John Esquemeling (better known as Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin) (c. 1645–1707) was a French barber-surgeon best remembered for this classic account of the buccaneer pirates of the West Indies. After travelling to Tortuga in 1666, Esquemeling joined the buccaneer company of Henry Morgan, one of the most successful and notorious privateers of the period. This volume, first published in English in 1684, and now reissued from the 1893 reprint, contains Esquemeling's detailed account of Morgan's dramatic exploits and adventures. Covering the period 1668–1674, Esquemeling recounts in fascinating detail Morgan's infamous attacks on Spanish-controlled ports in Cuba, Hispaniola and Costa Rica, and vividly describes the sack of the city of Panama and its aftermath in 1671. This work was the first account published in English of the lives of the buccaneers, and remains one of the most important sources for descriptions of seventeenth-century piracy.
