Pirates: Fact & Fiction

by David Cordingly, John Falconer

Pirates: Fact and Fiction traces the history of piracy from the Spanish Main, where Drake and the Elizabethan sea dogs plundered vast quantities of treasure from Spanish galleons returning to the Old World, to the China Seas where, in the early nineteenth century, the female pirate Ching Yih Saou commanded a fleet of over 800 junks. It examines the realities of pirate life through everyday items that would have been used by the pirates themselves--weapons, navigational instruments, charts--and, by contrasting these with fictional portrayals and stereotypes, sets out to dispel some of the myths surrounding this perennially fascinating subject.
With illustrations from the seventeenth century to the present day, and a lively text that draws on the wide-ranging expertise of Britain's National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Pirates: Fact and Fiction will appeal to all ages.
[Taken from book jacket]

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Pirates

128 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

David Cordingly is an English naval historian with a special interest in pirates. He held the position of Keeper of Pictures and Head of Exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England for twelve years.
David Cordingly organised several exhibitions at the National Maritime Museum, including Captain James Cook, Navigator and The Mutiny on the Bounty. One of these exhibitions was Pirates: Fact and Fiction, which became a critical and popular success, followed by a book of the same title, authored by Cordingly and John Falconer. Cordingly explored the subject further in his book Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. This was followed by Heroines and Harlots: Women at Sea in the Great Age of Sail (published in the U.S. under the title Women Sailors and Sailors' Women: An Untold Maritime History), expanding on a subject Cordingly had touched upon in Under the Black Flag in a chapter entitled "Women Pirates and Pirates' Women".
In 2002, Cordingly wrote an introduction to the republication of Captain Charles Johnson's 1724 book A General History of the Pyrates.
The Billy Ruffian: His Majesty's Ship Bellerophon and the Downfall of Napoleon, published in 2003, was longlisted for the 2003 Wolfson History Prize. It tells the story of an English warship, HMS Bellerophon, which played an important part in many battles and held captive the defeated Napoleon following the Battle of Waterloo.
Cordingly appears on the Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl DVD bonus features in a section called "Below Deck", a virtual tour of a pirate ship. This consists of several documentary shorts, hosted by Cordingly, comparing piracy fact and fiction along the same lines as Under the Black Flag.
Cordingly resides with his wife and family in Brighton, Sussex.

Reviews

[Mateen Ar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book gives a somewhat basic introduction to pirate history. Many details are glossed over, and a few of the details that make this topic as appealing as it is are missed out on. Being a long-time listener of the Pirate History Podcast, I enjoyed this book thoroughly. I already had those interesting details in my mind as I re-visited the many names that make pirate history what it is. Furthermore, the many pictures in the book really make the experience of reading it much more enjoyable.

There are several major criticisms, however. The book is printed as a revised version of a supplement of particular museum exhibition on pirates. I was surprised to find that few if any of the pictures of the book show museum items. these were mostly artists rendtions of piratical figures and events.
On another note, since narratives of pirate history tend to centre around particlar characters, this book also focused on particular people more than others. Figures such as captain Francis Drake, William Kidd and lady Shih. I think that there was a fine line between condensing the history of a particular period and focusing on individuals, and this book does not manage to strike a balance. In its chapter on the Golden Age of Piracy, the book focuses mainly on captain Kidd, cutting out the stories of Blackbeard, Charles Vain and such others almost entirely. Many of the important players of the era are entirely missed out on unless the reader knows from before to look for them, such as the British Admiralty, or the Dutch and Swedish East India Company.

Overall, this is a very fun read for anyone who is interested in pirates and pirate history. I'd recommend having Wikipedia at hand for any event or figure that would strike thge readers' interest.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Cordingly is, alongside Marcus Rediker, the leading contemporary historian on the Golden Age of Piracy. Whereas Rediker's scholarship is a radical history-from-below seeing pirates as the counter-cultural radical response to the abusive work conditions of merchant navies and the oppressive dynamics of seventeenth-century capitalism, a proto-naval proletariat straining for freedom against an increasingly enclosed world, Cordingly sees them as violent terrorists and rapists we are only able to idealise because we are safely insulated from them by the dustbin of history and the glitzy facade of fiction.

Cordingly's interest in piracy appears to have grown from the success of a museum exhibition he set up with John Falconer in 1992, and so the two of them produced this book for it, which was later expanded in a 2021 re-release. Cordingly's Life Among the Pirates is ultimately a deeper and more expansive engagement with this project, and so many of its arguments are here rehearsed in miniature, though he does at least attempt to cover some non-Eurocentric piracy here with some brief surveys of Mediterranean Barbary pirates and the frankly jaw-dropping pirate empires that Chinese history casually produced whenever their empires began feeling too comfortable.

Inevitably the surveys here are shallow (and frustratingly lacking in citations for his quotes), but as an entry-level survey of pirate history it's honestly pretty good, with a deliberate choice to downplay the Golden Age via a very short chapter in order to leave more room for the rest, though his survey of contemporary piracy is so woeful he probably shouldn't have bothered. The real highlight here are the images - full spread colour reproductions of woodcuts, paintings, engravings, title pages and portaits, but I think it falters by including far more fictional images and recreations rather than photographs of the actual artefacts the museum had on display. For all his performative disapproval of pirate mythology, Cordingly apparently enjoys burying his treasures.

[Michael Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hollywood has created a myth of pirates --- bad and bloody or honorable men forced to earn a living outside of the norm. While there were both kinds in real life, the line between them is very narrow. Merchant ships pied the seven seas with goods, slaves, looted treasure and most everything that the colonies of European nations needed or produced. So why not take some and sell it yourself. Then there were the pirate societies in parts of the world where it was an acceptable tradition by many and only looked at sideways by the big powers since they got a cut. Nice read with quick coverage of some aspects and more detail of other parts of the period.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent overview, though of vastly more breadth than depth. Many more comprehensive accounts can be found elsewhere, but this edition is worth a look for the wealth of pictures included.

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tiny bit dry but wonderfully illustrated.