The Mammoth Book Of Pirates

Awash with skulduggery, malice, terror and opportunism, here are 28 first-hand memoirs and contemporary reports of the most famous pirates to sail the seven seas, including Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, 'Calico Jack' Rackham, Alexander Exquemelin, Frances Drake, Anne Bonney, Jean Lafitte, and the Joassamee Pirates. The accounts range from the Golden Age of piracy, beginning in the mid 16th century with the birth of the 'buccaneers' in the Caribbean, to more recent times - such as: Francis 'Scourge of Spain' Drake's audacious night treasure raid on Nombre de Dios; The capture of Panama by Henry Morgan, greatest and cruellest of the 'Brethren of the Coast'; Alexander Exquemelin's fly-on-the-wall account of the 'wicked order of pirates, or robbers of the sea'; The apostasy of John Ward and Simon Danser - Christians who served as privateers for the Muslim states of the North African coast; Louis 'Half-Arse' Le Golif, whose buttock was shot away by cannon; Journal of William Dampier, found stashed in a hollow bamboo tube, having fled life as a Somerset farmer to piracy on the Pacific; Henry Avery's seizure of the Moghul of India's staggering treasure ship Gang-l-sawai; Plus, the Pirate's Code of Honour (article 4: lights out at eight o'clock, 'if after that hour any still remained inclined to drinking, to do it on open deck'...); a listing of pirate songs; pirate flags; and a full pirate chronology - all in all, no quarter spared in this Mammoth-sized collection.