Patricia Beatty “began work on a story that was set in the 1700’s. She asked her husband for background since he was an English history professor. That began a collaboration that continued for eleven books. In 1975, her husband unexpectedly died. She did not write for a few years but gradually she resumed her skillful storytelling.” ~Who Should We Then Read? by Jan Bloom

Fortunately, Pirate Royal is one of those eleven books that the husband and wife collaborated on. Set in the seventeenth century, 1668-1672, the book chronicles the adventures of Anthony Grey as goes from younger son of a British draper in Bristol, to apprentice to a dishonest and cruel master, to bondservant to a Boston tavern-keeper, to clerk to the infamous Henry Morgan, buccaneer and adventurer in Jamaica and the West Indies.

Readers who are looking for a true-to-life pirate adventure story would do well to try out this swashbuckling tale that never romanticizes the Brotherhood (of pirates and privateers) but rather provides a balanced, exciting, and insightful look at life among pirates in the Caribbean. Anthony is conflicted about his role as a buccaneer throughout the novel, sometimes thinking that he is a brave protecter of the innocent citizens of Jamaica and other times realizing that the Brotherhood are nothing but pirates motivated by greed and thrill-seeking.

The religious differences between the English protestants and dissenters and the Catholic Spaniards is a major theme running throughout the novel. It was a time of great religious upheaval, and Anthony Grey is no exception to the general rule of intolerance and prejudice. Yet there are episodes in the novel when Anthony dimly perceives that there are good people among his enemies, the Spaniards, just as there are hypocrites and thieves among the Royalists and dissenters who are his countrymen.

Pirate Royal is probably a Young Adult novel. It’s quite violent and shows the horrors of war and sectarian conflict. It doesn’t fit into the modern-day Young Adult genre because there’s no sexual content and hardly any romance. Anthony has a crush on a girl in Jamaica, but he has neither time nor rank nor skill enough to do anything but gaze at her from afar.

Do you have any other pirate tales set in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to recommend?