THE SEA HAWK

By Rafael Sabatini

Rafael Sabatini’s most famous tale of piracy at sea is, of course, Captain Blood, with The Sea Hawk coming in a distant second. Though it got enough attention in the ‘20s to result in a Hollywood movie based on the novel, it isn’t so well remembered today. That’s perhaps odd given the resurgence in interest in piracy that began in the ‘90s. All of which is beside the point.

The Sea Hawk tells of Sir Oliver Tresillian, a Cornish gentleman privateer in the days of Good Queen Bess. The first third of the novel follows his love for Rosamund Godolphin and his feud with her brother Peter and how same brought about Sir Oliver’s downfall. The rest of the tale follows Sakr-el-Bahr, the Sea Hawk and the deadliest corsair captain as ever shipped out from the Barbary Coast. I’m not giving away too much if I let slip that same is Sir Oliver, now turned Islamic Fundamentalist privateer. Suffice to say a lot of scores are settled. Sark-el-Bahr/Sir Oliver displays a mercurial temper as he switches from bloody-minded vengeance to remorse. Overall he comes off as a man in the mold of Captain Blood, one who has been wronged and seeks revenge, but fears he has gone too far.

I have mixed feelings about Sabatini as a stylist. He is too prolix and big blocks of exposition clutter that landscape like decorated boulders, fancy but not much use. On the other hand, Sabatini had a way with dialog, his characters speak a version of Elizabethan English that is archaic, yet modern enough to move and express feeling and color. That’s a pretty good trick to steer between the Scylla of Ye Olde Englishe and the Charibdis of making everybody sound like they’re from SoCal (or Essex, as the case may be).

If you want a shot of piracy on the high seas, exotic locales, and swashbuckling action, The Sea Hawk won’t let you down.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

REVIEW: FAST ONE

By Paul Cain

Fast One is Paul Cain’s novel of corruption and underworld warfare. Like other hard-boiled novels of the era it is set in the grit and glory of LA, but instead of a PI dedicated to bringing a criminal to justice, this is a tale of an outlaw’s struggle to survive. Gerry Kells is a war-hero, junkie, gambler, and gangster who just wants to leave the rackets behind for a little peace and quiet. But it doesn’t work that way in LA. He is drawn into a spiral of violence as rival underworld factions use him as a pawn. Unfortunately for them Kells is nobody’s fool and mayhem ensues.

Cain had a good grasp of the loose structure of the LA syndicate. As in the real LA-LA land the cops and the crooks are mostly indistinguishable (look up LAPD Lt. Guy “Whistler” McAfee sometime). Gamblers skirt the law by putting their casinos on freighters anchored just off-shore (again a fact the LA scene). Rivals use scandal-sheet newspapers as weapons in the war for City Hall and control of the rackets (much like “Gray-Wolf” Charlie Crawford did until he was shot by a candidate for judgeship).

This is a dark tale, more in the spirit of Cornell Woolrich’s noir than some of the more obvious comparisons to Cain's fellow Black Mask writers Hammett and Chandler. Fast One is a hard-boiled gangster story that deserves to be better known.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE DARK FRIGATE

By Charles Boardman Hawes

Charles Boardman Hawes’ tale of piracy upon the high seas in the days of King Charles is just as fresh today as when it won the Newberry Award in 1923. The Dark Frigate is an excellent work, though classed among young adult novels, it should have a lot of appeal to readers who love a good adventure and can still recall their reading tastes from when they were 13.

The hero is Philip Marsham, a lad who goes to sea in the Rose of Devon. But certain “gentlemen of fortune” under Martin Berwick make themselves masters of the Rose and the honest sailors have no choice but to turn pirate.

This is a dark version of Treasure Island, and Martin Berwick is a grim and tragic Long John Silver. The tale concerns itself with the thin line that divides the lawful from the lawless, and when men are adrift in an uncaring world, how easy it is to cross that thin line. Don’t be looking for easy or happy endings here. Crime is punished, but it’s a near run thing that nearly takes down the innocent too.

The Little, Brown and Co. edition has a good, moody cover illustration and nice black and white line drawings as chapter headings.

