Black Flags, Blue Waters

 

Black Flags, Blue Waters – by Eric Jay Dolin

My guess is that if we could go back in time, one of the things that would surprise us the most is the idea and feel of the 17^th-18^th century pirates that roamed the coasts of early America.  So much has been written about these mythological individuals and most of it has sparked our imagination through books, movies, tv shows, video games, and even Disneyworld rides.  This book leads us to believe that the image of these swashbuckling hard men with silk scarves, eye patches, and hooked noses is probably more of a work of fiction from tall tales handed down to us than actual truth.

This was a very good book, though, and it essentially told several stories of the more infamous pirates that haunted the coasts of North and South America.  Each chapter basically tells us the tale of one (or two, if they worked together) of these pirates.  We read about the how’s and why’s such an occupation was chosen, as well as the yarns of conquests, adventures, and in most cases, the perilous doom of such individuals.  For example, we learn that many men turned to pirating because they were actually treated much better by a pirate captain than they were by a legitimate commander of the Royal Navy.

The theme throughout each story tends to repeat itself; including the fact that we simply don’t know too much about these individuals.  In the centuries before video and photography, we must remember that paintings and even correspondence was reserved for the upper echelons of society, and if one were a commoner, much less a criminal, such descriptive accounts were mostly nil.

To be honest, much of these individual tales do become a bit monotonous after a while.  Since most of these characters were unknown to me at the time of reading, it was hard to keep said individual’s details in my mind once I progressed to the next chapter.  Each story has many similar events as well.  We read of many named famous vessels that were conquered, the famous individuals who may have been on these particular ships, as well as the pursuers of these pirates.  It all blends after a while.

The most interesting fact about these stories is also the saddest, yet not really surprising. It seems that in the early days of pirating (late 17^th century) most of these individuals were welcome in places like the American colonies.  Why? Well, the primitive colonies didn’t have much, and when these rapscallions arrived on the shore with ill-gotten booty to sell, it was relatively cheap. So the residents had ways of improving their wealth and possessions when these criminals arrived onshore. Plus, many of the ships that were attacked by these pirates belonged to “heathen” nations, so it’s only right that the individuals on the “right side” should enjoy the spoils of the conquered nasty foreigners. Right? Well.

So once the young colonies in America become more established, they then become the TARGETS of such attacks, so it’s only then that these pirates become a financial burden and scary threat, and efforts are strongly made to stop such atrocities.  This is why the “golden age” of pirating ended sometime around the 1720s.  Sad that many citizens would put their own needs over the suffering of strangers initially, but one might argue that some things never actually change.

It should also be mentioned that this book isn’t an exhaustive compilation of every well-known swashbuckler that succeeded during this time. The author generally limits his subject matters to the pirates who were most prevalent in North America – although many of these individuals were hazards the islands in the Caribbean as well as South America.

This book was fairly short and very easy to digest.  Although some of the stories tend to feel similar, the author has a very engaging style of prose that never bores the readers, and my guess is that younger readers could probably digest this book as easily as their adult counterparts.  This isn’t a detailed account of the entire history of pirating, but it gives the reader a very good understanding of why the phenomenon occurred, and carefully dispels a lot of the myths that most of us tend to now believe.