Don Mann - Crimson Waters: True Tales of Adventure. Looting, Kidnapping, Torture, and Piracy on the High Seas

Copyright 2022 by Don Mann and Kraig Becker

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Mona Lin

Cover photo credit: Getty Images

Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-5487-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-6041-7

Printed in China

Table of Contents

Foreword

W ho was Frogman? I asked myself, reading the business card this tall athletic gentleman just handed to me. Having spent much of my life exploring the world for sunken shipwrecks, and having discovered Captain Kidds Adventure Galley and the worlds only pirate treasure, my curiosity ran wild.

Later that evening at the Vail Round Table, where Ive been honored to share my lifetime adventures with men whod walked on the Moon, war heroes who survived months in solitary confinement at the Hanoi Hilton, and many other legendary men and women, I would come to know this extraordinary fellow explorer, world-class triathlete, and Navy SEAL combat veteran.

After exchanging adventure stories of Panama in the early 90s, when Don was involved in classified Navy SEAL missions and I was searching for the Viper Pit and Captain Morgans Satisfaction, it was as if two long-lost shipmates had returned to port to swap yarns. We talked of the ruthless bad guys wed encountered, and the bewitching Kuna sorceress who led me through the jungle to the mythical Viper Pit. With Don as my jungle sidekick, we hope to return someday... but thats another book.

The next week after returning to Cape Cod, I began reading Crimson Waters, and again found myself enthralled with Dons lucid storytelling.

Over the decades countless books have been written about pirates, none of which were written from the perspective of an intrepid Navy SEAL pirate hunter who survived captivity. He has brought us this intuitive historical resource of skullduggery, mayhem, and murder, to the dread of countries that enslaved entire populations to mine precious metals, and companies that sold millions of Africans at auction.

Escaped slaves were experimenting in democracy with multiethnic crews aboard pirate vessels.

Beginning with pirates of the ancient world, three thousand years before Blackbeard had whiskers, well meet mysterious Greek pierato and dreaded Tuscan Tyrrhenians who wreaked havoc up and down the Mediterranean, through the Golden Age of Piracy when renegade seadogs plied crimson waters for silver and gold, to modern day Somali pirates confronted by Dons courageous brethren of SEAL Team Six.

Thus, with utmost sincerity, I am honored to present this foreword to Crimson Waters.

Introduction

T he pirate captain stepped out onto the deck of the ship just as a wave crashed against its hull, sending sea foam soaring high into the air. The water hung over the bow of the vessel for just an instant, before it came crashing down on top of several crew members who scrambled to stay on their feet. A massive storm was quickly closing in, bringing high winds, heavy rain, and rolling seas along with it. The only question the captain had was whether or not the storm would arrive before the English frigate that was already bearing down on their position.

The Royal Navy had been dogging him and his crew for three days, giving chase around several islands in their attempt to engage the pirate ship in battle. The captain knew that if they caught him, hed be hanged for sure. Even outnumbered and outgunned, he wasnt about to let that happen.

Stepping to the stern of the ship, the crusty old buccaneer pulled a brass navigational telescope from inside his long, weathered jacket. Extending it to its full length, he raised it to his uncovered eye and peered back across the undulating sea behind them. On the horizon were the sails of the frigate, swelled to capacity as they caught the growing wind. Atop the main mast sat the Union Jack blowing wildly in the breeze, taunting him even from a distance.

Theyre still there, he said quietly. Still closing.

Turning back towards his men, the captain barked an order, imploring them to raise the main sail. Until now, he had relied on maneuverability and guile to help him stay one step ahead of his pursuers, but with the storm quickly approaching, time was quickly running out. Now, speed would have to be their ally, allowing them to escape both the British pirate hunters hot on their trail and the growing ferocity of Mother Nature.

A pirate captain.

Grabbing the wheel of the ship from his first mate, the old pirate steered the vessel out towards the open ocean. If they were lucky, they would lose their enemy in the wind, rain, and surf. If not, they would almost assuredly be sent to the bottom of the ocean.

If popular culture is to be believed, these kinds of cat-and-mouse scenes played out on the high seas on a regular basis during the so called Golden Age of Piracy. This name was given to the era that ran from roughly 1650 to about 1730, when thousands of pirates were active not just in the Caribbean, but in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of West Africa, and along the eastern coast of North America too. Some of those pirates stayed in relatively small areas, using their geographic knowledge of the region to their advantage. Others sailed the globe in search of easy targets, plundering ships the world over in a never-ending quest for fortune and glory.

When most people think of pirates, they often envision larger-than-life characters from the Golden Age of Piracy. After all, books such as Robert Louis Stevensons classic Treasure Island and movies like the Pirates of the Caribbean series have clearly defined exactly how we envision what a pirate looks and sounds like. Stevenson himself helped create the perfect pirate archetype, with the introduction of Long John Silver, the main villain in his genre-defining book. Even though Treasure Island was first published in 1883, the image of a tall, imposing man, complete with a thick black beard, a wooden leg, and a parrot on his shoulder, remains in our collective unconscious even to this day.

While it is true that Golden Age pirates were often larger-than-life figures, the history of piracy predates that era by thousands of years. Almost since the first humans ventured out onto our planets seas and oceans, others have sought to prey upon them on the water, claiming their cargo, crew, and ships for their own. In fact, history shows that pirates were active in a number of locations around the world dating back as far as 2500 BCE. And as we all know by now, the end of the Golden Age didnt put a stop to piracy either. Even now, in the twenty-first century, there are still parts of the world where seafaring bandits are an active threat to commercial shipping and passenger ships alike.