Steel

AUTHOR’S NOTE

My pirates aren’t movie pirates. I did a lot of research on the real pirates of the Caribbean in the early 1700s, and got a lot of ideas from that research. But my pirates aren’t quite real historical pirates, either. We have lots of evidence that some women dressed as men and sailed with pirates (Anne Bonny and Mary Read are the best-known real-world examples), but no evidence that any of them were ever captains of pirate ships, at least in the Caribbean during the so-called golden age of piracy. (We do know of women pirate captains in other places, like Ireland and Southeast Asia.) And while pirates did capture slave ships traveling the route between the western coast of Africa and the Caribbean, they were more likely to sell the slaves themselves than they were to set them free, as the captain and crew of the Diana do. On the other hand, we also have evidence of former slaves like Abe serving on pirate crews. Grandy Nanny was a real person, one of Jamaica’s national heroes, but she was active a bit later than I have her here. And while Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Stede Bonnet, Sam Bellamy, and all the pirates I name were alive at the same time, they were probably never all having a drink together in Nassau at the same time. But I couldn’t resist.

We know about most of the famous pirates because they were captured or killed, witnesses interviewed, and their stories recorded in great detail for the court cases. There were hundreds of less famous pirates whom we know nothing about, simply because they were never caught. They either accepted pardons and settled into law-abiding lives, or they sailed into the sunset with their booty and retired. While we don’t know of any women pirate captains in the Caribbean, I’d like to believe that’s simply because if there was someone much like Captain Marjory Cooper, perhaps she was never caught.

Thanks go to Zrinka Znidarcic for answering questions about sword restoration. To Walter Jon Williams for the extensive notes on all things regarding sailing in the eighteenth century. All my errors on that topic are mine alone. To Gary Copeland and the coaches and students of Northern Colorado Fencers, whose successes in national and international competition gave me the idea for Jill in the first place. And to my fellow Defenders of the White Scarf of the Outlands, for the camaraderie and the love of rapier combat.