Pirates in Their Own Words by E.T. Fox
Pirates in Their Own Words is a collection of original documents relating to the ‘golden age’ of piracy. Letters, testimonies, witness accounts and other primary source documents written by the pirates themselves, their victims, and the men who hunted them down.
John Gow was a Scottish pirate who was active off the Iberian Peninsula from 1724 to 1725. He was captured in the Orkneys and hanged at Execution Dock on 11th June 1725. His articles were written in his own hand writing and were found aboard his ship, the Revenge, not long after his capture in 1725. Evidence suggests that these articles were written only a few days before he and his crew were captured by the authorities after dangerous currents had pulled the ship onto a reef and forced it aground. Historians believe that the reference in Article IV to no going ashore “till the ship is off the ground” suggests that the ship was already grounded when this code was written.
The Wars of the Barbary Pirates – To the shores of Tripoli: the rise of the US Navy and Marines by Gregory Fremont-Barnes
The Barbary War – the first American war against Libya – was the first war waged by the United States outside national boundaries after gaining independence and unification of the country. The four Barbary States of North Africa – Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli – had plundered seaborne commerce for centuries. This was piracy on an extraordinary scale: they controlled all trading routes through the Barbary waters and North Africa: demanding ransom and booty for safe passage. In 1801 the newly elected President Jefferson ordered a naval and military expedition to North Africa in order to put down regimes that endorsed piracy and slavery. The Pasha of Tripoli declared war on the United States. Under the leadership of Commodores Richard Dale and Edward Preble, the US Navy blockaded the enemy coast and engaged in close, bitterly contested gunboat actions.…
