Reddit mentions: The best maritime history & piracy books

Read up on the adventures and misadventures of real pirates! The best inspiration is real life, and while many accounts are embellished, exaggerated, or flat out fabricated, they are all neat stories that have survived because they are compelling. I took a class my freshman year of college, and there are lots of good (and cheap) scholarly books you can use like Villians of All Nations, Bandits at Sea, and Pirates, The Complete History from 1300 BC to Present Day. These can be a wonderful source of neat ideas, not just for sidequests but the mainquest and worldbuilding. If you don't want to read any of these, feel free to ask any questions you might have and I'll answer them as best I can. I'll include some of the more ready-made sidequests below.

Allegedly, Benjamin Hornigold and his crew once boarded a ship, but according to the crew "did us no further injury than the taking most of our hats from us, having got drunk the night before, as they told us, and toss'd theirs overboard." Seems like an easy jump for a pirate captain to enlist your players in acquiring new hats after drunken shenanigans.

Another time, Hornigold and Blackbeard allegedly hunted a prize specifically because of it's cargo of Madeira wine, which they and their crews enjoyed. Booze is closely associated with pirates, and tracking down a rare kind of wine, spirit, or rum sounds like a fun sidequest.

Again, many of these stories are probably fake, drawn from sensational contemporary newspapers that were unreliable at best, or from Captain Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates (1724). Johnson is a pseudonym, but his work is one of the biggest influences on the depiction of pirates in pop culture, and has some fun stuff in it.

You’re welcome! If you’re interested in eyewitness accounts, which I agree are riveting, there are a lot to choose from for Titanic. Some of the classic ones are Jack Wincour’s edition of survivor accounts, The Story of the Titanic as told by its Survivors, which includes Col. Archibald Gracie’s account which he compiled by interviewing survivors, of which he was one. It was published posthumously; he died of the traumas he sustained in the wreck 8 months after the event. His account is also in Titanic, a Survivor’s Story, which also has young Jack Thayer’s memories, The Sinking of the SS Titanic, which he compiled from notes a few decades after the sinking. John Mowbray’s Sinking of the Titanic, Eyewitness Accounts was published in late 1912, months after the sinking. Like Gracie, he too pulls together accounts from surviving passengers. Titanic, First Accounts by Tim Maltin (2012) excerpts selections from survivors’ accounts. Finally, Violet Jessop was a nurse who survived the sinking of both Titanic and the Britannic. Her memoirs, Titanic Survivor, written in 1934, were just discovered in 1996. The Encyclopedia Titanica is a great online resource, so too are The Titanic Historical Society and The British Titanic Society.

>This one wasn't specifically answered except in that the Captain was generally elected. Were the other positions on a pirate ship analogous to other sailing ships?

Essentially, yes.

>So a quartermaster was picked because of his reputation and honesty. Were they deposed like pirate captains if they abused that power?

All positions were elected.

>Any specific resources for me to go to?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Invisible-Hook-Economics-Pirates/dp/0691150095/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1346266258&sr=8-1&keywords=the+invisible+hook

http://www.amazon.com/Under-Black-Flag-Romance-Reality/dp/081297722X/ref=pd_sim_b_15

http://www.amazon.com/Villains-All-Nations-Atlantic-Pirates/dp/0807050253/ref=pd_sim_b_10

>So abducted crew that were pressed due to their skills weren't required to fight.

Not necessarily. Every pirate crew was different.

>What about crew that signed up voluntarily but still had the same skills?

Everyone fought. No fight, no money.

>Do we actually know of any examples where someone like a surgeon willingly joined a pirate crew before being abducted?

Yep

>I saw that pirate captains got 1.5 shares of any prizes. How was the rest divvied up?

Each was different. google pirate code to see examples of various codes.

>also you mentioned the "workman's comp" plan for pirates--did this come out of a general fund

it came out before the shares were divided.

>How were repairs and supplies paid for on a voyage?

Lol, paid? almost everything was stolen.

>Would they follow the practice of their issuing country or something similar?

They followed the signed articles. The sponsoring nation would also get a substantial cut, and it was common to hide spoils from them.

>Was ransom a common thing or were pirate crews generally more interested in getting to the goods?

Only wealthy people and government officials were ransomed really, it probably paid into the general fund.

>Presumably there was a whole secondary market set up with merchants being willing to buy from pirates and then resell later on.

