Customer Reviews

The Pirate Ship 1660-1730 (New Vanguard)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

THE PIRATE SHIP 1660-1730 by Angus Konstam is an interesting little book (48 pages total), which has some very nice illustrations of 16th/17th century pirate ships, including a cross-section of the inside of a ship.

What you should expect to find in this book ... Topics include the design, origins, and conversion of pirate ships; small vessels and pirate flagships; and the pirate ship in action. The narration is easy to read and nicely detailed, and of course the main subject of the book is the pirate ship itself. One of my favorite passages was the real-life entry of a pirate-attack survivor, who talked about how his merchant ship engaged in bloody combat with pirates while (shockingly) two other merchant ships looked on, doing nothing to help.

What you won't find in this book ... I knew this book wasn't about the pirates themselves, as there are other books in this series written by this author that exclusively discuss pirates (or buccaneers). What I HAD hoped for, and didn't find, was a discussion about what living in a pirate ship was like (where did they eat, sleep, use the restroom, etc.?). As a side note, the closest I've ever come to seeing what life aboard a pirate ship might have been like was visiting the Vasa Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, which has a restored 17th century warship and includes a display on life inside the ship. It's a neat museum.

Anyway, this was a good little book for those interested in pirate ships. A recent pirate book I read and highly recommend is UNDER THE BLACK FLAG, which was rather entertaining for non-fiction.

The Pirate Ship by Angus Konstam is helpful in terms of providing a brief overview of pirate ships and some very detailed illustrations, but at 48 pages (including the index) it's little more than a pamphlet on the subject and should not be viewed as anything close to a comprehensive reference. The (short) chapters are:

- The Design of the Ideal Pirate Ship

- The Origins of the Pirate Ships

- The Conversion of a Prize

- Small Pirate Vessels

- Pirate Flagships

- The Pirate Ship in Action

That said, The Pirate Ship did increase, to some degree at least, my understanding of the wide variety of ships pirates actually used and of how the popular film versions of pirate ships do not reflect the reality of most historical pirate ships. It is also useful in familiarizing the reader with the historical terms used to distinguish various types of ships of the period (brigantines, sloops, shallops, fluyts, etc) and how one could tell the differences (square-rigged, fore-and-aft rigged, gaff-rigged, lateen-rigged). In fact, not all vessels we think of as ships were actually considered such:

"Today, the word 'ship' means any large, sea-going vessel. To the mariners of the 18th century, the term had a far more precise meaning. To them, a ship was a sailing vessel that had three masts and carried square-rigged sails. This included the majority of warships, including ships-of-the-line, the larger merchantmen, East India Company ships, and some slave ships (or 'guineamen') Other substantial sailing vessels such as polaccas (polacres), tartans, fluyts and others were not strictly considered ships."

The main thing I learned from reading this book was that, contrary to the popular portayal in the movies, the sloop ("a small vessel with a single mast, rigged with a fore-and-aft mainsail and jib foresail") was the most commonly used pirate vessel:

"it is clear that vessel-for-vessel, the sloop was the most important type of pirate ship of the period, as almost all pirates began their careers in this type of vessel."

Again, I did find this book helpful and informative in improving my understanding of pirate ships of the classical age of piracy, but I also was a bit frustrated by its limitations and found myself wishing the author had done a more in-depth work on the subject, most particularly with regard to what life on a pirate ship was like, something this book barely touches on. Worth reading, but don't expect more than what you'd get from a lengthy magazine article.

This is a study of the ships used by the Pirates in their `Golden Age' - 1690-1730. The author is an expert naval historian of the age of the wooden ship, and also an excellent writer, and this is a suitably good book, which concentrates of the ships themselves, rather than the men who crewed them; they have their own Ospreys.

The Contents are -

P03: Introduction

P04: The Design of the Ideal Pirate Ship

P08: The Origins of the Pirate Ship

P12: The Conversion of a Prize

P15: Small Pirate Vessels

P21: Pirate Flagships

P34: The Pirate Ship in Action

P38: Glossary

P41: Bibliography

P44: Colour Plate Commentary

P48: Index

The Colour Plates

A: The Brigantine Ranger of Charles Vane c.1790 - a full side view with sails & rigging

B: The Royal James and the Henry, Cape Fear River, North Carolina, 27 September 1718 - this is a painting showing both ships aground during their battle, but still firing on each other.

C: The Adventure Galley, 1698 (William Kidd) - this is a full side view, with masts and rigging.

D: A two page cut-away of the Queen Anne's Revenge, 1718 (Edward Teach, `Blackbeard')

E: The Royal Fortune, 1722 (Bartholomew Roberts) - this is a full side view, with sails, etc.

F: `Blackbeard's Last Fight' - a full-page painting of Blackbeard's sloop Adventure pursued by two Royal Navy-crewed sloops, Ranger and Jane.

G: The Sloop Flying Dragon, 1719 (Edmund Condent) - a full-page side view, with sails etc.

There are also plenty of contemporary illustrations to support the text.

Further Reading

Pirates 1660-1730 (Elite)

Privateers & Pirates 1730-1830 (Elite)

Pirate: The Golden Age (Warrior)

`The Pirate Ship, 1660 - 1730':

This book's strong points are the full color illustrations, and its strait to the point nature. For a book with 45 pages of content, this book does a fine job of detailing the often obscure nature of the pirate vessel, and includes anecdotes about the various captains who commandeered them. Of primary interest (as with 'Osprey' titles in general) are the original full color plates - here are the flagships of five famous pirates of the golden era, including a 2-page cut-away illustration of 'Queen Anne's Revenge', Blackbeards 40-gun man-o-war.

Other books are longer and go into much greater detail on the pirates themselves; this book focuses on their ships. It is well worth the $10-12 cost for the 7 original illustrations alone.

I would give it 5 stars if it included more of Tony Bryan's excellent artwork.

I found the book to be a solid resource in coming to understand the complex and sometimes contradictory world of marine architecture. The color illistrations were excellent even when the period reproductions were unclear. It was clearly written and easily understandable.

Hardly worth obtaining. Most of the information in here can be found elsewhere. But makes a good companion for the author's book on pirates by the same publisher.

Overall the Pirate ship was excellent and my grandson loves it.

However, in assembly, although relatively easy, the directions were vague. There were mostly pictures and arrows. The installation of the "collapsing mast" caused the most problems. It was unclear how the mast was to fit on the release lever. It turns out that there is a slot that the mast fits into but this is not clearly depicted.