 

-Dave Hardy

 

 

BLACK VULMEA’S VENGEANCE

By Robert E. Howard

Robert E. Howard, though best known for his horror and sword & sorcery, was at heart an adventure writer. He buckled anything that swashed. What better subject for swashbuckling adventure than piracy on the high seas?

Black Terence Vulmea is REH’s pirate hero. He is an Irish sea-rover, a survivor of England’s tyrannous rule over the Emerald Isle. We get two Black Vulmea stories: “Blades of the Red Brotherhood” and “Black Vulmea’s Vengeance”. “Blades” should be familiar to many Conan fans. It was originally a Conan tale and re-written as apirate sotry. L. Sprague de Camp re-re-wrote it as “The Treasure of Tranicos”. It’s a darn fine adventure as Black Vulmea finds himself stranded on a remote shore and involved with an exiled French nobleman, a rival pirate, hostile Indians, and a legendary lost treasure. It’s a festival of sword-play, double-crosses, and thrilling action.

“Vengeance” lets us get much closer to the pirate’s character. Vulmea is captured by Wentworth, a haughty Royal Navy captain. But the pirate is nobody’s fool and soon the tables are turned. This yarn is an interesting one in that REH gives full vent to his feelings on England’s rule of Ireland, and how a strong man deals with a bully. You might be surprised.

“Isle of Pirates Doom” rounds out the book. While it is a pirate tale, Black Vulmea is not present. Instead REH gives us one of his one of his sword-women: Helen Tavrel, the wildest she-pirate afloat. While Helen Tavrel has never gotten the notice that Belit (“Queen of the Black Coast”), Valeria (“Red Nails”), or Dark Agnes (“Sword Woman”) have received, this is an interesting story. Helen Tavrel isn’t just a man in drag or a sex-kitten with a sword. She has her own complex web of relationships and womanly sense of propriety. She’s no man-hater, but don’t take liberties, you’ll regret it.

Sadly out-of-print, Black Vulmea’s Vengeance is as fine a set of pirate yarns as was ever penned by a salty sea dog.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE BUCCANEERS OF AMERICA

By Alexander Exquemelin

No it’s not about an NFL team from Tampa, it’s about swaggering, cut-throat desperadoes who terrorized all in their path. No, I don’t mean the creative team that brought you Gigli either, I mean real pirates.

Alexander Exquemelin was a young Dutchman who went to the West Indies as an indentured servant, a slave with a contract that is. Finding the life of  a servant brutal, he went off to join the buccaneers, roving bands that hunted wild cattle in the interior of Hispaniola (nowadays Haiti & the Dominican Republic). These men were in constant conflict with the Spanish and many had taken to the sea to rob passing ships. In Exquemelin’s day they had grown strong enough that under leaders like L’Ollonais, Rock Brasiliano, Bartholomew the Portuguese, and Captain Henry Morgan, that they could form powerful fleets capable of seizing major cities and pillaging extensively.

Exquemelin gives us a unique first hand account of the hardships of frontier life in the West Indies. He is concise but there is a wealth of detail about the plants and animals, daily life among the colonists, and the trades they engaged in (besides armed robbery). Above all this is an account of the most notorious buccaneer chiefs and their war against the Spanish Main. The portraits of L’Ollonais and Morgan dominate the book. L’Ollonais is shown as a sociopath, practicing savage cruelty as matter of routine, but possessed of reckless personal courage in battle. Morgan comes across as a smooth, cozening rogue, but also as a man capable of using his abilities to unite disparate outlaw crews to undertake military campaigns of surprising strategic finesse and daring.

If you have any interest in piracy in the days of sail, you MUST read this book.

-Dave Hardy

 

 

THE END OF PIRACY

The final installment of a "A Brief History of Piracy" is online at Last Free Voice. -Dave

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PIRACY: PART FOUR

Is now online at Last Free Voice, this time the buccaneers. -Dave

Part Five went up this weekend. -dh

THE SPANISH MAIN

Is up up on Last Free Voice. It's Part Three of A Brief History of Piracy. -Dave

YO HO, YO HO...

