It starts a bit slow: the author’ prose comes off initially as more than a bit precious, and he’s a big one for parroting the received wisdom of  American history, especially the exaltation of powerful men. Although he does have a refreshing outlook on the banality of judging people’s actions 200 years ago by modern morality. (Face it, no matter how things shake out, two centuries from now people will regard us as ass-ignorant moral imbeciles. If there are still, you know, people.)

But once his story gets moving he keeps it rolling along quite entertainingly. He has a particular gift for picking out odd and colorful incidents. Of course he’s helped considerably by his chosen protagonists: Andrew Jackson, who despite what else may justly be said of him (mostly, that he was a chrome-plated prick) was an authentic badass who led the life of an action-movie hero; and Jean Lafitte, who despite what else may be said of him was an authentic freaking pirate. So, hard to go wrong.

I’ve reached the point where the Brits are invading Louisiana. Which made me think. At first it’d seem they were utterly naïve for believing they could get the local Creoles – Frenchmen who’d abruptly been converted to US citizens by the Louisiana purchase a few years before, and similarly situated Spaniards whose countrymen had been allied with the British to fight the French – would rise up against the US government and join the invaders.

Then it struck me: the old saw about the enemy of my enemy is my friend might kind of break down when your enemy primary enemy is remote and his enemy is living on your block, crapping on the sidewalk and breaking your windshield. The invading Brits may literally have been the men who’d just brought down the French empire; but the fall of the Corsican Napoleon and his putative gloire happened across the ocean, to other people. Whereas the odious Kaintucks, as the French Creoles generally called the Americans, were daily in their faces and on their lawns.

So I have wonder how a somewhat hypothetical enmity stacks up against everyday annoyance.

Also I can’t help but wonder how the moral situation shifts when the enemy of the first part turns up in your neighborhood in overwhelming force. Even if they’ve just been slaughtering your countrymen overseas, if they suddenly rolled down your block bristling with assault rifles, tanks, and attack helicopters, you might suddenly feel better disposed toward them.  Or at least unlikely to want to rush out and fight with them. Maybe better to let bygones be bygones and get along, yes?

And after all, those heavily-armed invaders might keep those other people – their enemies, who are decidedly not your friends – from waving their private parts at your aunty and stewing the neighborhood cats. Restore some law and order.

So maybe the Limeys weren’t all that silly for expecting the local majority population to join their side.

Except of course (*spoiler alert*) it didn’t happen. And the Brits  got their asses handed to them. The end.

Anyway, if you’ve any space in your reading queue, think about adding Patriotic Fire to it. The book’s a prime example of why I’ve always loved history: presented properly, it’s a wild-ass lurid action/adventure yarn that really happened.

PS: at some point I’m totally stealing characters and events from the New Orleans campaign for my own tales. Betcher ass.

It be a mighty fine read, arrh.

If we’re going to talk like pirates, shouldn’t we be speaking Somali, Malay, or Chinese? Arrh?

Talk Like a Pirate Day gives me a handy excuse for a long-deferred review of a book I vastly enjoyed.

Author Benerson Little is a former Navy SEAL who put his considerable knowledge of seamanship and small-unit naval tactics, along with substantial research skills, to good and mightily entertaining use by writing a history on a a key but seldom seriously discussed area: the actual tactics, as well as weapons and other equipment (such as, say, boats). He even serves up hearty helpings of authentic pirate speech and recipes. Including one for original-style barbecue, which was given to us by the boucaniers - the same people, obviously, who gave us the word buccaneers.

As for pirate tactics, such as finding prey, stalking it, and running it down – not so easy a task, given the wind’s vagaries, and the fact it would allow you to sail only in certain directions – ship-to-ship combat, and boarding actions, we find not so much that Hollywood got it wrong (as of course it often has), but that Hollywood and conventional histories haven’t told us the whole story. One thing, for example, I never knew was the preference of many pirates to attack with one or a number of small craft, such as the piragua, basically a large canoe which could be sailed as well as rowed.

It also fascinated me to learn how popular and prevalent grenades were. Even conventional military histories of the period, primarily the 16^th and 17^th centuries, tend to treat grenades as peripheral curiosities, too unreliable and ineffectual to be of much use.

But judging from the many original sources quoted by Little, they were used enthusiastically and to great effect by pirates, as well as pirate-hunters, and merchants who weren’t ready to turn ships, cargoes, or selves over to the tender mercies of armed robbers of the sea. Grenades took a variety of forms, from firebombs (in everyday quantities, black powder acts a lot like gasoline) to antipersonnel bombs like Claymores, which could be fastened to bulkheads as you dove into cover and locked the hatches behind you, to sweep the decks of boarders with flame, broken glass, shot, and nails.

