From the bestselling author of Under the Black Flag comes the definitive biography of Thomas Cochrane, the swashbuckling nineteenth-century maritime hero upon whom Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower are based.

From the bestselling author of Under the Black Flag comes the definitive biography of Thomas Cochrane, the swashbuckling nineteenth-century maritime hero upon whom Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower are based.

Though literature, films, and folklore have romanticized pirates as gallant seaman who hunted for treasure in exotic locales, David Cordingly, a former curator at the National Maritime Museum in England, reveals the facts behind the l...