March 2021 Theme: Argh Matey!

Ahoy, Matey! All hand hoy! Avast Ye! This month the reading needs to be centered on pirates, marauders, buccaneers, or corsairs. This read can be fiction or non-fiction; ancient or modern day.



Possibilities:
Fiction
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Stanger Tides by Tim Powers
Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini
We are Pirates by Daniel Handler
The Pirate by Walter Scott
Blood Jack by L.A. Myer
Peter Pan by J.M. Barry
Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne du Maurier

Non-Fiction

Alias Bluebeard: The Life and Death of Gilles de Raiz by Emile Gabory
The Pirate Wars, by Peter Earle
Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates, by Robert Ritchie
Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age, by Marcus Rediker
Women and English Piracy, 1540-1720: Partners and Victims of Crime, by John Appleby
King of the Pirates: The Swashbuckling Life of Henry Every, by E. T. Fox
The Last Days of Black Beard the Pirate: Within Every Legend Lies a Grain of Truth (Fourth Edition), by Kevin Duffus
The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates by Des Ekin

I think I'm going to do Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho. (I'd been planning to do Hereward the Wake for the Medieval/Viking quarterly read but didn't get to it after reading some other Viking literature.) My copy of Westward Ho is the 1946 Scribner edition with illustrations by N.C. Wyeth.

I might also do Stevenson's Kidnapped, Du Maurier's Jamaica Inn, and/or John McPhee's Looking for a Ship. Have to see how my time goes.

I'm trying to get back to some serious ROOTing this year, so I'm going as best I can with treeware that I've already got.

I am going to be reading Kidnapped by R. L. Stevenson for this and I also have Pieces of Eight by John Drake, a second book in a trilogy about Long John Silver. I wasn't all that thrilled with the first book of the trilogy, but I have the book on my shelf and being a completist this is a great opportunity to pull this one down off the shelves.

My granddaughter was very excited when she heard talk of pirates. She has a book she insists I read (she's in 7th grade) about Blackbeard. Guess I will read that one and also look for a more "adultish" book!

>4 Tess_W: Well, in BingoDOG you can fill in recommended by another generation, if it's still available!

Hmm, I've probably read most of the classics, and also several historical texts on piracy, so I might try something less mainstream such as The Corsair by Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud.

I plan to read Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates by Brian Kilmeade. My husband and son were Marines (well, once a Marine, always a Marine), so this one sounds good.

>7 marell: Me too! I've got that along with Frank Lambert's The Barbary Wars both on order from ABE. My interest is political. As a Tulsi Gabbard anti-interventionist, I like the idea that Tom smacked them around to teach them not to mess with our Mediterranean shipping but, when it was over, didn't do anything dumb like try to create a Jeffersonian democracy in north Africa.

I am torn on this topic - do I go for a Sabatini novel (I read him growing up and had not revisited since I was probably 15) or for non-fiction... Decisions, decisions... :)

It looks like what I have on my tbr is fiction. I'm a likely to try one or both of these:

Bloody Jack / L.A. Meyer
The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw / Christopher Healy

I would love to read Cinnamon and Gunpowder 1819 evil lady pirate, renowned chef and a Scheherazade theme. What's not to love? We'll see if I make it in March. It's been on my TBR for a bit.

>11 beebeereads: Cinnamon and Gunpowder was a good one told from an interesting point of view, as I remember.

I have Pirate Latitudes and Curse of the Blue Tattoo somewhere in the stacks. What I read depends on what I find first.

So I am either going with Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age or with Buccaneers of the Caribbean: How Piracy Forged an Empire or both. And I am still considering a Sabatini just for fun...

I plan to read Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian

>12 Familyhistorian: Thanks for the confirmation of my choice. I have it on hold and it shouldn't be too long a wait. I'll look forward to it.

I have completed my read of Pieces of Eight by John Drake for this month's theme. This was a fun pirate adventure story that is part of a trilogy that is meant to be a prequel to the classic Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. The book doesn't take itself too seriously and is a fast, action packed read.

Brian Kilmeade, Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates 3½***. Not bad, and a quick read, but it's more along the lines of "pop" history by a Fox News commentator. I'm turning next to Frank Lambert's The Barbary Wars, published a decade before Kilmeade's book, and looking to be at least a bit more academic in its style (and also covering not just Jefferson's First Barbary War but also Madison's Second).

