Customer Reviews

Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates (Harvest Book)

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4 star:		(35)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"Under the Black Flag" is a real pirate's treasure. For all those who want to know what was "real" and what "romance", here's your book.

Mr. Cordingly has performed a deep research on the subject and presents it in a very readable and interesting form. He has taken diaries, contemporary newspaper articles, personal letters and memoirs as a solid backdrop.
His study is centered mainly in the Caribbean theater, the East coast of North America and the Indian Ocean. He also gives glimpses of the Chinese pirates leaded by Ms. Cheng.
Every main issue is described: weaponry, tactics, vessels, flags, everyday life, treasures, pets and battles.
In its pages you'll find the life and deeds of famous characters as Henry Morgan, "Blackbeard", Captain Kidd, L'Ollonais, Calico Jack and many others not so well known.
A whole chapter is dedicated to women pirates including the adventures and misadventures of Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
Finally "romance" is addressed taking into account mainly movies on the subject.

As a bonus the book includes six maps of the different scenarios of pirate's campaigns; a glossary of sea terms; an extensive bibliography and several appendixes on relevant matters.

So brace yourselves and come aboard!

Reviewed by Max Yofre.

Probably one of the best overall books on the subject of piracy, myth and reality, that I have read. Cordingly covers the history, the movies, the books, the truths and the untruths. He covers the pirate havens, common practices, origins, the big names and little names. Not just a dry narrative, but a fun read.

If you were to buy one book on the topic of piracy, this should be it (Angus Konstam's History of Pirates would be next in line). It is a must for any budding pirate historian. P-)

David Cordingly's "Under the Black Flag, The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates" constitutes the best researhed book on pirate history I have ever read. The information provided about the lives of this notorious anti-heroes, the reality of the life among them and the world of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is amazingly accurate, and backed up with an extensive bibliography and footnotes. For those interested in pirate history throughout the ages, and specially the Golden Age of Piracy, this book constitutes a fundamental tool for understanding the pirate reality. When uncovering how the real people like Edward Teach and Calico Jack were, this book has no equal. Cordingly separates the myths from the real individuals behind them, proving that the reality is much more interesting than the romance, when uncovered. At the same time, the author discusses how the myths surrounding Blackbeard, the Women Pirates or Kidd's treasure, were formed and have survived through the years, becoming important elements of popular culture. Cordingly establishes why in our hearts, pirates were not sadistic villans, but rather "...romantic outlaws living far from civilization on some distant sunny shore," something most of us would dream to be.

I liked this one. It is more of an overview of the the history of piracy and of the period than the in depth study for which I hoped, but it is presented in no nonsense manner with many references to resources should you wish to go farther into any of the myriad of topics the David Cordingly inroduces.

His writing style is in the more popular vein (for an historian) and he supplies many anecdotes and popular myths about pirates in general and some specific characters as well. In places he seems to draw heavily on "A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pirates" by Defoe or Johnson (which ever you prefer). For people not willing to wade through Defoe's (or Johnson's) style - it is a good synopsis of those chapters, even if the common conseptions of the time have been removed.

He over states his point that Hollywood, Stevenson and others have romantisized the pirate life and proceeds to give the reader a quick dose of reality. However, I think for people approaching this book with the idea it is history, it is an overdose. There are too many regressions and comparisons to popular novels and movies. While the title implies such comparisons - they are rather obvious ones.

My main critique of this book is similar to others I have seen here. It was to much and too little. If you want an introduction to the history of piracy and some of the better known pirates - then this book is perfect. If you want an in depth study of the lives or even of the marauding of specific pirates sprinkled with eye witness accounts and embroidered in the telling - read Johnson (or Defoe) instead.

But the book holds many gems of information that may not be found in other histories and analysies. I just wish that some topics had been better developed. It is almost as if the book is a preparation for other books that will go further in depth on various aspects. I found the information gleaned from the archeological excavations of ships fascinating and wanted more. Perhaps there will be more forthcoming -especially now that they are working on Kidd's ship? I would recommend this book though as an introduction to those who wish to get a good tast of what life was like in that time.

I liked David Cordingly's "Under the Black Flag: the Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates." The sea terms glossary was useful: I didn't know that "pink" and "snow" were types of sailing ships. I like my books to have a bibliography, a table of contents, a list of illustrations, and be indexed so that I can find citations rapidly-Cordingly also put in four appendixes, documents supporting his thesis.

