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    Swashbuckling Tales of West Pirates
    Swashbuckling Tales of West Pirates
    Swashbuckling Tales of West Pirates
    Ebook88 pages49 minutes

    Swashbuckling Tales of West Pirates

    By Peter James Martin

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    About this ebook

    Well known in the city of Bristol for his Pirate Walks around the harbourside, Peter James Martin’s enduring fascination with the seafaring rogues inspired him to produce this book of swashbuckling tales. Weaving together colourful folklore and intriguing facts, the collection of stories about some of the West Country of England’s most notorious characters reveals this area’s connections to the Spice Routes and the Americas thanks to pirates such as Blackbeard and Barefoot Mary. Exotic harems, seasick leopards, hidden treasure and brutal deaths abound, and those, if we are to believe Pirate Pete, are just the bits that are true.

    You might not have thought of the likes of Sir Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake as pirates previously, but as Peter’s tales show, there’s a thin line between the Crown’s lawfully employed privateers and bloodthirsty pirates, and the distinction generally depends on whether you’re on the sending or receiving end of cannon fire. Illustrated by original artwork, it’s a rollicking romp through Bristol’s dark maritime past, packed with adventures to thrill all ages.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPeter James Martin
    Release dateMay 4, 2012
    ISBN9781476476322
    Swashbuckling Tales of West Pirates
    Author

    Peter James Martin

    Peter James Martin, a.k.a Peter the Pirate, is legendary in the UK’s West Country for his pirate walks around Bristol’s famous harbourside. These walks attract 10,000 visitors per year and have inspired him to write down the stories and to dig further into the rich vein of history that runs through the West Country region. Bristol’s favourite salty sea-dog has roamed the globe in search of his swashbuckling roots. Read his first collection of spine-tingling stories in: Swashbuckling Tales of West Country Pirates

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      Book preview

      Swashbuckling Tales of West Pirates - Peter James Martin

      Swashbuckling Tales of West Country Pirates

      By

      Peter James Martin

      SMASHWORDS EDITION

      *****

      PUBLISHED BY

      Peter James Martin on Smashwords

      Swashbuckling Tales of West Country Pirates

      ©Copyright 2009 Bristol Maritime Heritage BS4 1DF

      Smashwords Edition

      License Notes

      Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. If you enjoyed this book, please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author.

      Thank you for your support.

      ****

      The West Country played an important role in the slave trade, which had strong links to piracy and may be one of the reasons why this region seems to have been rife with the bloodthirsty seafarers, as the following tales will show.

      Table of Contents

      Chapter One – Lord Berkeley the Viking

      Chapter Two – Blackbeard the Merciless

      Chapter Three – Governor Rogers the Seadog

      Chapter Four – William Dampier the Buccaneer

      Chapter Five – Long John Silver the Scoundrel

      Chapter Six – Sir John Hawkins the Privateer

      Chapter Seven – Sir Francis Drake the Circumnavigator

      Chapter Eight – Sir Walter Raleigh the Treasure-seeker

      Chapter Nine – Lord Stuckley the Lion Tamer

      Chapter Ten – Lady Killigrew the Temptress

      Chapter Eleven – Bonny Anne Bonney & Barefoot Mary

      Chapter Twelve – Admiral de Pellow the Avenger

      Chapter Thirteen – Admiral Murat Rais the hostage-taker

      Chapter Fourteen – Sir Hugh de Marisco the Assassin

      Chapter Fifteen – Captain John Cabot the Adventurer

      Chapter One

      Lord Berkeley the Viking

      Vikings were the pirates of Scandinavia, crossing the seas in search of land to loot. One of the greatest Vikings was the descendant of King Harding of Hardanger, Norway. He joined forces with fellow Viking William the Conquer to invade southern England from Normandy in 1066.

      As a reward for his loyalty and support, Harding was appointed Reeve, or Governor, of the castle at Bristol – the second largest in the new kingdom after the tower of London. He set about fortifying it with stone brought up the River Avon.

      The castle was in a prominent position on high ground surrounded by the Avon and Frome rivers on three sides and was to be used as a military base to control the Welsh hoards attempting to come over the border into England, as well as being the point from which Richard de Clare, the second earl of Pembroke, would invade Ireland with an army of 200.

      In 1102 the family supported Baldwin I, the king of Jerusalem, in capturing Jaffa from the mighty Saladin in the Crusades and were awarded Crusaders crosses to sport on their family Coat of Arms. They lived on a street outside Bristol’s city walls, which they named Baldwin Street after the crusader king.

      In 1154, as a reward for protecting the young prince who was later to become King Henry II, the Hardings were granted 50 huge West Country estates stretching from Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire to Berkeley Square, London. Robert Fitz Harding became Lord Berkeley. With the vast income produced by their manors, the newly titled family set about building St. Mary Redcliffe and St. Augustine’s Abbey from Dundry quarry stone. The Berkeley coat of arms can still be seen on the Norman archway.

      By 1240, the Berkeleys had turned their attention to expanding the port of Bristol by building new quays and altering the course of the River Frome to run through the city centre.

      In the 16th century, King Henry VIII visited Gloucestershire and took a fancy to Lady Mary Berkeley, by whom he fathered two illegitimate sons (see Lord Stuckley the Lion-tamer for more on this).

      In 1597, together with descendants of the Dukes of Normandy, the de Clifford family, the Berkeleys decided to return to their marauding heritage to pay off gambling debts. They took a large fleet and 4,000 men to invade the Portuguese Azores, an archipelago of islands off the African coast. There they planned

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