Books with title The Pirates' Picnic

Orphaned in 17th century Whitby, ten years old Carlyle sets off to London to seek his fortune, but is kidnapped by a pirate press gang along with five other street urchins to sail on the ‘Black Prince’ and learn the pirate ways under the leadership of the tyrannical Black Bert. On an epic voyage to the West Indies, he makes friends with another orphan called Woody and a wounded albatross he named Arnie. Carlyle will need all the skills acquired on his late father’s fishing boat to survive life on a pirate ship.A mutiny on the ‘Black Prince’ left many dead, as Black Bert struggled to assert his authority.Sea battles, cannon-fire, hurricanes and swordplay, are all elements of a pirate’s way of life.The pirates become bolder, their fleet expanding. Attacks on ships sailing to the fledgling American Colonies, bring retribution. In a fierce battle with a British Man-o-War the outcome hangs in the balance.What will become of Woody when he jumps ship in Nassau? Will Carlyle survive a shipwreck on the captured Spanish frigate ‘Stella de Cadiz’, renamed ‘Pieces of Eight’? Will they ever see Old England’s shores again?

The Pirate is a novel by Walter Scott, based roughly on the life of John Gow who features as Captain Cleveland.[1] The setting is the southern tip of the main island of Shetland (which Scott visited in 1814), around 1700. It was published in 1822, the year after it was finished and the lighthouse at Sumburgh Head began to operate.Mr Mertoun and his son had arrived as strangers, and resided for several years in the remaining rooms of the old mansion of the Earls of Orkney, the father leading a very secluded life, while the son Mordaunt became a general favourite with the inhabitants, and especially with the udaller, Magnus Troil, and his daughters. On his way home from a visit to them, he and the pedlar Snailsfoot sought shelter from a storm at the Yellowleys' farmhouse, where they were amused with their penurious ways, and encountered Norna, a relative of Magnus Troil who was supposed to be in league with the fairies, and to possess supernatural powers. The next day a ship was wrecked on the rocky coast, and, at the risk of his life, Mordaunt rescued the captain, Cleveland, as he was cast on the beach clinging to a plank, while Norna prevented his sea-chest from being pillaged. Cleveland was in fact a pirate, but they did not know this. The captain promised his preserver a trip in a consort ship which he expected would arrive shortly, and went to seek the udaller's help in recovering some of his other property that had been washed ashore. After the lapse of several weeks, however, during which the Troils had discontinued their friendly communications with him, Mordaunt heard that the stranger was still their guest, and that they were arranging an entertainment for St John's Eve, to which he had not been bidden...

Orphaned in 17th century Whitby, ten years old Carlyle sets off to London to seek his fortune, but is kidnapped by a pirate press gang along with five other street urchins to sail on the ‘Black Prince’ and learn the pirate ways under the leadership of the tyrannical Black Bert. On an epic voyage to the West Indies, he makes friends with another orphan called Woody and a wounded albatross he named Arnie. Carlyle will need all the skills acquired on his late father’s fishing boat to survive life on a pirate ship.A mutiny on the ‘Black Prince’ left many dead, as Black Bert struggled to assert his authority.Sea battles, cannon-fire, hurricanes and swordplay, are all elements of a pirate’s way of life.The pirates become bolder, their fleet expanding. Attacks on ships sailing to the fledgling American Colonies, bring retribution. In a fierce battle with a British Man-o-War the outcome hangs in the balance.What will become of Woody when he jumps ship in Nassau? Will Carlyle survive a shipwreck on the captured Spanish frigate ‘Stella de Cadiz’, renamed ‘Pieces of Eight’? Will they ever see Old England’s shores again?

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The circumstances in which “The Pirate” was composed have for the Editor a peculiar interest. He has many times scribbled at the old bureau in Chiefswood whereon Sir Walter worked at his novel, and sat in summer weather beneath the great tree on the lawn where Erskine used to read the fresh chapters to Lockhart and his wife, while the burn murmured by from the Rhymer’s Glen. So little altered is the cottage of Chiefswood by the addition of a gabled wing in the same red stone as the older portion, so charmed a quiet has the place, in the shelter of Eildon Hill, that there one can readily beget the golden time again, and think oneself back into the day when Mustard and Spice, running down the shady glen, might herald the coming of the Sheriff himself. Happy hours and gone: like that summer of 1821, whereof Lockhart speaks with an emotion the more touching because it is so rare,—