Pirate Wars

The acclaimed historian presents a “masterful . . . much-needed reappraisal” of pirate history from the Elizabethan Era to the nineteenth century (Sunday Times, UK).

In The Pirate Wars, maritime historian Peter Earle examines the popular image of pirates as ocean-going Robin Hoods who pursued a life of freedom and contrasts it with the grim reality. As he vividly demonstrates, pirates lived short, violent lives of pillaging, torture and murder.

Earle charts 250 years of piracy, from Cornwall to the Caribbean, from the 16th century to the hanging of the last pirate captain in Boston in 1835. Along the way, we meet characters like Captain Thomas Cocklyn, chosen as commander of his ship "on account of his brutality and ignorance," and Edward Teach, the notorious "Blackbeard," who felt of his crew "that if he did not now and then kill one of them they would forget who he was." Using material from British Admiralty records, this is an account of the Golden Age of pirates and of the men of the legitimate navies of the world charged with finally bringing these cutthroats to justice.