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9781574889109

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The Sea Rover's Practice fills a longstanding void in the literature of piracy. With the trained eye and experienced hand of a sailor and maritime combatant, Benerson Little reconstructs a century of tactics and stratagems developed by pirates during the height of their operations in Spanish America and beyond. Through engaging prose and careful scholarship, Little uncovers the fascinating secrets of the sweet trade. A remarkably complete analysis of methods used in piracy, especially in Europe and America, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book is based on solid research and is especially valuable for understanding the language and literature of the subject. It includes useful notes and bibliographies and is a highly recommended reference work for both general and specialized libraries. As colorful as a Howard Pyle illustration and as compelling as an Errol Flynn film, The Sea Rover's Practice belongs on anyone s short list of useful scholarship on the great age of piracy. Based largely on first-person accounts, the book provides a trustworthy description of how pirates, filibusters, buccaneers, and privateers went about their business, from planning and recruiting, through chasing, engaging, and boarding, to dividing the spoils. One of the many intriguing facts to be gleaned, for instance, is the origins of the practice of small plunder by custom that continued to be included in the privateering articles of agreement of later eras. The reader, entertained as well as informed, is likely to have nearly as much fun reading this book as the author appears to have had in writing it. Benerson Little brings a unique and powerful perspective--that of a scholarly former U.S. Navy SEAL--to a fascinating subject. The result is a remarkable book that casts much new light on the sea rovers of the Age of Sail.

As colorful as a Howard Pyle illustration and as compelling as an Errol Flynn film, THE SEA ROVER'S PRACTICE belongs on anyone's short list of useful scholarship on the great age of piracy. Based largely on first-person accounts, the book provides a trustworthy description of how pirates, filibusters, buccaneers, and privateers went about their business, from planning and recruiting, through chasing, engaging, and boarding, to dividing the spoils. One of the many intriguing facts to be gleaned, for instance, is the origins of the practice of 'small plunder by custom' that continued to be included in the privateering articles of agreement of later eras. The reader, entertained as well as informed, is likely to have nearly as much fun reading this book as the author appears to have had in writing it.: --Michael J. Crawford, naval historian and editor of THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A YANKEE MARINER: CHRISTOPHER PRINCE AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION

The Sea Rover's Practice fills a longstanding void in the literature of piracy. With the trained eye and experienced hand of a sailor and maritime combatant, Benerson Little reconstructs a century of tactics and stratagems developed by pirates during the height of their operations in Spanish America and beyond. Through engaging prose and careful scholarship, Little uncovers the fascinating secrets of the sweet trade.

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