The Ghost Ship (The Joubert Family Chronicles)
The real-life story of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, the lesbian duo whose pirate ship briefly terrorised the Caribbean in the 18th century, has inspired numerous novels. For modern authors it ticks several of the right boxes – a powerful female protagonist with lots of ‘agency’ and an LGBTQ romance – but the awkward fact remains that this was robbery with violence on a grand scale, and the perpetrators were eventually brought to justice.
In The Ghost Ship Kate Mosse turns the story inside-out, relocating it to the Canary Islands in the early 17th century and turning the lesbian lovers into pirate hunters rather than pirates. Ultimately, they escape the law and presumably live happily ever after. In this re-telling Bonny becomes Louise, a rich Dutch merchant, and Read becomes Gilles, a young Huguenot refugee (Gilles is a girl who has assumed her late brother’s identity to take up his apprenticeship).
They devote themselves to attacking the galleys of the Barbary pirates who are harassing the Canaries, using a form of chemical warfare to disable the galley slaves without killing them (we hope). Since their own poison gas prevents then boarding the galleys, they content themselves with shooting down the pirate captains and their senior officers. No slaves are actually liberated. It is all very interesting and quite implausible.
Not that Mosse can write a bad book. This is the third in her series The Joubert Family Chronicles, and as in the earlier books, the 17th-century locations, La Rochelle, Amsterdam, et. al., are vividly portrayed and the main characters are rounded and interesting. Still very readable, but I find this one unbelievable.
