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Ned Yorke #1
Buccaneer
It is the 1650’s and Spain considers the Caribbean to be its own private sea, but England, Holland and France conspire to battle for freedom on the oceans. Set in days littered with the plunder of piracy; Ned Yorke, a loyal Royalist living in Barbados has a small vessel and devoted crew and together they sail, hunted by Roundheads and Spaniards, determined to pay whatever the price for freedom from tyranny. What transpires is a colourful, dramatic retelling of historical events surrounding the capture of Jamaica and the infamous raid on Santiago.
307 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1981
31 people are currently reading
113 people want to read
About the author
Dudley Pope
130 books93 followersDudley Pope was born in Ashford, Kent.
By concealing his age, Pope joined the Home Guard aged 14 and at age 16 joined the Merchant Navy as a cadet. His ship was torpedoed the next year (1942). Afterwards, he spent two weeks in a lifeboat with the few other survivors.
After he was invalided out of the Merchant Navy, the only obvious sign of the injuries Pope had suffered was a joint missing from one finger due to gangrene. Pope then went to work for a Kentish newspaper, then in 1944 moved to The Evening News in London, where he was the naval and defence correspondent. From there he turned to reading and writing naval history.
Pope's first book, "Flag 4", was published in 1954, followed by several other historical accounts. C. S. Forester, the creator of the famed Horatio Hornblower novels, encouraged Pope to add fiction to his repertoire. In 1965, "Ramage" appeared, the first of what was to become an 18-novel series.
Pope took to living on boats from 1953 on; when he married Kay Pope in 1954, they lived on a William Fife 8-meter named Concerto, then at Porto Santo Stefano, Italy in 1959 with a 42-foot ketch Tokay. In 1963 he and Kay moved to a 53-foot cutter Golden Dragon, on which they moved to Barbados in 1965. In 1968 they moved onto a 54-foot wooden yacht named Ramage, aboard which he wrote all of his stories until 1985.
Pope died April 25, 1997 in Marigot, St. Martin. Both his wife and his daughter, Jane Victoria survived him.
By concealing his age, Pope joined the Home Guard aged 14 and at age 16 joined the Merchant Navy as a cadet. His ship was torpedoed the next year (1942). Afterwards, he spent two weeks in a lifeboat with the few other survivors.
After he was invalided out of the Merchant Navy, the only obvious sign of the injuries Pope had suffered was a joint missing from one finger due to gangrene. Pope then went to work for a Kentish newspaper, then in 1944 moved to The Evening News in London, where he was the naval and defence correspondent. From there he turned to reading and writing naval history.
Pope's first book, "Flag 4", was published in 1954, followed by several other historical accounts. C. S. Forester, the creator of the famed Horatio Hornblower novels, encouraged Pope to add fiction to his repertoire. In 1965, "Ramage" appeared, the first of what was to become an 18-novel series.
Pope took to living on boats from 1953 on; when he married Kay Pope in 1954, they lived on a William Fife 8-meter named Concerto, then at Porto Santo Stefano, Italy in 1959 with a 42-foot ketch Tokay. In 1963 he and Kay moved to a 53-foot cutter Golden Dragon, on which they moved to Barbados in 1965. In 1968 they moved onto a 54-foot wooden yacht named Ramage, aboard which he wrote all of his stories until 1985.
Pope died April 25, 1997 in Marigot, St. Martin. Both his wife and his daughter, Jane Victoria survived him.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
February 22, 2015
Neither the Golden Age of Piracy nor the pirates themselves sprang fully formed from dragon's teeth. It (and they) came about by a very singular and unlikely set of circumstances.
First, it required the base material, the people. These were supplied by the rise of Cromwell in England and the death of the King. Cavalier supporters were exiled or fled to the Caribbean to escape the new regime. Most were not sailors or adventurers but minor nobility and landowners. Added to these were the sweepings of the streets and inmates of prisons in England and unfortunate Irish, all of whom were kidnapped and sent to the Caribbean as "indentured servants", slaves in all but name.