Lol, oh yeah. Read the invisible hook and this one. also read up on Port Royal, Jamaica, the "wickedest city on earth."

>What kind of literature do we have on these secondary markets?

Lots. Read through the books I recommended and it will explain a ton of it.

Colonial history professor here. Marcus Rediker is the guy you want to read for not just a narrative, but an analysis of Atlantic pirates and seafaring culture in general.

http://www.amazon.com/Villains-All-Nations-Atlantic-Pirates/dp/0807050253/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375140567&sr=1-4&keywords=marcus+rediker

http://www.amazon.com/Between-Devil-Deep-Blue-Anglo-American/dp/0521379830/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375140567&sr=1-5&keywords=marcus+rediker

Link to the book:
https://www.amazon.com/Adventures-Archaeology-Wreck-Other-Explorations/dp/0813064848/ref=nodl_

Links to Capelotti’s conversations with Parsing Science about the book:

Part 1:
https://www.parsingscience.org/2018/12/11/capelotti/

Part 2:
https://www.parsingscience.org/2018/12/25/capelotti-2/

The Golden Age of Piracy by Cyril Gallo

I have not read all of these. Hopeful this will be a good excuse to start some of them sooner. Hopefully it is not too late to post in this thread.

• [Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743277295/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1"By Robert Draper") - Inside Access Account of the George W. Bush Administration
  
• [The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375725601/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1"By Erik Larson") - Chicago Worlds Fair and a Serial Killers History
  
• [The Gulag Archipelago](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000GR0EXA/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1"By Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn") - Three-book account of Russian Gulag (Each book is very long, but insightful). Also, this has been required reading for lots of Russian schools.
  
• [The Storm of Steel](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001G2L7OY/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1"By Ernst Jünger") - German's Memoir of WW1 (Careful not to get abridged or updated version)
  
• [Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807050253/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1"By Marcus Rediker") - Life of An Atlantic Pirate in 17th and 18th Century
  
• [Slaughterhouse-Five: A Novel](https://www.amazon.com/Slaughterhouse-Five-Novel-Modern-Library-Novels/dp/0385333846/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1496182964&sr=8-1&keywords=slaughterhouse+five"By Kurt Vonnegut") - WWII Historical Fiction. Certainly in the vein of this book club though.
  
• [The Politics](https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Classics-Aristotle-ebook/dp/B002RI9Y3M/ref=sr_1_5?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1496183058&sr=1-5&keywords=aristotle+politics"By Aristotle") - Politics is in the name... nuff said
  
• [The Green Book , The](https://www.amazon.com/Green-Book-Muammar-Al-Gathafi-ebook/dp/B00ME46SVK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1496183108&sr=1-1&keywords=the+green+book+gaddafi"By Muammar Al Gathafi") - Gathafi's very own book. It sounds insightful. This is a honeypot for conspiracy theorists too.
  

I have read that, I believe in one of Walter Lord's books maybe. One of the suspect fishing boats was proven to be thousands of miles away at the time.

I thought the Californian claimed they were unaware it was the Titanic, but they did say they saw a ship appear to steam away. It was theorized that was actually the view of the Titanic sinking. But it could be the mystery ship.

If you're interested in sea disasters, there's a fantastic book about the mid-ocean collision between passenger liners the Andrea Doria and the Stockholm, in 1956. How they managed to collide is still a bit of a controversy based on running lights and passing laws. That book was a harrowing page-turner. I'm fascinated by books about disasters.

Since flooding is naturally consuming my thoughts right now, I might as well mention Washed Away, an incredibly detailed and compelling account of an unbelievable flood in 1913 that affected 11 states across the Midwest and killed hundreds of people. And, as a matter of coincidence, my people hail from Johnstown, PA, site of probably the most infamous flood in America, and there's no better account than David McCullogh's. Johnstown has suffered 3 catastrophic floods in its history, in 1889 when the dam broke, and then in 1936 and 1977 from torrential rain.

My family survived them all. And we're making it through this one in Houston, despite my aunt and uncle and cousin losing everything. Water isn't expected to recede from their neighborhood for THREE WEEKS, and then repairs will take months. They're going to be living between my house and my parents' house, though we tried desperately to get them temporarily into my late Grandfather's house that we are coincidentally about to close on, but the story about that is a rant for another time. I'll just say, there are still some shitty, shitty human beings in Houston without hearts.

I'm rambling. It's been an exhausting week here in Houston, and I'm blessed to be in my own bed.