Book Review
Booty: Girl Pirates on the High Seas
by Sara Lorimer
Booty is the first book to turn to if you’re interested in girl pirates.
In Brief...
We liked:
- Easy to read
- Short but in-depth biographies
- Well researched
- Inclusion of pirates from across the world, including Asia and the Middle East
- Broad time span, including women from the 9th century to the 20th centuries
Things we weren’t so keen on:
- We’re still trying to find something...
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Our Review
Booty is the first book to turn to if you’re interested in girl pirates. Sara Lorimer’s breezy style, short biographies, and excellent sense of what’s important gives the reader an easily navigable run down of the most important female pirates known.
Of course, the problem with writing a book on girl pirates is that there weren’t that many of them. The most important was probably Cheng I Sao. Also known as “Mrs. Cheng”, she took over a pirate confederation in the South China Sea that included more than 50,000 pirates and thousands of ships. She was also one of the few pirates that successfully “retired”.
Lorimer’s books covers some of the more well-known pirates too, most notably Mary Read, Anne Bonny, Rachel Wall, and Grace O’Malley. Perusing this book, you’ll find out how:
- Sadie the Goat ended leaving New York City’s “Bloody Fourth” Ward to become a notorious pirate;
- How a Viking King created a North Seas pirate by changing the rules on her arranged marriage;
- How a scheming ship’s officer turned a brave battle-hardened girl sailor into pirate captain cruising the
- Atlantic Coasts of England, Spain, France as well as the Mediterranean Sea;
- The name of perhaps the most successful pirate in Indian history was mysteriously never recorded.
Lorimer ends her book with a refreshing tour through the “Classic Pirate Lifestyle”, including a recipe for Turtle Soup!
Readers can’t go wrong with this book and we highly recommend for every pirate library.
