Arcturus

"In honest service, there are commonly low wages and hard labour; in this -- plenty, satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power. Who would not balance credit on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sour look or two on choking? No, a merry life and a short one, that's my motto." Bartholomew Roberts, Welsh pirate, 1722 In 1724, Captain Charles Johnson published A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pirates. In it, he created the modern image of the cut-throats who sailed under the Jolly Roger and gave mythical status to Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, Bartholomew Roberts, "Calico" Jack Rackham, Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Pirates: An Illustrated History looks at the reality behind these legends and reveals a world often as gripping as anything acted out by Errol Flynn. It portrays the pirates, their weapons, their ships, their victims and their hideouts, including the "pirate capital city" of Port Royal on Jamaica, once infamous as the "wickedest city in the world."