The word "pirate" conjures up many Hollywood images, but Trimming Yankee Sails by Faye Kert paints a very different picture. Covering the Atlantic coast from Cape Breton Island, Halifax, and Saint John to the east coast of the United States down to the Virginias, this insightful book offers a glimpse of northeastern North America's naval history and the pirates and privateers who scourged the Atlantic coast throughout the 19th century.

In Trimming Yankee Sails, Faye Kert recounts a thrilling but little known story. Pirates and privateers sailed from New Brunswick ports throughout the 19th century, but their exploits began in earnest during the War of 1812. Amid tales of battles at sea and fortunes lost and won, Kert's exposure of the murky context in which these semi-legal marauders operated reveals surprising truths about Confederation and its promoters.

Trimming Yankee Sails: Pirates and Privateers of New Brunswick is Volume 6 in the New Brunswick Military Heritage Series.

Privateers and pirates hunting their prey out of Atlantic Canadian ports have been Faye Kert's passion for many years. She is a popular speaker on North Atlantic seafaring adventurers, the book review editor of the Canadian Nautical Research Society's journal The Northern Mariner and the author of Pride and Prejudice: Privateering and Naval Prize in Atlantic Canada in the War of 1812, the standard work on the subject. She also worked on two important underwater archaeological projects: the discovery, survey and excavation of a 16th-century Basque whaling vessel at Red Bay, Labrador, and the raising of Henry VIII's flagship Mary Rose in Portsmouth, England.

Faye Kert's profile page

"Written clearly with an engaging style... a welcome contribution to the literature."

<i>International Journal of Maritime History</i>