>18 CurrerBell: I agree with your comment that Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates is “pop” history. The story was told on a junior high to high school level. I did enjoy reading it and learned a part of the country’s early history I knew nothing about. Contained maps, paintings, and illustrations of the key players and events.

>18 CurrerBell: >19 marell: I just finished Lambert's The Barbary Wars and it's definitely much better than the Kilmeade book, but it's really a good idea to read the two of them together and to read Kilmeade first. Kilmeade will give you a better overview of the cast of players; but note that Kilmeade concludes with the end of the First Barbary (Tripolitan) War in the Jefferson presidency while Lambert also includes the shorter Second Barbary (Algerine) War in the Madison presidency.

Lambert provides much more background and analysis. One of the reasons for the ultimate American success in the Algerine campaign was because it came with the conclusion of the US/British War of 1812 and the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars. With the ending of these "major" wars, the Atlantic became a theater of trade rather than a theater of war, and this very substantially improved the American position since some of the European powers had actually been encouraging the Barbary pirates to prey on American merchant shipping. This was particularly true of the British, who wished to suppress American carrier trade after the recognition of American independence and, even more so, actually saw the Barbary pirates as allies during the US/British War of 1812. (The pirates had the good sense not to prey on British shipping and confront the Royal navy.)

Kilmeade (3½***) is a quick read. Lambert (4****) is a more thorough analysis.

>20 CurrerBell: Thank you for those insights. I’ll see if I can find the Lambert book.

>20 CurrerBell: Thank you for your comments on the two books. I will try to find the Lambert book. It is a rather fascinating subject.

Looking for a kids book, written by a pirates mom, that is so fun; has a cd you can listen to but the text and pics are great. Does this ring a bell with anyone? (no I wont be reading it for this theme, might read Kidnapped as I don't think Ive read it, but the theme made me think of the picture book that the kids in my classroom loved

>23 cindydavid4: Could it be The Man Whose Mother was a Pirate? My librarian friend also says there is one called Pirate Mom, but she's unsure who wrote it.

I actually read 2 for this month:
1. Jamaica Inn
2. Who was Blackbeard

Charles Kingsley's Westward Ho! 3½***. Not really all that bad a book, as Amyas Leigh goes off privateering against the Spanish in the New World, seeks vengeance against the Spaniard who "corrupted" Amyas's true love Rose of Torridge (Rose Salterne, after whom an apparently second-rate Devonshire restaurant is now named), and finally becomes a raging Ahabian lunatic in a post-Armada battle until he is stricken blind, repents, and finally becomes domesticated like Rochester!

As for the nature descriptions, Westward Ho! definitely can't hold a candle to Kingsley's Hypatia, but the plot does have a rather childish excitement to it that in the jungle scenes somehow reminds me of Rider Haggard. It's also chock-full of anti-Catholicism as well as condescending treatment of Africans and Native Americans, which makes it understandable that it would have been subjected to "cancel culture" by the time of the early 20th Century.

Kingsley, ironically considering his strong anti-Catholicism, may be most noted today as a footnote to John Henry Cardinal Newman. It was Kingsley's intemperate magazine/journal foray of letter-writing versus Newman that led to Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua.

I also recall (though I don't have the source right at my fingertips) that, after reading Gaskell's Life of Charlotte Bronte, Kingsley remarked (sympathetically toward the sisters) something to the effect that, considering what a horrid upbringing they'd had, their crudeness was understandable.

Believe it or not, as a younger man and before his ministry in the Evangelical wing of the Church of England, Kingsley was drawn to Chartism.

Westward Ho! is also one of those books that satisfies this month's topic as well as the quarterly Renaissance & 16th Century read.

I have finished a non-fiction book about the Barbary pirates and their Christian counterparts: Piraten und Korsaren im Mittelmeer. Salvatore Bono is a historian which is why I found his casual way of notekeeping disappointing. Only the citations from Braudel are properly documented.

I read two books for this month's challenge:

Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates, in which I concur with the other comments in this thread.

Cinnamon and Gunpowder by Eli Brown, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

>28 countrylife: LOL!

I have finished Pirate Latitudes and found it a bit too formulaic and predictable.

Argh Matey! gave me the perfect opportunity to reread the best pirate book of all time - my opinion, that is - Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson. I actually enjoyed it this second time around better than the first. It has inspired me to read some of his other works. Why I’ve neglected him in my reading life I don’t know.

So do space pirates far in the future count? :)

I have a proper book to read but just finished a space pirates one and wondered for a bit... :)

>32 AnnieMod: um, sure!