I'm spreading a bit of piratical erudition over at Last Free Voice. Avast ye scurvy dogs. -Dave Hardy

PS: Part Two: The Medieval Era is now online. -dh

A PIRATE OF EXQUISITE MIND

By Diana & Michael Preston

This is a biography of William Dampier the 17th century explorer and naturalist. He also happened to be a buccaneer and pirate.

Dampier was a typical English lad, if a bit precocious and pompous in his youth. Yearning to get on in the world, he went to the West Indies in 1674. But a life playing second fiddle to a Jamaican planter did not suit Dampier. He soon drifted into the company of lumberjacks. In the West Indies, logwood men were a tough bunch. Like the boucaniers of Hispaniola, the logwood cutters were frontiersmen living on the fringes of the Spanish colonies. And like the boucan-hunters, the logwood men liked a bit of piracy.

Dampier joined in the freebooting about the time that the raiders were moving into Pacific waters. Dampier accompanied them as medic on pillaging expeditions about the Spanish Main as well as in the Pacific. He was an unusual sort of pirate, as interested in carrying off scientific observations as loot (though he did pretty well in the matter of plunder).

A Pirate of Exquisite Mind follows Dampier on his many voyages and offers a wealth of detail thanks to Dampier’s own extensive memoirs. The Prestons examine not only the world that Dampier moved through, but also the man and his reaction to it. Anyone interested in the history of pirates and pillagers as well as those interested in exploration and science will find this book quite readable and informative.

-Dave Hardy

THE BLACK STRANGER AND OTHER AMERICAN TALES

By Robert E. Howard

Steve Tompkins has an unusual way of looking at Robert E. Howard’s tales of horror and adventure. Tompkins makes grand leaps that pull in unexpected connections, his appraisal of REH is as likely to include critical tools taken from D.H. Lawrence and Leslie Fiedler as from H.P. Lovecraft.

In this collection Tompkins looks for the essential American soul in REH. It makes for an eclectic collection. The work has about as much Gothic horror (“The Horror from the Mound”, “Pigeons from Hell”) as pure Sword & Sorcery fantasy (“Marchers of Vallhalla”, “The Thunder-Rider”). The settings are eclectic as well. This collection sometimes seems like a core sample of a hidden history of Texas: pre-historic (“Marchers”), pre-Spanish (“Nekht Sermerkeht”, high-Comanche (“Thunder-Rider), Reconstruction (“Black Canaan”), frontier-cowboy era (“The Valley of the Lost”), to Howard’s own day (“Pigeons”). The center-piece is a tale of pirates, curses, Indians, and treasure set on the California coast in the 1600s (why not Texas one wonders, given La Salle’s interest in this land at the same time as the setting of “Stranger”).

REH collectors may well have all these tales in other volumes, but Tompkins’ unique observations of REH and what it means to be an American writer are to found nowhere else. If I have a criticism of this set, it is that Tompkins did not at least make a nod to the corpus of REH’s tall-tale westerns. While they are ably represented in such volumes as The Riot at Bucksnort and A Gent from Bear Creek, a taste of the rip-snortin’, half-horse-half-alligator craziness of REH’s gigantic hillbillies coupled with Tompkins’ consciousness-expanding lit-crit would have made a fascinating combination. That aside, I’m very proud to have this volume in my collection.

-Dave Hardy

SANDOKAN
By Emilio Salgari

I first came across Sandokan and the Tigers of Mompracem in “Prowl Unceasing” by Chris Roberson in the masterful anthology of swashbuckling SpecFic he published, Adventure Vol 1. Well, is it any wonder that a guy who has published Jess Nevins’ encyclopedias of pulp heroes & penny dreadfuls would know about Italy’s most famous dime novels? Is it any wonder that when I heard about a series of novels about dashing Malay pirates doing battle with James Brooke, one of Victorian Britain’s actual swashbucklers, I had to get a hold of them?

Nope and nope. But, be warned there is only one translation of Salgari’s multi-volume oeuvre. Back in the 1880s Salgari became a tremendous hit with Italian readers. His works have been extensively translated into Spanish and have been the basis for movies, TV series, action figures, and other product tie-ins. How is it that such a popular writer is apparently unknown in the English-speaking world except for some eccentric fans in Texas?

