Under the Black Ensign

by L. Ron Hubbard

Overview

Long before Captain Jack Sparrow raised hell with the Pirates of the Caribbean, Tom Bristol sailed to hell and back Under the Black Ensign. That’s where the real adventure begins.

Bristol’s had plenty of bad luck in his life. Press-ganged into serving aboard a British vessel, he’s felt the cruel captain’s lash on his back. Then, freed from his servitude by pirates, his good fortune immediately takes a bad turn … the buccaneers accuse him of murder and leave him to die on a deserted island. Now all he has left are a few drops of water, a gun and just enough bullets to put himself out of his misery.

But Bristol’s luck is about to change. Finding himself in the unexpected company of a fiery woman, he rescues a slave ship, unsheathes his sword, raises a pirate flag of his own and sets off to make love and war on the open seas in this nautical adventure.

In his early twenties, Hubbard led the two-and-a-half-month, five-thousand-mile Caribbean Motion Picture Expedition. He followed that with the West Indies Mineralogical Expedition near San Juan, Puerto Rico, in which he completed the island’s first mineralogical survey as an American territory. It was during these two journeys that Hubbard became an expert on the Caribbean’s colorful history—an expertise he drew on to write stories like Under the Black Ensign.

“A riveting tale of sailing ships, piracy and the high seas.” —Midwest Book Review

* A National Indie Excellence Award Winner

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781592123391
Publisher:	Galaxy Press, LLC
Publication date:	09/08/2008
Series:	Historical Fiction Short Stories Collection
Edition description:	Special ed.
Pages:	121
Product dimensions:	5.44(w) x 10.88(h) x 0.49(d)
Lexile:	800L (what's this?)
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

With 19 New York Times bestsellers and more than 350 million copies of his works in circulation, L. Ron Hubbard is among the most acclaimed and widely read authors of our time. As a leading light of American Pulp Fiction through the 1930s and '40s, he is further among the most influential authors of the modern age. Indeed, from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, there is scarcely a master of imaginative tales who has not paid tribute to L. Ron Hubbard.

Read an Excerpt

The time-honored cry of the sea floated down to them from the foretop. “Sail ho!” All eyes went aloft. The lash was momentarily forgotten. The sail must be very close, otherwise it would not have been announced.

“Where away?” shouted Mannville.

“Off the starboard, coming across our bows!”

Men leaped to the rail. The haze of light cast up by the sun on water momentarily blinded them. And then they saw the ship. It was sailing against the morning sun, full-rigged, tall-masted, gilded sterncastle sparkling. It was a bark of about sixty guns. Against the light, its sails looked black.

Even as they stared at it, a roll of bunting went up the truck and burst. Its identity was unmistakable. A grinning skull against an ebon field.                

—L. Ron Hubbard

Editorial Reviews

Errol Flynn would feel quite at home in Hubbard's ripping yarn of Caribbean piracy in the year 1680, first published in 1935. Press-ganged into the Royal Navy, Tom Bristol faces 100 lashes just as buccaneers attack the British man-o'-war on which he reluctantly serves. Tom soon realizes the pirate life is for him, a life replete with swordplay, maroonings and naval battles with ships lost in the roiling fog of cannon smoke. Supplementing the illustrated text are an extensive glossary of nautical and period terms, an essay entitled "L. Ron Hubbard and American Pulp Fiction," and a foreword by Kevin J. Anderson on the golden age of pulp fiction. The man who would go on to found Scientology never achieves the visceral intensity of such fellow pulp writers as Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan, but he conducts his minisaga in just the fashion readers of the era expected. (Sept.)

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Publishers Weekly

Also very highly recommended in this outstanding series is L. Ron Hubbard's Under the Black Ensign, a riveting tale of sailing ships, piracy and the high seas.

Midwest Book Review

Hubbard wrote a ton of pulp stories in every genre during the 1930s and 1940s. Galaxy is reissuing all of them in paperback-80 books in all (told you it was a ton). Each book features a killer pulp cover along with other illustrations, a glossary (parts of a ship for the briny swashbucklers, etc.), and background on the author.

—Michael Rogers

Library Journal

“Also very highly recommended in this outstanding series is L. Ron Hubbard’s Under the Black Ensign, a riveting tale of sailing ships, piracy and the high seas.” — Midwest Book Review

“Hubbard wrote a ton of pulp stories in every genre during the 1930s and 1940s. Galaxy is reissuing all of them in paperback – 80 books in all (told you it was a ton). Each book features a killer pulp cover along with other illustrations, a glossary and background on the author.” —Library Journal

 

“Errol Flynn would feel quite at home in Hubbard’s ripping yarn… replete with swordplay, marooning and naval battles with ships lost in the roiling fog of cannon smoke. Supplementing the illustrated text are an extensive glossary of nautical and period terms.” —Publishers Weekly

“This is a gem in American pulp fiction…” —Audiofile 

From the Publisher

This is a gem in American pulp fiction, in all its campy glory. The full-cast performance, complete with sound effects, only enhances its appeal, making weaknesses such as stock characters, a quick-and-dirty pirate plot, and unrealistically swift sea travel simply melt away into insignificance. While the performances of the readers are over-the-top at times, the approach doesn’t seem out of place for such a narrative setting. Moreover, the ever-present soundtrack is never distracting and, if anything, lends a richness to the imagined picture that would, in other titles, be filled by narrative description. Those who listened to “The Shadow” and “Flash Gordon” growing up will love this production. A.H.A. 2009 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

JULY 2008 - AudioFile