Piracy History

Daniel Defoe (1659-1661 to 1731) was an English writer, journalist, and pamphleteer, who gained fame for his novel Robinson Crusoe. The Life, Adventures, and Piracies of Captain Singleton is one of his earliest novels. The narrative describes the life of an Englishman, stolen from a well-to-do family as a child and raised by Gypsies, who eventually makes his way to sea.

Over the years, thousands of tales both true and fantastic have been told about the dastardly thievery of pirates. Their rum-drunk exploits and high-seas violence never fail to delight. Now in a brand new series collection, The Best Pirate Stories Ever Told includes many of the very best pirate yarns ever created on history’s most debaucherous scalawags. Anyone who loves a good story full of excitement, adventure, thrills, and laughs will find this collection irresistible.

Yet another brilliant entry in Kenemore’s zombie canon - Cap’n Hook meets the undead. Set in the Caribbean of the eighteenth century, the epicenter of piracy, voodoo, and the dark arts, The Code of the Zombie Pirate reveals all the secrets to selecting, customizing, and managing a motley crew of pirates-cum-zombies.

Bloomsbury presents The Pirate World by Angus Konstam, read by David Monteath Highly illustrated with colour images and specially commissioned maps throughout, this is a unique exploration of the pirate world. Often romanticised in print and on the silver screen, real-life pirates were a brutal...

When a sinkhole nearly swallows her whole, burned-out history professor Philippa Flynn takes it as a wake-up call. Leaving her carefully planned but unfulfilling life behind, she moves into an old seaside house she inherited from her grandmother, a bestselling author of swashbuckling romances. Philippa expects the clutter, disrepair, proximity to the family she deliberately moved away from, and reclusive writer she’ll be sharing the house with. She doesn’t expect that writer to also be the cover model who personified Iris Flynn’s bare-chested, cavalier-booted pirate king.

Uncover the gritty maritime history of ocean outlaws who ruthlessly raided imperial trade routes for bloody gold. Perfect for your daily commute, this immersive deep-dive into historical true crime strips away the myths to reveal the dark reality of shipboard labor. You will encounter the brutal...

يستكشِف هذا الكتاب أبرزَ حوادث تحطُّم السفن على مرِّ العصور، مستعرِضاً أسبابها وتداعياتها وأهوالها. ويوضِّح ما يمثِّله حطام السفن من مرجعٍ زمنيٍّ يُلقي ضوءاً جديداً على مجتمعاتٍ وحضاراتٍ اندثرت منذ زمنٍ بعيد، وغنيمةٍ يسيل لها لُعاب صائدي الكنوز، فضلاً عما يمثِّله أحياناً من مصدرِ خطرٍ يُنذر بوقوع كوارثَ بيئية. كما يتناول الكتاب الجوانب الإنسانية لهذه الحوادث، من شجاعة الطواقم إلى معاناة الناجين، إضافةً إلى الجهود التي بُذلت في عمليات البحث والإنقاذ.

“Thoroughly engrossing . . . a spirited, suspenseful, economically told tale whose significance is manifest and whose pace never flags.” —The Wall Street Journal From The New York Times–bestselling author of The Ghost Map and Extra Life, the story of a pirate who changed the world Henry...

The twelve entries in The Golden Age of Piracy discuss why pirates thrived in the seas of the New World, how pirates operated their plundering ventures, how governments battled piracy, and when and why piracy declined. Separating Hollywood myth from historical fact, these essays bring the real pirates of the Caribbean to life with a level of rigor and insight rarely applied to the subject.

Shipwrecks selects the sinkings with the greatest loss of life, the most famous vessels, the richest treasure troves, the most archaeologically significant wreck sites and the most daring rescues. It tells the tales of the fate of the victims, the disastrous mistakes made by ships' captains and navigators, the impossible conditions faced at sea, the courage of those who survived and the audacious attempts to raise what now lies at the bottom of the sea.

At the outbreak of the War of 1812, America's prospects looked dismal. It was clear that the primary battlefield would be the open ocean but America's war fleet, only 20 ships strong, faced a practiced British navy of more than a thousand men-of-war. Still, through a combination of nautical deftness and sheer bravado, the American navy managed to take the fight to the British and turn the tide of the war.

It was a frigid night in February 2013 when the five young fishermen vanished. The crew of the Miss Ally - a 12-metre Cape Islander from Woods Harbour, Nova Scotia - was fishing for halibut far off the Nova Scotia coast when their boat’s spotlight malfunctioned. A vicious winter storm was approaching from her south, and all other boats at the fishing grounds were steaming for shore. Unable to locate his longlining gear, the Miss Ally’s young captain decided to stay an extra day to retrieve the gear and, hopefully, a big catch.

In June 1631, pirates from Algiers and armed troops of the Turkish Ottoman Empire, led by the notorious pirate captain Morat Rais, stormed ashore at the little harbor village of Baltimore in West Cork. They captured almost all the villagers and bore them away to a life of slavery in North Africa. The prisoners were destined for a variety of fates—some would live out their days chained to the oars as galley slaves, while others would spend long years in the scented seclusion of the harem or within the walls of the Sultan's palace. 

Riveting stories of our last frontier and the acts of God and man upon it Even if we live within sight of the sea, it is easy to forget that our world is an ocean world. The open ocean spreads across three-fourths of the globe. It is a place of storms and danger, both natural and manmade. And at...

Henry Avery of Devon pillaged a fortune from a Mughal ship off the coast of India and then vanished into thin air—and into legend. More ballads, plays, biographies and books were written about Avery’s adventures than any other pirate. His contemporaries crowned him "the pirate king" for pulling off the richest heist in pirate history and escaping with his head intact (unlike Blackbeard and his infamous Flying Gang). Avery was now the most wanted criminal on earth. To the authorities, Avery was the enemy of all mankind. To the people he was a hero.

"Narrator Roger Davis, who earned first-class honors in media and anthropology, puts his training to good use to lead listeners through 17th- and 18th-century Malagasy history." - Library Journal The final posthumous work by the coauthor of the major New York Times bestseller The Dawn of...

It was a time when music fans copied and traded recordings without permission. An outraged music industry pushed Congress to pass anti-piracy legislation. Yes, that time is now; it was also the era of Napster in the 1990s, of cassette tapes in the 1970s, of reel-to-reel tapes in the 1950s, even the phonograph epoch of the 1930s. Piracy, it turns out, is as old as recorded music itself. In Democracy of Sound, Alex Sayf Cummings uncovers the little-known history of music piracy and its sweeping effects on the definition of copyright in the United States.

Lighthouses are striking totems of our relationship to the sea. For many, they encapsulate a romantic vision of solitary homes amongst the waves, but their original purpose is much more utilitarian than that. Still today we depend upon their guiding lights for the safe passage of ships. Nowhere is this truer than in the rock lighthouses of Great Britain and Ireland, a ring of 19 towers built between 1811-1905, so called because they were constructed on desolate rock formations in the middle of the sea, and made of granite to withstand the power of its waves.

“I presume we need make no Apology for giving the Name of a History to the following Sheets, though they contain nothing but the Actions of a Parcel of Robbers.” —from the book This work was published in 1724 under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson by an unknown British author, usually...

In Titanic Conspiracy, Emmy-nominated actor and internationally bestselling author Geoffrey Giuliano dives deep beneath the surface of one of the most iconic maritime disasters in history. With the skill of a seasoned storyteller and the intensity of a man driven by truth, Giuliano offers listeners more than a retelling of the doomed voyage of the RMS Titanic—he delivers a gripping, unnerving exploration of what might have really happened that cold April night in 1912.