Susan RonaldNew York, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.
$26.95/Hardcover
The Pirate Queen is a generally decent history in its own right. It is well-researched, informative, and knowledgeable. Unfortunately, it is not an especially enjoyable read; it is decidedly not the definitive work on the subject of Elizabeth I and her maritime adventures (even among newer histories), and it comes across as slightly superfluous.
To begin with, the title is deceptive. The Marquis of Santa Cruz branded Elizabeth “the pirate queen,” but the book is only partially about her (Ronald 239). By no means is it a biography. Instead it is a chronicle of her naval policy and how it related to her dealings with foreign powers. The term “pirate” itself is problematic. While historically accurate, it comes loaded with modern connotations of buccaneers, Errol Flynn, and Johnny Depp. Many of Elizabeth’s captains were out and out pirates at times, but many of their activities would more accurately be described as privateering (Ronald objects to this term, however, as it was not coined until the 18th century), and to lump men like John Hawkins and Francis Drake in with common pirates does them a disservice and blinds the reader to their more complex motivations (Ronald xix).
The main problem is simply that Ronald tries to cover too much ground. The opening chapters are heavily focused on Elizabeth’s early struggles to legitimize her reign and find enough cash to keep her treasury solvent. Ronald then moves swiftly to cover England’s foreign relations, religious conflicts, politics in the Netherlands, Ireland, English exploration and colonization in North America, illicit trade and piracy in the Caribbean, Drake’s circumnavigation and attacks on the Spanish coast, and the Armada and the Spanish war. All of these topics are crucial parts of the Elizabethan age, but any one of them could easily be a book in itself. Ronald, in writing a general history for a casual audience, is forced to decide how deeply to plunge into any one topic, and the result is that the reader is presented with tantalizing glimpses of intense detail coupled with perplexing omissions. There are frequent mentions of Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spy-master, but Ronald says almost nothing about him or the remarkable system of intelligence he managed. The entire Spanish Armada, from conception to aftermath, is covered in only seven pages, despite its importance as the first truly modern naval battle in history. Just as readers are becoming engrossed in Spanish politics in the Caribbean, they are whisked away to deal with Sir Walter Raleigh and Roanoke, then Martin Frobisher and the far north, then back to court for a bit of domestic intrigue.
Speaking of court, Ronald thankfully does not indulge in the “Gloriana” myth, but still it is rare for her to be too harsh on Elizabeth. Some historians roundly condemn Elizabeth for her indecisiveness and the missed opportunities and tragedies it gave rise to. Roland, while admitting Elizabeth’s fickle-mindedness, defends her by saying that, during the Armada, for instance, she trusted her commanders wholly once she was entirely committed (Ronald 308). This interpretation is open to question, however, and it is worth quoting an opposing view at length:
Elizabeth’s conduct before, during and after the campaign against the Armada has left a stain on her character that can never be erased…[her] vacillation and indecision before the Armada was launched left her country unprepared and stopped her navy from averting the looming catastrophe, and her parsimony even while the Spaniards were at her door so hamstrung her fleet that it was deprived of the chance to complete the Armada’s destruction; but her actions in the aftermath of the battle were the most despicable of all…Those few who died in battle or the thousands who succumbed swiftly to dysentery, typhus and scurvy must sometimes have seemed the fortunate ones to those who survived, unfed and unpaid, crippled, disease-ridden and starving (Hanson 401).
That, obviously, is extreme, but it is one that Ronald fails to address. For Ronald, Elizabeth is always carefully thrifty, doing her best to wring the most from England’s meager treasury while inflicting the most damage on her enemies and (ideally) maintaining deniability of any piratical actions. Ronald’s unwillingness to chastise Elizabeth for being close-fisted, or even to investigate the possibility, is disappointing.
Susan Ronald also makes several small errors—minor in themselves, but fairly glaring—that undermine the reader’s confidence. For example, on page 207 she writes that on a 1577 voyage, Martin Frobisher carried “a number of convicts from the Forest of Dean, brought along as ‘expendable’ colonists…This was the first hint of a policy of ‘transportation’ that would blight the English Empire for forty years in the nineteenth century.” In reality, penal transportation to Australia lasted eighty years, from 1788 to 1868, when the last convict ship, the Hougoumont, discharged her human cargo in Western Australia (Hughes 578). But transportation was not only a nineteenth century phenomenon. Two laws passed in 1597 and 1717 authorized the transportation of felons to the American colonies. Convict laborers appear in Virginia as early as 1611, and about 40,000 convicts were shipped to the colonies in the eighteenth century alone (Hughes 40-41).
Ronald also makes some errors in geography. Discussing Drake’s crossing of the Pacific, she writes that “[t]he English made landfall in Micronesia, somewhere in the Carolinian archipelago…” After an encounter with the islanders, the English “…sailed away from the isle that Drake had already named ‘Island of Thieves.’ It was the ancestors of these same natives who had killed Magellan” (Ronald 233). Again, this is demonstrably false. Magellan had, in 1521, explored the area around Guam and dubbed it and the surrounding small islands “the Islands of the Thieves” (Bergreen 223-229). It is not clear if Ronald assumes this island to be the same as Drake’s. Regardless, Magellan died much farther to the west, on the island of Mactan in the Philippines (Bergreen 275-282). Admittedly, these are small mistakes that have little bearing on the overall narrative, but their appearance does not inspire trust.
The Pirate Queen is by no means a terrible book, and Ronald is quite skilled at weaving a narrative. However, when viewed alongside other works on the subject, it simply doesn’t hold up. Interested readers are encouraged to try Arthur Herman’s To Rule the Waves, Geoffrey Parker’s The Grand Strategy of Philip II, and Neil Hanson’s The Confident Hope of a Miracle.
Works Cited
Bergreen, Laurence. Over the Edge of the World: Magellan's Terrifying Circumnavigation of the Globe. New York: Harper Collins, 2003.
Hughes, Robert. The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Austrailia’s Founding. New York: Random House, 1986.
Ronald, Susan. The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire. New York: Harper Collins, 2007.
