Pirates have become so much a part of story and legend that is easy to forget they actually existed. Their roving lives left behind little historical record; thus our image of them is overlaid with three centuries of ballads, plays, epic poems, and films. But how does our conception of pirates compare with the reality, and why has such a romantic aura become associated with murderers and thieves? Author Cordingly, of England's National Maritime Museum, has mined a wealth of original sources--eyewitness accounts, court documents, national archives, and more--to create the most authoritative and definitive account of the great age of piracy: how they attacked, how they governed themselves, what they wore, what ships they used, why they flourished in the years around 1720, and what brought their reign of terror to an end. --From publisher description.