Hello everyone I am new here. I love all things history especially anything pirates related. Look forward to conversing with you all
Have you read The General History of the Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson? There are several more excellent pirate books in inexpensive Dover paperback reprints.
I'm partial to this title. It took me quite a while to convince Dover to reprint it. Not only has it been a steady seller for them, but they went on to bring back into print several other good titles.
Good luck to all,
The Old Bookaroo, CM
For those interested, here is the Project Gutenberg scan of a first edition - probably the closest I will ever get to one of thoseA GENERAL HISTORY
OF THE
PYRATES,
FROM
Their first RISE and SETTLEMENT in the Island of
Providence, to the present Time.
With the remarkable Actions and Adventures of the two Female Pyrates
Mary Read and Anne Bonny;
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/40580/40580-h/40580-h.htm
"Come away, Hawkins," he would say; "come and have a yarn with John. Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Sit you down and hear the news. Here's Cap'n Flint--I calls my parrot Cap'n Flint, after the famous buccaneer--here's Cap'n Flint predicting success to our v'yage. Wasn't you, cap'n?" And the parrot would say, with great rapidity, "Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!" till you wondered that it was not out of breath, or till John threw his handkerchief over the cage. "Now, that bird," he would say, "is, maybe, two hundred years old, Hawkins--they live forever mostly; and if anybody's seen more wickedness, it must be the devil himself. She's sailed with England, the great Cap'n England, the pirate. She's been at Madagascar, and at Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. It's there she learned 'Pieces of eight,' and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of 'em, Hawkins! She was at the boarding of the viceroy of the Indies out of Goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a babby. But you smelt powder-- didn't you, cap'n?" "Stand by to go about," the parrot would scream. "Ah, she's a handsome craft, she is," the cook would say, and give her sugar from his pocket, and then the bird would peck at the bars and swear straight on, passing belief for wickedness. "There," John would add, "you can't touch pitch and not be mucked, lad. Here's this poor old innocent bird o' mine swearing blue fire, and none the wiser, you may lay to that. She would swear the same, in a manner of speaking, before chaplain." And John would touch his forelock with a solemn way he had that made me think he was the best of men. |