To be certain, Sandokan is a dime novel. Sandokan is a Terribly Romantic Pirate of a kind that would have appealed to readers in Rafael Sabatini’s day, but seems a bit over-the-top in our more cynical era. Sandokan is an exiled Malay prince who commands a band of pirates from his island headquarters of Mompracem. He is the enemy of all colonialists, Dutch, Spanish, and especially British. He and his pal Yanez, a Portuguese adventurer, defy the world. But, alas for Sandokan, he has seen Marianna the Pearl of Labuan, and is obsessed with her beauty. This would be no big problem, except her British uncle (she’s Eurasian), Lord Guillonk (I’m not making that up) is the blood-enemy of pirates. Even worse, she has been betrothed to Baron Rosenthal. All Sandokan has to do is kidnap her from the middle of an armed villa and hold off the entire Royal Navy. Love will do the rest.

It’s fun stuff, with an interesting setting and unusual characters. But Salgari is rather limited when it comes to creating characters that are even remotely credible. I like my characters a bit broad, but these guys are stretched. Sandokan throws his men’s lives away just to get a look at Marianna. Indeed, he falls in love with Marianna more or less on a whim. Although Yanez and Sandokan talk about how his obsession with Marianna means the end for the Tigers, nothing much comes of it, except lots of predictable slaughter. And just how many British peers have Jewish names? I was half expecting Earl Shlomo Mankowitz to show up and help Baron Rosenthal.

Salgari does not let the action slow for more than a nanosecond before there’s a battle with British ships, soldiers, sharks, or orangutans. Sometimes it gets to be a bit much, even for me, and I do love a high body count.

This may sound like excessive negativity from a crabby old man who’s read too many pirate novels. I really wanted to like Sandokan, and I found the book grew on me in a corny, clunky sort of way. So you might enjoy Sandokan if you are a historian of genre writing, or you might enjoy it if you are willing to commit to the utterly improbable and terribly romantic.

-Dave Hardy

PIRATE KING: COXINGA AND THE FALL OF THE MING DYNASTY
By Jonathan Clements

Jonathan Clements weaves a fascinating account of the rise and fall of the Zheng clan. This is several histories in one: that of a Chinese family, the rise and fall of empires, the colonization of Taiwan, the rise of Western colonialism, missionaries in China, and the economic history of the Pacific Rim.

While the title promises a biography of Coxinga, the “Pirate King”, it is just as much a biography of his father, Nicholas Iquan. Clements describes Iquan’s rise from disgraceful scamp to disgraceful scamp ruling a massive confederation of smugglers and pirates. Iquan was the sort of lad to seduce his stepmother (Chinese families wer polygamous in those days) and was exiled to be a trader in Macao. He came under the tutelage of “Captain China”, and was instrumental in running elaborate swindles on the Dutch and English traders based in Japan. Clements describes Iquan’s hustles with frank admiration and gleeful comic timing. Iquan battled his way into succeeding as Captain China’s successor and grew powerful enough that the imperial authorities bought him off with high titles in return for his political and military support.

Clements also lays out the decline of the Ming dynasty. In 1644 a horde of bandits actually captured the capital precipitating an invasion by the Manchu hordes. Compared to the bandits, the Manchu were civilized. They swept south smashing the poorly led Ming armies. A crafty old sea-dog like Iquan knew which way the wind blew and he surrendered to the Manchu.

But he hadn’t counted on his idealistic son, Coxinga (a latinization of Koksen'yua, one of his titles). Coxinga refused to surrender and fought a sixteen year rearguard battle against the Manchu, holding out on his remote coastal lairs. Though the Ming claimant was little more than a fugitive, Coxinga led a formidable rebel fleet whose smugglers were a major economic power and whose marines came within a hair’s breadth of seizing the capital.

Pirate King examines the role of the Dutch. Iquan and later Coxinga prospered as the intermediaries who smuggled goods back and forth to the Dutch. The Dutch in turn sought a trade port in China, but were blocked by the desire of both the authorities and the smugglers to maintain their respective economic strangleholds. The irony is that Coxinga made the break with the Dutch. As the Manchu grew more powerful, he needed a safe base offshore. The Dutch colony on Taiwan would be perfect. Thus Coxinga inaugurated the strategy of using Taiwan as a place of refuge for representatives of defeated Chinese regimes.

