Pirates: Fact & Fiction

Pirates: Fact and Fiction traces the history of piracy from the Spanish Main, where Drake and the Elizabethan sea dogs plundered vast quantities of treasure from Spanish galleons returning to the Old World, to the China Seas where, in the early nineteenth century, the female pirate Ching Yih Saou commanded a fleet of over 800 junks. It examines the realities of pirate life through everyday items that would have been used by the pirates themselves--weapons, navigational instruments, charts--and, by contrasting these with fictional portrayals and stereotypes, sets out to dispel some of the myths surrounding this perennially fascinating subject.With illustrations from the seventeenth century to the present day, and a lively text that draws on the wide-ranging expertise of Britain's National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Pirates: Fact and Fiction will appeal to all ages.[Taken from book jacket]