The Lost Fleet

July 1, 2002
Diver and shipwreck explorer Clifford (Expedition Whydah) produces an entertaining account of his 1998 exploration of the Caribbean reef of Las Aves, off the coast of Venezuela, where more than 1,000 French seamen and accompanying "filibusters" (pirates) ran aground in 1678. Clifford shows why the Las Aves calamity —"one of the most fatal naval catastrophes of its time"—was not only "the spark that ignited the golden age of piracy" but also the event that "probably meant the end of any chance for French domination over the West Indies." The bulk of the book is a fascinating investigation of the life of 17th-century pirates. Clifford argues that, in the wake of their destruction of much of the French naval force in the Caribbean, "pirate crews carried on a unique social experiment, creating a sea-faring society that was fundamentally democratic, egalitarian, fraternal and libertarian." Clifford does not overlook the crime and squalor of "hell towns" occupied almost exclusively by pirates, such as the legendary Penzance in England or the island of Tortuga, off the coast of Hispaniola. But his profiles of renegade sailors Captain Thomas Paine, the Chevalier de Grammont and others make vivid the complexity of the pirate world. Unfortunately, Clifford's detailed recollections of his ultimately successful discovery of two pirate vessels at Las Aves simply can't compete with his descriptions of pirate life; this less-interesting secondary narrative is overshadowed by his own ability to bring that lost pirate world alive for the reader.