The Pirate Library
My original idea for this website was to create an Encyclopedia Piratica, hence the domain name. However, I never found the time and energy to do the vast amount of work required; too much time spent proof-reading and recording audiobooks. However, this weekend I’ve sat down and used a few different resources to pull together a listing of piratey works … which can now be found at:
http://piratelibrary.com/library.htm
This is a bit of a hotchpotch at the moment, since contemporary and modern works are mixed, as are fact and fiction, and sea pirates with thieves of other stripes. I’ve simply labelled books according to source. So it will evolve over time, and I hope it proves of use / fun to someone somewhere along the way.
Collections included so far:
Project Gutenberg
LibriVox
The Internet Archive
To come:
Google Books (the public domain ones, anyway)
Other free online sources of piratical text & audio as I find them
One Comment
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It’s interesting that you should write about pirates, because I just watched the 1930s “Mutiny on the Bounty” and was inspired to do some research on the historical mutiny. I can’t put everything down here but, believe it or not, the movie, as great as it is, and perhaps also the Nordoff & Hall trilogy on which it’s based (and which I confess to not having read), don’t do justice to either Captain Bligh’s humanity or the mutineers’ inhumanity. If you don’t believe me, look at the true history of Pitcairn Island after Fletcher Christian and his band of merry rascals landed there with their abducted Tahitian maidens and manservants and proceeded to the distillation of alcohol.
You may agree with me that, if many a Briish sailor was decorated with stripes, he richly earned them.
TCM (which truly “does movies right”) accompanied its showing of “Mutiny” with some documentaries of Pitcairn Island and its (unfortunately inbred) population of the 1930s. The wreckage of the “Bounty” is still visible in the inlet where Christian, with great seamanship, ran the ship aground, and the half-breed inhabitants still bear his surname and those of his fellow mutineers. From the town hall bulletin board: “If any man can show just cause why John Christian should not wed Mary Christian, let him speak now or forever hold his peace. Signed, Thomas Christian, mayor.”
Thanks as always for your hard work and delightful voice.