Complete and unabridged, with 58 full-page plates by Winslow Homer, Willem van de Velde the Younger and Willem van de Velde the Elder. Kidd, Blackbeard, Morgan, Avery and the rest, told from the trial records and the colonial archives by a New England historian. John S. C. Abbott wrote dozens of popular histories and here works close to the documents, including Kidd's own petitions. His argument that Kidd was hanged for politics rather than piracy has worn better than most of his conclusions. Fifty-eight plates, among them sea pieces by J. M. W. Turner and Winslow Homer, give the pirates' element its proper weather.