Steven Lee Rowe

Brothers of the Black Flag Steven Lee Rowe

When the pirates who had taken the merchantman he served on demanded three men join up to replace the three pirates slain, young Asmus Gunderson was the first man to step forward. While the pirates laughed at little 'Mouse" Gunderson, his bold words win him a place aboard The Dark Maiden and the respect of his new captain, Kenny 'Black Pip' Townsend. With his friends Donald and Ernst, Asmus sets sail for a new life of adventure. On Sweetwater Cay, they are sworn into the Brotherhood of the Black Flag. There they also meet the men of the other ship in the brotherhood, Poor Patrick, and her foppish captain, Wallace "Bonny" William, so-named by the Scottish members of his crew because of his fine attention to his attire. When the brotherhood takes a slave-ship outward bound from Jamaica, Asmus and his mates discover a cargo of children destined for slavery in Tripoli. The rescue of those children embroils the brotherhood in the plans of a political schemer in England and makes them the target of that mastermind's sinister scar-faced agent in the Caribbean. It also brings Black Pip trouble in the form of Sterling Hathaway, not quite a woman but certainly no longer a child. Content to lead the wild and free life of sea rovers, the men of the brotherhood find themselves targeted by the scar-faced Barnaby Stackpole for what he fears they might know of his master's plans. In Jamaica, Asmus barely escapes with his life while three of his companions of abducted and tortured for information. While most of the brotherhood is absent from their island, Sweetwater Cay is invaded and only Sterling and a handful of others survive the bloody attack. Goaded time and again, the Brotherhood of the Black Flag fights back, tracking their tormentor to Port Jessup, a new colony town north of Charlestown, a place firmly in the hands of the English schemer. This pirate tale is full of all the swashbuckling adventure, rollicking humor and tender romance any follower of buccaneers could desire. Set in the historic Caribbean when pirates still roamed the seas in search of gold, plunder and, most of all, freedom, Brotherhood of the Black Flag brings the smell of the sea and the clatter of cutlasses to life as never before.