Buccaneer

By Tim Severin

Published Jan 2010

In this second Hector Lynch adventure, the young seafarer falls into the hands of the notorious buccaneer Captain John Coxon, who mistakes him for the nephew of Sir Thomas Lynch, Governor of Jamaica. Hector encourages the error so that his friends Jacques and Dan can go free. Coxon delivers Hector to Sir Henry Morgan, a bitter enemy of Governor Lynch. The captain expects to curry favour with Morgan, but is publicly humiliated when the deception is revealed. From now on Hector has a dangerous enemy. Befriended by Jezreel, an ex-prize fighter, Hector meets up again with Jacques and Dan, and the four comrades join the great buccaneer raid which marches through the jungle and attacks on Panama. The capture of a high Spanish official’s elegant wife leads Hector into a web of deceit. Thanks to his skills as a negotiator, the buccaneers ransom their captive in exchange for safe passage out of the South Sea, only to discover when they arrive back in the West Indies that they are wanted men. Captain Coxon has turned state’s evidence and Hector stands accused of murder and piracy. His survival depends on a young Spanish woman with whom he has fallen in love and the secret intelligence he has gained… In Buccaneer Tim Severin takes us on another enthralling voyage back to the seventeenth century, the is time to the lush and colourful Caribbean the Great South Sea. Drawing on the original diaries and logbooks of men detested by their Spanish opponents as outright pirates, he brings to life a world of rapacious sea captains, rum-sodden colonial officials, wealthy plantation heiresses, and reckless adventurers, whose fortunes depended on their skill with musket and cutlass.