Blue Hill Historical Society invites you to a presentation by noted author James L. Nelson on the enigmatic but colorful history of privateering, or legal piracy, along Maine’s coast in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Mainers have always been good at seafaring and making money off that pursuit. And nowhere did those two skills meet more perfectly than in the world of legalized piracy, when seafarers received government permission to plunder the ships of the enemy. Award-winning author James L. Nelson will discuss the Maine privateers of the American Revolution and the War of 1812,including the privateer ship Dash.
Light refreshments after the talk will be provided.
The event is free and open to all.
About the Speaker
Jim Nelson was born and raised in Maine and graduated from UCLA’s film school. Finding that despite being in Southern California, it was a damp, drizzly November in his soul, Jim took the cure Melville recommended and decided to sail about a little and seethe watery part of the world. For the next six years, he sailed about the watery part of the world, working on board traditional sailing ships, before launching a writing career as in 1994. Jim has written more than thirty works of maritime fiction and history. He is the winner or the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award and the Naval Order’s Samuel Eliot Morison Award, has lectured all over the country, and appeared on the Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic and BookTV. He and his former shipmate, now wife, Lisa, and the last of their four children, live in Harpswell, Maine, when they are not off sailing.