Pirates have been around since before recorded history. Pirates prey on society-they cannot exist without prey. Pirates are still active today-especially in the Far East. Cordingly mentions them (publication date is 1995)-my personal experience is that pirates are still a problem for security professionals.

"Under the Black Flag" explores both fact and fiction. The romantic image is examined through books, plays, and movies. Captain Hook from "Peter Pan" and Long John Silver from "Treasure Island" are said to be the two most famous pirates.

The historical pirates included the Chinese pirate queen Cheng Shih, Molly Read, Anne Bonny, Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Sir Frances Drake-to name the most notorious and famous. Some, such as Drake, became national heroes and were made legitimate. Others, such as Captain Kidd, were railroaded. The Blackbeards earned every bit of notoriety.

How did the pirates live-and die? My "day job" is working as a supply technician for the Nevada Army National Guard, and while on active duty I was an Army intelligence analyst-so details on how the pirate ships were kept in good repair and provisioned were right up my alley. Most pirate loot was hardware, food, sail cloth, and other such items that kept their ship afloat and their crews alive (if not healthy). As with pirates and terrorists and other criminals today, pirates survived because there was no concerted effort to eradicate them, because corrupt public officials and governments nurtured them, and because it wasn't really worthwhile for the large commercial corporations to pull the plug. "Under the Black Flag" does record instances where piracy suppression operations occurred, and Cordingly expresses surprise at how rapidly the pirate menace abated. No mystery to me-pirates live a precarious existence. Any number of things can go wrong. Pirates are never a match for a real navy-because navies do not have to subsist off of plunder. Cordingly records that in 1720 there were perhaps 2000 active pirates (a guess-pirates didn't submit to a credible and official census). Total pirate ships was low, with an average of 80 pirates per crew-so there were about two dozen pirate ships. The year 1720 was a peak of pirate activity. When the Royal Navy dispatched a dozen or so warships specifically for pirate suppression, issued amnesty to those who would give up piracy, closed pirate havens, organized merchant convoys, placed bounties on captured pirates, cracked down on corrupt government officials who supported piracy, and cleaned up the privateer system, the pirate menace all but vanished within a few short years.

Pirates were cruel and savage-they were "macho men" in many ways. Life in the Royal Navy was rough-but I was surprised to learn that life as a merchant seaman was worse. I didn't know it could get worse! For example, "Under the Black Flag" reports that the white crews of slave ships suffered the same rate of fatalities as their black human cargo. Merchant crews have always been small due to the desire to maximize profits by having low overheard-a pirate crew may have been 80 men, the same size merchant ship would have had perhaps a dozen in the crew. Wooden sailing ships are labor-intensive. In port, as with today's over-the-road trucker, the ships would be loaded and unloaded by dock hands. At sea, the small crew would be doing everything. If something went wrong (pirate attack, bad weather, accidents), the small crew would be overwhelmed. John Harrison's chronometer and lunar distance tables were developed in the middle of the 18th Century (page 82 & 83): until then, seamen could never be sure where they were in the east-west direction (longitude)-errors of 600 miles or more were common for poor navigators. Latitude calculations were usually within 5 or 10 miles-the view from the crows nest of those tall ships would be able to spot land at that distance, so navigators would pick a line of latitude and sail along that line. Or, they'd follow the coast. These navigational shortcomings played into the hands of the pirates, who had only to wait along `shipping routes' for fat merchant ships. Eventually, naval vessels began aggressively patrolling these routes, making life more difficult. Pirate ships had to be self-sufficient. Ports and shipyards were often closed to them. Pirate ships were basically modified merchant vessels-few pirate ships were purpose-built or started life as a warship. Ordinary merchant seaman life was so terrible that many turned pirate. Many were also drafted when their merchant ship fell victim to pirates-or so it was claimed at pirate trials. Deserters from the Royal Navy and escaped slaves became pirates. Due to lack of a national government and the need for leadership performance, pirate captains ruled at the whim of their crews.

I liked this book. It was informative and entertaining.

The biggest thing that made me nervous about this book beforehand was that the author, David Cordingly, was the former director of the National Maritime Museum, and those types can be long-winded. However, this book clocked in at only 224 pages (excluding the Appendices), so it didn't go long enough to drag.

