Description
Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts by Frank Richard Stockton is an excellently written, captivating history book dedicated to young readers about how pirating began and how it evolved during the 17th and 18th century. The terms buccaneer and pirate are nowadays used as interchangeable, but as a matter of fact buccaneers were a group of pirates active in the Caribbean and attacking only Spanish ships and are therefore considered to be the predecessors of the pirates of the Golden Age later on, in the 18th century. Stockton makes the distinction in his book and starts by presenting the lives of the most famous buccaneers, moving on to pirate biographies. The reader can find out everything about Peter the Great, Roc the Brazilian, Henry Morgan, Stede Bonnet, Bartholemy Portuguez, Raveneau de Lussan, Blackbird, Captain Kidd and many other infamous buccaneers and pirates of the time including lady pirates such as Anne Bonny as well. The stories are semi-fictional, being based on real events in the life of the people presented and on their deeds, but they are also enriched with fictional elements to make them even more entertaining. The world of pirates was certainly cruel, violent and bloody, but parents need not be concerned about giving this book to their kids for the story-telling lacks violence and the events described are more like adventures and not the bloody deeds of ruthless criminals. Stocktons book is valuable not only as entertainment for the young, but also as a great source of information about history and geography. The biographies are thoroughly documented and they give not only accounts of characters, but they also present economic and trade-related aspects of the pirate age. The original publication, dating back to 1898, included a wonderfully detailed, antique map of the Caribbean that made the stories even livelier and brought the Golden Age of the pirates even closer to the reader.