Pirate Rascals of the Spanish Main ABC Whipple  Hardcover VG

nice condition - tight binding - clean deckled pages - dust cover shows wear but has mylar covering - non-smoking home

Synopsis:

Mr. Whipple's book begins with Captain Kidd: and he makes clear that great man's innocence of the charges against him and the unscrupulous nature of the frame-up which brought him to the scaffold. The rest of Mr. Whipple's muster are, however, true pirates, every man - and woman - of them. There is Captain Tew, who seized a fortune on his very first voyage and had the sense to retire at once, but was later prevailed upon by his old shipmates to try his luck a second time, and was killed by the first broadside from the first merchantman he encountered. There is Captain Every, who seized a shipload of the Great Mogul's concubines, as well as other more permanent treasure, but who died in poverty in Bideford, cheated out of payment for his great hauls by the respectable merchants of Bristol. There is Captain Vane, whose crew mutinied and marooned him, but who within a few weeks had built up another pirate fleet. There is the extraordinary case of Major Bonnet, a wealthy plantation owner of Barbados, who suddenly took to piracy, and terrorized the American Coast before ending on a scaffold at Charleston. And there are the two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who successfully "pleaded their bellies" when the law at last caught up with them. But perhaps the two most authentic "story-book" pirates are Captain Flood and Teach (Blackbeard). It was Captain Flood who, while the aid of his first mate secreted a vast haul in a cave half-way up a cliff-side, and then pushed the mate to his death from the cliff-top; but who returned two years later to collect the treasure, found the mate still waiting for him - and this time it was Flood who went over the cliff-top. As for Blackbeard, this unspeakable monster really was all that one expects a pirate to be. It took two men-of-war to destroy him and in his final battle he fought a score of men single-handed, ignored wounds which would have killed a lesser man, and died literally on his feet. And Buried Treasure.

F93