Search results for ""Author Joseph Gibbs""

In addition to being commercialised and romanticised, piracy's history has also been distorted, with many works straying far from the facts recorded in the Age of Sail. In this book, author Joseph Gibbs goes back to many of the original materials about those who went "on the account" (a classic euphemism for piracy) to deliver an engaging, closely interpreted anthology of seven decades of primary sources. The text comprises original monographs, handbills, trial records, newspaper articles, and official reports that deal with piracy in and involving the Americas in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Joseph Gibbs annotates and explains these records in order to clarify the era's historical, legal, literary, and nautical references. Along the way readers will experience violent mutinies, vicious sea battles, anti-piracy raids on Louisiana islands and Latin American coasts, and the United States' first sustained encounter with the Barbary Corsairs. They will also catch glimpses of maritime brigands as remarkable as any that walked the decks of piracy's earlier "golden age" and encounter the naval officers and sailors who strove to bring them to rough justice. Enhanced with period maps and illustrations, the book provides an enlightening introduction to piracy's original canon as it emerged in the era of the quill pen and hand-turned press.

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Piracy along American coastlines and in the Caribbean in the late 1600s and early 1700s is often seen today through a colourful set of modern media archetypes. The reality, however, was usually more ugly and frequently lethal. In this book, author Joseph Gibbs goes back to original memoirs, monographs, newspaper articles, and trial records to present a stark picture of piracy in the era of Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, and Ann Bonny and Mary Read. A "prequel" to Gibbs' well received On the Account: Piracy and the Americas, 1766-1835, this book similarly presents primary sources chosen for authenticity. The contents are introduced, annotated, and carefully edited for modern readers. They offer a glimpse of piracy far removed from, and often more engaging than, the romanticised version provided by later writers and filmmakers. They describe, for example, the ordeal-filled marches of the Caribbean boucaniers, who were tough enough to eat leather while sacking the cities of the Spanish empire. They also shed light on the pirates' tactics at sea and on land; their practice of "forcing" captives to join them; their often-sadistic cruelty; and their ships' "articles" and the primitive democratic standards they upheld. Enhanced with classic maps and illustrations, The Golden Age offers an unvarnished look at those who sailed and often died under the dreaded black and red flags of the era. Readers will see pirates as they actually were -- in pursuit of prey, in battle, and sometimes on the way to the gallows.

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