It sounds like the stuff of children’s story books: Caribbean pirates fighting a pitched battle with the Royal Navy in the seventeenth century, modern day treasure hunters searching for the pirate shipwreck, inter personal tension amongst the searching team and a race against time. It’s the story of a merchant ship captain who “stole the great ship he commanded, the Golden Fleece, and embarked on a piracy rampage, a genuine good guy gone bad in the 1680s, the Golden Age of Piracy.” (p.4). What’s more, it’s all true.

Pirate Hunters (2015) by Robert Kurson tells the story of how three very different men, Tracy Bowden, John Chatterton and John Mattera, joined forces to search for a legendary pirate ship. A ship commanded by Captain Joseph Bannister; but it’s not a simple or straight forward story. Diving in remote Caribbean waters to search from an ancient shipwreck may sound glamorous – but it’s not. Harsh and unrelenting living and working conditions would take their toll on young men, let alone middle aged men. When this is combined with the steady haemorrhaging of funds, the constant threat from other treasure hunters and imminent changes in the law that would end treasure hunting, it creates a toxic cocktail.

Robert Kurson vividly captures the tension within and friction between team members, as well as the highs and lows of the whole expedition. He reveals how painstaking searches in library archives around the world, understanding Captain Joseph Bannister and the Pirate Code, together with years of methodical searching enabled them to eventually find the wreck site.

Pirate Hunters certainly tells a dramatic and intriguing story of the life and career of Captain Joseph Bannister – and it is an amazing story. From seizing the ship he was commanding to his initial capture. His audacious escapes from captivity, pitched battles against the Royal Navy, to his apparent hanging from the yard arm of HMS Drake in 1687. However, we are left to wonder ‘was the man hung really Joseph Bannister. Would such a man have allowed himself to be found so easily and so meekly arrested? Why he was hung and his body thrown overboard within miles of the British Governors residence rather than tried and convicted in a court of law?’ You can decide.

An engaging feature of the book is the way Robert Kurson weaves the story of Joseph Bannister with pen portraits of the three main characters. He also supplements the book with numerous photographs and charts, maps and sketches, as well as notes on his sources and an extensive index.

Epilogue: In many children’s story books they all live happily ever after. Unfortunately this is not true of the salvage of the Golden Fleece. Disputes arose between the salvors which resulted in legal action. At the time Pirate Hunters was published the action was ongoing.

Pirate Hunters (2015)

• by Robert Kurson
• Publisher – Elliott and Thompson Limited
•  306 pp
• ISBN 9781783962198

Robert Kurson was awarded a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin and a degree in law from Harvard Law School. His award winning stories have appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine and Esquire.

Other novels include Shadow Divers (2004), Crashing Through (2007) and Rocket Men (2018). Robert lives in Chicago.

Find out more about the reviewer, Professor Fred Lockwood, who is also a published author at www.fredlockwood.co.uk.