Quotes from Robert Kurson

A century before the concept took hold in America, pirate ships were democracies. Most captains were elected by crew and could be voted out anytime.

Pirate ships were built for stealth and invisibility. They filed no manifests with any agency or government. When they went missing or sunk, nobody went looking for them. They simply disappeared into the ether.

Pirates almost never sailed with women. Just four or five are known to have worked as pirates during the Golden Age. Two of them - Mary Read and Anne Bonny - became famous, dressing as men and fighting alongside one of the most celebrated of all pirate captains, 'Calico' Jack Rackham.

Once you discover that real pirates are more interesting than fictional ones, you can't look away.

Pirates worked to avoid violence and fighting.

I have been interested in pirates since I was about 8 years old. The idea of people deciding, sometimes at a moment's notice, to throw over the rules and restrictions of society - it was just irresistible.

...it was easy to get an incomplete picture of the world if one relied solely on experts, and how important is would be to further rely on oneself

Port Royal, Jamaica, was built for pirates. The town had a well-protected harbor, corrupt politicians and townsfolk, and a set of ethics that seemed passed down from Sodom and Gomorrah.

I think it's strange for people to read about themselves, no matter what's portrayed or how it's portrayed. But they get used to it, and I think they're fine with it.

I had an advantage over a lot of people who had gone to school and earned degrees in writing and had learned the rules for writing, so to speak. My style was just to tell a story but to tell it well, and that has worked out for me so far.

More than reading - much more than reading, in fact - I developed a love for telling stories from listening to two parents who really knew how to do it. And it really is an art.

Violence, as it is for the mafia and most other criminal organizations, was bad for pirate business. By doing battle with prey, pirates risked damage to their own ships and injury to their crews. It also made them bigger targets for law enforcement.

Reputation became the pirates' sharpest sword.

only way to see what really mattered in life was to go to the places that were hardest to reach.

the only way to see what really mattered in life was to go to the places that were hardest to reach.

treasure is crisis, because what you get in the end is yourself.

Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates. —MARK TWAIN

and when he sat against trees to catch his breath he marveled at how full life felt when a person got to be excellent

To those few, it is not a matter of if they will taste death, only of whether they'll swallow.

A telegraph on display in a diver's living room, therefore, is much more than a shiny object; it is an announcement. It says, If someone had been to this ship's wheelhouse before me, he would not have left this telegraph behind.

Buy a Beechcraft King Air B200

pumpkin-sized potholes

Excellence is born of preparation, dedication, focus, and tenacity; compromise on any of these and you become average.

In May of that year, forty-one U-boats were destroyed by Allied forces, a disaster that came to be known as "Black May" and which Dönitz described as "unimaginable, even in my wildest dreams." The "Happy Time" had yielded to Sauregurkenzeit, or "Sour-Pickle Time.