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Featured Publication
My latest book segues from my previous military history, Disaster on the Spanish Main, by revealing the amazing life history of one of the players in the West Indies expedition: George Lowther. Prior to serving as a Royal Navy lieutenant, George Lowther became infamous as a pirate who marauded the Caribbean and North Atlantic from 1721-1723. After getting marooned on Blanquilla Island in October 1723, it was widely thought that he had killed himself when searchers found a pirate's corpse on the island a few months later. Yet, Lowther escaped and settled in Panama for sixteen years. In 1739, the arrival of a British fleet, led by his former ship's captain, presented him with a chance to redeem himself in service to the crown during the War of Jenkins' Ear. In a unique twist of fate, George Lowther went from an indicted pirate to a commissioned naval officer. This book covers Lowther's remarkable story from his early days as an able seaman in the Royal Navy and a mate on a Royal African Company slave ship, to his time as a fearsome pirate captain, and ends with his passionate yet failed effort to restore his reputation by bringing Britain a military victory in the West Indies. Schiffer Publishing released the book April 28, 2025.
You can get a brief description of the The Resurrected Pirate by clicking the link below to the YouTube video:
See what some noted historians think of it.
“This masterful account sheds new light on a complex and misunderstood pirate; a man whom Craig Chapman reveals managed to cheat death, before spending his remaining days atoning for his piratical sins. This superbly researched and written book is a compelling read.” –Angus Konstam, maritime historian, and author of The Pirate Menace.
"No longer simply the tale of a defeated pirate, Lowther’s story is now one of crime, penitence, and the quest for redemption.” –Len Travers, author of The Notorious Edward Low
"This account of George Lowther’s life reads like a gripping, edgy novel. It is enlightening, provocative, and tragic. ” –Cindy Vallar, editor of Pirates and Privateers
“Combining the in-depth research of a clear-eyed historian and the dogged clue-chasing of a classic sleuth, the author corrects the historical record and vividly brings to life one of the most notorious pirates who sailed under the Black Flag.” –Benerson Little, author of The Golden Age of Piracy
Excerpts
Chapter- Prowling the Greater Antilles
“Local traders knew that pirates were notoriously easy marks and soon visited the careening bay in loaded periguas and dinghies to take advantage of the buccaneers’ profligacy. Delivery’s crew bartered for local goods with looted merchandise they were pleased to be rid of. Bolts of linsey-woolsey or a kilderkin of nails could be exchanged for a basket of fresh vegetables. The bandits were no better with cash. For a few shillings, traders bought pounds worth of finery, tools, or excess gunpowder from the crew. The same shillings, in turn, dropped back into the traders’ hands for pennies worth of rum punch sold to the buccaneers. The sea robbers might have known they were getting skinned, but couldn’t care less. Seamen and especially pirates saw little value in the accumulation of wealth. A sixpence spent to fill a cup was better than a guinea sitting in a chest.”
Chapter – A Pirate Admiral
“Lowther sent a strong boarding party over to the Greyhound before Captain Edwards had a change of heart. The next events strongly suggest that his new lieutenant, Edward Low, had charge of the men taking possession of the merchantman. The pirates climbed aboard Greyhound and immediately unleashed their pent-up emotions on their captives. Using knotted ropes, handspikes, pistols, cutlasses— anything that could inflict pain, they “whipp’d, beat and cut” the defenseless sailors. Sea bandits often whipped merchant crews that had put up resistance, if only to discourage such defiance. This drubbing went beyond the normal punishment and certainly exceeded any of Delivery’s previous encounters. Once Low discovered that the ship sailed from Boston, he pummeled the captives with redoubled force. Captain Edwards received a particularly savage thrashing. “Two of the unoffending sailors were triced up at the foot of the mainmast and lashed until the blood ran from their backs.” The brutality persisted until the captors exhausted themselves. Eventually, the longboat brought the merchant seamen over to Delivery, where the rovers imprisoned them in the hold. The bandits then “rifled the ship.” After Greyhound had been looted of all portable items of value, Lowther ordered the ship burned—no sense leaving evidence of a crime.”
Chapter – A Time for Reckoning
“Before leaving the North Atlantic, Lowther seized the Baily, a Virginia ship bound for London. The buccaneers “plunder’d him of all his fresh Provisions, Arms, and Powder, and wantonly thrown over-board a new Cable valued at [£70 1s].” With his men busy emptying Baily of its goods, Lowther asked the merchantman’s skipper, Captain Graves, “to take a Glass with him,” likely from Graves’s own stock. Graves obliged the request. He may have been grateful that his captor was being hospitable instead of slicing off his ears as Low would have done. Lowther seemed in good spirits, full of confidence. Then again, he may have been mindful of Harris’s recent capture and how precarious a pirate’s life could be. “After flourishing his Sword several times over his Head,” Lowther turned to Graves to make a bold statement. “I make no doubt, but you expect to see me make my exit at Execution-Dock; but by G— I never will, for if I should be over-power’d, here is that shall End me.” Lowther then drew a pistol from his girdle and held it up for Graves to see. This act of bravado seemed to proclaim his defiance of the law and refusal to submit to a hanging, but it might also have a shown a bit of inner trepidation, a hint of worry about where his path was leading. Pirate captains usually concentrated on their next ship seizure, while their men seldom looked beyond their next drink. Most buccaneers avoided thinking too much about the future—there were no favorable long-term prospects. While he ruled his sloop and regaled Captain Graves with his fine cloths and swagger, Lowther could brandish his pistol and pretend to make light of his death. In a few months he would face the harsh reality of choosing the noose or the pistol, a dilemma he would find terrifying.”
Chapter – Cuba
“At five o’clock the next morning, Lt. George Lowther; John Drake, the man who provided intelligence about the countryside; Capt. Thomas Watson, skipper of HMS Boyne; and a company of North American marines commanded by Capt. Lawrence Washington (older half brother of George) boarded six longboats and then shoved off for the mouth of St. Ann’s River (renamed the Augusta River). The boats entered the river’s elongated delta, which stuck into the southwest corner of the bay like a chameleon’s tongue. Rowing against the flow, the party snaked upriver 4 miles past salt ponds and estuaries before reaching the lowlands, dominated by squat stands of cedar and gumbo-limbo trees interspersed with mahogany. The narrow river and remote forestland, far from the busy fleshpots of Port Royal and Kingston, exuded the eerie, claustrophobic ambiance of a primordial wilderness closing around the scouting party. The boats meandered another 3 miles through swamps and sloughs before reaching a cataract below a scrubby hill. Lowther, Drake, Watson, and Washington decided to explore the high ground, the first vantage point they had encountered since leaving the bay.”
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