Customer Reviews

The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730

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For those who love historical texts, but sometimes have a hard time weeding thru the period language, overly technical jargon and miles of microfiche, this book is a real blessing. The author not only deals with the methods of tracking, chasing and boarding prey, but goes happily in-depth about the people who follow the "sweet trade". He covers the buccaneer lifestyle on land as well as at sea, the events leading up to their rise in influence in the Caribbean, and goes into clothing, food, religion, heirarchy, weapons, flags,choice of ships and cultural relationships.
I picked up this book primarily to confirm or disprove my theories on individual weapons combat during boarding actions and while the techniques are not played up in any great detail,citing the use of powder and grenades over cutlass and knife, the reasonings behind what weapons were used and how unorthodox hand to hand combat could be in closed quarters are sound.
Overall a very enjoyable and informative book!

Gareth Thomas
Director; Historical Maritime Combat Association

This is a great backgrounder on what really was behind the privateers, buccaneers / boucaniers, filibusters / flibustier, and pirates. Focusing on a hundred year period beginning in 1630, the former Navy SEAL draws on contemporary diaries and books to describe everything from the background, motivation, tactics, equipment, and even an appendix on drinks. The reality of the sea rover's tactics are in stark contrast to the image of the Hollywood pirate. The reality were crews and officers operating under very democratic rules and performing complex operations seeking to maximize effort (return on investment).

Appropriate to the modern era of small wars? Little generally leaves it to the reading to connect to the present (absent a rare couple of modern analogies in the book), except for one paragraph at the end:

"Whatever their vices, weaknesses, and moral ambiguities, these buccaneers have in common with most sea rovers several tactical virtues, including innovation, loyalty, perseverance, adaptability, and courage. Collectively, they prove that a loose, uncentralized, and informal network can conduct significant, complex military operations. They show the effect that an irregular force can have on the resources of a powerful state, causing great economic damage and tying down significant forces. And, most importantly, they demonstrate that elements of broadly divergent and disparate cultures, races, nationalities, classes, professions, and personalities can act as one with a common goal."

My brief comments here don't do the book justice. The amount of detail Little puts in this book is sometimes mind boggling, not to say amazing. This is not a book that only looks at the past but has surprising applicability to modernity.

I have found it particularly useful in supporting various arguments about privatization of force as well as insurgent warfare.

Mr. Little, an experienced "rover" himself from his time in the USN SEALs, does this topic justice in his book. Well and exhaustively researched, this book gives a great peek into the reality of the pirate/privateer life that is so often romanticized in book and film.

Every aspect of the sea rovers' life is placed before the reader, from seamanship to boarding tactics, to life on shore after a successful cruise. In the back of the book, you can find statistics for firearms and great guns, several glosseries for ships and people, and even some simple recipies buccaneers would have used.

The only minor quibble I might have is that the style of the writing can seem stilted and list like, but that was not frequent and did not detract from my enjoyment of the work.

This is a must read for anyone with an interest in maratime history or pirates.

Ben Little has done an excellent job of writing this book. It is very difficult to maintain a good writing style, while keeping the factual nature of the material clear. The author has maintained this balance superbly.

It is obvious that the author has obtained as much of the facts as possible from first hand accounts written during this time period. It is also nice to see military tactical thinking without the Hollywood overlay of glitz.

I would recommend this book to anyone that would like a factual view of pirate tactics, life style, and weaponry.

"The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730" by Benerson Little is a great reference tool for anyone interested in the in-depth details of how buccaneers, privateers, and pirates of the West Indies commanded and conquered.

Do not expect a storyline or biographies in this book. It is solely about tactics, as stated in the subtitle. Each section is filled with detail after fascinating detail about pirate battle strategies. You get a real understanding of why a pirate would, for instance, chose a particular weapon to use during the boarding of a ship, examining everything from the weapon's overall capacity to maim to the sturdiness of the materials used to construct it.

The book's first chapter talks of greed and desperation and the last chapter covers dying by the sword. In between, you learn about pirate ships, recruiting, arms used in close combat, watches, flags, cruising strategies, mutiny, broadsiding, pirate tricks, and many other topics. There are also appendices with items like pirate vocabulary and recipes, as well as illustrations depicting weapons (guns, swords, cannons, etc.) and the best boarding positions.

Altogether, the book is easy to read, thorough, and loaded with information. I definitely recommend it to those who want to learn more about the real pirates of the Caribbean.

For those who prefer biographies (or less strategy and more story), read David Cordingly's "Under the Black Flag" for an engrossing look at piracy throughout the ages.

