Ye know I can never resist a buccaneer tale. Thus this tome is making its way to me through the library. If it’s as good as it’s purported to be, It’ll find its way onto the shelves of the captain’s cabin.
The year is 1680, in the heart of the Golden Age of Piracy, and more than three hundred daring, hardened pirates—a potent mix of low-life scallywags and a rare breed of gentlemen buccaneers—gather on a remote Caribbean island. The plan: to wreak havoc on the Pacific coastline, raiding cities, mines, and merchant ships. The booty: the bright gleam of Spanish gold and the chance to become legends. So begins one of the greatest piratical adventures of the era—a story not given its full due until now.
Inspired by the intrepid forays of pirate turned Jamaican governor Captain Henry Morgan—yes, that Captain Morgan—the company crosses Panama on foot, slashing its way through the Darien Isthmus, one of the thickest jungles on the planet, and liberating a native princess along the way. After reaching the South Sea, the buccaneers, primarily Englishmen, plunder the Spanish Main in a series of historic assaults, often prevailing against staggering odds and superior firepower. A collective shudder racks the western coastline of South America as the English pirates, waging a kind of proxy war against the Spaniards, gleefully undertake a brief reign over Pacific waters, marauding up and down the continent.
With novelistic prose and a rip-roaring sense of adventure, Keith Thomson guides us through the pirates’ legendary two-year odyssey. We witness the buccaneers evading Indigenous tribes, Spanish conquistadors, and sometimes even their own English countrymen, all with the ever-present threat of the gallows for anyone captured. By fusing contemporaneous accounts with intensive research and previously unknown primary sources, Born to Be Hanged offers a rollicking account of one of the most astonishing pirate expeditions of all time.
*
Whet your appetite with an overview of the Pacific Adventure…
Matthew says
Sounds fascinating. I might pick this up.
What is it about pirates that is so fascinating? I mean they are obviously dangerous criminals but it is hard not to be intrigued by them.
Quixotic Mainer says
Morgan was one of those rare guys that just punched way out of his weight class for what was essentially a private enterprise to shift world history. At the siege of Cartajena I recall there was a cattle stampede used as an offensive/diversion in true western trope fashion.
JimC says
Aye!
Stanley Wheeler says
That sounds great! I can’t wait to see your review, so I can decide whether to read it.
Pirates capture our imagination at a young age–like cowboys, and vikings. Sure, they may be cutthroats and criminals, but many of them started out under the color of law with letters of marque. They were fighters in a larger war in which they fought on their own terms, dashing in to capture a rich prize, and put the enemy to the sword. What boy can be resist the roar of cannons by the broadside, the clash of steel, decks slick with blood, and swinging from the lines to sweep the damsel from danger. With all that excitement working into our brains, it easy to forget hardships, murder, and other repugnant aspects of the trade. Of course, we, imagining ourselves as pirates, put ourselves to be above that, and retain our good, civilized qualities even as we plunder our deadly enemy. It’s just good fun.
JimC says
Aye. We have an endless capacity to romanticize. Nothing wrong with that — as long as you keep in mind that you’re doing it.