DWD's Reviews

  Published in 2007 by Random House Audio Read by John H. Mayer Duration: 13 hours, 26 minutes. Unabridged. Stephan Talty writes a lot about pirates in Empire of Blue Water. Not modern pirates, but the swashbuckling pirates that most Americans imagine when they hear the word "pirate". The modern personification of that word is Johnny Depp's Captain Jack Sparrow. In the late 1600s, the personification of that word was a Welshman named Henry Morgan. Morgan was technically not a pirate. He was a privateer. If you were in the Spanish government, there was not much of a difference between a privateer and a pirate, except that privateers came with an extra level of annoyance.  17th century England did not have the money to expand the Royal Navy enough to confront Spain. Spain was more than 200 years into looting the Americas and had a very, very large navy to protect that loot as it came across the Atlantic to the home country.  England did have something that Spain did not ha...

Published in 2009. The year is 1665 in Pirate Latitudes and the English colony of Jamaica is surrounded by a constellation of Spanish colonies. The Caribbean is in a near-perpetual state of war as English privateers attack Spanish treasure galleons hauling literally tons of New World silver and gold to Spain. Charles Hunter is the captain of an English privateer ship named Cassandra (or, he is simply a pirate when Spain and England are not at war). He has learned that Spain has a fortress on a remote island called Matanceros to protect ships that attempt, but fail to make the trip to Spain. They cannot return to their port of origin alone. In fact, the less time they are alone and exposed to privateers, the better. So, Spain has built an impregnable fortress to protect such ships.  Michael Crichton (1942-2008) At least it is supposed to be impregnable. Hunter is very sure that he has figured out a way that the perfect team can infiltrate the fort and then take the ship th...