Great Pirate Stories (Review)
Great Pirate Stories (Review)
kay, less a review, more of a social rant.
Pirates.
Co’mon.
What is this suburban fascination with pirates? How many Baldwin Park Freds do you see driving around with pirate decals (usually skulls and over-ornate crap) pasted over their Tahoe rear windows? Really? Like, so, you live in suburbia and have a green lawn and a good job and house payments, but it if wasn’t for all that, you’d be cannonading a Spanish Port? Really? So clearly you desire the blood of innocence running down your elbows, and your pockets stuffed full of church gold? That you’d rape children and torture women to find where that last hold-out cache is hidden?
Really?
What is it with this deep-suited desire the break the bounds of civilization yet turn back on it like some rabid mastiff, mauling your former master?
Not that I’m faulting this work, mind. The stories were collected through the 1920s, sometimes even sooner (I saw sections I recognized from Esquemeling). Besides these picturesque views of the horrors Morgan put Panama through (they made him a Governor for it, so there’s a government supporting terrorism for you), there were some later works, ones taken from merchants running from Moors or Chinese and whatnot. There was even Lucretia Parker’s account of herself being taken by pirates, and she was damned lucky. She only had to watch her crew be slaughtered. They didn’t get around to gang-raping her.
My most favorite piece was the one describing an English fellow who had the bad luck to be taken by Chinese river pirates. Carried into the interior, he witnessed first hand the massive river battles and pitched sieges that tore through those regions. Imagine tens of thousands of river pirates living and working their narrow boats, their lives focused on the blur of daily battles and daily rowing, the blood and horrors running together until it is all a hazy dream.
So, yes, and there isn’t one gay-hinting pirate flouncing around, being chased by skeletons, in any of the stories.
So it’s safe.
Perhaps some of you Jimmy Buffet pirates should expand your view and see just what your dream is really about. You can get it all for free, right HERE on Gutenberg.
Argh, Sharkey!