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 updated
December 15, 2024
as in - books about pirates
 I
never thought of myself as having once written a pirate book - as in a book
whose theme is salty - though the evidence is undeniable - in the form of my
book Alexander Woyte
and the Pirates (and Goblins) which within its 192 print pages has a lot
to say on the subject.
When I wrote it I didn't give any thought to
compiling and including a list of references. It's not that kind of book. Is it?
In
2024 (21 years after having published it online and 1 year after publishing it
in print) I came to a new understanding of the book I had written so long ago.
- Notwithstanding its goblin roots - this is definitely a pirate book
- Readers who already have an interest in pirate books (or develop that
interest from having encountered my own) might have a natural curiosity about
what factors may have fed into my particular formulation of the pirates.
- A reference list of such pirate works may help readers find books which
are similar and better.
Enter "reverse engineering"
- a process of memory dredging which was fortunately much simplified by the
fact that I hadn't spent much time immersed in researching the genre of pirate
stories myself before feeling bold enough to add to it. | |
| . |
| Here, for what it's
worth, and to the best of my recollection is the overdue literary search
of nautical influences which may have fed into my writing of the book - Alexander Woyte and the Pirates
(and Goblins) |
- 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. 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 on crutches. This was based
on a true incident (reported in the book as fiction) and woven into the story.
No parrots, however. They have become a Monty Python thing.
- Mr.
Midshipman Hornblower by C. S. Forester - is the only other pirate
themed book I can remember having read before I wrote my own pirate book (which
until recently I thought of as just another goblin story - despite having
stirred pirates into a very compatible brew with the goblins).
This
shows you can't rely on authors to analyze their own stories. I read
Midshipman Hornblower when I was at school, and that sufficed for many decades
thereafter. But in the mid 2010s I became aware of an excellent
tv series
based on that character and watched them all. In 2023 after republishing my book
as an ebook and paperback I was in the mood to read some real swash buckling
stories and remembering the Hornblower tv series I became curious about the
Hornblower books. I read most of them 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
re
modern navy customs and tactics
- 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) 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.
- HMS Victory, Portsmouth Historic Dockyward 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.
and
what have I left out?
- 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. I
could have stopped there
But the absence of suitable lists is what
set my 30 years of writing non-fiction on its way. List making is in my
blood. And having become atuned (since joining X in 2023 as
@goblinsearch) to a fresh wave
of new pirate books which were boldly surfacing in 2024, and knowing how
difficult it can be for new authors to get any kind of contextually relevant
visibility, without paying for it in sweat or advertising, I thought I would
extend my list for any of you have reached this far. | | |
| . |
| Ahoy there the new wave of
emerging piratebooks |
If you seek bracing new books with pirate themes
I urge you: look now to these lively authors below.
- @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. Unfortunately I lost my link to that 5 star review.
All you need to know is that I 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. these
below are on my tbr list
| | |
| .. |
| yet more lists of pirate
books |
Other lists of pirate books are available. You can find plenty by searching
for "pirate books" or asking a friendly AI.
My purpose here
is to introduce you to a view that's different from what you'll see if you trawl
the top titles in online bookshops which are tilted against the discovery of
titles which haven't been heavily promoted by traditional publishers.
One
such angle which came to mind was looking at what pirate books are available in
public libraries. When I conducted a search of ebooks on the Libby/Overdrive
platform in May 2024 it delivered the list below. Now, it may well be you can't
borrow these from your own library. But that's another story which I'll return
to in another blog.
top 8 pirate books in Libby / Overdrive - May 2024
(unordered)
| | |
| .. |
| ai ai - a nod to Pirate
Books |
author - January 15, 2025
- I thought to make this page more useful I'd ask Perplexity AI for a list of Pirate
books.
It
replied
with age sorted lists which it had extracted from 5 web sources.
1,
2,
3,
4,
5.
All of which are worthy lists but none of which include mine.
Perplexity's
list of pirate books from search results, categorized by age group: |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Undaunted by my own pirate book's
undiscoverability in this first search, I then asked Perplexity AI as a follow
up to list books with pirates and goblins in the title.
Perplexity's
suggestions - some books featuring pirates and goblins:
Fiction
Books
- 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
Pirate Books with Potential Goblin Elements
- The Rover by Mel Odom - A fantasy novel involving pirates, goblins,
and a librarian protagonist
2
Recommended
Pirate Books by Zsolt Kerekes
Kerekes suggests some classic pirate
literature that influenced his work:
- Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
- Mr. Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester
goblinsearch editor's notes:- some of the links cited by
Perplexity to the 2nd query (above) were wrong, being out of date, duplicates or
otherwise incorrect. I have deleted the duplicates and replaced others with the
best current urls I could find at this time. Link rot in AIs can occur typically
due to the time interval which has elapsed since the whole web sample was done,
and in some cases related to this pirates book query because the AI can't judge
the difference in reliability between offering a transient link such as in a
news page and a permalink such as in a dedicated blog. | | |
| .. |
| how the heck did we get
here? |
Sometimes we get to a
page on the web which looks interesting. It starts out one way but ends in
another.
Oh yes. You and I both got here because I wrote 4 books for
kids. |
|
| | |
and not just books for kids
.. |
Great deeds done for love of family do
not list in scrolls of wars.
Yet how best stop the tides of war return and live at ease together?
 Memories
fade. Can be remade.
Victors write true histories whose meanings time
wipes slippery.
For those who can read them - words of Olden cast new warnings.
The goblins are coming, 1, 2, 3.
Hide in the cellar. Hide in the
tree.
A novel of books past and future
by Zsolt Kerekes - coming in
2025 |
 | |
