Cindy Vallar's Blog - Posts Tagged "calico-jack-rackham"

The Ballade of Mary Reede: Twilight of the Buccaneers by N.C. Schell

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


One summer in 1752, the son of an old shipmate visits John Tanner at his home in the hills of New England. This lad brings with him a small chest with the message that perhaps it’s time to tell the story. What’s inside awakens a host of memories and emotions – some good, some bad – but his friend is right. Nearly three decades have passed since Captain Johnson published his account of the pirates, and he omitted many details to protect John and others. Better to record the full story now, before it’s too late.

Captain Charles Johnson first entered John’s life at the age of ten. The successful investor had once sailed with William Dampier and later journeyed to the Levant. He also has a particular fascination with pirates, attending their trials, collecting anecdotes, and interviewing them in their gaol cells before they hang. When John turns thirteen, Johnson provides him with the opportunity to learn the trade of ship’s carpenter. Once John receives his papers, Johnson offers him the position of master carpenter aboard the Rachel, a brig he helped to build.

Rachel sails for the Caribbean, where the threat from pirates has lessened since Governor Woodes Rogers arrived at New Providence. She is a happy ship and all goes well until a topsail schooner is sighted off the island of Turks. John’s best friend, able seaman Candy Jones, suspects those aboard the strange sail are pirates, perhaps even some he knows. He hopes not, as he took the King’s Pardon and has no intention of going back on his word.

After the captain is rowed over to the pirate ship, some of the cutthroats board the Rachel. Two in particular catch John’s attention. The first is Black Mike Magoon, whom John likens to a “maddened highland bullock.” He once sailed with Blackbeard and is just as crazy and violent. The other has a handsome face and keen eyes that always watch what’s happening around him. Mark Reede is quiet and polite, but prefers people call him by his surname. When John finds himself on Black Mike’s bad side, Reede saves John’s life. Doing so is to honor their captain’s wishes, but the intervention heightens the animosity between the two pirates and Black Mike vows a day of reckoning will come – sooner rather than later.

After Captain Jack Rackham comes aboard Rachel, the looting begins, a trial is held, and volunteers are asked to join their merry band. But John and Candy aren’t given an opportunity to decline Rackham’s generous offer. Both are forced; neither signs the pirates’ articles and each vows to do only what he must to survive. Reede is given the responsibility of protecting and teaching John. As the days pass, John enjoys his time with Reede, yet is also perplexed by feelings that don’t make sense. Although the pirates successfully raid other vessels and trade with maroons and smugglers, their seizures incense the authorities and before long pirate hunters are on their trail.

This is by no means just a pirate tale. It’s also about the maroons and smugglers, people whose lives intersected with pirates. The meaning of nautical jargon may stump a few readers, but its use never impedes the story’s flow. Schell incorporates a mock trial into this narrative, but as a wonderfully descriptive way of showing how pirates entertained themselves and sat in judgment of sea captains and their treatment of the sailors under them. His interpretation of how the animosity sparks between Reede and Magoon is plausible and enlightening. The same is true of what happens to Anne Bonny after she is condemned to hang.

Having Charles Johnson, the author of the most famous pirate history ever published, participate in this story is both delightful and refreshing. His role may be minor, but it is definitely an important one that is easily believed. Schell instills life into this historian’s book so it is no longer mere words on the page. His portrayal of these men and women is as vivid and realistic as the world he weaves around them. He is a master at creating unique, memorable characters be they major or minor ones. Although I share Irish roots with Anne Bonny, it is Mary Reed who has long been my favorite of this famous duo and this story is an admirable and realistic portrayal of her life. As for the minor characters, my favorite is Trinket, a pirate who comes back from the dead.

The Ballade of Mary Reede is the first book in the Twilight of the Buccaneers series. It is a well-crafted, captivating tale rich in historical detail and pirate lore. The love story is both heartwarming and heart wrenching, and even though history tells us how the story must end, never once does Schell permit us to stop hoping that love will triumph. His re-imagining of John’s farewell to Mary is a poignant moment that stays with you long after the story ends.




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Anne Bonny the Infamous Female Pirate by Phillip Thomas Tucker

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Ask for the name of a female pirate and Anne Bonny will inevitably be given. History has left us two main sources of information about this woman – Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates and the account of her trial in Spanish Town, Jamaica in 1720. The former isn’t an entirely accurate history of famous pirates and the latter covers only a short period in Anne’s life that is primarily seen from the victims’ perspectives. Anne herself left no journal or diary detailing her life. Over the centuries, a number of books, mostly collections about women pirates, have included Anne, but author bias and cultural interpretations have sometimes intruded into these biographies. Dr. Tucker’s goal is to separate the mythology from Anne’s story to resurrect the real Anne Bonny and place her within the world in which she lived.

Anne Bonny begins in 1698 and lays the framework for who her parents were, how she came to be born, and how circumstances in Ireland eventually led to Anne and her parents emigrating to South Carolina. Subsequent chapters cover her life in that colony, her marriage to James Bonny, her move to the Bahamas, her love affair with Calico Jack Rackham, her life as a pirate, and her capture and trial. The account of her life concludes with what happened to her after she vanished from her gaol cell until her death in 1782. The narrative ends with a conclusion and endnotes. Maps and other blank-and-white illustrations are included throughout the book.

This book has a number of weaknesses. The absence of an actual bibliography and index make it difficult to locate information within the narrative. The format of the endnotes causes confusion as to which part of the narrative provided either the subject discussed or the quotation. Also, a few of the source materials cited here fall under the category of primary documentation. The majority are either secondary or tertiary resources; a few, such as Wikipedia and Answers.com, are questionable resources. Dr. Tucker incorporates source citations within the endnotes, but only the first usage includes the author, full title, and publication date. If the resource is a website, a URL is never provided and trying to locate it using a search engine is nearly impossible from the limited information that is provided.

Equally frustrating is the frequent use of language conveying hypothetical conclusions, such as likely, might, possibly, perhaps, maybe. In a non-fiction book that purports to set the record straight and to fill in the gaps, how can this be achieved without providing definitive historical evidence to back-up these claims? A subsection of chapter two is “Dynamic Irish Women”, yet the first woman role model discussed is Joan of Arc, who was French. If Anne knew of Grace O’Malley, who was Irish, her story may have inspired Anne as Dr. Tucker claims.

Several of his points also raise red flags. On page 49, Anne was “unaware that piracy was a most dangerous profession.” Captain William Kidd’s imprisonment, trial, and execution in 1701 were big news back then and Anne was not illiterate. Newspapers and broadsheets often carried tales of pirate attacks. The zenith of bringing pirates to justice and executing them may not have been reached at the time Anne became a pirate, but she was associating with them in the taverns of New Providence when Woodes Rogers was tasked with the job of ridding the pirates from the Caribbean. How could she not have known piracy was dangerous?

Two other examples pertain to Edward Teach or Blackbeard. On page 56, Dr. Tucker writes, “Some scant evidence exists that even Edward Teach . . . was of mixed black and white ancestry.” Ten pages later this becomes a rumor and that he was “a light-skinned mulatto,” yet no evidence is provided to support or discount this – why include a rumor in the first place? As to Dr. Tucker’s claim that Anne “might well have seen Blackbeard on the sandy streets” of Nassau, this is highly improbable. Anne didn’t arrive there until November 1718 and in November Blackbeard was in the environs of the Carolinas and was slain on 22 November.

On the other hand, this book provides an interesting perspective of Anne and how cultural influences and societal attitudes may have influenced her life and her decisions. It also shows her as a typical teenager, experiencing the angst of growing up and living in patriarchal societies where religion and on which side of the tracks you were born played a role in who and what you could be, especially if you were female. Dr. Trucker also does a commendable job expressing why society feared Anne and what she represented.




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