Product Description

When we think of pirates we conjure up images of Blackbeard and Captain Kidd, but these characters hailed from one period. Known as "The Golden Age of Piracy", this period only lasted around a quarter of a century - from around 1700 until 1725.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #196428 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

From the Publisher
Piracy isn't a thing of the past - it's actually on the increase! Reports show a sharp rise in pirate attacks over the past year. This definitive new book helps explain why. It chronicles the brutal story of piracy from the earliest times to the present day.

The 368 page, 120,000 word book is the ultimate pirate history book - the one which tells the full story.
The swashbuckling text is augmented by over 100 illustrations - many in color - a series of eight specially commissioned maps, plus a glossary of sea terms, notes and a bibliography.

From the Author
This book was almost a quarter century in the making. Back in the summer of 1983 I had just left the Navy, and was busy thinking about what to do next. I was up visiting my parents in Orkney when a magazine came in the mail. An old aunt had died, and while my mother was sorting out her estate the mail was being redirected. She had once been a graduate of St. Andrews University, and they were still sending her their annual Graduates' journal. One day I was idly flicking through it when I came across an article about the foundation of a new department - the Scottish Institute of Maritime Studies, run by a guy called Dr. Colin Martin. It was one of those career-defining moments. The postgraduate course it planned to run involved a combination of maritime archaeology and historical research. I sounded custom made for me. After all, I had dived in the Navy, and studied history at Aberdeen University. Amazingly my reading of the article was followed a week later by a visit to my father by an academic who was touring Orkney - Dr. Geoffrey Parker, then the Professor of Modern History at St. Andrews. He praised the course, and recommended that I should apply.

Three months later I was a student again, and immersing myself quite literally in the world of maritime archaeology. It was all fascinating stuff, but while I found the ships of the ancient world fascinating enough, my real interest lay a little later - the era of the Age of Discovery, and the early days of the sailing battlefleets. When the time came to write my Masters Degree I opted for exactly that period, and over the next year or so I wrote a thesis with the less than snappy title of Naval Artillery to 1550: Its design, evolution and employment. Another part of the appeal was that this was virgin territory - despite Dr. Colin Martin's excavations of Spanish Armada shipwrecks and the recent raising of the Mary Rose, very few people had really looked at the way guns played a major part in the evolution of the Renaissance warship.

Although it sounded glamorous enough, my subsequent career as a maritime archaeologist lasted less than a year. In the summer of 1985 I was hired by the Royal Armouries at the Tower of London to help organise a two week archaeological dig. I stayed for ten years, having discovered a whole new career as a museum curator. Naturally enough my main field was artillery, and over that decade I met hundreds of archaeologists and divers, museum professionals and academics - all of whom added something to my understanding of guns and ships. In 1995 I left for a new job in Florida, where I was immersed in a whole new world of Spanish shipwrecks, sunken treasure and yet more guns lying on the seabed. More than a decade later I found myself back in Scotland, surrounded by the piles of notes, books, photos and drawings accumulated during this 25 year quest to find out more about the ships of the Renaissance. I thought it might be time to put some of it down on paper. This is the result.

About the Author
Angus Konstam is a well-known author and historian, with over 60 books in print, including over 30 titles for Osprey.
His books include the best-selling Blackbeard: America's Most Notorious Pirate (2006), and The History of Pirates (1999).
A former naval officer, underwater archaeologist and museum curator, he is one of the world's leading experts on piracy.

Customer Reviews

From fantasy to reality on the high seas.
There's no doubt that Angus Konstam knows a thing or two about pirates. While we all love watching films about swashbuckling adventure the reality was, and is, far more sinister. Konstam covers the whole of the history of pirates from those in the Ancient World until the present day. This book is really all you need to own to get an insight into an activity that has been in existence as long as humans have been able to go to sea. Excellent!