Corsair (Pirate)

by Tim Severin

Corsair by Tim Severin is the first swashbuckling adventure in the Pirate series.

1677. On a late-summer's evening, two ships lurk off the coast of southwest Ireland. Seventeen-year-old Hector Lynch wakes to the sound of a pistol shot as the Barbary corsairs raid his village, and he and his sister are snatched. Separated from each other, Hector is sold at auction in Algiers, and thrown into a bewildering world where life is cheap and only the quick-witted survive.

In North Africa, Hector befriends fellow captive Dan, a Miskito Indian from the Caribbean, and the two men convert to Islam to escape the horrors of the slave barracks - only to become victims of the deadly warfare of the Mediterranean. Serving aboard a Turkish ship, their vessel is sunk at sea and by a savage twist of fortune they are chained to the oar bench of a French galley.

Desperate to find his sister, Hector finally stumbles on the chilling truth of her fate when he and Dan are shipwrecked on the coast of Morocco.

• ISBN10: 1447277465
• ISBN13: 9781447277460
• Publish Date: 12 March 2015 (first published 1 June 2007)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 4 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Imprint: Pan Books
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

Littered with historical detail this starts in Baltimore in West Cork, Ireland and moves to the Mediterranean through several bouts of slavery and various survival that seems to be subordinate to the historical details.
 
Interesting but doesn't really make me want to read the rest in the series.