The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630?1730 Book

When I was younger, I spent endless hours in the history sections of college library browsing through the history books looking for concrete lists of facts, numbers, measurements, parts, names, and well lists that I could gather and utilize in my role playing games. Every such book was viewed through a lens of how much data it could provide to my simulations, and with few exceptions most were judged unworthy being filled with dry stories and no concrete facts.

Now though, it seems every historian out there is ready to cater to my earlier needs. Facts are collected and drawn up in tidy little lists, and everything is categorized and laid out in logical sections as if ready to draw up the requirements or setting encyclopedia for the latest wargame or RPG. And naturally, far from content, I find myself missing history that was stories and contained long direct quotes from the real life characters. So it is with this book. I'd have loved 25 years ago.

It's still an excellent introduction to the subject matter, and might be a decent 'sophomore text book' on the Age of Piracy. But as History, it needs more story in it, and a bit more history rather than just a study and summary of history, however well organized it is. I found myself yearning for the actual journals that were the author's source material, and wished for more direct views into their contents. Most of all, I would have preferred more detail about how it was actually done, with examples. It's all well and good to say that the Pirates preferred an ambush, but how was that actually accomplished on the open sea with boats that would sail 3mph or so in a fair wind? What customary behavior might ships have had that allowed a nare-do-well to cozen his prey into close range? We glimpse the scene I think too dimly, and with too little information. The only hints we are given are brief mentions of flying false colors and hiding your crew below decks so as to seem more harmless than you are, but I think that's probably only a taste of a broad range of aiming to misbehave.