Shipmates

Everyone loves a good pirate yarn, and history’s seafaring rogues have firmly cemented themselves in the collective consciousness — the peg legs, the parrots, the eye patches — often in the form of Halloween costumes or scenery-chewing Hollywood types. But, as the latest from Clifford Jackman points out, pirates were actual people, who lived real lives and made real voyages. The Braver Thing gives an account of the experiences of these men not as legends but as regular “Honest Fellows” (as they styled themselves).

In the novel, pirates do not swagger and sneer through spyglasses, winking at the camera like Jack Sparrow; nor, it turns out, are they caricatures of their literary forebears in Stevenson, Cooper, or Scott. Rather, The Braver Thing positions itself within the realm of plausibility, bolstered by the author’s extensive historical research. Jackman, a lawyer...