Pirate King is filled with fascinating characters such as Wu Sangui, the general who gave up his loyalty for love of a woman. There is Adam Schall, the Jesuit who became the chief astronomer of the Manchu emperor and handled a cannon to defeat the Dutch. Clements tells the story of Reverend Hambroek, who gave his life to carry a message of defiance to Coxinga. Pirate King is a gripping, fast paced, and often funny story of a real-life pirate warlord and the world he lived in.

-Dave Hardy

ARRR, MATEY

Avast ye swabs! Today is, yes you guessed it, National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Shiver me timbers!

In honor of same, I present a bit of shameless self-promotion. You can still get a copy of Black Sails, a collection of pirate yarns from 1018 Press for a mere $11.99 (dollars, not doubloons). The stories range from the comedic to the horrific, from Davy Jones Locker to the skies, and all points in between. Your humble subscriber, Scurvy Dave Hardy, has a salty yarn of piracy, curses and cruelty on the high seas titled “Black Curse of the Noose” in said collection.

-Dave Hardy

RECEIVED

Here are some belated notes on recent appearances by myself. I got my copy of Black Sails, the anthology of pirate-fantasy stories from 1018 Press. Some favorites are “The Death of Captain Eugene Bloodcake and Fall of the Horrid Whore” by Joel A. Sutherland (it’s about as weird as it sounds, and that’s a good thing). “The Siren’s Lure” by Jordan Lapp is a sparkling swashbuckler. There’s a lot of good stuff in here with all kinds of pirates from sheer fantasy to sharply defined history to Zeppelin pirates, in stories that cover comedy, horror, and action. It’s more than I can list right now, when I have a little more time I hope to comment on some of my fellow contributors’ tales in more detail.

From a while back The Cimmerian V4, N3 with my article “Worms of the Frontier” is available. There’s a fine article on Howard’s Sword & Sorcery influence on Heavy Metal by Scott Hall. Gary Romeo looks at the origins of the phrase “Sword & Sorcery”. Paul Shovlin takes a long hard look at Solomon Kane. I consider “Worms of the Earth” as a classic of American writing that imports the American frontier into Iron Age Britain.

Finally, my good friend GW Thomas has gotten Talbot Mundy’s classic TROS OF SAMOTHRACE out in one volume. This is some of the best historical fiction I’ve read. If you like Harold Lamb’s Cossack stories or Robert E. Howard’s Crusader tales, check out Tros. He’s a one man navy with a band of Freedom Fighters out to stop Julius Caesar from turning Britain into a Roman colony. It is way cool. Gary deserves a big hand for keeping this out where the public can get it: www.lulu.com/ragemachinebooks.

-Dave Hardy

FAIR BLOWS THE WIND
By Louis L’Amour

Though better known for his Westerns, Louis L’Amour was a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. A true product of the pulps, he was ready to write any kind of story, so long as it involved heroic men in a tight situation. In Fair Blows the Wind he takes on the era of Drake, Shakespeare, and Elizabeth. Unfortunately, the result is a bit uneven.

The novel begins with a strong premise. Tatton Chantry is cast away on the unexplored shores of North America. Much to his shock, he is not alone. A small group of Spanish travelers are also shipwrecked on the coast of what will someday be the Carolinas. It’s a bit of a stretch, but ok. Just as Chantry is working his way into the intrigues surrounding the Spanish castaways (involving a beautiful Inca princess and a special treasure) with yet another castaway (why am I reminded of Solomon Shaft from The Pyrates?) Chantry takes the reader on an extended flashback through pretty much all of Chantry’s teenage years and adulthood.

Alas, I was only slightly more enlightened about Chantry antecedents when I was done than when I started. L’Amour has a marked impulse to allude to things that are critical to the plot, but are too secret to be spoken aloud. Alas, this does little for reader comprehension. Chantry belongs to an un-named Irish family that has been outlawed. As L’Amour reminds us again and again, Chantry is not his real name, his own is so famous that all of Britain would know it. So why bother mentioning it, just be sure it’s REAL important.

