Sign-In
Cart
The Notorious Edward Low: Pursuing the Last Great Villain of Piracy's Golden Age
Hardcover
General World HistoryTrue Crime
Currently unavailable to order
Please enter your email and a message will be sent to you when this product becomes available on our website.
ISBN10: 1594163987
ISBN13: 9781594163982
Publisher: Westholme Pub
Published: May 5 2023
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.95
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781594163982
Publisher: Westholme Pub
Published: May 5 2023
Pages: 256
Weight: 0.95
Height: 1.10 Width: 5.90 Depth: 9.10
Language: English
Following the War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1713)--generally known in the Americas as Queen Anne's War--a dramatic, decade-long wave of sea-robbery plagued the Atlantic rim. Often glamorized as the Golden Age of Piracy, that period saw such colorful pirate leaders as Edward Blackbeard Teach, Charles Vane, and Calico Jack Rackham and his henchwomen Anne Bonney and Mary Read. Outdoing any of these, a Boston-based laborer, Edward Low, left his mark on pirate history as a monster, the most vicious and sadistic raider of them all. Low's reputation, and those of the other pirates of the time, was crafted through newspaper accounts and popular literature, most notably The General History of the Pyrates, first published in 1724. Romanticized as anti-heroes and egalitarians in a monarchical world who had liberated themselves from the constraints of law and society ashore, these marauders came to enjoy an immortality bestowed upon them by generations of historians, novelists, and moviemakers. That persistent gloss masks a more sordid reality.
In The Notorious Edward Low: Pursuing the Last Great Villain of Piracy's Golden Age, historian Len Travers reexamines this critical period through the career of Low, a complicated pirate leader, and his nemesis, Peter Solgard, captain of the Royal Navy warship HMS Greyhound. By the time Solgard, aboard Greyhound, was tracking Low in 1723, the era's other notable pirates were gone--dead, captured, or disappeared. Drawing on previously unpublished Admiralty records and consulting both contemporary and modern chroniclers, Travers directs readers to much powerful testimony minimized in or excluded from histories of piracy's Golden Age, leveling a critical eye at familiar sources too long accepted at face value. Travers demonstrates that, feared as they certainly were, pirates were largely ordinary seamen trapped in desperate circumstances who, in the end, had little to show for their efforts. Contrary to popular portrayals, for pirates the second decade of the eighteenth century was a time of radically diminishing returns, scant treasure, buried or otherwise, and increasingly successful suppression by state authorities. One by one, safe havens shut out the sea-rovers, who with their depredations in America quickly squandered the sympathy and support they had once enjoyed among common folk. The Notorious Edward Low puts individual actors, from colonial governors to captains to common seamen, at center stage, and reveals how British authorities used new anti-piracy laws to reclaim a measure of authority over their fractious North American colonies--a compelling and meaningful story with its own brand of true-life swashbuckling on the high seas.
2 different editions
Also available
The Notorious Edward Low: Pursuing the Last Great Villain of Piracy's Golden Age
Travers, Len
Audio Book
$45.99
The Notorious Edward Low: Pursuing the Last Great Villain of Piracy's Golden Age
Travers, Len
Audio Book
$45.95
Also from
Travers, Len
The Notorious Edward Low: Pursuing the Last Great Villain of Piracy's Golden Age
Travers, Len
Audio Book
$45.99
The Notorious Edward Low: Pursuing the Last Great Villain of Piracy's Golden Age
Travers, Len
Audio Book
$45.95
Also in
General World History
Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America
Kendi, Ibram X.
Paperback
$10.99
Titanic: The Ship Magnificent - Volume Two: Interior Design and Fitting Out
Braunschweiger, Art
Hall, Steve
Beveridge, Bruce
Hardcover
$84.50
Karl Popper - The Formative Years, 1902 1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna
Hacohen, Malachi Haim
Hardcover
$236.28
Agents of Chaos: Thomas King Forçade, High Times, and the Paranoid End of the 1970s
Howe, Sean
Hardcover
From $12.99
A Manufactured Wilderness: Summer Camps and the Shaping of American Youth, 1890-1960
Van Slyck, Abigail A.
Hardcover
$12.99
Animal, Vegetable, Junk: A History of Food, from Sustainable to Suicidal: A Food Science Nutrition History Book
Bittman, Mark
Hardcover
$10.99
The Rise of Thomas Cromwell: Power and Politics in the Reign of Henry VIII, 1485-1534
Everett, Michael
Paperback
$10.99
Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong
Loewen, James W.
Paperback
$9.99
The Allies: Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, and the Unlikely Alliance That Won World War II
Groom, Winston
Paperback
From $9.99
Something New Under the Sun: An Environmental History of the Twentieth-Century World
McNeill, J. R.
Paperback
$10.99
Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives
Cordingly, David
Paperback
$17.10
Dangerous Games: Faces, Incidents, and Casualties of the Cold War
Wise, James E.
