Book
The Black Ship
First published 1963
The Black Ship is Dudley Pope's non-fiction account of the mutiny aboard HMS Hermione in the West Indies in 1797. Captain Hugh Pigot had created a brutal regime of punishment aboard the frigate, and in September the crew rose against him, killing Pigot and most of the officers before carrying the ship into the Spanish port of La Guaira.
Pope reconstructs the causes of the mutiny, the killings, the Spanish reception of the captured frigate and the Royal Navy's long pursuit of those responsible. He follows the story through trials, executions and transportation, then to Captain Edward Hamilton's spectacular cutting-out attack in 1799, when British sailors recaptured Hermione under the guns of Spanish fortifications. The book treats the episode as a study of discipline and failed leadership as well as one of the most violent mutinies in British naval history.
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