Next was a suitable location, a base in hostile Spanish territory where the pirates could find safe harbour, supplies, crew, and businessmen to buy their plunder. This came about by the a doomed expedition sent by Cromwell to exert English power in the Spanish Main in the form a fleet led by Penn and Venables. The expedition was a miserable failure, many of the soldiers and sailors dying from disease and hunger rather than Spanish weapons. The best the survivors could do was to capture the Island of Jamaica, which was largely unoccupied but which boasted the finest harbour in the region. The English founded a settlement there, a settlement that would come to be named Port Royal, the most sinful city in the entire world.
In this novel, Ned Yorke, an exiled member of a Cavalier family, has his estate in Barbados stolen from him, leaving him with only a merchant vessel, and a crew of ex-servants and his lover, the wife of the Roundhead supporter who stole his estate. He is not a hardened adventurer or even any kind of a sailor, just as could be expected from someone who was basically a plantation owner.
And yet during the course of the novel we see our hero moulded by circumstances beyond his control into first a pirate, a buccaneer, and then a privateer, a pirate with a license. He commences his career at the very time when the seeds of Port Royal and the Golden Age of Piracy are first planted. Although he would prefer to find a new plot of land to restart his plantation, this is not to be, and slowly and painfully he realises that his only option is piracy and he sets about learning the necessary skills while at the same time keeping his followers alive and fed and dealing with the hostile Roundhead Governor of Jamaica.
This is not the novel for someone looking for another "Pirates of the Caribbean" or the ordered and structured adventures of an officer in the Royal Navy. Instead it is a view of the life at sea and of a band of ordinary men and women forced to adopt piracy as a way of life. The language, history, and the lifestyle of the period are well and accurately portrayed, and the characters feel very real and human, with all their strengths, frailties, and lusts. Even the women are well portrayed, being neither helpless playthings or pure and haughty ladies, but real and very hardy people, suited to a very harsh and dangerous time.
I give the book five stars and I intend to read the rest of the series. I recommend you give it a fair try too.
First, it required the base material, the people. These were supplied by the rise of Cromwell in England and the death of the King. Cavalier supporters were exiled or fled to the Caribbean to escape the new regime. Most were not sailors or adventurers but minor nobility and landowners. Added to these were the sweepings of the streets and inmates of prisons in England and unfortunate Irish, all of whom were kidnapped and sent to the Caribbean as "indentured servants", slaves in all but name.
Next was a suitable location, a base in hostile Spanish territory where the pirates could find safe harbour, supplies, crew, and businessmen to buy their plunder. This came about by the a doomed expedition sent by Cromwell to exert English power in the Spanish Main in the form a fleet led by Penn and Venables. The expedition was a miserable failure, many of the soldiers and sailors dying from disease and hunger rather than Spanish weapons. The best the survivors could do was to capture the Island of Jamaica, which was largely unoccupied but which boasted the finest harbour in the region. The English founded a settlement there, a settlement that would come to be named Port Royal, the most sinful city in the entire world.
In this novel, Ned Yorke, an exiled member of a Cavalier family, has his estate in Barbados stolen from him, leaving him with only a merchant vessel, and a crew of ex-servants and his lover, the wife of the Roundhead supporter who stole his estate. He is not a hardened adventurer or even any kind of a sailor, just as could be expected from someone who was basically a plantation owner.
And yet during the course of the novel we see our hero moulded by circumstances beyond his control into first a pirate, a buccaneer, and then a privateer, a pirate with a license. He commences his career at the very time when the seeds of Port Royal and the Golden Age of Piracy are first planted. Although he would prefer to find a new plot of land to restart his plantation, this is not to be, and slowly and painfully he realises that his only option is piracy and he sets about learning the necessary skills while at the same time keeping his followers alive and fed and dealing with the hostile Roundhead Governor of Jamaica.
This is not the novel for someone looking for another "Pirates of the Caribbean" or the ordered and structured adventures of an officer in the Royal Navy. Instead it is a view of the life at sea and of a band of ordinary men and women forced to adopt piracy as a way of life. The language, history, and the lifestyle of the period are well and accurately portrayed, and the characters feel very real and human, with all their strengths, frailties, and lusts. Even the women are well portrayed, being neither helpless playthings or pure and haughty ladies, but real and very hardy people, suited to a very harsh and dangerous time.
