- Author: Inglis Fletcher
- Title: Lusty Wind for Carolina
- Binding: hardcover with jacket
- Size: octavo; about 6" x 8"
- Pagination: 470pp
- Published: Blakiston (Philadelphia), 1944; Book Club Edition
- Condition: Good; jacket in rough shape, with bad tears at spine and hinges of flaps; spine slightly cocked; shelfwear at bottom of boards; something that had been pasted inside on front paste-down was torn out (but it is not ex library); clean and complete otherwise, though dingy
[OCR is approximate, as always]
After the Peace of Utrecht, the Lords of Trade and Plantations dreamed of bringing back the days of Elizabeth and her great sea captains. The immense riches of American possessions -pearls and amechysts and virgin silver, sugar and ginger and cacao, raw hides and tanned, turpentine and tar and fur skins -were bait to draw adventurers, merchants and scamen to Caribbean islands and the southern plantations of the mainland.
When the great navigator Woodes Rogers was appointed Governor of the Bahamas, was it any wonder that the Merchants of Bristol fell across one another's feet to sign the register of those who paid for shares in the Bahama Venture? And what, on the other hand, was one to think of those Lords Proprietors who were ready to sell out the Carolinas for the illusory speculation of the South Sea Bubble?
Woodes Rogers had his opinion of those Lords.
Hero of a voyage around the stormy tip of South America into the far Pacific, he vowed to sweep from the seas the pirate hordes infesting the Caribbean waters and the long outer Banks along the Carolina coast.
It was not the hope of easy wealth that decided Robert Fountaine to secure a land grant in North Carolina. Protestant England had ceased to be a haven for the Huguenot who had been driven first from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and then from Ireland, because he was a master craftsman, and Irish weavers resented foreign rivalry. Jealousy had followed him even to Bristol where he had hoped life would bring peace and security for his invalid wife and lovely daughter Gabrielle. An old acquaintance, Roger Mainwairing, on a visit to England from his Albe. marle plantation, painted to Fountaine a glowing picture of life in a country free from Old World hates and intolerance.
It took little to persuade his handsome young gardener David Moray, sometime soldier of the Pretender, to join Fountaine's group of colonists bound for the Cape Fear River.
Woodes Rogers and his men, lending the convoy of ships, were spoiling for a fight by the time they reached the Canary Islands. A brush with the Spaniards, and then luck led him to a thrill. ing sea battle with the freebooting enemy he had sworn to exterminate
The sight of Anne Bonney aboard the pirate ship brought memories flooding back to Roger Mainwairing of the "leet" girl he had once saved from burning for witchcraft. Her life as a pirate seeking vengeance against the Albemarle settlers seemed only to heighten her seductive beauty.
Three streams of action interweave as through colorful scene after colorful scene the full river of the narrative rolls on.
There is the struggle of Robert Fountaine's colony against loneliness, against the terror of the deep forest, against the hidden secret voices of dark swamps, against pirate attack and Indian maid.
There is the stormy love story of Gabrielle Fountaine and David Moray, and the dangerous romance of gay Mary Lepel and Michael Cary.
And there is the epic combat of outraged trade with the swarming pirate crews.
In the Alberarle the staunch American planters find themselves embroiled with Governor Eden whom they strongly suspect of collusion with the notorious Blackbeard. Virginia is out for Blackbeard's scalp. Charles Town has sworn the swashbuckling French bandit Stede Bonnet shall hang.
Midway between the thriving settlements of Charles Town, on the Ashley and Cooper, and Edenton, on Albemarle Sound, lies the Cape Fear River, offering safe harbor to pirace ships.
In the romantic setting of the rendezvous on Ocracock Inlet the pirate captains assemble in scenes dominated by the cold-blooded Charles Vane and the gorgeous, volatile Anne Bonney.
Each of these currents of interest flows swiftly on to a dramatic climax. But no brief summary may indicate all the elements of interest in LisBy Wid for Carolina.
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