A classic children's adventure of icy seas and cold-blooded pirates, wolves, mermaids and the bravery of one girl determined to save her sister The cold bites and the sea lashes in this page-turning adventure on the ice seas. No one but ten-year-old Siri dares to face treacherous sailors, hungry wolves and the arctic winter to save her younger sister from the dreaded Captain Whitehead and his ice sea pirates.
Lords of the Sea revises our understanding of the epic political, economic, and cultural transformations of Japan’s late medieval period (ca. 1300–1600) by shifting the conventional land-based analytical framework to one centered on the perspectives of seafarers who, though usually dismissed as "pirates," thought of themselves as sea lords. Over the course of these centuries, Japan’s sea lords became maritime magnates who wielded increasing amounts of political and economic authority by developing autonomous maritime domains that operated outside the auspices of state authority. They played key roles in the operation of networks linking Japan to the rest of the world, and their protection businesses, shipping organizations, and sea tenure practices spread their influence across the waves to the continent, shaping commercial and diplomatic relations with Korea and China. Japan's land-based authorities during this time not only came to accept the autonomy of "pirates" but also competed to sponsor sea-lord bands who could administer littoral estates, fight sea battles, protect shipping, and carry trade. In turn, prominent sea-lord families expanded their dominion by shifting their locus of service among several patrons and by appropriating land-based rhetorics of lordship, which forced authorities to recognize them as legitimate lords over sea-based domains. By the end of the late medieval period, the ambitions, tactics, and technologies of sea-lord mercenary bands proved integral to the naval dimensions of Japan’s sixteenth-century military revolution. Sea lords translated their late medieval autonomy into positions of influence in early modern Japan and helped make control of the seas part of the ideological foundations of the state.
"No cryin' No dyin' No brushin' yer teeth! No stealin' No squealin' No eatin' Parrot Pete! No nappin' No scrappin' No wimpy moans or groans! No veggies No wedgies No disobeyin' Cap'n Bones!" It's the pirate code! Do you pledge? Do you agree? Then open this book to join the crew on the Dragonfish of Doom and become a pirate of the sea!
Outpirating the pirates with one of the most interesting men alive: Max Hardberger recounts his adventures repossessing ships and sneaking them out of lawless, third-world countries, often under threat of death or imprisonment. His journeys lead him from corrupt ports in the Caribbean to the ice-bound docks of Vladivostok. His adventures in rescuing ships pit him against a rogue's gallery of antagonists, including Haitian rebels, modern-day Caribbean pirates and Russian mobsters. • Capt. Max Hardberger uses every trick, tool and tactic at his disposal to right wrongs and out-pirate pirates in this action-packed expose of the seedy underworld of international shipping. As a professional ship extractor, he risks death and imprisonment in dangerous third-world ports to steal ships from modern buccaneers and corrupt governments and deliver them back to their rightful owners. In the course of his adventures, he's had to outwit resourceful crime families, subdue armed soldiers, and turn the tables on clever con artists. He's escaped imprisonment in Venezuela and avoided death at the hands of the Russian mafia. Because Max shuns the use of force, the ingenious methods he must use to accomplish his missions are the stuff of legend he's employed a witch doctor in Haiti, tricked armed guards off a ship in Honduras, and rented a brothel in Mexico, all to thwart the designs of ship-thieves. Seized! is an intense, fast-paced window on the underbelly of ocean shipping, where all power comes from the barrel of a gun, and the only law is the law of survival. -- "Max Hardberger, maritime repo man extraordinaire ... Using a combination of ingenuity, stealth and good old-fashioned derring-do, he has made his name retaking vessels which have been hijacked or which, through local corruption, are impounded by authorities hungry for bribes." • -- Sunday Express • "With most people, the longer you spend talking to them, the more normal they appear. With Hardberger, the reverse applies. Just when you think you've heard it all, he comes up with something wilder ... Over the years, he's distracted crews with prostitutes and witch doctors, bribed officials to look the other way, conned Russian mobsters and hidden from naval radar by riding out thunderstorms at sea; he's even taken a 10,000-tonne freighter out of Haiti while the 2004 revolution was going on around him." • -- Guardian • "Required reading, fascinating. Maritime Repo Man Hardberger does it tough; his life is flown by the seat of his pants, or shipped, much like his profession ... This book delivers." • -- Paul Carter, bestselling author of Don't Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs and This Is Not A Drill • "In this heart-stopping account of his work recovering stolen (or otherwise illegally-seized) ships from 'hellhole' ports, commercial captain Hardberger proves himself tough as a tank and articulate as a poet ... [He] has a seafarer's gift for atmospheric storytelling, layering details to create a sense of place, history, and foreboding ... Hardberger's escapades make undeniably fun reading." • -- Publishers Weekly • "One of the strengths of Hardberger's book is his prose, which is lucid, entertaining and dramatic." • -- Daniel Sekulich, author of Terror on the Seas: True Tales of Modern Day Pirates
How is it possible for six men to take a Liberian-flagged oil tanker hostage and negotiate a huge pay out for the return of its crew and 2.2 million barrels of crude oil? In his gripping new book, Jatin Dua answers this question by exploring the unprecedented upsurge in maritime piracy off the coast of Somalia in the twenty-first century. Taking the reader inside pirate communities in Somalia, onboard multinational container ships, and within insurance offices in London, Dua connects modern day pirates to longer histories of trade and disputes over protection. In our increasingly technological world, maritime piracy represents not only an interruption, but an attempt to insert oneself within the world of oceanic trade. Captured at Sea moves beyond the binaries of legal and illegal to illustrate how the seas continue to be key sites of global regulation, connectivity, and commerce today.
