2024 50 Book Challenge

Maritime and Pirate History Challenge:
*Have to borrow or buy

1) Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery by Jonathan Lamb
2) Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen
3) Icebound: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World by Andrea Pitzer
4) Piracy and the Decline of Venice 1580-1615 by Alberto Tenenti
5) Sir Francis Drake: The Queen's Pirate by Harry Kelsey
6) Pirates and Privateers from Long Island Sound to Delaware Bay + Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay + The Daring Exploits of Pirate Black Sam Bellamy by Jamie L. H. Goodall
7) Why We Love Pirates and The Pirates' Code by Rebecca Simon
8) Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean by Edward Kritzler
9) A General History…of the Most Notorious Pirates by Captain Charles Johnson
10) The Republic of Pirates by Colin Woodard
11) Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly
12) Black Flags, Blue Waters by Eric Jay Dolin
13) The Custom of the Sea by Neil Hanson
14) Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson
15) The Pirate Hunter by Richard Zacks
16) The Pirates Wife by Daphne Geanacopoulos
17) The Trial of Captain Kidd ed. by Graham Brooks
18) A Pirate of Exquisite Mind by Diana & Michael Preston
19) Born to Be Hanged by Keith Thomson
20) The Life and Tryals of the Gentleman Pirate, Major Stede Bonnet and Colonial Virginia's War Against Piracy by Jeremy R. Moss
21) Pirate Queens by Rebecca Alexandra Simon
22) Heroines and Harlots: Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail by David Cordingly
23) The Whydah by Martin W. Sandler
24) Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean by David Cordingly
25) If a Pirate I Must Be… by Richard Sanders
26) Longitude by Dava Sobel and The Notorious Edward Low by Len Travers
27) The Island of Blue Foxes by Stephen Brown
28) The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann
29) The Pirates' Pact by Douglas Burgess
30) Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution by Eric Jay Dolin
31) John Paul Jones by Evan Thomas
32) The Floating Brothel by Sian Rees
33) Caliban's Shore by Stephen Taylor
34) The Bounty by Caroline Alexander and The Eventful History of the Mutiny…of HMS BOUNTY by Sir John Barrow
35) Young Nelsons by D A B Ronald
36) Leviathan by Eric Jay Dolin
37) Narratives of Barbary Captivity by James Leander Cathcart and The Atrocities of the Pirates by Aaron Smith
38) Wreck of the Medusa by Alexander McKee
39) In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick
40) Demon of the Waters by Gregory Gibson
41) The Black Joke by A.E. Rooks
42) The Notorious Captain Hayes by Joan Druett
43) Pirates: A New History, from Vikings to Somali Raiders by Peter Lehr
44) Erebus by Michael Palin
45) Ghost Ship by Brian Hicks
46) In the Wake of Madness by Joan Druett
47) A Hanging Offense by Buckner Melton
48) All Standing: The Remarkable Story of the Jeanie Johnston, The Legendary Irish Famine Ship by Kathryn Miles
49) In the Kingdom of Ice by Hampton Sides
50) Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Bonus: The Golden Age of Piracy in China by Robert Antony
Bonus: Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge: A Novel by Lizzie Pook
Bonus: A True Account Hannah Masury's Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written By Herself by Katherine Howe
Bonus: Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook by Christina Henry
Bonus: A Gentleman from Japan by Thomas Lockley
Bonus: My Darling Dreadful Thing by Johanna van Veen
Bonus: The Drowning House by Cherie Priest
Bonus: This Earthly Globe by Andrea Di Robilant
Bonus: Left for Dead by Eric Jay Dolin
Bonus: A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins
Bonus: The Pirate King by Sean Kingsley
Bonus: The Madness by Dawn Kurtagich
Bonus: Shylock's Venice by Harry Freedman
Bonus: The Talented Mrs. Mandelbaum by Margalit Fox
Bonus: Dance of the Sun Goddess: Pagan Folkways of the Baltic Coast by Kenneth Johnson
Bonus: This Fierce People by Allan Pell Crawford
Bonus: Hypnagogia by Michael Simpson
Bonus: Witches and Witch-Hunts Through the Ages by Phil Carradice
Bonus: Belonging: An Intimate History of Slavery and Family in Early New England by Gloria McCahon Whiting
Bonus: The Wide, Wide Sea by Hampton Sides
Bonus: William Dampier. Buccaneer Explorer by William Dampier
Bonus: The Pirate Menace by Angus Konstam
Bonus: Burnt Offerings by Danielle Devlin
Bonus: The Demon of Unrest by Erik Larson
Bonus: Philadelphia: A Narrative History by Paul Kahan
Bonus: Virginia Voyages by Richard Hakluyt
Bonus: The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye: A Novel by Briony Cameron
Bonus: The Book of Forgotten Witches by Lilla Bolecz
Bonus: Hollow Tongue by Eden Royce
Bonus: The Bluestockings by Susannah Gibson
Bonus: Master Slave Husband Wife by by Ilyon Woo
Bonus: Holliday by Matthew Do Paoli
Bonus: His Unburned Heart by David Sandner
Bonus: The Witch's Door by Ryan Matthew Cohen
Bonus: A Plausible Man by Susanna Ashton
Bonus: The Summer of Fire and Blood by Lyndai Roper
Bonus: The Instrumentalist
Bonus: The Haunting of Moscow House by Olesya Sainikova
Bonus:Tales Accursed ed. by Richard Wells
Bonus: Errant Roots by Sonora Taylor
Bonus: A Winter Dictionary: A Collection of Words for the Festive Season by Paul Anthony Jones
Bonus: The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, the First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805 by Richard Zacks
Bonus: Mercenaries, Pirates, and Sovereigns by Janice E. Thomson
Bonus: Catholic Pirates and Greek Merchants: A Maritime History of the Early Modern Mediterranean by Molly Greene
Bonus: Liquid Empire: Water and Power in the Colonial World by Corey Ross
Bonus: Lucy Undying by Kiersten White
Bonus: Bound in Blood ed. Johnny Mains
Bonus: Beyond Jefferson by Christa Dierksheide
Bonus: Sempiternal by Michael F. Simpson
Bonus: Lightborne: A Novel by Hesse Phillips
Bonus: A Haunting in the Arctic by C.J. Cooke
Bonus: Cult of the Lamb Vol. 1: The First Verse by Alex Paknadel
Bonus: The Fall of Egypt and the Rise of Rome by Guy de la Bedoyere
Bonus: Four Points of the Compass by Jerry Brotten
Bonus: A Feast of Folklore by Ben Gazur
Bonus: If the Tide Turns by Rachel Rueckert
Bonus: Of Magic and Rum by Carly Spade
Bonus: The Turnglass by Gareth Rubin
Bonus: Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel
Bonus: Folklife and Superstition by Sandra Rollings-Magnusson
Bonus: Sailing the Graveyard Sea by Richard Snow
Bonus: Ghosts of Cape Sabine by Leonard F. Guttridge
Bonus: Breverton's Nautical Curiosities: A Book Of The Sea by Terry Breverton
Bonus: Lady L.C.W. Allingham

