The Pirate Hunter [UNABRIDGED]

Rating:
Summary: A triumph of historical research and evocative writing
Review: Author Richard Zacks in this book alone has proven to be a grand master of research. Much of the success of "Pirate Hunter' rests on unimaginable hours of pouring over documents, diaries, letters, old books and anything else he could get his hands on pertaining to Captain Kidd, Robert Culliford, pirates in general and the late 17th century in particular.
Consequently Zachs can tell this amazing story with next to no speculation and virtually no gaps. It's evident that any sources available to help tell the story were found. Ahh yes, the story...
All this research would have been for naught but for Zachs superior storytelling skills. And what a story he has to tell!
Pirates (I was surprised how many of the Hollywood stereotypes DID apply to them) their ruthless, murderous greedy adventures, those who hunted them for country and/or profiteers make for fascinating tales.
It's all here, months to years at a time at sea with disease a constant threat, bloody battles, torture, colorful characters and variously innocent, wily and lascivious natives.
There are also well-drawn settings, from Colonial New York to islands of Madagascar with numerous unforgettable stops in between.
At the centerpiece is Captain Kidd. Zachs' sympathetic portrayal depicts Kidd as more a pirate hunter than the pirate he was convicted of being and is remembered as.
Here is Kidd the charismatic leader, the shrewd businessman, the brutal captain, the faithful husband, the martyr to his own vanity.
Also meet Robert Culliford who beyond a doubt was a vicious pirate, the man whose paths crossed Kidd's at key point in both men's live and who met an altogether different fate.
The "Pirate Hunter" is simply one of the very best books of its kind ever written.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping
Review: Zack's well-researched account of the famous fall of William Kidd, and the parallel course of actual pirate Robert Culliford, makes for excellent reading and will change the way you think about Kidd. For most readers, William Kidd was a notorious, blood-thirsty pirate who allegedly buried large stashes of treasure. In fact, after examining many original sources, Zacks reveals that Kidd was actually a gentleman and well-financed mercenary, a man outfitted by leading merchants of the late 17th century to seek out and steal from pirates themselves. It is touching to read about Kidd's confidence that his backers would support him, and his belief that the truth would come out if he was ever tried as a pirate.

By contrast, Culliford is a despicable rogue, leading Kidd's crew to mutiny on more than one occassion, and whose luck never seemed to run out even as he was captured and jailed as a pirate in London. Zacks sometimes alternates chapters between Kidd and Culliford, detailing the public hysteria over Captain Kidd, despite his honorable deeds and charter to hunt down pirates, while the rogue Culliford gets away with much more.

Ultimately the biggest villain of the book has to be the legal authorities in London, who railroad Kidd and conveniently lose the most important documents for his defense, consisting of French passes which made Kidd's capture of two Moorish vessels legal spoils of war. Kidd wastes away in solitary confinement with no formal charges against him for months, in despicable conditions at Newgate prison.

Overall, I thought this book did a very admirable job of portraying pirate life in great detail. We learn what they wore, how they traded for goods with shady merchants in places like Madagascar, and how discipline was meted out. I for one was also suprised by the "democratic" way in which decisions were made on pirate ships - captains did not hold as much authority as commonly believed. I was likewise surprised to learn how supposedly greedy buccaneers would seek out the widows of slain comrades to deliver their "shares" of the plunder. All in all, I was very impressed with The Pirate Hunter, and after skimming Zacks' sources (including the original commissions and letters reprinted in the pages of this book), it is tough to challenge any of his conclusions. A first-rate read.

Rating:
Summary: Puts you right in the thick of it! ARRR
Review: This book is phenomenal. Zacks does an extraordinary job of sending the reading back in time and recreating a New York City harbor swarming with pirates, trade routes thick with theives, and London full of entrepreneurs and waring social classes. I've never read a book that is so effective in recreating details and evoking feelings of an era long past. tremendous.

