The most useful book for this chapter: the real Tortuga, the one from history, and real pirates: not that we are any less, but we are surely better and more merciful people than these godless wretches, described (realistically) by a great italian writer who keeps reaping successes, fans and victims with his crude, realistic and historically correct works.
In 1685 the days of the pirates called the Brotherhood of the Coast, faithful to the king of France, are numbered. Luis XIV made peace with spain, and the runnings of the Carribbean’s Freebooters, based on the island of Tortuga, (la Tortue) have become a nuisance. A new governor took possession of the island and he means to make it a more normal place.
It is in this situation that Rogèrio de Campos, a portoguese boatswain, ex Jesuit with a dark past, is captured by famed pirate Laurencillo and pressed into service. He finds himself living amongst terrible people, free and undisciplined, subject to bouts of tremendous cruelty. Slowly, Rogèrio is conquered by the rules of that strange fellowship, sometimes brother-like, sometimes fierce. His is a descent to hell, but a hell based on the release of instincts, and in a way democratic. Tortuga itself, haven for the freebooters, in theory loyal to the french crown, appears as a republic, but is founded on strict slavery. Rogèrio, now in service to the Grim Chevalier de Grammont, takes part in the last great adventure of the pirates of Tortuga: the bloody taking of the city of Campeche, on the mexican coast. Only light in this infernal descent is the love of the portoguese man for an african slave, to which Grammont himself is drawn. This will slowly turn tragic as the journey back unfolds…
For hard, iron-cast stomachs. A novel of salt, of iron and of blood. Not for the faint-hearted.
Gord