If you want to know how pirates in the America's worked then this book is for you. If like me you have seen too many Hollywood movies this book is an eye-opener.

Piracy was a business. A pirate was a businessman and so any attack would be measured by a commercial cost/benefit analysis first. So it was done as cheaply as possible using commando methods. That is why it is good the writer having been a naval seal knows and understands these methods. Which he discusses well.

One doubt on this book I have is it discusses how a professional pirate would have done it, I am sure that many pirates were amateurish. A few people decide to go pirate take over a ship and learn on-the-job. This book only discusses the ideal tactics. Not how it was often done but how it was suppose to be done.

I also found it fascinating the discussions of the social structure of the ship. The pirate leader does not have a formal chain of command like the military caption have. He is in charge ultimately because the crew want him to be in charge. If he does not match up to the crews expectations he is out.

I hope the writer does a sequel on Muslim and Chinese pirates.

PS I even like the recipes at the end and am keen to try them out. I wonder if one of them the rum punch with lime was popular as it would stop scurvy. The medical benefits of citrus foods was known about this time although not proven till the late 1700s.

Benerson Little, a former Navy SEAL, has written an excellent reference work on how piracy actually worked. In short, it's not anything like the mythical descriptions we get from cinema or novels.

The depth and breadth of his scholarship, as evidenced by this work, is highly commendable. He ranges from detailed descriptions/explorations of weapons and tactics to the dynamics of contracts, leadership, and organization. It was an excellent read and I particularly liked it since it provided me more insight into how warfare, outside the confines of most forms of legality or convention, is waged in a modern context.

For example: He details how a pirate crew is put together, from financing to recruitment to employment contracts (the articles) to financial compensation. To me, this was valuable since many of the financial dynamics he details are present in modern criminal economies, from the cyber crime of the Russian Business Network to the IED cell operating in Iraq.

Another example: Very precise examination of the armaments and ships used by pirates to ply their trade. Everything from the advantages of multi-shot and flintlocks to the efficacy of oars and canoes. For me, it was a very illuminating exploration of how weaponry can be altered to provide tactical advantages to an outnumbered and outgunned attacker.

So, if you are interested in finding out how pirates truly operated - or - you want to gain a more insight into 21st Century guerrilla warfare, this is the book for you. Buy it today, read it, and pass it on to a friend.

Final note: Benerson should be giving classes on this subject at Annapolis and West Point (I am sure he would be oversubscribed).

Hope this helps,

John Robb
Author of: Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization

An excellent resource to understand the how-to of piracy. From firing a broadside to boarding, it gives the reader a handle on how the pirates were able to outfight and outsail their prey with smaller ships and sometimes fewer guns.

THE SEA ROVER'S PRACTICE: PIRATE TACTICS AND TECHNIQUES 1630-1730 is based largely on first-person accounts and describes how pirates and buccaneers made sea roving a profitable business. Successful pirating was conducted on the high seas to acquire wealth: chapters come from first-person source materials and reveal all the basic details perfect for any general-interest collection where lively history is of interest.

Pay attention to the subtitle: Pirate Tactics and Techniques.

Little writes a wonderful book about pirates, here. He avoids sinking into the typical "history of this, that, and the other pirate" sort of cliche that other authors have followed (how many different times can you recount the exploits of Edward Teach and Henry Morgan, anyway?). Rather, his book is a study of HOW the pirates conducted their business. There are chapters on how they recruited, how they acquired their ships and sailed, on what they would have been interested in retrieving from their prey (no buried treasure or chests of Aztec gold here), what weapons they used and how they were used, ship types and descriptions, sailing and chasing techniques, flags, routines ashore, etc.

This is much more informative and interesting than the actual biographical books. Little is certainly fully qualified to write this book, as he spent 8 years on the Teams (although he went as an officer, which is something like joining the Dark Side), and afterwards was an analyst for NSW Strategy and Tactics Group. He did a ton of research (demonstrated by his 29 pages of footnotes and 8 pages of references), and presents the subject matter in straightfoward and easily understood manner.

The one thing that somewhat disappoints me is the total lack of any information on pirates in areas besides the Caribbean. A simple addition of "Caribbean" somewhere in the title would have been nice. He completely skips over the notorious Barbary corsairs (who were less well known for their seamanship, but better known for their bloody boarding actions) or the pirate lords of the Far East, such as Ching Yih, who nearly ruled a nation. For a little more information on these, check out Angus Konstam's History of Pirates.

I heartily recommend this book to anybody who is interested in actual pirate practices in the Caribbean.