Rating:
Summary: A Real Treasure: Richard Zack's true story of Captain Kidd
Review: Anyone who's followed the lore and legend of the great pirates and buccaneers of the 17th and 18th centuries will follow with even greater delight the revelations and recounting of fact in Richard Zack's THE PIRATE HUNTER: The True Story of Captain Kidd. It's an incomparable tale of treachery and greed, not only on the high seas, but in the back rooms of colonial governors, rich merchants and British Lords who played fast and furious with the rights of nations and other men's lives.

Zach tells the story of William Kidd, a somewhat retired and perhaps bored New York merchant ship's captain who hoped to reprise his early days as a privateer by tracking down pirates and taking posession of their rich bounties..all under a somewhat dubious and not so secret commission from the King of England. Kidd in large part was duped by his wealthy and powerful backers, though to some measure also by his own intransigence, ambition and naivete...which, combined with an uncanny string of BAD LUCK makes for a drama of tragic proportions, reminding this reviewer somewhat of Hamlet or Macbeth. Equally uncanny is Richard Zack's ability to sift through 300 years of hyperbole and sensationalism to bring forth in completely readable fashion the facts in this matter - facts no less arresting and fantastic than the tall tales for so long associated with the infamous Captain Kidd.

THE PIRATE HUNTER is rich with detail and authentic references to and quotations from documents, court records and first-hand testimony of the time, not to mention some remarkable research on Zack's part. He makes it especially clear when he's citing from various sources: clearly naming ships, pirates (even by their aliases) and players; and by backtracking to make sure the reader isn't lost in the sometimes circuitous events of Kidd's life. Overall, The Pirate Hunter is an important and unprecedented step forward in bringing the unadultrated story of this hapless ship's captain and this notorious era to the attention of your average modern-day landlubber. This is the kind of stuff that would make for a terrific movie, except that no one would believe it.

Rating:
Summary: The Notorious Pirate Who Wasn't
Review: Mention the name of Captain Kidd, and you can't help thinking of buried treasure, bloodthirsty tales of plunder, and general maritime mayhem. There was a real Captain Kidd, and he did sail among the pirates, but we all have the wrong idea about him, according to Richard Zacks, whose _The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd_ (Theia / Hyperion) sets the record straight. William Kidd was a master mariner who lived in New York, on Wall Street, no less, at the end of the seventeenth century. He had a wife and daughter. "He was no career cutthroat, no cartoon Blackbeard, terrifying his prey by putting flaming matches in his hair." Kidd was a respectable sea captain, who had enormously bad luck in his endeavors to hunt pirates for profit.

Kidd was no pirate, but a privateer, recruited by powerful Lords and merchants to rob from the pirates that had robbed from the merchants. He had a secret commission from King William III himself, who privately took a ten percent share of any profits that Kidd might come up with. Kidd sailed on _Adventure Galley_, a three-master built in England and launched in 1696 specifically for Kidd's mission, with a crew of 150. Many of the crew had been pirates themselves, and Kidd was putting himself in an uncomfortable management position. He had nothing but bad luck in finding pirates to rob, but even before he did so, rumors of his being a pirate himself had sprung up. After his crew mutinied, he tried to return to his home in New York, but discovered to his surprise that he was the most wanted man in America. He sneaked back towards New York, and in another unpiratical act, sought the help of his lawyer. He made overtures to Lord Bellomont, his prime backer, but the gouty and treacherous Bellomont, having learned of the extent and whereabouts of the haul Kidd had brought back, put him into jail. Kidd was shipped in chains to England. The corruption involved in his jail term and his trial are well detailed here.

Zacks has dug into account books, diaries, and forgotten, centuries-old governmental documents to bring out the truth about Kidd, but this is far from a dusty academic account. Zacks has fun telling us about how pirates really lived, how politics was conducted, the difficulties of shipboard life, and how different the times were from our own. For example, he writes of a messenger: "As he reached the East River, the Manhattan skyline loomed: a windmill and two church steeples towering over a seaside row of three-story gable roofs." Kidd's was a wild and eventful life, even if it wasn't the life of a pirate. My guess is that Zacks's book will never overcome the centuries of folklore that have accumulated around Kidd's story, but the true story is still a rousing treasure.

