Heroines and Harlots: Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail

DAVID CORDINGLY

Pan/Macmillan

Heroines and Harlots : Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail

Travel

For centuries, the sea has been regarded as a male domain, but in this illuminating historical narrative, maritime scholar David Cordingly shows that an astonishing number of women went to sea in the great age of sail. Some traveled as the wives or mistresses of captains; others were smuggled aboard by officers or seamen. And Cordingly has unearthed stories of a number of young women who dressed in men’s clothes and worked alongside sailors for months, sometimes years, without ever revealing their gender. His tremendous research shows that there was indeed a thriving female population—from pirates to the sirens of myth andlegend—on and around the high seas. A landmark work of women’s history disguised as a spectacularly entertaining yarn, Women Sailors and Sailor’s Women will surprise and delight.

Heroines & Harlots: Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail

History

Military

Macmillan

What were pirates really like? How much, if any, of the piratical stereotype - of a dashingly handsome man with an eye-patch, peg-leg and a parrot on his shoulder - is based on the documented fact. In this revealing and highly original study David Cordingly sets out to discover the truth behind the piracy myth, exploring its enduring and extraordinary appeal, and answering such questions as: why did men become pirates? Were there any women pirates? How much money did they make from plundering and looting? And were pirates really dashing highwaymen of the Seven Seas or just vicious cut-throats and robbers? From Long John Silver to Henry Morgan, Robert Louis Stevenson to J.M. Barrie, LIFE AMONG THE PIRATES examines all the heavyweights of history and literature and presents the essential survey of this fascinating phenomenon.

Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality

ABACUS +

Women Sailors and Sailors' Women

World

Random House]

This is the story of the Bellerophon, a ship of the line known to her crew as the Billy Ruffian. Under fourteen captains, she played a conspicuous part in three of the most famous of all sea battles: the battle of the Glorious First of June (1794), the opening action against Revolutionary France; the battle of the Nile (1798), which halted Napoleon's eastern expansion from Cairo; and the battle of Trafalgar (1805), which established British naval supremacy for 100 years and during which her captain was shot dead with a musket ball an hour before Nelson was mortally wounded. But her crowning glory came six weeks after the Battle of Waterloo, when the Napoleon, trapped in La Rochelle, surrendered to the captain of the ship that had dogged his steps for more than twenty years.

Billy Ruffian: The Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon - The Biography of a Ship of the Line 1782-1836

Bloomsbury Paperbacks

Cochrane the dauntless: the life and adventures of Admiral Thomas Cochrane, 1775 - 1860

Biographies & Memoirs

BLOOMSBURY

Stories of individual pirates in the Caribbean, from Blackbeard to Calico Jack, have been the stuff of legend since the eighteenth century, but in Spanish Gold pirate expert David Cordingly at last gives us the big picture in all its bold and ruthless truth. Cordingly shows how the attacks of the buccaneers on the treasure ports of the Spanish Main, and the sacking of Panama by Sir Henry Morgan in 1671, were the prologue to an explosion of piracy which led to the establishment of a pirate colony at Nassau in the Bahamas. By 1717, so many ships had been raided and trade so badly disrupted that the merchants of London had to act. The man they selected 'to drive the pirates from their lodgement' was Captain Woodes Rogers, himself a former privateer who had sailed round the world with William Dampier the buccaneer explorer as his pilot. Woodes Rogers had captured the fabled Manila treasure galleon, and rescued Alexander Selkirk from a remote Pacific island - indeed, it was his account of Selkirk's ordeal that inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Woodes Rogers' resolute actions as Governor of the Bahamas restored order to the colony and proved a defining step in the campaign against the pirates, inspiring the fight-back against men like Blackbeard, Calico Jack and Bartholomew Roberts, all of whom died in dramatic circumstances. Played out against the background of fierce colonial rivalry between Britain, France and Spain, linked with the slave trade, the sugar plantations of the West Indies, and the fabulously rich trade in gold and silver from the New World, the true story of the rise and fall of the pirates of the Caribbean makes for a tale even more interesting and surprising than the legends themselves.

Spanish Gold: Captain Woodes Rogers and the Pirates of the Caribbean

Bloomsbury UK

Capt. James Cook navigator: The achievements of Captain James Cook as a seaman, navigator and surveyor

National Maritime Museum

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Books by DAVID CORDINGLY