Really long, really informative.

Difficult read. But filled with excitement and adventure.

The nearby, to me, port city of Bristol has a strong association with 17th and 18th century maritime history including trading, buccaneering/privateering, piracy and the shameful Atlantic slave trade (which enriched the city of that era). I’ve previously bumped into some of the naval tales via a historian friend, not least that Treasure Island is possibly based upon the piracy originating from Bristol sailors so I was hoping this book could expand on that.

It was published in 1724 so it’s one of the major sources for all the later tales involving pirates of that period. Robert Louis Stevenson and JM Barrie credit it as a source. The Jolly Roger flag, buried treasure and the missing limbs/wooden legs of still active pirates originate here.
The author is a mystery though another book was published later about Highwaymen and street robbers under the same name. The book has also been published with Daniel Defoe credited as the author though there seems no evidence other than he was in Bristol around that time and did know about the maritime adventures of the period (he probably based Robinson Crusoe on a rescued sailor, Alexander Selkirk, who was dropped off in Bristol by one of the characters featuring in this book - the privateer Woods Rogers).

Phew - a long intro to the book I’m reviewing but the background is probably as interesting as the content. There’s an introduction by the author about why piracy took off in the early 1700’s (partly due to privateers (mercenaries) having nothing to do once the wars they’d helped with had finished), especially in the Caribbean and off the Carolina’s coast. The introduction meanders as much as my review - the author making a prolonged analogy with Ancient Rome letting piracy take off in the Mediterranean while they were distracted by land campaigns and then later having to clamp down on it hard. Comparisons with Ancient Rome crop up in a couple of other later passages too!

The core of the book consists of 16 chapters each detailing (and I mean detailing!) the exploits of a pirate captain with sub sections on crew members who became notorious in their own rights. It also sometimes drifts away into descriptions of geography and culture, such as details of Portuguese African colonies in a rare break from the West Indies. It doesn’t sugar coat the exploits of the pirates, shown to be violent robbers who happened to be on sea going vessels. Sometimes they just offloaded provisions from ships they stopped and then let them continue; sometimes they burnt the apprehended ships and treated the crew from them brutally or sadistically. The slave trade is mentioned in passing as slaves aboard the merchant ships could be taken, like any other commodity, to be sold on by the pirates. Though some in the pirate crews are mentioned as being black, presumably free. They had plenty of small Caribbean islands on which to hide, usually got very drunk, and played cat and mouse with the Royal Navy sometimes sent to stop their activities.
The cover page makes a point of mentioning two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, (both crew members of a Captain Rackham). Of course, it’s one of the more interesting sections given the era. The author seems to have a remarkable amount of background on them, before they became pirates, which makes you wonder how it was researched. One was brought up as a boy because of a deception by her mother to obtain money from relatives (who believed her/him to be her first born son, who had actually died unknown to them). She then joined the army as a male soldier and fought, before eventually becoming involved in piracy, also initially as a man - until discovered by the other woman on Rackham’s ship, a fiery pirate who seemed to fancy him/her and hadn’t disguised her sex. She also had a well documented background - the illegitimate daughter of an Irish attorney, who had quite a love tangle affecting his family.
Upon the capture of Rackham’s crew one female pirate died in prison but the other disappeared from history, apparently avoiding execution due to being pregnant.
I could go on. Blackbeard/Edward Teach (from Bristol) is shown to be exceptionally ruthless and fearless, hence his legendary reputation. His career was helped by the corruption of officialdom in the Carolina’s, well known to the author, where he operated until a bravely led naval expedition killed him in quite a battle. Israel Hands, a senior associate of Blackbeard’s, features in Treasure Island.

So I’ve learnt a bit about piracy from the source material. No ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ romanticism. I’m not rating the book though. It doesn’t need my star rating. It’s of its time, the somewhat archaic English of the original text, its meanderings and heavy detail of ships and voyage details made it hard to read without frequent stops. I dipped in and out, skipped a few of the technical (boring) passages. More for the naval historian I suppose, but nonetheless fascinating in its own way if you want to see where 18th century pirate tales originated from.

This printing attributes this history to Daniel Defoe. However, in reading on Wikipedia about this History of pirates, the author is unknown and scholars have attributed its writing to several besides Defoe.

The telling of the history is interesting but a dry report. Nonetheless, it may be more of a recording of 18th century pirate tales, and less any research on the topic.

There is a lot of information recorded from trials. Perhaps that is accu a rate. I am not sure

I can't quite pinpoint what I find so fascinating about the history of piracy, but listening to the audiobook of A General History of the Pyrates by Daniel Defoe was certainly easier than slogging through the actual reading – so kudos to the narrator, John Lee, for the overall slick execution of the production. That being said, this book is very much a product of its time, and reflects the casual racism and cultural jingoism so inherent to the era and in the author's general outlook. But if you're prepared to look past this, there's a treasure trove of details about the history of piracy during the late 1700s, much of it allegedly drawn from interviews with primary sources.