Rating:
Summary: Shades of Tom Clancy and Oliver North
Review: Picture if you will a small but powerful consortium of men in the uppermost rungs of government. This consortium devises a cunning plan to not only rid the world of some very dangerous terrorists but to secretly enrich themselves at the same time. This scheme is at best shady and mostly likely illegal under international law.But the rewards could be immense and a part of the world could be safer.So a skilled man of arms, with experience in these matters, who can handle a team of anti-terrorists(who may in fact be terrorists) is called upon. The consortium calls William Kidd. Melodramatic? Maybe,but the full description of Kidd's tale is even more melodramatic. Example; Kidd was an immensely successful and wealthy ship captain who lived on Wall St. in NYC. He undertook this mission because he wanted to be rewarded as a ship captain in the English Royal Navy.Kidd was so desireous of this prize and so sure of the mission success that he signed a ruineous performance bond that would have left him a pauper if he failed. The tale thickens and thickens again. For anyone fimilar with the author Richard Zacks, you know him to be a wizard of research and a delight to read. If you have read his book 'An Underground Education' you will not be disappointed here. 'The Pirate Hunter' is not only the story of William Kidd,but what the world was like that Kidd lived in....the 'feel' of it. You will know what I mean by reading just the first several pages of the Prologue.....the identifaction of pirate Gilliam. Everyone know something about Capt. Kidd and his pirate treasure but Zacks will tell you about a pirate world meshed to smoke filled government back rooms that reads like today's headlines.

Rating:
Summary: A good read
Review: This is a great summer book. Fun to read and good subject. Lots of information that somehow was left out of our history class in school. If you ever played pirates as a kid, or enjoy history, you will like this book. Well done.

Rating:
Summary: A-Okay for this one...
Review: I truly enjoyed this book. It proposes that William Kidd
was not a pirate but a victim of special circumstance
that led to his execution on the banks of the Thames.
Abandoned by the very people who supported his royal
commission to capture pirates and enemy ships, Captain Kidd
left New York as a privateer and returned three years later
as England's most wanted pirate. His case, as the author
suggests, is one of character assasination through rumor,
misinformation, and the twisting of facts. This book will
tell you so much about the seafaring trade in the 17th century,
how spices, dry goods, precious metals, jewels, and human lives
hang precariously over the likelihood of a pirate raid on
the high seas. There are many characters in the book, but
the author gives helpful references in case you have forgotten
who and how they figure in the story. the reader will read about
17th century protocol between ships, be it to ascertain
superior firepower among friendly ships or as a ruse for
capture. The storytelling is easy and flowing. It held my
interest very much and I can recommend it to those who
love history and piracy.

Rating:
Summary: A-Okay for this one...
Review: I truly enjoyed this book. It proposes that William Kidd
was not a pirate but a victim of special circumstance
that led to his [death] on the banks of the Thames.
Abandoned by the very people who supported his royal
commission to capture pirates and enemy ships, Captain Kidd
left New York as a privateer and returned three years after
as England's most wanted pirate. His case, as the author
suggests, is one of character assasination through rumor,
misinformation, and the twisting of facts. This book will
tell you so much about the seafaring trade in the 17th century,
how spices, dry goods, precious metals, jewels, and human lives
hang precariously over the likelihood of a pirate raid on
the high seas. There are many characters in the book, but
the author gives helpful references in case you have forgotten
who and how they figure in the story. The author touches on
17th century protocol between ships, be it to ascertain
superior firepower among friendly ships or as a ruse for
capture. The storytelling is easy and flowing. It held my
interest very much and I can recommend it to those who
love history and piracy.

Rating:
Summary: History turned around.
Review: Zacks' Pirate Hunter is a lively account of the story of Captain Kidd. This book is hard to put down as it reads like an adventure novel. Captain Kidd is a pirate hunter who through assorted events gets branded a pirate and is hunted and tried for piracy. Meanwhile his adversary Robert Culliford who is a true pirate comes out almost smelling like a rose! This is an excellent telling of this true pirate story. This book is recommended for anyone who enjoys a good adventure yarn!