Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
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.
Pages: 400
Published: 2010
ISBN: 978-0007329106
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.
The ‘jolly roger’ is probably the most iconic flag in the world. Nobody can see the skull and cross-bones without thinking ‘pirates’. This carefully-researched book explores the history of the famous pirate flag, its many variants, and includes descriptions and illustrations of every ‘jolly roger’ recorded during the ‘golden age’ of piracy in the eighteenth century.