Pirates, Privateers, and Rebel Raiders of the Carolina Coast. (Book Reviews).

Pirates, Privateers, and Rebel Raiders of the Carolina Coast. By Lindley S. Butler. (Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. Pp. xvi, 275. Paper, $15.95, ISBN 0-8078-4863-8; cloth, $29.95, ISBN 0-8078-2553-0.)

This book consists of short biographies of eight seafarers who plied the coastal waters of North Carolina between roughly 1715 and 1865. Two of the subjects sailed in 1717 and 1718, during the golden age of piracy: the almost mythic Edward Teach, also known as Blackbeard, who terrorized the merchant ships of the Caribbean and North America (and whose sunken vessel, the Queen Anne's Revenge, has, it seems, recently been found near Beaufort, North Carolina); and his consort, the Barbados gentleman-turned-freebooter Stede Bonnet, who was hanged for his transgressions in Charleston, South Carolina. Two more of Butler's subjects distinguished themselves in the War of 1812: Otway Burns, one of North Carolina's most famous privateering captains, and Johnston Blakeley, one of the Old North State's most renowned naval captains. The final four commanded at sea during the Civil War: James W. Cooke, North Carolina's highest-ranking Confederate naval officer; John N. Maffitt, perhaps the most successful of the Confederate blockade runners; John Taylor Wood, a charismatic pioneer of naval commando tactics; and James I. Waddell, commanding officer of the last of the great Confederate cruisers, the Shenandoah.

What holds these eight men--and the book--together? Butler explains that all of his subjects were in one way or another "masters of organized theft at sea" (p. xiii). They plundered and pillaged, some legally, some illegally, all by choice. "They were all skilled seamen and decisive, imaginative leaders who possessed a deep thirst for adventure, at times pursuing danger with a reckless abandon" (p. 24). But most importantly they were connected by place: all used the "rivers, estuaries, tidal marshes, great sounds, barrier islands, and offshore Outer Banks" of North Carolina (p. 3). Butler's knowledge of--and love for--these coastal waters gives the book depth and charm.

The biographies are each old-fashioned narrative histories, with all of the attendant strengths and weaknesses: they are engaging, well written, and based on solid archival research; but they are also insufficiently analytical, somewhat narrow, and too inattentive to broad economic, political, social, and cultural issues and themes. Yet by combining two popular traditional genres, biography and maritime history, and by emphasizing drama and adventure, Pirates, Privateers, and Rebel Raiders of the Carolina Coast will surely appeal to many general readers, especially those who already have an interest in its place, people, and topics. This study in regional maritime history is an ideal offering for institutions such as the North Carolina Maritime Museum and might also prove useful to scholars who teach southern and early American history.

MARCUS REDIKER
University of Pittsburgh