–Legal Piracy Along Maine’s Rock-Bound Coast
Blue Hill Historical Society is (or Blue Hill Public Library and Blue Hill Historical Society are) sponsoring a discussion of privateering or what is often termed legal piracy in Maine. 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.
Jim Nelson was born and raised in Maine and graduated from UCLA’s film school. But his soul yearned for a damp, drizzly Maine November, and so he left Southern California to take the cure that Melville recommended. 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.
This event is free and open to the public, and will be held in the library’s Howard Room. For more information, please call George Pazuniak at 207-359-8576 or email gp@del-iplaw.com. Light refreshments will follow talk.