December:
Bonus: La Belle Famille by A.M. Vergara
Bonus: Blood on the Blue Ridge by R. Scott Lunsford, Alfred Dockery
Bonus: Capt. John Sinclair of Virginia by Claude O. Lanciano
Bonus: The Cultist's Wife B.J. Sikes
Bonus: The Dead of Winter by Sarah Clegg
Bonus: Murder by Degrees by Ritu Mukerji
Bonus: Shock Induction by Chuck Palahniuk
Bonus: The Eagle and the Hart by Helen Castor
Bonus: The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen
Bonus: The Scapegoat by Lucy Hughes-Hallett

Finished reading Maude Horton's Glorious Revenge by Lizzie Pook
Pages: 320
Words: None
Notes: None

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading Scurvy: The Disease of Discovery by Jonathan Lamb
Pages: 276
Words: None
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading A True Account Hannah Masury's Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written By Herself by Katherine Howe
Pages: 268
Words: ramillie wig
Notes: None

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Over the Edge of the World by Laurence Bergreen
Pages: 414
Words: autopsis; Saint Elmo's Fire; williwaw; proa; quintalada
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading Icebound by Andrea Pitzer
Pages: 273
Words: parhelion
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook by Christina Henry
Pages: 292
Words: None.
Notes: None.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading Sir Francis Drake: The Queen's Pirate by Harry Kelsey
Pages: 399
Words: demesne, messuages, loamy, byre, bederoll, alcalde, deroterro
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean by Edward Kritzler
Pages: 263
Words: None.
Notes: "It is thought that Columbus himself was a descendant of Spanish Jews, the Colon family, who had converted and moved to Genoa a century before on the heels of the Massacre of 1391."

