Читать книгу The Pirate Hunter - Laura Martin, Laura Martin - Страница 3

The Caribbean: over seven thousand islands, with lush interiors, golden sandy beaches and clear blue seas, inhabited by people with an eclectic mix of cultures and backgrounds. When I visited the Caribbean for the first time on my honeymoon in 2013 I, like so many others before me, fell in love immediately. Each and every island I explored had its own unique ambience, traditions and history, but one thing united them all: piracy.

Between the mid-sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries the Caribbean was not a safe place to live—especially if you earned your living at sea. Pirate attacks on merchant ships were common, and devastating town raids were also a constant threat for those living on the Caribbean islands. As the eighteenth century dawned the issue of piracy did not go unnoticed by the European political and military leaders, and there was a push to clean up the Caribbean. The number of Spanish and English Naval ships posted to the area dramatically increased and slowly many of the pirates were hunted down. By the mid-eighteenth century there were only a few pirates left capable of evading the British Navy. This time of change seemed the perfect backdrop for THE PIRATE HUNTER.

In the process of my research I became fascinated by the people who lived in the Caribbean; on the one hand they were surrounded by natural beauty, but on the other they were constantly under threat from piracy. Therefore I think it is important to say that, although the characters and events portrayed in THE PIRATE HUNTER are completely fictional, I have endeavoured to depict the setting and atmosphere as accurately as possible, to give a true sense of the Caribbean at the time.