The pirate's pocket book
(Book)

Fictional works have colored Pirates' images into the romantic, swashbuckling anti-hero, who forced prisoners to walk the plank and sought buried treasure where X marks the spot. Yet the reality was often far more extraordinary and violent. Compiled within extracts from biographies of the period, letters and court documents, news articles and pamphlets offering the latest gossip on pirate trials and executions, survivors' statements and even royal proclamations, this pocket-book builds up an authentic picture of the lives and deaths of the most infamous pirates and privateers, as well as illuminating the brutal comradeship of a pirate crew, and their devil-may-care attitude to their own mortality. The mythology of pirate ships, flags and rum punch, are all examined in special box-outs in order to get to the heart of the pirates' world.