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Under The Black Flag Summary

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David Cordingly is a maritime historian and the author of many historical pirate books. Cordingly’s book Under the Black Flag shows how the pirates of fictional works have changed from the reality of pirates’ lifestyles. The book succeeds in describing the life of pirate crews along with documented evidence as proof to make the book fascinating and full of interesting information. Under the Black Flag explains how the pirates in fictional works may have evolved based on events that actually happened in the pirates’ world. Cordingly takes the usual images of pirates from fictional stories and reveals the historical events that made the image well-known. On the topic of buried treasure Cordingly states: The pirate who seems to have been largely …show more content…

Cordingly talks of movies based on works of fiction, saying “There is nothing wrong with this….But the fact remains that the lives of some of the real pirates and the men who hunted them down are as fascinating and as full of drama as any of the works of fiction” (177). Cordingly is fine with letting fictional pieces be exaggerated for the story, but does not want the true stories to be forgotten. First hand sources from journals, letters, court records, and other written sources are used to verify the events proving the points of the book. In the first chapter, Cordingly discusses the written records describing pirates’ attire. One story reports, “when he fought his last sea battle in 1722, the pirate captain Bartholomew Roberts was, according to Captain Johnston, ‘dressed in a rich crimson damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his hat, a gold chain round his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it’”(12). The book also uses excerpts from and refers to popular fictional pieces for comparison with the facts given. “The effect of Treasure Island on our perception of pirates cannot be overestimated. Stevenson [author of Treasure Island] linked pirates forever with maps, black schooners, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen with parrots on their

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