"Vasco da Gama's pilot Moncaide was actually a Spanish Jew from Castile named going by the name of . His real name was Alonso Perez. With da Gama acting as his godfather, he was baptized and christened Gaspar da Gama...Gaspar later met Amerigo Vespucci in Cape Verde and imparted to him all of his geographical knowledge."

"Fernando de Noronha was a 16th century converso who headed the first capitalist venture in the New World. He recruited other prominent conversos

"In Portugal, forcibly converted in 1497 by the threat of having their children enslaved, the newly baptized Jews referred to themselves in Hebrew as anusim (forced ones.) Although they made up about 10% of Portugal's 1.5 million people, conversos constituted nearly 3/4 of the mercantile community owing to the Portuguese upper class's disdain for commerce."

"On October 17, 1528 Hernando Alonso became the first person in the New World to be burned alive at the stake. Alonso was a secret Jew, as was his deceased first wife Beatriz, the sister of Diego Ordaz, one of Cortes' five captains."

"The Limpieza de Sangre (Pure Blood) law introduced to Santo Domingo in 1525 decreed the New World off-limits to all but Old Christians able to trace their ancestry back four generations. A drop of Jewish blood rendered one unfit to forward the Spanish empire. The law also barred New Christians from a growing list of professions, and even parts of Spain. To discourage escape, conversos were not permitted to sell their land or exchange promissory notes or bills of exchange."

"Like the Catholic clergy, the mullahs castigated financiers as parasitic usurers and forbade their followers from engaging in such matters. The vagaries of finance were thus left to the Jews, who minted coins, collected taxes, loaned capital, and backed proven ventures like the marauding voyages of the corsairs."

"In Holland, Jews could not join craft guilds, engage in retail business, or hold political office. Neither could they marry Christians, employ them as servants, or have sexual relations with Christian prostitutes."

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading This Earthly Globe by Andrea Di Robilant
Pages: 240
Words: taquyya; stoccafisso
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Left for Dead by Eric Jay Dolin
Pages: 259
Words: The Naval War of 1812
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Why We Love Pirates by Rebecca Simon
Pages: 233
Words: The History of the Buccaneers of America; matelotage
Notes: "Essentially pirates were people who rejected society and created their own little world on their ships...they were able to cast off all of the social obligations and roles."

What became known as the Boston Tea Party, was a protest a 10% tax on all imported tea. "They were described as acts of riot and piracy...Technically the 200 men were on a body of water and stole a huge amount of goods. Since they destroyed three ships' worth of revenue, then it could be assumed that it was an attack on the British economy. Therefore, pirates."

"Women were certainly allowed on ships. The wives of captains, diplomats and royal governors traveled with no harm done. Women were brought on as healers, tailors, kitchen managers and as sex workers."

"Avery's fortunes peaked in 1695 when he joined forces with other pirates and unified a fleet of 25 ships. Together they sailed east and attacked an Indian ship, the Ganj-I-sawai and its escort, the Fateh Muhammed, taking their vast wealth and treasure. Avery and his squadron captured upwards of 600,000 pounds in coins and jewels which would be worth nearly 9 million today. In just one day, Avery and his men became the richest pirates in the entire world."

"Many pirates also formed romantic relationships with each other. There are documented cases of 17th century pirates who practiced 'matelotage' meaning that they became legally bound to each other. The term comes from the French word 'matelot' which simply means 'sailor.' It became associated with 17th c. Caribbean pirates because they became known for having bonds with each other that were almost like marriage. Two pirates on the same ship could become institutionally linked to each other. It's possible that pirates engaged in matelotage for legal and financial reasons. For all intents and purposes, if a pirate died, his partner would receive his share of the pay, not unlike a widow receiving her late husband's pension. And, of course, it could be because the pair were genuinely in love."

