Hunting Pirate Heaven: In Search of Lost Pirate Utopias - Softcover

Rushby, Kevin

3.58

86 ratings by Goodreads

9780802716071: Hunting Pirate Heaven: In Search of Lost Pirate Utopias

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802716075 ISBN 13: 9780802716071

Publisher: Walker Books, 2007

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Hitching rides on a motley assortment of freighters, dhows, yachts, and fishing smacks, Kevin Rushby sailed up the east coast of Africa in search of the lost pirate settlements that, in the sixteenth century, were established on the islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean. He turned east to the islands of Comoros and Madagascar, his ultimate objective being to locate the descendants of the infamous sixteenth-century pirates―such as Captain Misson, the legendary French pirate who may have been dreamed up by Daniel Defoe; English sailor-turned-buccaneer Thomas White; and Rhode Islander Thomas Tew―who carved kingdoms for themselves in the remote jungles of northeast Madagascar. As he traveled, Rushby met up with the crackpot dreamers, tough settlers, fighters and failures who live on the coasts and islands now―where forgotten Portuguese forts lie covered in jungle, where some have tried to shoot their way to paradise, and where the ocean can destroy lives and dreams as quickly as men and women create them.

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About the Author:

Kevin Rushby has lived and worked in Sudan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Yemen. He is the author of Children of Cali: Through India in Search of Bandits, the Thug Cult, and the British Raj; Eating the Flowers of Paradise: A Journey Through the Drug Fields of Ethiopia and Yemen; and Chasing the Mountain of Light: Across India on the Trail of the Koh-I-Noor Diamond. He lives in York, England.

From Publishers Weekly:

As difficult as it is to make a good pirate movie, it's almost as hard to write a good nonfiction book about pirates. Rushby (Children of Kali; Eating the Flowers of Paradise; etc.) has overcome the obstacle most writers on the subject come up against (i.e., the impossible task of separating a few hard grains of truth from the clouds of fantasy and wish-fulfillment that have always surrounded the subject) by simply venturing to the places pirates used to call home and looking around. A rough-and-tumble adventurer who's more than willing to poke fun at his na‹vet‚ and inexperience (despite the long list of adventure travel books to his credit), Rushby journeys to the islands around East Africa and Madagascar in search of the old pirate redoubts once hidden there. He follows pirate legends via a mix-and-match collection of hitched rides and lucky encounters, reveling in the loopy nature of the area's Arab, Indian, French and African cultural cross-pollination. Rushby is affable even in the worst circumstances, which serves him well when he's going clubbing in a dangerous part of Mozambique with a former gunrunner, almost getting marooned by a vengeful Scandinavian or losing his passport on the war-torn isle of Anjouan. The journey is more interesting than the destination, as Rushby doesn't find many pirate remains at all: rumors, some ruins and lots of stories. However, Rushby does present an enthralling guide to a little-visited corner of the world, haunted by the ghosts of its pirate past.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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