A dauntless adventurer who lost his fortune as often as his temper, Captain Woodes Rogers was sent into the thick of the action during Britain's war with Spain, when he was hired to lead a 1708 mission against Spanish targets in the Pacific. Though this escapade resulted in the capture of a treasure galleon and the rescue of shipwrecked sailor Alexander Selkirk (the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe), it was as the governor of the Bahamas—keeping order over a string of islands plagued by pirates like Blackbeard, Charles Vane, and Anne Bonny—that Rogers truly made his name. The author of Under the Black Flag here gives us a rollicking chronicle of Rogers's life, as gripping as any seafarer's yarn.