Under the Black Ensign
A Pirate Adventure of Loot, Love and War on the Open Seas
-
-
5.0 • 6 Ratings
-
-
- $4.99
-
- $4.99
Publisher Description
Long before Captain Jack Sparrow raised hell with the Pirates of the Caribbean, Tom Bristol sailed to hell and back Under the Black Ensign. That’s where the real adventure begins.
Bristol’s had plenty of bad luck in his life. Press-ganged into serving aboard a British vessel, he’s felt the cruel captain’s lash on his back. Then, freed from his servitude by pirates, his good fortune immediately takes a bad turn … the buccaneers accuse him of murder and leave him to die on a deserted island. Now all he has left are a few drops of water, a gun and just enough bullets to put himself out of his misery.
But Bristol’s luck is about to change. Finding himself in the unexpected company of a fiery woman, he rescues a slave ship, unsheathes his sword, raises a pirate flag of his own and sets off to make love and war on the open seas in this nautical adventure.
In his early twenties, Hubbard led the two-and-a-half-month, five-thousand-mile Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition. He followed that with the West Indies Mineralogical Expedition near San Juan, Puerto Rico, in which he completed the island’s first mineralogical survey as an American territory. It was during these two journeys that Hubbard became an expert on the Caribbean’s colorful history—an expertise he drew on to write stories like Under the Black Ensign.
“A riveting tale of sailing ships, piracy and the high seas.” —Midwest Book Review
* A National Indie Excellence Award Winner
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Errol Flynn would feel quite at home in Hubbard's ripping yarn of Caribbean piracy in the year 1680, first published in 1935. Press-ganged into the Royal Navy, Tom Bristol faces 100 lashes just as buccaneers attack the British man-o'-war on which he reluctantly serves. Tom soon realizes the pirate life is for him, a life replete with swordplay, maroonings and naval battles with ships lost in the roiling fog of cannon smoke. Supplementing the illustrated text are an extensive glossary of nautical and period terms, an essay entitled "L. Ron Hubbard and American Pulp Fiction," and a foreword by Kevin J. Anderson on the golden age of pulp fiction. The man who would go on to found Scientology never achieves the visceral intensity of such fellow pulp writers as Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, but he conducts his minisaga in just the fashion readers of the era expected.
Customer Reviews
Excellent character
Like many of the Heros in Hubbard's books, Tom Bristol - even while living under trying circumstances - brings out the best in human character. From my viewpoint the moral of the story of this book is book is that even though there are dire times and situations, people are capable of rising above them and the degree to which one can and does do this he becomes a leader and is successful. Its is doubtful if there were characters of this Kind in real life back in the buccaneer times, but it's and interesting through to ponder what that would have been like.
Presentation on the iPad is also very cool. Definitely a must read.
Under the Black Ensign
This is a fine rich pulp story set back in the Buchaneer Days. The outcasts and slaves make a suspenseful comback to turn the tables on their haughty oppressors.