Product Description

He drank tea rather than rum. He never killed a single prisoner. And he was probably gay. Meet the real pirate of the Caribbean. Bartholomew Roberts was the greatest of Caribbean pirates, seizing 400 ships in a career that lasted little more than 2 years. Yet today he is virtually forgotten. Originally a tea-sipping, disciplined third mate, when captured by pirates for recruitment, he begged to be released. But, he was fearless, and a born leader and he became the most successful, most exciting and dynamic pirate there ever was. Through the telling of this remarkable story, Richard Sanders explores the myth of pirates and provides a pirates' tour of the strange and cruel world of the early 18th century Atlantic. With searing research and swashbuckling anecdotes, Sanders has written a biography of one of the most intriguing men in history. Here is the reality of the myths which spawned a million childhood fantasies. 'A fascinating book, full of incident and fresh insight...' Daily Telegraph 'A swashbuckling tale from the golden age of piracy, spilling over with pieces of eight and whiffing of gunpowder ...' Mail on Sunday Richard Sanders is an award-winning documentary producer, director and presenter. He lives in London.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9445 in Books
• Published on: 2008-02-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Review
'A fascinating book, full of incident and fresh insight...' Daily Telegraph 'A swashbuckling tale from the golden age of piracy, spilling over with pieces of eight and whiffing of gunpowder ... ' Mail on Sunday

Sian Rees, author of The Floating Brothel
`A classic adventure story - and a fascinating study of how
ordinary people react to extraordinary circumstances'

Daily Telegraph
'Excellent biography ... this is a fascinating book, full of
incident and fresh insight.'

Customer Reviews

A very different pirate tale
This book is fascinating and a fast read.Richard Sanders admirably satisfies my love for swashbuckling and rollicking pirate tales, whilst providing historical and societal background in great detail. Anyone who's read Robert Louis Stevenson will find that "If a Pirate I must be..." illuminates the buccaneers and privateers in those novels, particularly affirming their admirably classless, democratic virtues as well as their excessive, drunken foibles. The peg-legged and the half-blind, cast-off by navy or merchantman, found welcome amidst the sea's original equal opportunity employers. Sanders's book complements the recent film about the slave trade, "Amazing Grace", as it depicts the abominable life of sailors on the slavers' ships, where crewmen, on occasion, were reduced to begging food from their enchained victims. Reading of Bartholomew Roberts, his origins, and brief career I felt sympathy and admiration for the man, and a better understanding of the period.

Swashbucklingly good
This book is a great example of how narrative history can be used not just to tell stories about the past but also to illuminate the world in which these events unfolded.

The book recounts the story of Bartholomew Roberts, a pirate captain in the early 18th century, who operated in the Caribbean, up the Atlantic coast to Newfoundland and down to Brazil, and off the west coast of Africa. Sanders draws on a wide range of primary and secondary sources to reconstruct the details of Roberts' career and life on board the ships he captained, and to explore what motivated Roberts and his fellow pirates.

The retelling of Roberts' story also provides a narrative framework for the reconstruction of the world in which the pirates existed. Just a few of the topics that Sanders touches on are the slave trade, the appalling conditions in both the merchant navy and the Royal Navy, and the early British colonies in the Caribbean.

Another thing I really liked about this book was the way it set me thinking about its underlying themes. Perhaps the most important of these is freedom, or the lack of it. In addition to African slaves, there were also both merchant and Royal Navy seamen who had been pressed into service, tricked into signing lengthy contracts or who were simply suffering under a particularly authoritarian captain. And the pirate crews included not just those who had chosen to become pirates (usually in reaction to such abuses), but also included sailors who had been forced to join after their ships had been captured, as well as significant numbers of slaves. Indeed, Roberts himself was initially just such a 'forced man'.

A related theme is that of loyalty. When a pirate ship confronted a merchant ship, many of the merchant ship's crew might see the pirates as liberators (and many used the pirates' appearance as an opportunity to gain revenge on abusive officers). Similarly, when a pirate ship faced a Royal Navy vessel, there were usually a significant number of forced men in the pirate crew who viewed this as a chance to escape from piracy back into mainstream life.

In short, this is popular history at its very best. It is superbly written with a tight narrative structure, tells a fascinating story, and also tackles a whole range of topics without ever insulting the reader's intelligence by dumbing down.

Timbers well and truly shivered here
This is a terrific book. It's well researched but doesn't bash you over the head with the fact. It manages to be an exciting read without playing hard and fast with the truth (one or two assumption wobbles aside), and is really a great lesson in how to combine journalistic skills with compelling narrative.