Francis Spriggs sits in that crowded corner of pirate history reserved for men who were dangerous, capable,...
Pirates
The Golden Age of Piracy, spanning roughly from the 1650s to the 1730s, was marked by a surge in maritime raiding across the Atlantic and the Caribbean. This period saw the rise of infamous figures such as Edward Teach, Henry Every and Bartholomew Roberts, operating at a time when empires were expanding and naval power was in flux. Pirates targeted merchant shipping routes, often exploiting colonial rivalries and weak enforcement. While romanticised in later fiction, piracy in this era was brutal, opportunistic and shaped by the politics and economics of empire, trade and war. It left a complex and lasting historical legacy.
George Lowther is not one of piracy’s grand myth-makers. He did not retire rich, found a pirate...
Pirate flags were never just spooky decoration. They were tools of psychological warfare, fast communication, and reputation...
There are pirates who blaze brightly and briefly, and then there are the ones who linger awkwardly...
Christopher Myngs is known to history as both a hero and menace, which is often where the...
Laurens de Graaf has a habit of pulling the reader straight into warm, treacherous waters where loyalties...
Michel le Basque exists in a corner of pirate history where the evidence is thin, the rumours...
Writing about Pierre Le Grand feels like working with a half-burnt map. The outlines are there, the...
François L’Olonnais has long been introduced as the most brutal of the French buccaneers who haunted the...
Pirate fiction is usually all crashing waves and rum-fuelled chaos, but Flint and Silver manage something far...