A dazzling array of swashbuckling pirates, picaroons, and sea rovers are
pitted against the often feckless representatives of an outpost
government authority in the Chesapeake Bay region. It is an exciting and
dramatic two hundred-year history that begins grimly with the "starving
time" in the Virginia colony in 1609, and ends with the peaceful
resolution of the Othello affair with the French in 1807. In between
lies a full panoply of violent and bizarre buccaneering incidents that
one is hard pressed to imagine from the vantage point of the
twenty-first century. Documented by impressive research in articles of
the Netherlands, England, and the United States, Shomette skillfully
reconstructs these episodes and many others, including the intensive
anti-pirate cruise to capture--dead or alive--the notorious Blackbeard.
The anti-pirate cruises led to the roundup of dozens of pirates and some
showy executions but did little to curb the continued terrorist
activities of bandits like Roger Makeele, Stede Bonnet, and Joseph
Wheland.