2
as Blackbeard 87
Major Stede Bonnet and his Crew 101
Captain William Kid 117
Captain Edward England, and his Crew 135
Captain John Gow, alias Smith, and his Crew 145
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Captain Avery frontispiece
Captain John Rackham facing page 19
Captain Edward Lowe " 39
Captain Teach " 89
Major Stede Bonnet " 103
Captain William Kid " 119
Captain Edward England " 137
Captain John Gow " 147
[Illustration]
FOREWORD
Time, though a good Collector, is not always a reliable Historian. That is to say, that although nothing of interest or importance is lost, yet an affair may be occasionally invested with a glamour that is not wholly its own. I venture to think that Piracy has fortuned in this particular. We are apt to base our ideas of Piracy on the somewhat vague ambitions of our childhood; and I suppose, were such a thing possible, the consensus of opinion in our nurseries as to a future profession in life would place Piracy but little below the glittering heights of the police force and engine-driving. Incapable of forgetting this in more mature years, are we not inclined to deck Her (the "H" capital, for I speak of an ideal), if not in purple and fine linen, at least with a lavish display of tinsel and gilt? Nursery lore remains with us, whether we would or not, for all our lives; and generations of ourselves, as schoolboys and pre-schoolboys, have tricked out Piracy in so resplendent a dress that she has fairly ousted in our affections, not only her sister profession of "High Toby and the Road," but every other splendid and villainous vocation. Yet Teach, Kid, and Avery were as terrible or grim as Duval, Turpin, and Sheppard were courtly or whimsical. And the terrible is a more vital affair than the whimsical. Is it, then, unnatural that, after a lapse of nigh on two centuries, we should shake our wise heads and allow that which is still nursery within us to