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading A History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks by David Gibbins
Pages: 270
Words: withies, palstaves; aqualung; pithoi, kylix, terebinth, stirrup jar, faience, balance-pan weights, amphora, alabastron, ophthalmoi, meltemi, triremes, kantharoi, ambo, ciborium, changcha ware, periplus, carracks, bandeirantes, moidores
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates by Eric Jay Dolin
Pages: 312
Words: bar shot; mooncussers: wreckers that prayed for dark and cloudy nights when wrecks were more likely, cursing any bright moonlight
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Finished reading Enemy of All Mankind by Steven Johnson
Pages: 255
Words: mlecchas; strangury; Black and British
Notes: Too many for here.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading The Pirate King by Sean Kingsley and Rex Cowan
Pages: 213
Words: harcoora
Notes: "Copy. Letter from Avery the Pirate. 27:/ Dec.r 10.1700 - The problem Zelinde had reading the Avery letter was that it was written in code...the letter was part of an archive ranging in date from 1497 to 1897 donated by Scotland's Hamilton-Bruce family of Grange Hill and Falkland...Prof. John Bruce, born in 1745, was professor of logic in Edinburgh from 1778 and also a founding member of the Royal Society of Edinburgh."

"His mother died when he was six years old, his father when he was just eleven."

"More than 3000 ministers left the church rather than accept the Act of Uniformity. Another 8000 imprisoned Protestant Dissenters died in jail during the reign of King Charles II."

"O'Bruin was promoted to an admiral, got his 8-year deal on October 30, 1690. The terms were reasonable enough: one third of all treasure salvaged would go to the King of Spain, plus all artillery from Spanish navy vessels discovered underwater...In May 1691 Admiral O'Bruin agreed in writing that 2/3 of the 1000 men hired to service must be Spanish and the rest strictly Roman Catholic...To improve his chances, O'Bruin hired John Strong in 1692, the diving expert who made Phips's wreck salvage a runaway success...Houblon had hedged his bet on the expedition by filling the holds with secret cargo."

"Daniel Foe chased wealth wherever money could be made. He sailed to Ireland in 1689 to sell Porto wine, beer, tobacco, hosiery, and Spanish snuff."

"By now his company included 52 Frenchmen, 14 Danes, and the rest English, Scotch, and Irish."

"Adam Baldridge built Madagascar's first wooden fort in January 1691, after fleeing the authorities when he murdered a man in Jamaica...It became a supply base to chase Spanish Manila galleons across the Pacific in the 1680s...Baldridge bought Indian cloth, Chinese silks, calico cloth, drugs, spices, diamonds, gold and hard currency and sold everything from clothes, rum and gunpowder to gardening tools and Bibles...Wine was bought eagerly on Sainte-Marie at 15x higher than the price in New York."

"The Dutch East India Company started rounding up Africans in Madagascar in the late 1650s to sell to plantations on Mauritius, Batavia and Cape Town. The French needed slaves too for their new colony on Bourbon (present-day Reunion), over 100 nautical miles west of Sainte-Marie Island, and the English for St. Helena and Sumatra in far-off Indonesia."

"Enslaved Malagasy were run into British colonies in the West Indies, Massachusetts, and New York from the 1670s, disrupting the Royal African Company's command of the transatlantic slave trade."

"The peacock throne, valued by a French jeweler at 6 million, was studded with precious gems and the largest diamond ever seen. The Badshahi Masjid, which Aurangzeb paid for, its doors able to welcome 60,000 worshipers was the largest mosque in the world...India's top exports were cotton textiles, raw silk from Bengal, pepper from Kerala, saltpeter, rice, and sugar from Bengal, alongside cheaper hull fillers of indigo, wax, coconut goods, ginger and tumeric."

"Henry Avery, now an admiral of a flotilla of 440 men and six ships - including Thomas Tew's Amity, Joseph Farrell's Portsmouth Adventure, Richard Want's Dolphin, William May's Pearl, and Thomas Wake's Susanna..."

"21 of the Mughal emperor's subjects were killed, including Nur Muhammad and his bodyguard, Seyyid Yusuf and his concubines, and Muhammad Yusuf Turabi. Twenty more were wounded, not least the spiritual teacher Muhammad the Blessed."

"By way of Ascension Island, the pirates voted to head for America, where their names and faces were unknown."

"The earliest account of the princess, shared by a Pennsylvania merchant 2 years after the event in Sept 1697, agreed she was preparing to be married off and that the crew of the Fancy "killed most of the men and threw her overboard."

"Daniel Smith and Benjamin Griffin settled in Bermuda. Seven of Avery's crew married in New Providence and bribed Nicholas Trott to sign royal pardons."

