Blackbeard

Charles Town, 1718: young Jack Cockrell watches Stede Bonnet, the gentleman pirate, swagger ashore, and is soon a hostage when Blackbeard blockades the harbour — then adrift on a raft, lost in a Carolina swamp, and at last a witness to the great fight of Captain Teach. Ralph D. Paine had been a war correspondent and wrote of the old sailing trade from logbooks and records, and the real blockade and the real pirates stand behind the adventure. Fifty-two plates range from Turner and Aivazovsky to the lesser-known Dutch and Italian masters, gathering four centuries of storm, wreck and night sea to match the perils Jack Cockrell faces.