I give the book five stars and I intend to read the rest of the series. I recommend you give it a fair try too.
September 19, 2014
Full review at: http://susimetsa.blogspot.fi/2014/09/...
Dudley Pope’s The Buccaneer shows promise on the surface, but doesn’t really deliver as a novel. Set in the 17th century, it tells the story of a royalist plantation owner in Barbados who finds that he will have to flee the island or face the Roundheads whose fleet is coming over from England to subdue the Caribbean settlements. The protagonist, Ned Yorke, snatches his neighbour’s wife and makes his escape only to find that it is not so easy to decide what to do afterwards.
Overall, I found Pope’s prose relatively dull fare. Ned’s endless self-doubts and repetitive discussions about the same issues over and over again with his fellow travellers really sapped the story of any interest that it might have otherwise built up. It is doubtful whether I will pick up the sequel, even though the era described is my passion.
1.5/5
Dudley Pope’s The Buccaneer shows promise on the surface, but doesn’t really deliver as a novel. Set in the 17th century, it tells the story of a royalist plantation owner in Barbados who finds that he will have to flee the island or face the Roundheads whose fleet is coming over from England to subdue the Caribbean settlements. The protagonist, Ned Yorke, snatches his neighbour’s wife and makes his escape only to find that it is not so easy to decide what to do afterwards.
Overall, I found Pope’s prose relatively dull fare. Ned’s endless self-doubts and repetitive discussions about the same issues over and over again with his fellow travellers really sapped the story of any interest that it might have otherwise built up. It is doubtful whether I will pick up the sequel, even though the era described is my passion.
1.5/5
September 6, 2019
It has been ten years since I last read a book by DUDLET POPE. That book was number 18, of 18, books in the LORD RAMAGE series set in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. I had thought that was all he wrote in the world of naval fiction. Thank heavens I was wrong.
Pope also wrote six books featuring the Yorke family. Four of them are set in the Caribbean Sea area of North America in the 17th century. The last two Yorke novels are set during WWII featuring a descendant of NED YORKE the hero of the 17th century stories.
The first of the Yorke novels is entitled BUCCANEER in which Ned Yorke is introduced. He is the most eligible bachelor on the island of Barbados. He is running his father’s very successful plantation on that island (now country). A ship arrives from England with bad news from his father, an earl. Oliver Cromwell has seized his estates and a British fleet is on its way to Barbados to seize his estate there and to arrest Ned and other political enemies.
Ned has been secretly in love with the French born wife of a very nasty plantation owner who desires Ned’s plantation. As he readies his staff to flee on his trading ship, he goes to see his secret love. After an altercation with her husband, he convinces her to escape with him. It was relatively easy to convince her since she had been a victim of spousal abuse for years. They leave with her housekeeper and the housekeeper’s husband and Ned’s plantation staff. Once aboard his ship, the personnel have to decide what they are going to do. Trading is most obvious since they have hundreds of tons of sugar on board and that is as valuable as gold.
After a short period, they fall into a sailing relationship with another freelance ship. The owner of that ship is a nephew of Cromwell but is on the opposite side politically. He, too, has a young woman in his company. The two ships decide to go into partnership as “buccaneers”. Eventually they add several other ships to their partnership and base themselves in Jamaica.
If you are a fan of C.S.Forester or Alexander Kent or even Dudley Pope, you will enjoy the Yorke adventures. There is a lot of history included in the story. Highly recommended!
GO! BUY! READ!
Pope also wrote six books featuring the Yorke family. Four of them are set in the Caribbean Sea area of North America in the 17th century. The last two Yorke novels are set during WWII featuring a descendant of NED YORKE the hero of the 17th century stories.
The first of the Yorke novels is entitled BUCCANEER in which Ned Yorke is introduced. He is the most eligible bachelor on the island of Barbados. He is running his father’s very successful plantation on that island (now country). A ship arrives from England with bad news from his father, an earl. Oliver Cromwell has seized his estates and a British fleet is on its way to Barbados to seize his estate there and to arrest Ned and other political enemies.
