Jerry Smith's Reviews > Born to Be Hanged: The Epic Story of the Gentlemen Pirates Who Raided the South Seas, Rescued a Princess, and Stole a Fortune

I followed a number of reviewers who raved about this book and it was certainly interesting and an amazing series of adventures covering 17th century piracy on the Spanish Main, which is always going to be a fertile ground for such tales. I was very unfamiliar with this period, and location, of history so there was much to learn here. This story largely comes from chroniclers who travelled with the pirates (or buccaneers, or privateers as they preferred to be called) and they basically sailed around the Caribbean (and further afield) seeking treasure ships to raid and on-shore spanish settlements to plunder for booty.

There is quite the cast of characters here, and the book is very approachable in terms of the writing, although with so many characters it can be a challenge to keep them straight. It seems that pirate ships were surprisingly democratic. The captain/leader was essentially elected and although he could be deposed in what could be, and was herein, described as a mutiny, it was basically a leader being voted out of office. The crews were there for the rewards that could be gathered from their nefarious activities and so members of the crew tended to come and go (as well as being press-ganged) when their monetary needs were satisfied. It is very interesting. I had read about piracy on the high seas in other works and this is a common thread which is perhaps not what one would expect.

This is a swashbuckling tale for sure but for some reason I found it somewhat less engaging than I expected. I won't give too much away but I think the title is somewhat misleading. It is clear that the activities of pirates were a gray area as far as the English were concerned. If the "privateers" were attacking the Spanish they were all for it, at least until a peace treaty was concluded between England and Spain at which point the Spanish put a lot of pressure on Charles II to bring the piracy to an end. He seems to have been half hearted, at best, in obliging. Indeed, the English seemed more than happy to take intelligence from the pirates as it related to Spanish endeavors in building an empire.

This next remark is probably unfair but I must confess to finding the stories of the battles somewhat hard to fully believe as told from the journals. We are given countless stories of how a relatively small force of buccaneers was able to overpower a vastly superior force of spaniards, sometimes at sea, often times in fortified defenses on land and we keep hearing about the prowess of the english marksman and the obvious ineptitude of the Spanish opposition who seemed to be incapable of hitting water if they fell out of a boat. I don't doubt that the buccaneers were professional, battle hardened crews but there is a credibility stretch here for me.

However, it is an interesting and compelling tale of adventure on the high seas but one must remember these men were essentially outlaws, seeking to make a fortune in plundered gold and silver, and being quite successful. They doubtless went through significant hardship in this quest and this is brought home in the narrative. It is just that, to me, sometimes this sounds more like a boys own tale of swashbuckling yarns and I can't help wondering if, sometimes, the stories are exaggerated or embellished by those compiling the original sources from which this narrative is drawn.