Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates by Eric Jay Dolin

Here be the dramatic and surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age”—spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s—when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. Best-selling author Dolin illustrates how American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the British Crown, and then violently opposed them. Through engrossing episodes of roguish glamour and extreme brutality, Dolin depicts the star pirates of this period, among them towering Blackbeard, ill-fated Captain Kidd, and sadistic Edward Low, who delighted in torturing his prey. Also brilliantly detailed are the pirates’ manifold enemies, including colonial governor John Winthrop, evangelist Cotton Mather, and young Benjamin Franklin. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes, Dolin provides this wholly original account of the seafaring outlaws whose raids reflect the precarious nature of American colonial life.

Pirate: the Buccaneer’s Unofficial Manual by Stephen Turnbull

This witty, informative, and highly entertaining fictionalized account, written as a pirate’s training manual for a young recruit based in the year 1793—a golden age for piracy, gives all the details on to how to be a pirate. Included are chapters on the history of piracy, stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome; essentials of language and dress; notable pirate role models, including Blackbeard and Captain Kidd; what to expect of life at sea; the best weapons to have; how to capture a prize on the high seas and much more. Find out whether people really walked the plank, pirates kept parrots, or burried treasure and marked it with an X on the map, and then try to avoid talking like a pirate. You CAN’T, ye scurvy dog!

Hook’s Tale: Being the Account of an Unjustly Villainized Pirate Written by Himself emended and edited by John Leonard Pielmeier

This rollicking debut novel reimagines the childhood of the much maligned Captain Hook: his quest for buried treasure, his friendship with Peter Pan, and the story behind the swashbuckling world of Neverland. Long defamed as a vicious pirate, Captain James Cook (a.k.a Hook) was in fact a dazzling wordsmith who left behind a vibrant, wildly entertaining, and entirely truthful memoir. His chronicle offers a counter narrative to the works of J.M. Barrie, a “dour Scotsman” whose spurious accounts got it all wrong. Hook’s Tale offers a radical new version of a classic story, bringing readers into a much richer, darker, and enchanting version of Neverland than ever before. The characters that our hero meets lead him to the most difficult decision of his life: whether to submit to the temptation of eternal youth, or to embrace the responsibilities of maturity and the inevitability of his own mortality. His choice, like his story, is not what you might expect.

Pirates and Privateers: a Swashbuckling Compendium of Seafaring Scoundrels by Charlotte Montague

The romantic image of the pirate has been seen as something of a Hollywood cash cow ever since Errol Flynn first climbed the rigging for the film Captain Blood, in 1935. The hugely successful Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, starring the megastar Johnny Depp, proved undoubtedly that swashbuckling sells. But what do we know about the real Captain Jack Sparrows of yesteryear? Who were they? Where did they come from? And what heinous and daring acts did they perform on the path towards riches and infamy? Pirates and Privateers delves into the real lives of these men and women, whose seafaring adventures have become legendary. It explores the criminal careers of some of the most fascinating scoundrels and scallywags in history, including Blackbeard, the Barbarossa Brothers, Captain Kidd, Anne Bonney and Mary Read.

Black Sails

This Starz television show follows Captain Flint and his pirates twenty years prior to Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic novel “Treasure Island.”

Season 1
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Bad Pirate by Kari-Lynn Winters

Barnacle Garrick is bold and saucy and selfish. And for a pirate captain, that’s good, very good. And his crew are all scurvy sea dogs–selfish down to the last flea-bitten scuttle-butt. And that’s good too. But Augusta Garrick is shy, polite, and selfless. For a pirate, that’s bad, very bad. Despite her father’s horrible example, the sea pup can’t stop helping out. It just might take one terrible storm, a ripped sail, a missing peg leg and a panicked crew before Augusta can prove that being selfless is a bold and saucy move after all. And that’s good, very good indeed!

The Whydah: A Pirate Ship Feared, Wrecked, and Found by Martin Sandler

The 1650s to the 1730s marked the golden age of piracy, when fearsome pirates like Blackbeard ruled the waves, seeking not only treasure but also large and fast ships to carry it. The Whydah was just such a ship, built to ply the Triangular Trade route, which it did until one of the greediest pirates of all, Black Sam Bellamy, commandeered it. Filling the ship to capacity with treasure, Bellamy hoped to retire with his bounty but in 1717 the ship sank in a storm off Cape Cod. For more than two hundred years, the wreck of the Whydah (and the riches that went down with it) eluded treasure seekers, until the ship was finally found in 1984 by marine archaeologists. The artifacts brought up from the ocean floor are priceless, both in value and in the what they reveal of life in that much-mythologized era, changing much of what we know about pirates.

DK Findout! Pirates

Meet swashbuckling pirates in DK findout! Pirates and see how they really lived out on the high seas. Discover the truth behind the myths, and tease out the facts from the fiction.

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