"The emperor condemned the company as pirates and, in turn, blockaded their port in Bombay, forcing the English to prostrate themselves and pay an imperial fine of 150,000 rupees in 1690."

"Captain Robert Sneed, commissioner of peace in PA, was one of the first colonial authorities to get his hands on a copy of the warrant at the end of April 1697...Sneed knew full well that some of Avery's crew were living in Philadelphia, including Robert Clinton, Edmond Laselle, Peter Clay, and James Brown."

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading Pirates Queens by Rebecca Alexandra Simon
Pages: 139
Words: None.
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Colonial Virginia's War Against Piracy by Jeremy Moss
Pages: 106
Words: None.
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly
Pages: 244
Words: The Four Years Voyages of Capt George Roberts; ruse de guerre; "jolie rouge"; granado shells; woolding; Piratical Barbarity or The Female Captive
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading The Whydah by Martin Sandler
Pages: 158
Words: None.
Notes: "Slavery is traumatic and dehumanizing, and the psychological damage Africans suffered when torn from their homes, families, native land and everything else they cherished was devastating as the physical pain and cruelty they would experience once transported and sold."

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Seafaring Women: Adventures of Pirate Queens, Female Stowaways, and Sailors' Wives by David Cordingly
Pages: 250
Words: London Labour and the London Poor; The Female Marine, or The Adventures of Lucy Brewer; The Female Soldier; Or, The Surprising Life and Adventures of Hannah Snell;
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading The Bluestockings: A History of the First Women's Movement by Susannah Gibson
Pages: 294
Words: fatuity, watery gripes,
Notes: "The word Bluestocking had begun as a joke. In 1757, Montagu used it to poke fun at the botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet. Coming in from fieldwork he would neglect to change from his rough worsted blue stockings. The word caught on and came to imply a kind of informality...From the 1750s to the 1770s the word was applied equally to women and men; later, it was reseved for the women who surrounded Montagu."

"Women, Thrale thought, needed a separate system, and so she devised a new set of criteria: worth of heart, conversational powers, person, mien and manner, good humor, useful knowledge, ornamental knowledge...Thrale did not include any category pertaining to virtue for the women because 'they must posses Virtue or one would not keep them Comapny."

"Yearsley received a deed of trust from More...in that all proceeds of the book would be placed in the trust and a tiny salary would be paid out to cover Yearsley's basic living expenses. Yearsley would not be entitled to the interest from the trust fund - More could spend it as she thought proper. Her children would have no claim on the money in the event of Yearsley's death."

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading John Paul Jones by Evan Thomas
Pages: 311
Words: None.
Notes: "It was rumored that John Paul Jr. was really the son of William Craik because his mother had worked as a housekeeper for Mr. Craik. She married John Paul Sr. the day before Craik married a neighboring lady. Craik did have at least one illegitimate son who became George Washington's personal physician."

"The most common medical hazard was hernia, or rupture. Between 1808 through 1815, the Royal Navy handed out an amazing 29,712 trusses. It is estimated that about 1 in 7 British seamen in the navy busted a gut."

"John Paul joined the Freemason Lodge in Fredericksburg, VA. In a public progression staged on St. John's Day Dec 27 1774, the Masons paraded through the streets wearing calfskin aprons, holding their sacred texts on pillows, and carrying jewels...One of the Masons, Hugh Mercer had treated the bayonet wounds of Highlanders cut down at Culloden."

"He courted Dorothea Spottswood Dandridge, the granddaughter of the former colony's royal governor and cousin of Martha Washington. She instead married the governor of Virginia, Patrick Henry."

"In the coal pits of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, the British were using at least a hundred American prisoners as slave labor."

"John Paul Jones' capture of the HMS Mellish contained some 10,000 winter uniforms, and without them Burgoyne's march down through Lake GHeorge and Lake Champlain was hobbled by the loss. The uniforms were used to clothe Washington's freezing men, who recrossed the Delaware to defeat British hessian troops quartered at Princeton and Trenton at Christmas."

The Ranger was the first warship saluted flying the Stars and Stripes, which had been adopted the same day Congress gave Jones command of it in June 1777."

"The Alliance's crew had attempted to mutiny on the voyage from America under Capt. Landais. Landais was to be cast off, in chains, in a boat without food or water. Only General Lafayette, brandishing his sword, had been able to restore order."

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading Longitude by Dava Sobel
Pages: 175
Words: None.
Notes: "Ptolemy was free to lay his prime meridian wherever he liked. He chose to run it through the Fortunate Islands off the northwest coast of Africa. Later mapmakers moved the prime meridian to the Azores and to the Cape Verde Islands as well as Rome, Copenhagen, Jerusalem, St. Petersburg, Pisa, Paris and Philadelphia before it settled down at last in London. The placement of the prime meridian is a purely political decision."

"On October 22, 1707, at the Scilly Isles near the southwestern tip of England, four homebound British warships ran aground and nearly 2000 men lost their lives."

"The Longitude Act of 1714 set the highest bounty of all, naming the prize equal to a king's ransom for the practical and useful means of determining longitude."

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Finished reading Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo
Pages: 335
Words: opodeldoc
Notes: "In Georgia, any Black person was legally presumed to be enslaved until proven otherwise. William could be questioned at any time, not only by slave patrols but also by any White person, who was authorized to "moderately correct" him if he did not respond."

"Ellen's present enslaver, Robert Collins, had overseen the construction himself. It had been his laborers, likely enslaved, who had discovered relics four feet underground, including earthenware, spoons, human bones, among them those of a 7 or 8 year old child. Collins' brother Charles had collected some of these relics and displayed them in town."

"At his death...Fellow churchgoers remembered him as a good and generous man. Hugh Craft was declared universally loved...but at the cost of the men, women and children he enslaved...A man who made such a show of his religion...would think nothing of destroying the bond between his devoted mother and father."

"Her mother's name was Maria. Only several years old than James Smith's first daughter by his legal wife, Maria was said to have been bought by Smith when she was a child. Maria, too, may have been fathered by a White man. She was described as mulatto and half White; Ellen, as quadroon, or a person of 1/4 African ancestry...It is said that James Smith began making nighttime visits to Maria when she was still in her teens...Maria was in no position to say no to the 37 year old man who was her owner."

"Mary Eliza, identified by at least one source as Ellen's mother's sister, in an illicit relationship with her enslaver, Michael Morris Healy, a White Irish immigrant...Healy considered Mary Eliza his one and only wife, and their ten children his family. Together, they lived as master and slave, husband and wife, relationships that were forbidden to coexist...Private acts of manumission were prohibited in Georgia."

"For this era, the railroad was the biggest slaver in town...Steamships, even more than railroads, were strongly hierarchical, with position determined by class, race, and gender: the captain at the top, cabin boys and chambermaids at the bottom. Passengers were classed similarly...All were accounted for by the ship's captain, who had to sign for every enslaved person he carried, attesting that no one had been imported after 1808."

"The Pulaski House, named for the famous Polish general, was a popular establishment for slave traders. It was rumored that there were underground pens for holding human cargo and tunnels that led directly to the river for transport."

"The Custom House in Charleston hosted the city's largest open-air slave market on its north side...The Sugar House was surrounded by high walls, topped with broken bottles to cut up any who dared to run away. Customers of the Sugar House could determine every aspect of the pain to be inflicted on the people they forced through its doors...The most notorious was the perpetual staircase, upon which the enslaved were forced to keep up the terrible pace at the risk of falling under and having limbs ripped off if they did not, generating profits with their pain, as the machine ground corn for consumption."

"The Crafts would learn later that on the last ship out, a month before, a fugitive had been found aboard. His name was Moses, and he was enslaved to a Miss Mary Brown. Moses squeezed his body into a box the size of a child's coffin and was loaded into the hatchway just before the ship was to sail. There he had lain, barely breathing, with a loaf of bread and a jug of water, awaiting delivery to Philadelphia. Heavy seas, however, caused the ship to be delayed for two days...the ship turned back to Newcastle, Delaware, and Moses went to jail."

"In Richmond, enslaved people were kept in slave jails or pens for keeping overnight. The most infamous was Lumpkin's Jail, called the Devil's Half-Acre. The owner, Robert Lumpkin, lived on the grounds with the mother of his children, a "nearly white" enslaved woman named Mary. One day, thanks to Mary Lumpkin, a school for Black freedmen would rise on these grounds, eventually to become part of Virginia Union University."

"One Mr. Hayne expressed repeatedly on the voyage that 'the negro was only a little removed from an animal" and that Black blood "in the veins of anyone could always be detected, particularly by a Southerner." This same man pulled Robert Purvis, a "passing" black man, over to dance with his daughter."

"By Friday afternoon, the door that protected William belonged to Lewis and Harriet Hayden, who had convinced their friend to move back into their home. It was reported that Lewis had prepared two kegs of gunpowder, resolving to blow up his home rather than surrender his guest."

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading The Golden Age of Piracy in China, 1520–1810 by Robert J. Antony
Pages: 137
Words: haifei or yangfei "sea bandits";
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading The Pirates' Pact by Douglas R. Burgess
Pages: 265
Words: None.
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading Piracy and the Decline of Venice 1580-1615 by Alberto Tenenti
Pages: 151
Words: venturini; galleot; trireme; fuste
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading Summer of Fire and Blood by Lyndal Roper
Pages: 544
Words: etiolated; Frondienste; Haulage; anfechtunge; Sacramentarianism; herren; eygennutz; Premonstratensian
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

Finished reading The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty by Caroline Alexander
Pages: 410
Words: quondam; contumacy
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Finished reading Pirates: A New History From Vikings to Somali Raiders by Peter Lehr
Pages: 218
Words: "Victual Brother"; "Likedeelers"; ghazis; brazzere; dromond; Annals of Saint-Bertin; tramp trade
Notes: None.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading A Haunting in the Arctic by C.J. Cooke
Pages: 368
Words: torfbaeir
Notes: None

Rating: 3 out of 5

Finished reading All Standing: The Remarkable Story of the Jeanie Johnston, The Legendary Irish Famine Ship by Kathryn Miles
Pages: 214
Words:
Notes: Too many for here.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Finished reading The Atrocities of the Pirates by Aaron Smith
Pages: 174
Words: myrmidons; pestiferous; carronades; seriatim
Notes: "On June 1821 I embarked on a voyage to the West Indies...Capt. Talbot...introduced and recommended me to Mr. Lumsden, the master of the merchant brig Zephyr."

"Mr. Lumsden had been originally bred for the coal trade...The windward passage, I informed him, might prolong the voyage, but the leeward would expose us to the risk of being plundered by pirates..."

"The captain then detained me for the purpose of navigating the schooner...the captain then inquired if we had any Americans on board as seamen...he declared he would kill all belonging to that nation in revenge for the injuries that he had sustained at their hands..."

"I told Seraphina, that, were I at liberty, I should be happy to devote myself to her services; nay, that could I escape and she would accompany me, I would, on my arrival, marry her...If she found it practicable, she would consent to escape with me to the Havannah, and thence to England."

"...the captain went below and enquired of the least injured of the wounded men, the cause of their quarrel...he told the pirate that his antagonist was one of the party formed by the chief mate to assassinate him and the whole crew, and take possess of the ship and plunder...they dragged the helpless wounded wretch upon deck...proceeded to cut off his legs and arms with a blunt hatchet, then mangling his body with their knives, threw the yet warm corpse overboard."

"...Prior to our leaving the schooner, the thermometer was above 90 degrees in the shade, and the poor wretch was exposed naked to the full heat of the sun...we took him to one side of the channel which was bordered by swamps full of mangrove trees, and swarming with the venomous insects...We had scarcely been half an hour in this place when the miserable victim was distracted with pain; his body began to swell, and he appeared one complete blister from head to foot...a pig of iron was fastened round his neck, and he was thrown into the sea."

"...He then gave directions that I should be taken and lashed to the main-mast, and the bandage removed from my eyes...a number of cartridges, and place the powder round me on the deck, with a train to it, and have orders for the cook to light a match and send it aft...The explosion deprived me of my senses...I found my legs dreadfully injured, the flesh lacerated, and the bone in some parts laid bare; and by this time, large blisters had risen on various parts of my body..."

"The whole of the Dutch vessel's crew were then ordered on board, with the exception of the captain's cook, the carpenter, who was lame, and a little boy."

"In this place the French cook of the Dutch prize was placed for security...but he had shown evident symptoms of insanity...he caught hold of a hatchet and wounded one of his tormentors. The blow was no sooner given than the rest plunged their knives into his body, and threw him overboard while yet breathing..."

"The captain who had been regarding me stedfastly for some time, now claimed acquaintance with me...the pirate asked his name, and he replied Cooke; I then recognized him as a casual acquaintance...but told him he was my cousin, and that, therefore, he would not maltreat Captain Cooke."

Rating: N/A primary source