Baron, Scott
Hardcover
$8.99
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection
Green, John
Hardcover
From $19.99
The Wreck of the Mentor: A True Story of Death, Despair, and Deliverance in the Age of Sail
Dolin, Eric Jay
Hardcover
From $19.99
1873: The Rothschilds, the First Great Depression, and the Making of the Modern World
Ahamed, Liaquat
Hardcover
$28.80
Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution
Kiernan, Denise
Hardcover
$28.80
The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy
Ross, Steven J.
Hardcover
$29.69
100 Bible Verses That Made America: Defining Moments That Shaped Our Enduring Foundation of Faith
Morgan, Robert J.
Paperback
$21.84
American Pope: Leo XIV's Road from the South Side of Chicago to Vatican City
Burke, Daniel
Detrow, Scott
Hardcover
$31.34
The Sea Captain's Wife: A True Story of Mutiny, Love, and Adventure at the Bottom of the World
Mazzeo, Tilar J.
Hardcover
$27.00
The Housewives Underground: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the JFK Assassination Our Most Enduring Mystery
Tiffany, Kaitlyn
Hardcover
$31.50
How to Kill a Language: Power, Resistance, and the Race to Save Our Words
Galer, Sophia Smith
Hardcover
$28.80
True Color: The Strange and Spectacular Quest to Define Color--From Azure to Zinc Pink
Stamper, Kory
Hardcover
$28.80
1,000 Days in America: An Illustrated History of the Moments That Defined a Nation
National Geographic
Hardcover
$47.50
Two Ships: Jamestown 1619, Plymouth 1620, and the Struggle for the Soul of America
Reynolds, David S.
Hardcover
$31.50
Lightning Beneath the Sea: The Race to Wire the World and the Dawn of the Information Age
Tabor, James M.
Hardcover
$28.79
How to Kill a Witch: The Patriarchy's Guide to Silencing Women
Venditozzi, Zoe
Mitchell, Claire
Paperback
$17.09
Freedom's Daughters: How a Generation of Black Women Resisted Oppression Through Literacy and Education
Headlee, Celeste
Hardcover
$29.44
The Phantom: The Untold Story of the American Marine the Nazis Could Not Kill
Clavin, Tom
Drury, Bob
Hardcover
$31.35
The Zorg: A Tale of Greed and Murder That Inspired the Abolition of Slavery
Kara, Siddharth
Hardcover
$27.00
The Conjuring of America: Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women's Magic
Stewart, Lindsey
Hardcover
$33.25
The Wide Wide Sea: Imperial Ambition, First Contact and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook
Sides, Hampton
Paperback
$17.10
Liberation Summer: The Moment That Changed the Women's Movement and the Future of American Politics
McElya, Micki
Hardcover
$30.40
The Nord Stream Conspiracy: The Inside Story of the Explosions That Shook the World
Pancevski, Bojan
Hardcover
$26.99
A Brief History of the World in 47 Borders: Surprising Stories Behind the Lines on Our Maps
Elledge, Jonn
Paperback
$17.06
The East Wing: Power, Intrigue, and the Untold Story of America's First Ladies
Moaveni, Azadeh
Hardcover
$31.35
Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight Over Free Speech in Modern America
Loeffler, James
Hardcover
$26.99
The Elections That Changed the World: Fifteen Pivotal Moments That Shaped How We Live
Bash, Dana
Hardcover
$30.40
Socialism: The Real History from Plato to the Present: How the Deep State Capitalizes on Crises to Consolidate Control [With Paperback Book]
Federer, William J.
Paperback
$19.00
No One's Coming: The Rogue Heroes Our Government Turns to When There's Nowhere Else to Turn
Hazzard, Kevin
Hardcover
$28.50
The Summer of Death: The Great Heat Wave of 1936 and the Making of Modern-Day America
Williams, Geoff
Hardcover
$33.25
Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City
Brown, Kate
Hardcover
$28.79
Captain's Dinner: A Shipwreck, an Act of Cannibalism, and a Murder Trial That Changed Legal History
Cohen, Adam
Hardcover
$28.80
The Delectable Negro: Human Consumption and Homoeroticism Within Us Slave Culture
Woodard, Vincent
Paperback
$56.55
A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them
Egan, Timothy
Paperback
$16.20
A Woman of No Importance: The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II
Purnell, Sonia
Paperback
From $11.99
On the Mark: From Periods to Interrobangs, How Punctuation Remade the World
Hazrat, Florence
Hardcover
$28.80
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
McGilchrist, Iain
Paperback
$21.80
Radical Duke: How One Aristocrat-And the American Revolution-Transformed Britain
Allen, Danielle
Hardcover
$33.75
The Long Run: Steve Prefontaine, Frank Shorter, Joan Benoit, Grete Waitz, and the Decade That Made the Marathon Cool
Dugard, Martin
Hardcover
$28.80
How to Build a Haunted House: The History of a Cultural Obsession
Blackwell Baines, Caitlin
Hardcover
$28.45
When America Roared: How the 1980s Saved, Then Broke, the Country--And Led Us to Today
Kaufman, Jonathan
Hardcover
$31.50