Customer Reviews

Pirates of the North Atlantic

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The prose is reminiscent of Howard Pyle's The Book of Pirates; unfortunately, it does not include the wonderful artwork. What I mean by this is that the book makes for entertaining reading, but factually, you need to take much of it with a grain of salt. The latter chapters on the Saladin, Mary Celeste and Zero seem to be fairly accurate. The preceding chapters cover John Phillips, Edward Low, Edward and Margaret Jordan, Blackbeard, William Kidd, Bartholemew Roberts, Samuel Hall, Thomas Pound, Peter Easton and Henry Mainwarring. These early chapters contain a good deal of fictionalized content that makes for excellent reading and perpetuates a number of myths.

One of the things that bothers me about the book is the author's choice to cite three of his works (on treasure hunting and Oak Island) and a number of semi-fictional works in the bibliography of this book.

As always, though, it is necessary to read a number of works in history to garner the sparkling gems of truth from the many grains of sand. The gems are here, but so is the sand, and the author is aware of them as evidenced by his preface, "As with all stories obscured by time, there are probably inaccuracies in my accounts,...".

Bottom line, a good book for young pirate aficionados, but be aware of the shortcomings and look to a number of other books for a consensus on the real stories. In particular, I find Angus Konstam to be a good reference.
P-)