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.
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.…
Feeding Nelson’s Navy: The True Story of Food at Sea in the Georgian Era by Janet MacDonald
The first modern study of the process of naval provisioning Explodes many myths about shipboard food and drink Written with the general reader in mind The prevailing image of food at sea in the age of sail features rotting meat and weevily biscuits, but this highly original book proves beyond doubt that this was never the norm. Building on much recent research Janet Macdonald shows how the sailor’s official diet was better than he was likely to enjoy ashore, and of ample calorific value for his highly active shipboard life. When trouble flared – and food was a major grievance in the great mutinies of 1797 – the usual reason was the abuse of the system. This ‘system’ was an amazing achievement. At the height of the Napoleonic Wars the Royal Navy’s administrators fed a fleet of more than 150,000 men, in ships that often spent months on end at sea.…
A New Voyage Round the World by William Dampier
The pirate and adventurer William Dampier circumnavigated the globe three times, and took notes wherever he went. This is his frank, vivid account of his buccaneering sea voyages around the world, from the Caribbean to the Pacific and East Indies. Filled with accounts of raids, escapes, wrecks and storms, it also contains precise observations of people, places, animals and food (including the first English accounts of guacamole, mango chutney and chopsticks). A bestseller on publication, this unique record of the colonial age influenced Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels and consequently the whole of English literature.
Pages: 512
Published: 2020 (first published 1697)
ISBN: 978-0241413289
Empire of the Deep: The Rise and Fall of the British Navy by Ben Wilson
The story of our navy is nothing less than the story of Britain, our culture and our empire. Much more than a parade of admirals and their battles, this is the story of how an insignificant island nation conquered the world’s oceans to become its greatest trading empire. Yet, as Ben Wilson shows, there was nothing inevitable about this rise to maritime domination, nor was it ever an easy path.