I just finished "The Corsair" using The Poetical Works of Byron (Cambridge Editions) (edited, interestingly, by Paul Elmer More). There's a pirate kidnapping in "Don Juan," I think somewhere in the fourth or fifth canto, but I'm not sure I want to make that great a commitment to Byron right now as to read a poem of that length.

>34 CurrerBell: Byron did like a piracy reference. In Childe Harold's Pilgrimage his Suliote Greeks celebrate the piracy of their ancestral culture in song:

"Then the Pirates of Parga that dwell by the waves,
And teach the pale Franks what it is to be slaves,
Shall leave on the beach the long galley and oar,
And track to his covert the captive on shore."

John McPhee, Looking for a Ship 1½*

I have a very favorable recollection of McPhee's The Pine Barrens, though it's been years since I've read it, and I have a vague but not at all unfavorable recollection of Coming into the Country (Alaska); but Looking for a Ship just doesn't cut the mustard. It's about an excursion McPhee takes on a cargo ship with a friend who's an officer in the U.S. Merchant Marine, but the narrative goes all over the place.

Pirates show up from time to time. These aren't your "Arrgh Matey" types of Caribbean legend. They tend to be armed robbers who clamber onto ships docked in South American (Pacific) ports. Considering that U.S. cargo ships often have at most a couple dozen crew and they're the size of, say, Pennsylvania Station, don't expect their crews to be able to provide an enormous amount of security, considering the genuine danger to life in resisting once the robbers have gotten past the fire-hose spray and gotten on board.

The pirate portions of Looking for a Ship are pretty much throw-away episodes, just like most everything else in the book.

>36 CurrerBell: They tend to be armed robbers who clamber onto ships docked in South American (Pacific) ports.

thats pretty much what the pirates of mediteranian legend were. i guess I never got the hero worship of pirates; its fun and all, Johnny Depp does a great job as one in the movies, and there lots of fun books out there that put an interesting spin on them. But then there is the movie Captain Phillips with a much more realistic and sinister spin on them, and realizing these weren't good guys as a general rule.

Not that I wouldn't pass up a ripping good yarn, well written like the ones you all have been reading. Just pushed a button I guess.

I read The Corsair by Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud, which is a historical adventure novel about piracy and politics set in 1818-19 in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula along what was known as the "Pirate Coast". Al-Mahmoud's journalistic background shows in the writing so it's clearly communicative and well paced, with short chapters and plenty of action, but it also tends to read as much like reportage as fiction. There are a few short infodumps but as this story was aimed at both Arab readers and a wider audience the detail is more often informative than obstructive.

For me this was a mildly interesting read for the history and Qatari cultural influences but a slightly below average novel, although readers focused on the adventure aspect might enjoy it more than I did. 2.5*

Bloody Jack / L.A. Meyer
3.75 stars

At the end of the 18th century, Mary thinks she was about 8 years old or so when her parents died and she was literally put out on the street and left to fend for herself. She managed to join up with some other homeless kids and they begged and stole and did what they could for money and food. When she was a few years older, Mary decided to dress like a boy and she managed to get on a ship as a ship’s boy. But no one knew she was really girl as they went about their adventures on the sea.

I listened to the audio and loved the accent. I think it was a Cockney accent (had to look that up!). I quite enjoyed this and it gets the extra ¼ star for the audio. The story was fun, too. It’s odd, but whether I listen to or read adventure, I tend to not pay as much attention to the adventure parts. Odd, I know. But I still quite liked the story and I will be continuing the series.

I had a choice of two pirate themed books in my book stacks. Pirate Latitudes was the shortest one so I chose it. It was an interesting story about English pirates from Jamaica coming up against the Spanish who had control of a large part of the Caribbean. There was lots of fighting involved and a clear story line so the story moved forward at a good speed, unlike the ships the pirates were on.

I also read Pirate Latitudes for this month. My review:

Meh, this was fine for what it was - an adventure story set in the Caribbean in the 17th century. The manuscript was found on Crichton's computer after his death, and I think had he lived to polish it and flesh it out a bit, it would have been a really fun book. As it was, it seemed very bare bones, with some random plot holes and events that seemed important but were never referred to again... Still, it kept me interested enough to turn the pages...

3 stars

>32 AnnieMod: "So do space pirates far in the future count? :)"

I too am now reading a novel, for a different challenge, that happens to contain unexpected science fictional pirates.