The story is a bit of a picaresque as Chantry is by turns a member of a Travelling clan, an apprentice to a Highland sword-master, an associate of a secret society, a Grub Street hack, and a soldier-of-fortune. One gets the feeling that Chantry’s career parallels a bit of L’Amour’s life as well. Ultimately, Chantry pits himself against an Elizabethan Godfather who has made himself the crime-boss of 16th century London.

While normally I decry the tendency of novels to be overlong and full of padding, Fair Blows the Wind has enough material for a much longer novel. L’Amour seems almost to have been striving for an epic that encapsulates the time. But rather than following Drake’s epic voyages of piracy and exploration or the cataclysmic confrontation between radical-Catholic Spain and the revolutionary-Protestant Netherlands, L’Amour has his hero wander about the English countryside a lot.

Fair Blows the Wind is frankly, a big disappointment. There are decent moments, but they are not up to the level I expected. I had high hopes for a swashbuckling tale of Elizabethan rogues and rapscallions. Alas, the goods arrived damaged.

-Dave Hardy

THE PYRATES
By George MacDonald Fraser

George Macdonald Fraser has made a career of deconstructing classic genre fiction. The Flashman series is part homage, part parody, part mutation. The Pyrates carries the parody even further, this time instead of exploring every nook of the Victorian Empire, Fraser takes a run at the swashbuckling tales of Jeffery Farnol, Rafael Sabatini, Captain Johnson, Michael Curtiz, and dozens of others. The Flashman novels have footnotes, this one has a bibliography!

The tale follows Colonel Thomas Blood, who’d be a rakehell rapscallion, if only his luck would turn for just a minute. Alas, he is doomed to be overshadowed by handsome Ben Avery, the handsomest man in the Royal Navy. Avery is charged with delivering the Crown of Madagascar tot he ruler of that strategic nation (that is, an insect plagued bit of swamp the French happen to covet). Ben can’t help it if every damsel he passes falls violently, madly, obsessively in love with him. The only hitch is that the International Brotherhood of Pirates under their ferocious shop-steward Calico Jack Rackham are out to seize the crown, rescue their comrade Black Sheba (who is panting with lust for Avery) and save up for retirement. Complicating affairs is the disgusting Don Lardo, a villain of Sydney Greenstreet proportions and the Marquis de Sade’s predilections. Will the pirates and the Royal Navy put aside their animosity to unite against the real foe; Spaniards in possession of portable wealth? Pretty much, yeah.

For the record, Fraser’s hero Colonel Blood is NOT a knock-off of Sabatini’s Captain Blood. Rather he is a fictionalization of the real Col. Blood, an noted Irish schemer who was something of a one-man crime-wave. When he wasn’t plotting to overthrow the monarchy (or restore it, Blood’s politics were a bit murky), he was apt to do a bit of looting. Blood actually directed the heist of the century: he stole the Crown Jewels. Though he was immediately caught, Blood also managed a reversal that would have made O.J. envious. Blood was sentenced to a slow painful death (a seventeenth century specialty). But after being granted and interview His Majesty the King, Blood got a pardon and a Royal handshake. I guess the whole “sentenced to death thing” was just one of those wacky misunderstandings…

The Pyrates is a jolly romp through the cliches of the pirate tales of yore. Sometimes the humor gets a bit repetitious, but then there are gems like a description of a determined pirate chief as a man who, in modern times, would make a good Paratroop sergeant or a moderate Labour MP. Mr. Blair, take note.

-Dave Hardy

THE PIRATES LAFFITE
By William C. Davis

There have been many biographies of Jean Laffite, mostly they are romanticized evocations of an era when New Orleans dripped with Spanish Moss and scoundrels. Hot-blooded Creole gentlemen met with swords under the Dueling Oaks to determine who would win the favors of languid octaroon mistresses.

While octaroon mistresses do figure prominently in William Davis’ tale of the Big Easy’s best-known outlaws, Davis takes a flinty eye to the antics of the last great corsair.

First off, while Jean has had the spotlight pretty much to himself for 200 years, this is the story of the Laffite brothers. While Jean was the public face, older brother Pierre was a dedicated and skilled back-room schemer who complemented Jean’s drive and energy with meticulous planning and political chicanery.

