Investigates the fascination pirates hold over popular imagination, taking the fable of ocean-going Robin Hoodsailing under the "banner of King Death" and contrasting it with the muderous reality of robbery, torture and death, and the freedom of a short, violent life on the high seas. Using previously undiscovered material from British Admiralty records, the book charts 250 years of piracy, from Cornwall the Caribbean, from the 16th century to the hanging of the last pirate captain in Boston in 1835.