Obviously you're interested in the genre of pirates if you're looking at this book, and I personally think it is a gem. It covers all of the areas that you want to hear about: the drinking, the debauchery, the plundering and all of the other gruesome and glorious aspects of life at sea. However, instead of just perpetuating myths, this one actually goes about proving and disproving them.

One of the highlights for me was reading all of the personal accounts of pirate attacks, trials and such, still in its original language. Cordingly actually quotes these people as they wrote it at the time, for example "We being attacked by ye pyrattes and therefore fell under duress" instead of the author translating that to "we were attacked by pirates and got scared", it really helped the feel of the book.

If you're not a pirate scholar but are interested in the subject and would like to learn a few tidbits to impress your friends, I don't think you'd find a better means of doing so than "Under the Black Flag".

If any period of history needs some major debunking, it's the life of pirates and piracy. This book does the job and more. The romance and swashbuckling portrayed in the comic book fashion of movies and television gets the wind taken out of its sails by Cordingly. He sets the record straight with smooth, exciting, and descriptive writing. You are there among all the cruelty, horror, and greed as well as the splendor of sudden wealth, freedom and democracy of life aboard a pirate ship. Enchanted by some pages, I could feel the salt spray and the wind to my back, and imagine myself on board ship pulling into some exotic and strange new port. A few more pages on, and I could feel my teeth loosening from scurvy, and the sudden need to take a hot shower. Read this book in a comfortable easy chair, with your favorite hot or cold drink at hand and the room a perfect temperature for the season. And appreciate how lucky you really are!

My favorite part of the book was the afterword, which quickly summarized the book's main theme - the difference between the reality of pirate life and the romantic mythology created by books, plays and movies. There are many other interesting topices covered. For example, the difference between buccaneers(outlaw freelancers) and privateers (government sanctioned pirates whose method was to attack and rob the merchant ships of rival countries).

But I did find this book to be a rather dull read. Partially this was due to Cordingly's dry writing style. But perhaps more so because of poor organization and editing. Cordingly divides the book into chapters based on various aspects of piracy. But it is not chronological. This causes the many dates written about to muddle into a confused mess rather than provide a clear historical context. Also Cordingly tends to jump from story to story. This prevents the book from having any narrative flow and caused me to lose interest after awhile. By the end I found myself "speed reading" just to get through.

Plenty of good information by a knowledgeable expert. But there must be a better written historical account of pirates to read.

This is a well researched & factual account of the lives & times of pirates. The historical facts throughout, are nicely compared to the popular illusions we all draw when considering pirates in particular, or in general. A romantic life, this was not! Extremely few lived to enjoy the product of their nefarious activities on the high seas. In fact very few avoided coming to a sticky end on the gibbet, or on the deck of their ship. It's clear that the crime of piracy in the late 17th. early 18th. century, rarely paid. The book abounds with details of the principle characters that are both interesting & surprising. Perhaps the difference between two of the most well remembered & recognised pirates, Blackbeard & Captain Kidd, is a good example of the contrasts that are so neatly drawn in this book. Whilst Teach (Blackbeard) went about his business in true pirate fashion; cruelly, ruthlessly, fighting to the death & with no decency or honour. Captain Kidd, was proven guilty of only one murder (he killed one of his own crew in a fit of temper, by hitting him over the head with a heavy wooden bucket) & maintained until his final moments that his conviction for piracy was just a pure misunderstanding. This book is lightweight enough for anyone to enjoy & detailed enough for those wishing to study the subject in some depth.

It is difficult to find intelligent, well written, historically accurate accounts on such broad (yet obscure) topics as piracy on the high seas. It is even more difficult to find ones whose style doesn't dull the compelling nature of the institution. Cordingly however, is able to put forth to his readers a refined historical account, that is long on both drama and accuracy. This book fills a gap, on the study of pirates, that existed between the overly scholarly and the overly sensational, giving both the history buff and the mildly curious a window into an otherwise difficult subject to research and report on. But unlike most historical works, there is no loss of romance, proof that history doesn't need the added flare of a coffee table publication if the humanity of the subject is stressed over the plain, dry facts. The lives of these sea-roving vagabonds are enough to lure the reader further into Cordingly's pages, but his style is enough to keep you loving it. ! I recommend this book wholeheartedly, especially to those who have never read any such account on the true history of piracy.