Empire of the Blue Water

Pirates - and Henry Morgan as one of the better known ones, are seldom a boring read, and this fast paced biography is no exception. Pirates (or privateers), military strategy, the ‘silver train', the shear brutality of the pirate life - all make fascinating reading with a background of the dominant Spanish, and the English, French, Dutch and Portuguese largely playing second fiddle to them - certainly in the Caribbean and the ‘New World' of Central and South America.

This book does well to keep up the pace, in outlining the political setting, concurrent with Morgan's life. There are plenty of exciting battles, hard times, pirate loot and plenty of Morgan mocking the Spanish, who he certainly tormented for the whole of his adult life!

Well researched, this certainly didn't read as if it was embellished - there is a large bibliography and page after page of footnotes which establish the events portrayed in the book.

One of the interesting devices used in the book is the ‘standard' pirate - named Roderick. His background and career is described side by side with Morgan, and was useful in demonstrating how out of the ordinary Morgan's career was.

Roderick was nineteen years old, short (five foot four being a common height in those days), English (as most of Morgan's men were), and unmarried - in one survey of Anglo-American pirates from 1716 to 1726, only 4 percent had taken a wife. He was blue-eyed, lean and quite strong for his size. Roderick had grown up in Dover, one of the great seaports of England, which were veritable factories for sailors and pirates. He went to the docks not only out of tradition (his father and grandfather had earned their living on the water, rolling into their hovels after six long months away with tales of Morocco and Corsica) but because he had an itch for adventure and newness. He looked with astonishment on friends who became clerks or cobblers...

It goes on to describe his signing up as a sailor on a merchant ship, which is taken by pirates near Barbados, and given the option to join up. Later he becomes one of Morgan's regular men, and we follow his career. For me it was a very successful device.

Some of the more interesting parts for me were:
- the fact Morgan was a clever military tactician, but only for land based manoeuvres - he was practically a danger to himself and others in a ship. He continually runs aground, treating his ships as transportation alone - getting him to his battle ground.
- The Spanish being so caught up in bureaucracy, and so concerned that if they provided too many troops to the New World they may start to think for themselves, and stop transporting the riches back to Spain. They effectively made it impossible to successfully defend against Morgan and his ilk, who were really only limited by the pirates themselves, and their inability to maintain a long term fighting force.

Four stars from me.