Take that, Jack Sparrow.

He also presents us, as might be expected, some utterly fascinating characters. Not so much the usual suspects, either, like Blackbeard or Captain Kidd, or even the lesser known but remarkable Bartholomew Roberts. Rather we get the Indiana Jones-esque likes of Captain William Dampier, a naval officer and naturalist as well as privateer and outright pirate, the positively Bondian Jean Doublet, and the frightful L’Ollonois, a SPECTRE-worthy sadistic supervillain who got what he had coming good and hard, courtesy of irate Central American Indians. Then there’s my favorite, Father Jean Baptiste Labat, who was of all things a Dominican priest. Labat, who could only be described as a pirate groupie (or maybe a pirate George Plimpton), not only sailed with freebooters and buccaneers of various nations but on at least one occasion fought alongside them.

And speaking of pirate talk – Labat despaired of the rough language used not just by pirates, but by regular seamen as well. He especially deplored the Spaniards and Portuguese for their favorite blasphemy of swearing on “an entire boatload of hosts.” Which tickled the, um, Hell out of me. (Don’t worry if you don’t get it; it’s a Catholic thing.)

It’s not flawless. In his enthusiasm the author sometimes gets infected by his sources with archaic speech styles that don’t always work. Sometimes that makes him a bit hard to understand. And sometimes he seems to forget to finish paragraphs, leaving us wondering what the Hell he was getting at. (Arrh.)

Also, after quite effectively whetting our appetites, he could have given us fuller biographies of some of his remarkable characters.  And I was surprised not to find more detailed examinations of pirate battles, although the book’s thoroughly strewn with snippets of descriptions of them, by way of illustrating his points.

But those are quibbles. Especially, I admit, the points about the characters and battles: he wrote the book he intended to write, not entirely the book I found I wanted him to write.

That’s one of those fine-line author/reader conflicts. As an author it annoys me when people complain I didn’t write the book they wanted. And I see such reviews all the time on Amazon. At the same time, as a reader, sometimes I’m disappointed in that way. But those cases are usually ones in which I felt the author failed to deliver on promises made. As I said, it’s a tight call, and a subjective one.

It also looks as if Little might just have filled those unsatiated appetites of mine by writing other books he wanted to write, given his 2007 release The Buccaneer’s Realm: Pirate Life on the Spanish Main, 1674-1688, plus the forthcoming Pirate Hunting: The Fight Against Pirates, Privateers, and Sea Raiders from Antiquity to the Present. Both of which I strongly suspect I must have. (Hint†.)

Make no mistake: my criticisms are spits in the Seven Seas. I love this book, and recommend it highly. If you’ve any interest in the subject I give it five bullets out of five. If you have no particular interest in the subject (wait, did you read this? Pirates!) it’s still four bullets out of five. Little may go into a bit more technical detail than suits you; just skip those parts. You will find ample awesomeness here.

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day, me mateys!

“Mort Dieu, les Espagnols me le payeront!” – L’Ollonois (“God’s death, the Spaniards will pay me for this!”)

*I see that Amazon has made it impossible to download a decent-sized cover image. Thanks for making it harder for me to advertise your site! You do a lot of things right, but this time you appear to have erred on the Stupid, Greedy Bastards side of thing. What do you think you are, Google?

And speaking of greedy – but I hope not stupid – remember, you can support this site, my lovable pets Emma, TJ, and Squeak†, and me by clicking through the linked image and buying the book! Buy some for all your friends. Christmas isn’t that far away…

†Shame? None for me, thanks!

Thanks to Sheldon Richman.

This might not seem your cup of chai. But Brecher’s writing is brisk, his wit savage. He’s the freshest writer on current events since P. J. O’Rourke sold his soul to the Dark Side. Fair warning: like O’Rourke he uses what we might call fairly strong language. Then again, sometimes the easily offended need to be.

And soon, you won’t have to spend hours clicking from column to column in the eXile archives to get your Brecher fix. As of June 1^st, 2008, you can enjoy reading some of his greatest hits between the covers of The War Nerd, the book.

If you pre-order you can get a 5% discount off Amazon’s already marked-down price of $10.85. And of course, if you pre-order or buy the book through this site, you’re helping to support me. And of course my wonderful animal family, including Emma (note the subtle yet entirely gratuitous way I worked in the site’s real draw!)

If you want some of the best insight on the current disaster – and the various whirlwinds so assiduously being sown today – all wrapped up in a damned and damnably entertaining read,you can hardly do better than the self-proclaimed fat boy from Fresno. I just ordered mine!