A witty, informative and highly entertaining guide to how to be a pirate, combining historical accuracy with a humorous eye in an irreverent but revealing look at the world of piracy and buccaneering.

Pirates have a well-earned bad reputation, and this book invites the reader to join their ranks. Here you will discover everything the aspiring pirate needs to know in order to join a crew and start – and possibly end – a life of adventure, plunder and glory. The hopeful initiate is educated on all manner of piratical concerns: the history of this dishonourable tradition stretching back to ancient Greece and Rome; essentials of language and dress; notably dastardly pirate role models from around the world, including Blackbeard and Captain Kidd, but also some less well known, such as Eustace the Monk and Anne Bonny and Mary Read; what to expect of life at sea; the best weapons to have; how to capture a prize on the high seas, and much more.

Author Stephen Turnbull has studied the archives and travelled to pirate locations around the world in researching this fictionalized account, written as a pirate’s training manual for a young recruit, but solidly grounded in fact, based on the year 1793, a golden age for piracy. His lively and engaging manual provides answers to all the questions you may have wondered about – did they really walk the plank (probably not); keep parrots; bury treasure and mark it with an X on the map? And you may be surprised to learn what their usual style of hat actually was.

Illustrated throughout with contemporary artifacts, documents and prints, as well as modern reconstructions, this light-hearted but informative guide will captivate readers young and old, and covers with authority every aspect of what it was really like to be a pirate.