• As a kid I watched the tv series Captain Pugwash. It was 60 years ago so I can't remember any details about it. But when I came to write this research note (in 2024) I thought - aha! - maybe the style of naming one of my pirate characters might have been subconsciously inspired by Pugwash's naming conventions.

• I also read, as a kid, the classic pirate novel - Treasure Island written by Robert Louis Stevenson (now available as a free ebook on gutenberg.org). And although I haven't reread it since, it left its mark. In my own pirate novel I pay homage to Treasure Island by a visual reference to the image of a main character (Alexander's dad) on crutches. This was based on a true incident (although narrated in the book as fiction) and woven into episodes in the story. No parrots, however. They have become a Monty Python thing.

• I read Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester when I was at school in the late 1960s, and that satisfied my pirate reading for decades thereafter. Books satisfy one type of appetite. TV another. In the mid 2010s I became aware of an excellent tv series based on Hornblower and watched them all. In 2023 after republishing my book as an ebook and paperback I was in the mood to read some swash buckling sailing stories as real books again and prompted by my memory of the Hornblower tv series I became curious about the full Hornblower literary legacy. "Research" done in a few clicks. (The same way you got here.) So many titles! I read most of them (available on the public library app libby) and was not disappointed.

• If there is a book about Captain Blood I've never seen it. But a film of that name appeared on tv screens many times in my tv viewing life and I must have seen it several times long before I set my mind to writing about pirates.

• Although I've never seen or read the play Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie but a vague awareness of it crept into my education. And I have a vivid memory of first watching the Steven Spielberg movie based on characters and the world of Peter Pan as depicted in Hook

• A big influence and source of research material on modern Royal Naval etiquette which I undoubtedly absorbed (even if I failed to match its heights was the BBC radio comedy series The Navy Lark.

• Admiralty Research Establishment Portland - was a customer of mine about 12 years before I wrote my pirates and goblins book.
  
  In those days I was the Hardware and Software Manager of a group which designed and architected real-time data acquisition systems and computing platforms for computer applications which other vendors placed in the "impossible" or "too difficult" category.
  
  What I learned by my site visit to my Navy customer was that my sense of direction was crap as usual. I got lost for a while between endless rows of containers trying to find the right hut.

• Writing on board a ship! I wrote one of the chapters in my pirate book while onboard an actual ship!
  
  It was a river cruise rather than on the sea. On a Viking vessel on the Rhone which stopped at delightful locations in France. Had a fun time teaching fellow passengers who were from the States the rules of British cricket. Though the way we played it owed much to invention and larking about.

• Titanic - Yes. I did see the old and new Titanic movies before writing my book. And read a book about how the wreck was found. And Titanic itself is also mentioned in the story.

• Did you know that Julius Caesar was captured by pirates? Well I had read the true story of that (based on ancient texts - the account by Suetonius) and the modern version (starring Asterix the Gaul) before writing my ow pirate book. And some of my characters do get captured. But they don't go on to become Emperor of Rome.

• The Hunt for Red October by Tom Clancy (in book form) painlessly imparts in its narrative of nuclear subs an understanding of the stakes which soon make all its readers feel they are experts on underwater skullduggery. And the legacy of the film, starring Sean Connery, for me: is that when I think of my own Russian sub captain I find it hard to shed the idea he too speaks with a Scottish accent. How do pirates come into this? This was an afterthought for me too in the writing of this article. I guess if someone is taking over your vessel (even if it's the enemy within) it's piracy.

• HMS Victory, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard and Southsea are all important fixtures in the story itself and in the writing of it. There's pages of stuff about these very important aspects in the book itself. I revisited the dockyard in Nov 2023 and wrote about that visit here.

• Some readers having got this far - and being utterly dismayed by my lack of any real qualifications to write a novel about Pirates and ships and things nautical may be asking yourselves - what about Pirates of the Caribbean?
  
  I began publishing the story 2 years before the film was released and had finished my book before ever seeing it. In a way that's lucky - because I'm sure I would've been deterred from my writing project otherwise and literature would've lost an unusual pirate book.

• @PauleneTurner - Black Tides, book 4 of The Time Travel Chronicles (July 18, 2024)
  
  I read Black Tides soon after it was published and reviewed it in Sept 2024. Here's what I said.
  
  gritty pirate realism - the best yet
  
  I had already bought volume 5 in Paulene Turner's time travel series - before writing this review prompted by wanting to remind myself of the (no plot spoiler) way in which the pirate story Black Tides ended and seeing a reminder in my reader screen to leave a rating - which tells you something of my priorities. If you (like me earlier) have already read the 1st 3 books then what are you waiting for? I think it's her best writing yet. Real plot twists, tensions and gritty realism in the pirates.
  
  I went on to read all 6 books in the series shortly after they were published and to avoid losing links to my reviews on other sites I wrote a review of book 6 here - in which I also mention Black Tides.

• @SteveHillWriter - The Blood of the Cutlass (May 23, 2024)

• @AbigailYardimci - Murder at the Pirate Festival (May 2, 2024)

• @katherinebhowe - A True Account: Hannah Masurys Sojourn Amongst the Pyrates, Written by Herself (November 2023)

pieces of 8?

• Privateer - By Tim Severin, book #4 in his Pirate series. (August 2014)

• Pirate - by Clive Cussler, in his Fargo Adventures, (September 2016)

• Pirates - a Somali Adventure - by Greg Cummings, (April 2014)

• Pirates - by Ross Kemp, true crime documentary, (September 2009)

• Pirates - History's Warriors - by Gail Terp, (August 2019)

• Pirates - Horrible Histories - by Terry Deary, (June 2019)

• Pirates - A New History, from Vikings to Somali Raiders - by Peter Lehr, (July 2019)

• The Old Pirate of Central Park - by Robert Priest, (May 2008)

• Alexander Woyte and the Pirates (and Goblins) by Zsolt Kerekes - A comedy saga involving a Portsmouth pirate ship melted from an arctic iceberg and goblins 1

• Pirates, Goblins, & Peg-Leg Bill by Curtis Cornell - An adventure across Serenium following Peg-Leg Bill 8 (temporarily out of print)

• The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison - A fantasy novel with hints of pirates and featuring goblins 4

• The Rover by Mel Odom - A fantasy novel involving pirates, goblins, and a librarian protagonist 2

• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

• Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester