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A READING LIFE
The refuge of radicalism
By Caroline Leavitt | June 27, 2004
There's a Jefferson Airplane lyric that goes "We are all outlaws in the eyes of
America." It's belted out with a catchy exhilaration. We know they don't mean
the denizens of Alcatraz, but outlaws of a more iconic kind: people who have
been mistreated or neglected and see no recourse but to fight back to achieve
something better. In truth, rebels with good causes. And don't we all sort of
like and admire this kind of outsider?
Well, I know I do.
Let's start with pirates. I've had a fascination with them ever since a
ninth-grade teacher put Richard Hughes's "A High Wind in Jamaica," a novel about
proper British kids who betray the pirates who rescue them, in my hands. So it's
no wonder I picked up the fascinating "Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates
in the Golden Age," by Marcus Rediker (Beacon Press, $24.) Right from the first
pages -- a hanging in which a real-life charmer of a pirate reties the knot of
his own noose -- I'm hooked. Pirates, says Rediker, have been misrepresented.
Most pirates were sailors who were so abused by their vicious captains that
mutiny seemed the only answer and piracy the logical choice. And in what was
known as the golden age of piracy, circa 1716-26, who wouldn't want to join up?
Egalitarian to the extreme, pirates embraced "outcasts of all nations," people
of color, and cross-dressing women. They had their own form of self-government
and were especially concerned with all the issues that had been ignored when
they were sailing under their country's flag -- health, safety, and security.
Yes, they did steal, but unlike their previous captains, pirates didn't bilk
people of their wages or their food. No one was threatened with the
cat-o'-nine-tails or worked to the bone. Instead, pirates believed in making
merry as soon as the work was done. Yes, they did murder, but out of necessity
rather than a thirst for blood. If they hungered for gold, it was because gold
could ensure a better, easier, and happier life, and when they got it, they
divided it -- and all plunder -- equally, and if a pirate dared to take more
than his fair share, he was put off the ship. Pirates, contrary to what society
thought about them, represented themselves as honest men.
Oh, and honest women, too. One of the more astonishing chapters is about the
female buccaneers Anne Bonny and Mary Read. Read became a pirate out of economic
need, Bonny because she needed to quench her thirst for adventure. Ferocious and
fearless, both were captured pregnant, and while their male compatriots cowered
below deck, Bonny and Read fired on their captors. Caught, tried, and sentenced
to hang, Bonny cursed her pirate lover, saying that although she was sorry to
see him hanged, if he had fought "like a man, he need not have been hang'd like
a dog."
It was only when piracy became more of a threat to global trade that the big
guns were called in to stop the maritime mayhem, and virtual war on pirates was
declared. Now, of course, pirates are more often drug runners, and there's
nothing egalitarian about their ruthlessness, but these don't seem to be the
kind of pirates Rediker would write about, or the kind I'd particularly want to
read about. Instead, Rediker's book is enormous fun, swashbuckling through myths
and firsthand accounts, and alive with his obvious respect for pirates.
. . .
Caroline Leavitt's latest novel is "Girls in Trouble." She can be reached at
www.carolineleavitt.com
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company
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