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Have an idea for Subject of the Month?
September 2017
Selectors: Rachael Clark, Karen Liston, Lori Rinaldi, and Damecia Donahue
Arr! Ahoy, mateys! Pirates, buccaneers, corsairs, privateers, and river pirates are known around the world as ship and coastal area robbers and smugglers. Their history is said to date back as early as the Ancient World, and their legacy continues to date. Although a minority, women were also known as pirates, and date back as early as 232 to 228 BC, starting with Queen Teuta of Illyria. Some of the most infamous pirates include Blackbeard, Anne Bonny, and Captain Kidd. We hope you enjoy our selection of resources! Be sure to visit the display in the Purdy-Kresge Library for more rapscallion delights!
eBooks
The Best Pirate Stories Ever Told by Call Number: WSU Access ID & Password RequiredISBN: 9781626368798Publication Date: 2011-05-01Over the years, thousands of tales both true and fantastic have been told about the dastardly thievery of pirates, and their rum-drunk exploits and high-seas violence never fail to delight. Now in a brand-new series collection, The Best Pirate Stories Ever Told includes many of the very best pirate yarns ever created on history’s most debaucherous scalawags.
Lords of the Sea by Call Number: WSU Access ID & Password RequiredISBN: 9781861899071Publication Date: 2012-07-15The escalation of piracy in the waters east and south of Somalia has led commentators to call the area the new Barbary, but the Somali pirates cannot compare to the three hundred years of terror supplied by the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean and beyond. From 1500 to 1800, Muslim pirates from the Barbary Coast of North Africa captured and enslaved more than a million Christians. Lords of the Sea relates the history of these pirates, examining their dramatic impact as the maritime vanguard of the Ottoman Empire in the early 1500s through their breaking from Ottoman control in the early seventeenth century.
Bandits at Sea by Call Number: WSU Access ID & Password RequiredISBN: 0814766781Publication Date: 2001-04-01The romantic fiction of pirates as swashbuckling marauders terrorizing the high seas has long eclipsed historical fact. Bandits at Sea offers a long-overdue corrective to the mythology and the mystique which has plagued the study of pirates and served to deny them their rightful legitimacy as subjects of investigation. Comparisons between various types of piracy illustrate differences in practice and purpose between pirates of different areas; social histories, including examinations of women pirates and their historical significance and circumstances, offer similar insight into the personal lives of pirates from diverse regions.
Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates by Call Number: WSU Access ID & Password RequiredISBN: 9780801890888Publication Date: 2009-01-21Explores the shared histories of the modern polite English gentleman and other less respectable but no less celebrated eighteenth-century masculine types: the rake, the highwayman, and the pirate. Mackie traces the emergence of these character types to the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, when traditional aristocratic authority was increasingly challenged. She argues that the development of the modern polite gentleman as a male archetype can only be fully comprehended when considered alongside figures of fallen nobility, which, although criminal, were also glamorous enough to reinforce the same ideological order.
Electronic Journals, September 2017
The Viking Pirate, Ladgerda
- The Swashbuckling History of Women PiratesWhen women roamed the high seas in search of fortune, freedom, and sometimes revenge. From Smithsonian Magazine
Life and Times of a Pirate
"Who became a pirate and what was life like for them? Step into the world of pirates in the classic age of piracy."
- The Life and Times of a PirateAn online exhibit and history from Royal Museums Greenwich.
Pirates on Pinterest
Talk Like A Pirate Day
"Time Passes, But Pirattitude is Forever"
International Talk Like A Pirate Day, Sept. 19, every year since 2002
- International Talk Like A Pirate DayA website for everything "Pirate" and the annual day of celebration.
Websites, September 2017
From Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates . . . (London, 1724)
Courtesy of the Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
- Pirates in the Atlantic WorldFrom the Smithsonian's online exhibition, On the Water. Features famous and infamous pirates, weaponry, songs, and stories.
- Pirate MuseumA museum in Salem, Massachusetts.
- Top 10 Women Pirates"There have been awesome pirates throughout the years but nothing quite compares to the level of badass a woman pirate brings."
- St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure MuseumThe museum spans about 5,000 sq. ft. with a 1,300-sq.-ft. courtyard and an approx. 500-sq.-ft. upper deck. It overlooks the historic Matanzas River and the magnificent Castillo de San Marcos, the 17th Spanish fort located directly across the street on the bayfront.
Databases, September 2017
"Captain Kidd the Bold Bad Buccaneer." Famous Crimes, vol. V, no. 56, p. 74+.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowNineteenth Century Collections Online is a digitized collection of primary sources related to the nineteenth century. Materials within the collection consist of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. Four archives are available: "British Politics and Society;" "European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection;" "Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange;" and "British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture."
- Early English Books Online This link opens in a new windowEarly English Books Online (EEBO) contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
Blackbeard
The pirate Blackbeard is perhaps the most notorious of sea robbers. He and other pirates plagued shipping lanes off North America and throughout the Caribbean in the early-eighteenth century: an era commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Piracy."
- The Queen Anne’s Revenge ProjectThe Queen Anne’s Revenge was the flagship of Edward Teach, also known as “Blackbeard,” during the period known as the “Golden Age of Piracy.” The website explores Blackbeard's history, as well as conservation and discovery of his ship.
Videos, September 2017
Reclaiming the Blade - European & Asian Historic Swordplay
Running Time: 79 mins
Year: 2005
Streaming Video on Kanopy
WSU Access ID and Password Required
THE SUNKEN PIRATE CITY, National Geographic
Hidden beneath the waters of Jamaica’s Kingston Harbor lie the ruins of the biggest pirate city of all time, Port Royal. With its reputation for extravagance, liquor and ladies it became known as the “wickedest city on earth”.
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881--82 under the title Treasure Island or, the mutiny of the Hispaniola with Stevenson adopting the pseudonym Captain George North. Traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, Treasure Island is an adventure tale known for its atmosphere, characters and action, and also as a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality — as seen in Long John Silver — unusual for children's literature now and then. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels. The influence of Treasure Island on popular perceptions of pirates is enormous, including treasure maps marked with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen carrying parrots on their shoulders. (summary adapted from wikipedia.org)
The Seattle Gilbert & Sullivan Society production of The Pirates of Penzance July 25, 2015. Act Two, With Cat-Like Tread.
History of the Pirates - Hathi Trust
- The History of the Pirates Containing the Lives of Those Noted Pirate Captains......Misson, Bowen, Kidd, Tew, Halsey, White, Condent, Bellamy, Fly, Howard, Lewis, Cornelius, Williams, Burgess, North, and their several crews ... To which is added, a correct account of the late piracies committed in the West Indies; and the expedition of Com. Porter.