Davis traces the pair to the south of France and finds some evidence that they relocated to the Caribbean in the early years of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As opportunities for wealth and plunder closed down with the fall of France’s West Indian empire, the Laffites moved on to New Orleans.

At the time huge profits could be made by smuggling. Smugglers brought in everything from slaves, to ordinary goods, to loot captured by corsairs operating in the name of Spain’s rebellious colonies.

Evading customs duties was a major occupation for many New Orleans residents. The city was the major port for legitimate trade, and pretty much the major one for smuggling as well. The Laffites were able to act as honest brokers for the smugglers. They made sure debts were paid and the right palms were greased. They had a number of bases, their best known was Barataria. It was an island in the Mississippi delta, accessible only by shallow draft vessels, and only by one who knew the maze-like waterways. It was also reasonably near the customers in New Orleans. The Laffites had many scams for bringing in goods, including a magnificent use of legal loopholes that allowed them to inform on their own contraband, collect a reward for turning it in, and then sell the goods legally. Davis documents the Laffites’ rise to power with liberal use of court documents, newspaper stories, and government reports. Federal authorities had quite a bit to say about the Laffites.

In a remarkable turn of fortune, just when the Laffites’ fortunes were at their lowest, they turned them around by heroic service at the Battle of New Orleans. Davis tells the story with a twist, he shows just how the Laffites were masters at promising little while asking for a lot. Both the Federal authorities and the British courted the Laffites. Davis suggests their choice to join General Jackson was based less on patriotism than the fact that the Brits saw through the Laffites!

As Spain’s empire crumbled, many in the United States looked on greedily. Davis shows how the Laffites installed themselves at the nexus of patriots, schemers, spies, and expansionists who hoped to profit from the destruction of the Spanish empire. Davis also accessed the correspondence of Spain’s spies in the region and details the Laffites’ most audacious coup of all. When it became clear that the half-baked plans for using secret armies of American mercs to overthrow the Spanish would never work, the Laffites quietly turned informer. In a double stroke they obtained a pass for their own activities in commerce raiding while ensuring a steady income from the Spanish secret service!

Davis follows the downward arc of the Laffites’ career too. Jean’s operations at Barataria came under heavy pressure so he moved to Galveston. There he often found himself in the position of rendering substantial material aid to the very plotters he was supposed to be squelching for Spain. Laffite’s motives seem to be a mixture of humanitarianism and a need to keep the stumblebums in the field so the Spanish would pay him.

Davis documents the grim end of the brothers. Pierre died in a small affray in the Yucatan, Jean in a sea-fight off Cuba. It was a dismal end for men who had once been the criminal masterminds of the Gulf Coast and subject of concern to kings and presidents.

There is a coda. Pierre’s descendents by his mixed race mistress sought to better themselves in segregated New Orleans by passing as white. Davis found the court documents that showed they were not “white” and, in a revealing twist, notes the disappearance of church records that would have proved them to be mixed race.

While The Pirates Laffite is not a fast paced book, it is one of great depth. Davis is meticulous in his study of the details of the Laffites and the milieu of corsairs, smugglers, and secret agents they moved in. Sometimes the barrage of facts is a bit overwhelming, but the clarity of the picture Davis builds is worth slogging through the details. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the Gulf Coast. It is also a monument in the literature of piracy and covert warfare.

New Orleans still drips with Spanish moss, criminals, and post-Katrina damp. The local outlaws are far more likely to ambush one another with bullets than to meet with swords. The era of Jean and Pierre Laffite seems quaint by contrast. Still, one wonders if they were here today, would they not quickly rise to the top?

-Dave Hardy

Local History & More Piracy!

I live near Hornsby Bend in Travis county (that’s Texas y’all). It’s an area of farmland that is swiftly turning into tract housing and a bypass highway. It’s perhaps not surprising that people might assume that there is no history behind an area like this. It was a cow pasture, now it’s brick-faced, ranch style homes starting in the $80s.

