Book Review Time with Kyndal Kohl

Black Flags, Blue Waters is a nonfiction book about the Golden Age of Piracy, a period from the late 1600s to the early 1700s. This book mainly concerns itself with the pirates that lurked the waters of the Americas. Though the tales of infamously cruel individuals such as Blackbeard and Edward Low are provided, Dolin also provides an insight into the lives of other pirates and, surprise, it is nothing as romantic as Hollywood has made it out to be. This was one of five books I had selected to read for research in my term paper, which will be about the Golden Age of Piracy.

Pirates didn’t take much care to document their day-to-day lives, and what has been recorded can be seen as heavily biased, especially in the case of Cotton Mather. Mather would be the equivalent of a televangelist of today’s era, with his grandiosity and holier-than-thou mentality. Dolin does a wonderful job providing the anecdotes of several pirates, one right after another, and it was a pleasure to take notes between the margins. I think part of the joy of being a history major is looking into our past with a sense of horror and curiosity. If you delight in the gruesome details of pirating, this might be the book for you.

One might know the name of Edward Low, arguably one of the most sadistic mariners to sail the Seven Seas. In terms of cruelty, he would rank higher than Blackbeard. Through accounts of his crew, we know of all the tortures that Low subjected his captives. Low had a penchant for cutting off the ears, noses and flesh of his prisoners, forcing them to eat it; if he didn’t cut off the ears and nose, he would often slash the face and slit the nostrils. Horridly, he told one of the survivors, “He would do the like to all he meets.” Sometime in the 1720s, Edward Low disappeared from historical record.