Three hundred years ago, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates by Captain Charles Johnson first hit the shelves of London’s booksellers. The book aimed, according to Johnson, to give “a distinct Relation of every Pyrate who has made any Figure”.
Here were all the fabled plunderers of the seas: Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts, Anne Bonny and Mary Read and many others. More than any other book, the General History changed the way we see pirates. It created the image that word still conjures today.
