Blackbeard and other pirates of the Atlantic coast

by Nancy Roberts

They were bold, arrogant, brutal. They strode the rolling deck of a ship more easily than the tame streets of a town. They were wealthy -- some beyond the wildest dreams of the governors and kings who first supported them, then pursued them. They were the pirates of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and they terrorized shipping lanes and coastal villages around the world. The pirates in this book sailed far and wide, but all made their mark on the Atlantic coast. Some made their home there, such as the notorious Blackbeard, who anchored his ship off Ocracoke Island and lived for a time in Bath, North Carolina. Others put ashore just long enough to change seafaring history, such as the rakish "Calico Jack" Rackham, whose chance meeting in Providence, Rhode Island, with a spirited redheaded girl would give the world another legendary pirate -- the beautiful Anne Bonny. Though popular culture has created an image of a "typical" pirate, plying his trade with dash and vigor beneath