Wreckwatch Magazine, focused on stories of the world’s greatest lost shipwrecks, history, archaeology, treasure reviewed The Life and Tryals of the Gentleman Pirate, Major Stede Bonnet.
Portions of the review are included below, but visit the link below for the full review. While you’re there, check out the December 2020 pirates special issue is out (138 pages of mayhem) and sign up for your FREE digital subscription!
From: https://www.wreckwatchmag.com/post/mad-bad-a-total-gent-the-demons-of-the-pirate-stede-bonnet
Mad, Bad & a Total Gent: the Demons of the Pirate Stede Bonnet
JEREMY MOSS
The Life and Tryals of the Gentleman Pirate, Major Stede
Köehlerbooks, 2020. 206 pages
Paperback £13.55/$12.90
By Sean Kingsley
Of all the misfits who went on the account in the golden age of piracy, none made as little sense as Stede Bonnet. Men, and the odd woman, took to the high seas for the cash or to escape the chains of social injustice. Many pirates jumped ship from navies to get away from the shackles of harsh colonial life, beatings and being press ganged.
Bonnet was no such creature. He was born in Barbados in 1688 with a silver spoon in his mouth. The Bonnets made a fortune out of the triangular slave trade that saw West African slaves shipped to the Caribbean in horrendous numbers to fuel the sugar revolution. Major Stede’s family owned over 400 acres of sugarcane plantations, a townhouse and manor house, two windmills, a cattle-driven mill and 94 slaves.
Well educated, born rich and “a Gentleman of good Reputation” whose family lived like “little sovereigns”, the great mystery surrounding Bonnet is not his achievements as a pirate but why he walked out on the life of Riley in the first place. For a curious and complex character who sailed shoulder to shoulder with Edward Thatch or Teach – Blackbeard – and raked in $5.5 million in ill-gotten gains (in modern value), very little ink has been spilled on Major Stede Bonnet’s life and times and what persuaded him to walk out on his wife, Mary, four children and financial stability. He had it all and lost it all.
Jeremy Moss’s new book lifts the lid on one of piracy’s most fascinating characters. Its three sections robustly cover his movements from hearth to hangman’s noose, his trial and then various appendices, including a table of all the prizes Bonnet seized between June 1717 and October 1718. For a man who outwardly ticked all the pirate boxes (a portfolio of prizes, a bounty on his head, hanging), the morose major has somehow fallen through the cracks of popular history. The Life and Tryals of the Gentleman Pirate, Major Stede is one of only two modern books dedicated to him. Moss restores Bonnet to his rightful place in the pantheon of pirate lords, warts and all. It’s about time…
Read More: https://www.wreckwatchmag.com/post/mad-bad-a-total-gent-the-demons-of-the-pirate-stede-bonnet
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