You won't need a bottle of rum to enjoy the exploits of these famous and fearsome swashbucklers. There's a galleon's worth of action in this awesome exploration of pirates--their weapons, adventures, legends, language, and lost treasures. See what life was really like aboard a pirate ship; Meet Blackbeard, Calico Jack, and a host of other villainous adventurers as they sail through the high seas in search of plunder; Learn about their ships, flags, and weaponry, from cutlasses to blunderbusses, sangrenels to musketoons. If you are looking for exotic desert islands and sword-wielding desperadoes, they are here, but you will also learn what life was really like for the scourge of the seas: what motivated them, what kept them together, the hardships they had to endure, and the adventures they sought
Highly illustrated with colour images and specially commissioned maps throughout, this is a unique exploration of the pirate world. Often romanticised in print and on the silver screen, real-life pirates were a brutal menace that plagued the high seas. In this book, Angus Konstam separates myth from reality, tracing the history of piracy through the centuries, from the pirates who plagued the Ancient Egyptians to the Viking raids and on to the era of privateers. He discusses the so-called 'Golden Age of Piracy' and colourful characters such as Blackbeard and Captain Kidd, before examining the West's initial encounters with Eastern pirates off the Chinese coast and the phenomenon of the modern pirate.
Michael Scott Moore, a journalist and the author of Sweetness and Blood, incorporates personal narrative and rigorous investigative journalism in this profound and revelatory memoir of his three-year captivity by Somali pirates—a riveting,thoughtful, and emotionally resonant exploration of foreign policy, religious extremism, and the costs of survival. In January 2012, having covered a Somali pirate trial in Hamburg for Spiegel Online International—and funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting—Michael Scott Moore traveled to the Horn of Africa to write about piracy and ways to end it. In a terrible twist of fate, Moore himself was kidnapped and subsequently held captive by Somali pirates. Subjected to conditions that break even the strongest spirits—physical injury, starvation, isolation, terror—Moore’s survival is a testament to his indomitable strength of mind. In September 2014, after 977 days, he walked free when his ransom was put together by the help of several US and German institutions, friends, colleagues, and his strong-willed mother. Yet Moore’s own struggle is only part of the story: The Desert and the Sea falls at the intersection of reportage, memoir, and history. Caught between Muslim pirates, the looming threat of Al-Shabaab, and the rise of ISIS, Moore observes the worlds that surrounded him—the economics and history of piracy; the effects of post-colonialism; the politics of hostage negotiation and ransom; while also conjuring the various faces of Islam—and places his ordeal in the context of the larger political and historical issues. A sort of Catch-22 meets Black Hawk Down, The Desert and the Sea is written with dark humor, candor, and a journalist’s clinical distance and eye for detail. Moore offers an intimate and otherwise inaccessible view of life as we cannot fathom it, brilliantly weaving his own experience as a hostage with the social, economic, religious, and political factors creating it. The Desert and the Sea is wildly compelling and a book that will take its place next to titles like Den of Lions and Even Silence Has an End.
This is a short story about a man backpacking through South East Asia. Trying to find a simpler life. Years pass as he has now become the major drug smuggler in the Banda Sea. With that comes trouble too. The pirates and criminals in the are see him as their main threat to the drug smuggling business. But it's just a game to him with his modified Bombardier 415. The top of the range amphibious aircraft or flying boat. This is all happening as the reader is trying to piece together the untold missing years of the story.
