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50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Knife Into The Underbelly Of Spanish America, May 3, 2007
This review is from: Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign (Hardcover)
One of the thoughts I took away from this book was how sometimes in order to defeat an enemy, it is necessary to fight him at his own level. Understanding this, England's most pragmatic monarch, Charles II, took the shrewd step of not only employing the regular navy in his conflicts with Spain, but of commissioning pirates to act as privateers, which he then sent out to take the fight directly into the nerve-center of Spain's lucrative Caribbean territories.
Empire of Blue Water---which has a beautiful cover, I might add---is primarily the story of Captain Henry Morgan, 1635-1688, the ultimate embodiment of buccaneer and raider in the great age of sail. Living a life that lends credence to the old maxim about truth being stranger than fiction, the flamboyant, fearless Morgan, son of minor Welsh gentry, proceeded to attack his nation's foes from Cuba to the coasts of South America and back again across a string of islands in a series of audacious flanking strikes that not only rattled the Spanish from the New World to Madrid, but lead to Spain's making a peace treaty with England that was highly beneficial to England's interests.
Stephan Talty also dishes up the de rigueur gossip and dirt on other pirates who sailed the Caribbean waters, sometimes acting in one nation's interest, sometimes that of another, most often simply dwelling as seaborne opportunists who sought profit and adventure wherever it was to be found. Fans of Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean series will probably enjoy reading about the exploits of real life counterparts to the fictional characters in the film, who were every bit as conniving, lawless and savage as might be expected. (Or hoped.)
At the center of this book is Captain Morgan's January 1671 raid into Panama, which demonstrated the vulnerability of even the most boastfully protected strongholds to the fast-moving, ruthless new breed of warrior he and his men represented. Ironically, Morgan's brilliantly executed raid, complete with a Robert E. Lee-like division of his forces during the assault, was carried out after the signing of the British-Spanish treaty, and was therefore an act of piracy. Arrested and jailed for his aggression, Morgan, then a national hero, escaped punishment by pleading ignorance in London of the existence of the treaty, and returned to the Caribbean a figure of almost cult-like renown.
A necessary part of this book which I did not greatly enjoy was that which dealt with the declining years of Morgan, when he became a figure very unlike his younger self on whom his legend is based. Morgan, who began life flirting with roguedom and ended it a deposed, drunken governor of the British colony of Jamaica, knighted and almost respectable, was forced to hang in the name of the Crown pirates he surely once knew as fellow "highwaymen of the open water." Eventually removed from office and spurned by those he'd once served, Morgan became a pitiable figure whose life perhaps lasted a decade longer than his fame. The fact that a heroic adventurer could find his end at the bottom of a bottle, a discarded pawn and tool of the establishment, was depressing and unworthy of what Henry Morgan deserved. Still, it's the legend that is remembered today, and Talty does a good job of buoying the myth, even as he never loses sight of the truth.
Good historical writing, and well-chosen subject matter.
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34 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
long on style, short on research, May 28, 2007
This review is from: Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign (Hardcover)
This book is basically a rehash of material that was covered by Peter Earle's THE SACK OF PANAMA. But instead of digging into new primary sources as Earle did in the unexplored Spanish records, Mr. Talty quotes familiar sources like Alexander Exquemeling and other secondary works, including Earle's. One sees the phrase "As quoted in" repeated all to often in his endnotes. He even includes sources on pirates who flourished sixty years after the events in his book, and he creates a fictional composite of a buccaneer named Roderick to perform actions that aren't backed up by facts. Mr. Talty also annoyingly peppers his prose with inappropriate modern analogies. For instance, Thomas Gage, former missionary to the Spanish Main, and propagandist for colonization of the Indies is described as the Neil Armstrong of his day.
Nevertheless, Talty's style can be engaging when he refrains from modernisms, and the book did provide some historical context for Henry Morgan's exploits. The introductory chapters on Gage and the settlement of Jamaica, as well as closing chapters concerning the years when Henry Morgan was deputy Governor of Jamaica were worth reading. But there is too much in between that has been refuted by the historical record, such as Exquemeling's lurid descriptions of torture which, if they were true, would have found their way into Spanish reports.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Private or privateer?, August 3, 2007
This review is from: Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign (Hardcover)
I've never been much interested in pirates, but I found myself enthralled with Stephan Talty's Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign.
Empire of Blue Water begins with the British trying to muscle in on Spain's hold in the New World by conquering Jamaica. At the time, Welshman Henry Morgan was a young sailor. But by the end of his life, he proved to be one of the most influential men in the Caribbean and helped to change the course of world history.
There was a thin line between being a private or a privateer, with Morgan being in the latter group. Privateering was actually invented by Henry VIII. This cash-strapped king offered commissions to sea captains to harass the French, attacking and capturing enemy ships. But unlike regular pirates, privateers gave a percentage of their "profits" to the crown. A romantic imagine exists today about pirates, but pirating was a very hard and dangerous life. But unlike most jobs, pirating was a "democratic institution." "The most important decisions were made from the bottom up." As for leadership, "the captain was only in charge when the crew was fighting, chasing a ship, or being chased."
Henry Morgan made a name (and a fortune) for himself by amassing large groups of pirates and staging four of the most daring raids of that period. They were against Granada, Portobello, Maracaibo and Panama. The Caribbean was akin to the Wild West in these days and Morgan proved to be a bold and brilliant leader. His cunning strategies allowed him to assess the weaknesses of the Spanish and to beat them at almost every turn. When England and Spain finally signed a peace treaty, pirating was outlawed. Morgan was one of the few who made a successful transition to private life, running his Jamaican plantation and becoming deputy governor.
There are fascinating tidbits of information in Blue Waters and I enjoyed how Henry Morgan and his exploits affected the world stage. Morgan had much to do with breaking the back of the Spanish Empire. "Without him, who knows what the map of the Caribbean and even the United States might look like." After 1713, Spain ceased to be a world power. Also, an earthquake in Port Royal four years after Morgan's death destroyed this Jamaican trade capital. Trade with Port Royal was then diverted through the American Colonies, never to return.
So, was Captain Morgan a bold, brilliant privateer or a "rampaging, torturing, thieving pirate?" Read Stephan Talty and decide for yourself!
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