But every place has its story. It turns out the Hornsby area has quite a few old stories, if you know where to look. Here’s an interesting website that I came across today. It has all kinds of history tidbits about Rueben Hornsby, the first settler to move into this part of Travis County back in the 1830s.
http://www.hornsbybend.com/

Back to reviews of pirate books!



THE BLACKBIRDER
By James L. Nelson

It seems that you can’t toss a brick these days without hitting some kind of pirate reference (especially in children’s books and tv), except in the world of fiction. James L. Nelson set out to change that with his “Brethren of the Coast” series.

The Blackbirder is actually the second novel in the set (The Guardship was first and The Pirate Round is the third). The protagonist is Thomas Marlowe, a reformed pirate turned merchant captain and Virginia planter. Marlowe has freed his slaves, an act that has aroused the hostility of his slave-owning neighbors. When one of Marlowe’s freedmen kills the captain of a slave ship and then heads out to sea, Marlowe must hunt the man down or see his own future blighted. Action at sea and intrigue on land ensues.

This is a decent action novel, but not top drawer. Nelson isn’t Rafael Sabatini. He makes some desultory efforts to use 18th century speech, though mostly he uses neutral 20th century American English. Nelson's descriptions of slave ships are gruesomely true to life. His observations on pirates and their ways sometimes seems heavy-handed, but reasonably accurate: they were admirably freedom-loving, but brutal in their disregard of the lives and property of others.

There are a lot of characters and subplots in this novel, and some of it works better than other parts. Marlowe is a good hard-boiled character, as is Madshaka, an escaped slave with some interesting plans of his own. I really wished the novel spent more time with Marlowe. Too much of the plot seems contrived, the admirable freed slave just happens to kill a scummy slaver captain. The bigoted neighbor just happens to have a dark secret. A pirate ally just happens to show up to help Marlowe’s wife save the day for the freed slaves, etc…

While I don’t want to sound too negative about The Blackbirder, it just didn’t grab me as strongly as other pirate yarns. The strong points for the novel are lots of action, some good characters, and an interesting look at race relations in the 18th century.
-Dave Hardy

This is the inagural post for my new Fire & Sword blog. Given the great speed with which I write my reviews (as some may note from my grammar, spelling, and punctuation) , a blog format is the easiest way to get my reviews online. A nifty feature is that blogs can be interactive (not so with locked down html on a private site).

Please feel free to visit my site at http://www.fireandsword.com for lots of other reviews, links, and some examples of my fiction.

Since this is the summer of piracy, without further ado here is my review of the splendid pirate tale, The Golden Hawk.



THE GOLDEN HAWK
By Frank Yerby

Although little remembered today, Frank Yerby was one of the last great writers of swashbuckling adventure novels. In The Golden Hawk he tackled the quintessential swashbuckler subject, piracy on the high seas.

Kit Gerardo is the dashing young man at the center of the novel. He serves under Captain Lazarus, a leper buccaneer, together they quell a mutiny, survive the Port Royal earthquake, battle a Spanish galleon, and rescue a beautiful girl who drives Lazarus to suicide and shoots Kit in the head. And that’s just the first chapter.

The rest of the novel pretty much keeps up the pace. Kit and his friend Bernardo lead the buccaneers of the Seaflower across the Caribbean in search of vengeance upon Don Luis del Toro, the Spanish grandee who had Kit’s mother tortured to death by the Inquisition. Kit is also in quest of Rouge, the fieriest she-pirate ever to sail the Main, she also has a score to settle with Don Luis. On the other hand Bianca, Don Luis’ bride, becomes acquainted with Kit and ensures the very complex relationship between Don Luis and Kit doesn’t get any simpler.

Yerby was too good a writer to make his tale just about good and evil, so he keeps his characters hopping to show that good and evil aren’t always so far apart. Yerby also adds in the details that give his tale a richness beyond the usual cutlasses and pieces-of-eight business. I’d never heard of Caviedes the Mad Poet of Lima before, but he’s one of the most interesting characters in the novel.

The Golden Hawk is a rousing tale of adventure with a distinctive cut to its jib. While tales like Captain Blood and Pirates of the Caribbean are well known, The Golden Hawk is realtively obscure. It’s a pity because the Hawk deserves to soar.
-Dave Hardy