UNDER THE BLACK FLAG, BY DAVID CORDINGLY

Long have I sought a work wherein the word “piratical” appears as a descriptive necessity, and not humorous affectation. That, actually, is a lie. A very helpful bookseller at Diesel recommended this to me when I inquired after books cataloguing different types of ships, sails, and riggings one might encounter in a Patrick O’Brian novel. The book has nothing to do with such concerns, of course, but it does do the job of feeding my budding nautical history obsession. So far so good, more upon completion. Yar.

DONE

So that was fun. Certinaly some shortcomings, including an almost exclusive emphasis on pirates of British extraction. Cordingly takes pains to emphasize that stripped of the strange glamor of romance they’ve accreted over the centuries, pirates were (and are) savage criminals who were as careless in their violence as they were ruthless. It seems odd, then, that he spends so little time on pirates of modern times in southeast Asia and elsewhere, pirates unfamiliar and lacking romance. I think that a comparative approach would have better emphasized the criminal nature of piracy and stripped them of their romance. Instead, Cordingly takes off his shirt and rolls around in that romance, spreading it all over and making little castles, giggling all the while. Ok, that’s not true. I just wanted to write it. He does seem to express an admiration for certain pirates, though, pirates with a sense of style or daring. Seems odd.

Notes

• p. 8, Thomas Rowlandson, 19th century British cartoonist and illustrator. Many of his illsutrations related to the British navy and life at sea.
• p. 67, Mary Anne Talbot, passed as a male soldier and sailor for many years in the last quarter of the 18th century. Any relation to the Sandman story in World’s End? Also, Hannay Snell and Rebecca Johnson. Mary Read and Anne Bonny, women pirates operating in the Caribbean and along the east coast of North America, tried in 1721.
• p. 83, Williams Dampier, pirate, explorer, and naturalist! 17th century, definitely worth investigating. See A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, by Diana and Michael Preston.
• p. 182, Edward Barlow, captain in the royal navy, known for his detailed and illsutrated journals of life at sea.