Ned has been secretly in love with the French born wife of a very nasty plantation owner who desires Ned’s plantation. As he readies his staff to flee on his trading ship, he goes to see his secret love. After an altercation with her husband, he convinces her to escape with him. It was relatively easy to convince her since she had been a victim of spousal abuse for years. They leave with her housekeeper and the housekeeper’s husband and Ned’s plantation staff. Once aboard his ship, the personnel have to decide what they are going to do. Trading is most obvious since they have hundreds of tons of sugar on board and that is as valuable as gold.
After a short period, they fall into a sailing relationship with another freelance ship. The owner of that ship is a nephew of Cromwell but is on the opposite side politically. He, too, has a young woman in his company. The two ships decide to go into partnership as “buccaneers”. Eventually they add several other ships to their partnership and base themselves in Jamaica.
If you are a fan of C.S.Forester or Alexander Kent or even Dudley Pope, you will enjoy the Yorke adventures. There is a lot of history included in the story. Highly recommended!
GO! BUY! READ!
August 17, 2021
A very dull book by Dudley Pope standards. He was obviously keen to show off how much research he had done into the West Indies and the English civil war. Very little action in the story and when the "hero" has at last decided he can make the change from running an estate to being a Bucanneer, his mistress spoils it all by givng him his estate back.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 27, 2022
ReRd. 1652 Barbados. Royalist Ned flees with Aurelia Wilson neighbor's wife, Saxby foreman, and volunteers from servants.
Pope expertly spouts details of history. Suspense when they decide to be pirates and sneak into a Spanish town.
Pope makes women strong. The only Spanish speaker, Aurelia sneaks ashore to interpret. Lusty single big Mrs Judd and Mrs Bullock get women in breeches to sew and cook. Mistresses Aurelia and Diana are a class above, yet still in breeches.
52-2022: map
Pope expertly spouts details of history. Suspense when they decide to be pirates and sneak into a Spanish town.
Pope makes women strong. The only Spanish speaker, Aurelia sneaks ashore to interpret. Lusty single big Mrs Judd and Mrs Bullock get women in breeches to sew and cook. Mistresses Aurelia and Diana are a class above, yet still in breeches.
52-2022: map
August 7, 2013
Dudley Pope is hailed as one of the great maritime writers, but I’m not too sure why… This is the first book of his I have read and I can’t say I was too impressed.
Unlike some of the other reviewers I read this through to the end, but probably only because I was stuck on a ten-hour coach journey.
Whilst I do not doubt the historical and geographical accuracies of the novel, nor the technical sailing expertise, I just found the whole affair rather boring. The main character – fleeing plantation Royalist Ned Yorke – shows no development or characterisation other than the very forced progression from rich farmer to murdering pirate.
I enjoyed the climatic battle, but I don’t feel it was worth hanging around for…
Unlike some of the other reviewers I read this through to the end, but probably only because I was stuck on a ten-hour coach journey.
Whilst I do not doubt the historical and geographical accuracies of the novel, nor the technical sailing expertise, I just found the whole affair rather boring. The main character – fleeing plantation Royalist Ned Yorke – shows no development or characterisation other than the very forced progression from rich farmer to murdering pirate.
I enjoyed the climatic battle, but I don’t feel it was worth hanging around for…
February 17, 2013
I did enjoy this book and will read more in the series. But this is certainly not a typical sort of Age of Sail book such as Hornblower or Bolitho. Firstly, this is a century earlier and the tale of a buccaneer, not a King's officer. And the main character owns his ship before he has any idea how to sail it. It seems an explanation of how one might come to buccaneering, though I can't say how accurate the picture is.
September 25, 2014
It was a fun little read and I am going to look for more at some point.
December 25, 2015
Meh - I'm undecided as to whether or not this was good enough to warrant reading the rest of the series. It's not awful but it's not really good either.
October 30, 2016
Interesting take on early pirates of the English Civil War.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews