Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Treasure Island is the seminal pirates and buried treasure novel, which is so brilliantly concocted that it appeals to readers both young and old. The story is told in the first person by young Jim Hawkins, whose mother keeps the Admiral Benbow Inn. An old seadog, a resident at the inn, hires Jim to keep a watch out for other sailors whom he fears but, despite all precautions, the old man is served with the black spot which means death. Among the dead man’s belongings Jim discovers a map showing the location of the buried treasure of the notorious pirate Captain Flint. It is not long before he, along with Doctor Livesey and Squire Trelawney, sets sail to find the treasure. However, amongst the hired hands is the one-legged Long John Silver who has designs on the treasure for himself.
Pages: 240
Published: 1883 (reprint 1999)
ISBN: 978-0140437683
It’s 1715 and Spain rules the Caribbean. Young Abigail Margaret Mary Pennyworth isn’t happy leaving her friends in England for the New World, but she has no say in where her missionary family goes as the Pennyworths set off for America. Not long before the end of the three-month voyage, their merchant ship is captured by Spanish pirates, and Abby is separated from her family and all she has known. But before she can adjust, the Spanish vessel is captured in turn—by the notorious English pirate Benjamin Hornigold, the leader of the Pirate Republic in Nassau. Hornigold renames the Spanish vessel Mary and decides that, rather than serving Abby to the sharks, he’ll have her serve as a member of his crew. And so starts her new life as the Captain’s cabin boy. Abby’s adventures begin as they seize Spanish vessels in the Caribbean and sail in consort with many of the famous pirates of the day: Blackbeard (Edward Thache), Black Sam Bellamy and his partner, Paulsgrave Williams, Major Stede Bonnet, and Olivier Levasseau.…
Jamaica, in 1665 a lone outpost of British power amid Spanish waters in the sunbaked Caribbean. Its capital, Port Royal, a cuthroat town of taverns, grog shops and bawdy houses – the last place imaginable from which to launch an unthinkable attack on a nearby Spanish stronghold. Yet that is exactly what renowned privateer Captain Charles Hunter plans to do, with the connivance of Charles II’s ruling governor, Sir James Almont. The target is Matanceros, guarded by the bloodthirsty Cazalla, and considered impregnable with its gun emplacements and sheer cliffs. Hunter’s crew of buccaneers must battle not only the Spanish fleet but other deadly perils – raging hurricanes, cannibal tribes, even sea monsters. But if his ragtag crew succeeds, they will make not only history … but a fortune in gold.
Corsair by Tim Severin is the first swashbuckling adventure in the Pirate series. 1677. On a late-summer’s evening, two ships lurk off the coast of southwest Ireland. Seventeen-year-old Hector Lynch wakes to the sound of a pistol shot as the Barbary corsairs raid his village, and he and his sister are snatched. Separated from each other, Hector is sold at auction in Algiers, and thrown into a bewildering world where life is cheap and only the quick-witted survive. In North Africa, Hector befriends fellow captive Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean, and the two men convert to Islam to escape the horrors of the slave barracks – only to become victims of the deadly warfare of the Mediterranean. Serving aboard a Turkish ship, their vessel is sunk at sea and by a savage twist of fortune they are chained to the oar bench of a French galley. Desperate to find his sister, Hector finally stumbles on the chilling truth of her fate when he and Dan are shipwrecked on the coast of Morocco.…
Wrongfully convicted of treason, a man escapes from slavery in the West Indies and becomes a pirate, determined to right the injustices that he sees around him, but his quest is undermined by his love for the plantation owner’s beautiful niece, in a swashbuckling, historical adventure.