Barbary Pirates [Paperback]

C. S. Forester (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: New English Library Ltd; New impression edition (December 1968)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0450002322
• ISBN-13: 978-0450002328
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,583,053 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

C. S. Forester (1899-1966) wrote several novels with military and naval themes, including The African Queen, The Barbary Pirates, The General, The Good Shepherd, The Gun, The Last Nine Days of the "Bismarck," and Rifleman Dodd. But Forester is best known as the creator of Horatio Hornblower, a British naval genius of the Napoleonic era, whose exploits and adventures on the high seas Forester chronicled in a series of eleven acclaimed historical novels. Over the years Hornblower has proved to be one of the most beloved and enduring fictional heroes in English literature, his popularity rivaled only by Sherlock Holmes.

Born Cecil Louis Troughton Smith in Cairo, Egypt, Forester grew up in London. At the start of World War II he traveled on behalf of the British government to America, where he produced propaganda encouraging the United States to remain on Britain's side. After the War, Forester remained in America and made Berkeley, California, his home.

The character of Horatio Hornblower was born after Forester was called to Hollywood to write a pirate film. While the script was being drafted, another studio released Captain Blood, starring Errol Flynn, based on the same historical incidents about which Forester was writing. Rather than seek another movie project, and to avoid an impending paternity suit, Forester jumped aboard a freighter bound for England. By the end of the voyage he had outlined Beat to the Quarters, which introduced the now legendary character Hornblower, Bush, and Lady Barbara.

Forester died in 1966 while working on Hornblower During the Crisis.

Back Bay's editions of the Hornblower novels are numbered according to the chronology of Hornblower's life and career, not according to the sequence in which they were written. The series is comprised of the following titles:


Mr. Midshipman Hornblower
Lieutenant Hornblower
Hornblower and the Hotspur
Hornblower During the Crisis
Hornblower and the Atropos
Beat to Quarters
Ship of the Line
Flying Colours
Commodore Hornblower
Lord Hornblower
Admiral Hornblower in the West Indies

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A clear, crisp telling of the war with the Barbary pirates, January 20, 2004

By 

Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Barbary Pirates (Hardcover)

This is the story of America's first steps onto the world stage: her fight against the Barbary pirates. C.S. Forester, grand master of the naval adventure novel, here writes not a novel, but simply a story, of young America's struggle to gain freedom of the seas against a harsh and cruel enemy that was seizing American ships and enslaving American sailors. The rest of the world had put up with this state of affairs literally for centuries. America, armed with resolve but no money, and virtually no navy, determined to end it.

Forester does not gloss over the difficulties and the folly that America committed along the way as it tried to figure out how to end the menace of the Barbary Pirates. We tried to buy them off, but they couldn't be bought off, and these efforts endgendered contempt and even more depredations against American ships and men. American politicians, even the great Jefferson, feared establishing a powerful Navy on the theory that such a Navy might become a threat to the young Republic's liberty by bringing forth tyrants. This quaint theory would cause young America endless problems, both with the war against the pirates, and later in the War of 1812 against Britain.

Forester writes in a crisp narrative that completely holds the reader's interest, and he tells a complicated story in a manner that gets his point across without burying the reader in detail. This is a short, sharp book that tells a great story from the early history of America and which holds lessons that are relevant to today's events and problems.

As Forester notes, every country at some time or another in its history brings forth an unusually large number of particularly gifted and great men. This was such a time for America, which brought forth Preble and Decatur, naval heros who lived to become legends in their own times, and whose leadership brought honor to the American nation and Navy as it finally crushed the pirates, establishing the doctrine of Freedom of the Seas which even today is a bedrock of American policy.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A film begging to be made, April 9, 2000

By 

Erica "Erica" (Washington State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Barbary Pirates (Hardcover)

If you find this classic by Forester, snap it up. Written in a razor-sharp style, The Barbary Pirates recreates America's first formal naval engagement since the Revolutionary War. Stephen Decatur and the core of young naval officers at the heart of this remarkable story are more than American heroes, they are icons of dash and bravery, and intelligence. This book is an excellent introduction to one of the least-known periods of American history, a time when her Navy was young and the Barbary States---Morocco, Tunis, Tripoli and Algiers---terrorized the Mediterranean and Europe.

13 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A clear, concise history of our war with the Barbary Pirates, April 21, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Barbary Pirates (Hardcover)

Between 1785 and 1805, the United States was at the mercy of the Barbary Pirates. The Barbary Pirates, actually fundamentalist Moslems, waged war against those who weren't Moslems. The Barbary States, Morocco, Algiers, and Tripoli, were engaged in a centuries long war with Christendom. They fought all of Christianity and enslaved their captives. When the American frigate USS Philadelphia was on blockade duty off Tripoli in 1804, she tried to capture the Tripolitans but ran aground on the shoals. To prevent her from falling into enemy hands, Steven Decatur, who said "My country right or wrong," burned the ship with the help of a Neapolitan ship, captured by Decatur and his men, and named the Intrepid. A MUST READ for anybody who loves history.