Hunting Pirate Heaven: In Search of Lost Pirate Utopias

Hitching rides on a motley assortment of freighters, dhows, yachts, and fishing smacks, Kevin Rushby sailed up the east coast of Africa in search of the lost pirate settlements that, in the sixteenth century, were established on the islands and atolls in the Indian Ocean. He turned east to the islands of Comoros and Madagascar, his ultimate objective being to locate the descendants of the infamous sixteenth-century pirates—such as Captain Misson, the legendary French pirate who may have been dreamed up by Daniel Defoe; English sailor-turned-buccaneer Thomas White; and Rhode Islander Thomas Tew—who carved kingdoms for themselves in the remote jungles of northeast Madagascar. As he traveled, Rushby met up with the crackpot dreamers, tough settlers, fighters and failures who live on the coasts and islands now—where forgotten Portuguese forts lie covered in jungle, where some have tried to shoot their way to paradise, and where the ocean can destroy lives and dreams as quickly as men and women create them.