A01=Joseph Gibbs
Author_Joseph Gibbs
Blackbeard
Category=DNBH
Category=NHK
Category=NHTM
Charles Gibbs
Crewman*CHRIS*
Edward Low
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Fiction
Hanging
Lawlessness
Letter of marque
Man in the Dark novel
Neglect
No quarter
Nudity
Ordinary seaman
Paul Auster
Piracy
Pirate code
Privateer
Ruse de guerre
Solitary confinement
The Invention of Solitude
Product details
- ISBN 9781570036934
- Weight: 456g
- Dimensions: 162 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 19 Sep 2007
- Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Dead men tell no tales, or so the pirate maxim goes. But when facing execution in 1831 for mutiny and murder, the previously enigmatic pirate Charles Gibbs recounted the infamous crimes of his harrowing life at sea in a self-aggrandizing series of ""confessions."" Wildly popular reading among nineteenth-century audiences, such criminal confessions were peppered with the romanticized mythology that informs pirate lore to this day. Joseph Gibbs takes up the task of separating fact from fiction to explicate the true story of Charles Gibbs - an alias for James Jeffers (1798-1831) of Newport, Rhode Island - in an investigation that reveals a life as riveting as the legend it replaces. Jeffers was the child of a Revolutionary War privateer captain with his own history in the ""rough work."" After a heroic career in the U.S. Navy during the War of 1812, Jeffers eschewed military life and took to the privateer trade himself. As Charles Gibbs, pirate, he sailed from the ports of Charleston and New Orleans to wreak havoc in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Stripping away 170 years of embellishment, Joseph Gibbs maps the still-shockingly violent career of Charles Gibbs across the seas and, in the process, challenges and discredits much of his self-made mythology. Gibbs recounts Jeffers' well-documented role in the infamous mutiny and murders in 1830 aboard the brig Vineyard while the vessel was carrying a load of Mexican silver. The pirate was captured the following year and brought to New York. The case against Jeffers and accomplice Thomas Wansley culminated in a sensational trial, which led to their subsequent executions by hanging on Ellis Island. In addition to recounting the exploits of a ruthless cutthroat, ""The Confessions of ""Charles Gibbs"""" tells the larger story of American piracy and privateering in the early nineteenth century and illustrates the role of American and European adventurers in the Latin American wars of liberation. Carefully researched, engagingly written, and enhanced by twenty illustrations, this is pirate history at its most credible and readable.
Formerly a reporter and editor for several Massachusetts newspapers, Joseph Gibbs holds a doctorate in communication studies from Boston University. The author of Gorbachev's Glasnost and Three Years in the Bloody Eleventh, he is a professor of journalism and mass communication at the American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
