![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality by David Cordingly
Continuing my quest to learn about the Age of Sail...
I'll confess I was a little bemused by the rationale for this book which combines a history of piracy in (broadly speaking) the 17th and 18th centuries with digressions into books, stories and movies about pirates. I suspect there is something of a case of wishing to have your cake and eat it. By combining both the "romance" and the "reality" Cordingly gets to discuss the actual historical tales of actual historical pirates while also indulging in a certain amount of swash and buckle. I wasn't convinced it always worked. Far more time is devoted to the reality so it often came as a bit of a surprise when thing moved into literary or film history and the transitions were not always well executed. Chapter 9, for instance, starts out discussing the styles of ship favoured by pirates and ends up with a potted history of pirate films with the two sections rather clumsily linked together by observations about the constraints imposed by filming on the creation of realistic sets of pirate ships.
To be honest, I suspect Cordingly of being more interested in real pirates than in imaginary ones, which was fine for my purposes and while he took care to stress many of the realities of piracy he displayed a certain relish for tales of pursuit and confrontation so the final impression remains one of adventure and derring-do. The book isn't as authoritative as Rodger's books on the Royal Navy are and reads more as a set of interesting tales than as a detailed analysis of the phenomenon. However it was easy enough to read and perfectly entertaining.
In short a fun book, very much aimed at the lay person, but with a slightly odd structure in places.
Now all I need to do is find a book about the Merchant Navy
I'll confess I was a little bemused by the rationale for this book which combines a history of piracy in (broadly speaking) the 17th and 18th centuries with digressions into books, stories and movies about pirates. I suspect there is something of a case of wishing to have your cake and eat it. By combining both the "romance" and the "reality" Cordingly gets to discuss the actual historical tales of actual historical pirates while also indulging in a certain amount of swash and buckle. I wasn't convinced it always worked. Far more time is devoted to the reality so it often came as a bit of a surprise when thing moved into literary or film history and the transitions were not always well executed. Chapter 9, for instance, starts out discussing the styles of ship favoured by pirates and ends up with a potted history of pirate films with the two sections rather clumsily linked together by observations about the constraints imposed by filming on the creation of realistic sets of pirate ships.
To be honest, I suspect Cordingly of being more interested in real pirates than in imaginary ones, which was fine for my purposes and while he took care to stress many of the realities of piracy he displayed a certain relish for tales of pursuit and confrontation so the final impression remains one of adventure and derring-do. The book isn't as authoritative as Rodger's books on the Royal Navy are and reads more as a set of interesting tales than as a detailed analysis of the phenomenon. However it was easy enough to read and perfectly entertaining.
In short a fun book, very much aimed at the lay person, but with a slightly odd structure in places.
Now all I need to do is find a book about the Merchant Navy
no subject
http://www.historicnavalfiction.com/all-tags/history_british_merchant_navy
the early volumes of which seem to be the kind of thing you're looking for.
no subject
no subject
The Merchant Navy (Shire Library) [Paperback]
Richard Woodman (Author)
ISBN-10: 0747812322
Your University library seems to have Vols 1-4. Not that surprising given that Liverpool was a historically important port.
no subject
EDIT: yeah, 56 pages.
no subject
no subject