Women of the sea : ten pirate stories

Author / Creator

Weatherly, Myra

Available as

Physical

Summary

Though piracy has existed for as long as people have traveled by sea, a particularly intensive period of piracy began in the Western world in the 1650s, ending around 1725. The last thirty-three ye...

Though piracy has existed for as long as people have traveled by sea, a particularly intensive period of piracy began in the Western world in the 1650s, ending around 1725. The last thirty-three years of this period of plundering earned the name the Golden Age of Piracy. In the history of piracy women are few, though some of the fiercest, cruelest, and most daring pirates who ever lived were women. Included here are ten stories of such women, from the Viking princess Alfhild to the twentieth-century pirate Lai Choi San, whose story comes to us via an American journalist who bribed his way aboard her ship. Stripped of glamorizing myths, the true stories of these women pirates tell of romance, brutality, and intrigue that is often far more compelling than fiction. Their names are not well known, but women pirates left their mark upon history. Accounts of this bold, brutal breed of women have a common thread: each chose an adventurous, defiant lifestyle that broke out of old patterns and forged new paths. Who they were, what they did, and how they did it continues to capture our imagination.

Show More