If you're an author, like me, on the hunt for story seeds, there are certainly plenty to be found among the tales of awful people doing awful things. Which in my mind is pretty much a summary of what this book is about. Forget the golden glow of historical romances – the lives of pirates and indeed any sailors press-ganged into service during the 18th century – were often brutal, bloody, and short. If disease didn't carry you away, a storm might. Or a violent encounter with pirates or an enemy fleet. You'll meet cunning men and women among these pages, as well as wicked, greedy, and violent ones. The fact that the penalty for piracy was death did not deter those who sought opportunity on the high seas – no matter the cost of this dearly bought freedom.

I really don't have much more to say other than the fact that my continued research has offered me a clearer idea of the cultural mores of the era, the challenges faced in sea travel, and how far we've come as a global community compared to what things were like during the 1700s. While much of this book can be quite dry, a patient reader can glean fascinating insights about a time so vastly different from our own.

I may be biased, because I've always loved pirates and likely always will...
But I enjoyed this book immensely.
I have dabbled in pirate books since this one and they all seem to pale. No one gets anything as clearly, as precisely, and as truly, as Charles Johnson.
It seems every other history is just a retelling of his stories in new words, that all are cheep imitations.
Even Howard Pyle (who wrote King Arthur), attempted a retelling to make it more of a narrative, and instead chopped off good sections of account to do so.
This story (however creditable it may be.) is the most accurate, complete, and interesting, book of pirates that we have to date.

A book written by a sea captain about pirates and other sea captains during the time when pirates reigned. This book is essential for anyone who has more than a passing interest in the history of pirates. Johnson by no means appraises the deeds of these outlaws. As a sea captain himself, he is entirely against them and seems to be astounded by the public's interest of these outlaws. Due to the success of his book in 1724, he found himself writing more stories about pirates than he had previously expected he would.

As an outcome of the time period the book was written in, the writing can be dry and the details extraneous. Johnson will write excessively of the minute details of what a sloop was carrying, when the aspect the reader wants to know about is the people it carried and how they lived. He also finds every opportunity he can to insert God and biblical verses to explain how doomed the pirates are due to their actions. Obviously, now we would find this to be outlandish in a historical documentation.

If you are to read any of this book, I would suggest the chapters on Anne Bonnie and Mary Reed. Johnson appears to forget his dry listing of details when it comes to these two characters and starts telling the story of their lives based on historical documentation and word of mouth. It is obvious that something intrigued him about the ferocity of these two women, which in return makes their stories the most fun to read out of the bunch.

Bare with the dry narration, and you will be rewarded with some rich, exciting pirate tales.

A captivating collection of histories about the most well-known pirates sailing during the Golden Age of Pirates. It is sorted nicely by each Captain (and his crew) and often the pirates are organized by familiarity with each other due to overlapping histories (i.e. Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet; Jack Rackham, Mary Reed, and Anne Bonny, etc.). Each section is a reasonable length except for Bartholomew Roberts for whom the author decides to provide in-depth summaries of every crew members trial results. The flow of text is easy to read through, considering the time the language was written, but can get a bit clogged with the run-on sentences and love for using semi-colons. The author does have occasional tendencies to branch off into side discussions; at times it makes sense on how it relates to the pirate in question but other times you get lost on why it's significant. Despite these few flaws, I still enjoyed reading potentially one of the first collections of information about pirates. Overall, an excellent selection to have in any pirate lovers collection.

"Such a Day, Rum all out. Our Company somewhat sober:--A Damned Confusion amongst us!--Rogues a plotting--great Talk of Separation. So I looked sharp for a Prize;--such a Day took one, with a great deal of Liquor on Board, so kept the Company hot, damned hot, then all things went well again."
--Thus quoth Captain Teach. I like the management strategy.

Very brief bios of pirates from rhe 17th and 18th century. Each bio should have been longer with much mores descriptions of personalities and adventures. Glad I read the book but wanted mores from the author who claimed to also be a pirate

I only read this book because of Our Flag Means Death, yes, but I think it's a really fun read even if you don't care that much about pirates.

It can be very repetitive at times (you can only describe a ship being captured so many ways), but there is a lot of cool action as well. It also takes some time to get used to 18th century spelling and language, but once you get it it helps set the tone.

I absolutely adored the section describing Brazil, it was amazing seeing my country through the eyes of an 18th century English man haha

I also found the sections describing the articles of piracy really cool - I never considered that pirates could have "laws".

Overall I really enjoyed, and recommend te sections on Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet, if tou don't want to read it all.

So I'm not sure how historically accurate this is. I have heard some could be fabricated, but I really enjoyed it.