Under the Black Ensign (Stories from the Golden Age) (Historical Fiction Short Stories Collection) - Softcover

L. Ron Hubbard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1592123392 ISBN 13: 9781592123391

Publisher: Galaxy Press, 2008

Synopsis

Long before Captain Jack Sparrow raised hell with the Pirates of the Caribbean, Tom Bristol sailed to hell and back Under the Black Ensign. That’s where the real adventure begins.

Bristol’s had plenty of bad luck in his life. Press-ganged into serving aboard a British vessel, he’s felt the cruel captain’s lash on his back. Then, freed from his servitude by pirates, his good fortune immediately takes a bad turn … the buccaneers accuse him of murder and leave him to die on a deserted island. Now all he has left are a few drops of water, a gun and just enough bullets to put himself out of his misery.

But Bristol’s luck is about to change. Finding himself in the unexpected company of a fiery woman, he rescues a slave ship, unsheathes his sword, raises a pirate flag of his own and sets off to make love and war on the open seas in this nautical adventure.

In his early twenties, Hubbard led the two-and-a-half-month, five-thousand-mile Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition. He followed that with the West Indies Mineralogical Expedition near San Juan, Puerto Rico, in which he completed the island’s first mineralogical survey as an American territory. It was during these two journeys that Hubbard became an expert on the Caribbean’s colorful history—an expertise he drew on to write stories like Under the Black Ensign.

“A riveting tale of sailing ships, piracy and the high seas.” —Midwest Book Review

* A National Indie Excellence Award Winner

About this title

About the Author

With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 230 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most acclaimed and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and & 40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard.

Reviews

Errol Flynn would feel quite at home in Hubbard's ripping yarn of Caribbean piracy in the year 1680, first published in 1935. Press-ganged into the Royal Navy, Tom Bristol faces 100 lashes just as buccaneers attack the British man-o'-war on which he reluctantly serves. Tom soon realizes the pirate life is for him, a life replete with swordplay, maroonings and naval battles with ships lost in the roiling fog of cannon smoke. Supplementing the illustrated text are an extensive glossary of nautical and period terms, an essay entitled L. Ron Hubbard and American Pulp Fiction, and a foreword by Kevin J. Anderson on the golden age of pulp fiction. The man who would go on to found Scientology never achieves the visceral intensity of such fellow pulp writers as Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, but he conducts his minisaga in just the fashion readers of the era expected. (Sept.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Galaxy Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1592123392
• ISBN 13: 9781592123391
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 121