Some Books of the Week BRISTOL in the Middle Ages
was a thriving port, but with the discovery of America and the opening of the trade with the East Indies she became second only to London. Her great days are recalled in Commander J. W. Darner Powell's learned and exhaustive work on Bristol Privateers and Ships of War (Arrowsmith, 31s. 6d.), which records the ships built at Bristol and gives some account of their doings, especially in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The warships included the notorious Hermione,' whose crew mutinied in 1797, mur- dered their tyrannical Captain Pigot, and gave up the vessel to the Spaniards. The Bristol privateer captains included Martin Pring, famous for his exploits against the Portuguese in the Indian seas, and Woodes Rogers, whom Dampier has celebrated in his journals. The author has a good deal to say also about the adventures of Bristol merchantmen like the ' Jacob,' captured in 1621 by Algerian pirates and retaken by her four apprentices, who carried their ship into San
" where they sold the nine Turks for galley slaves for a good sum of money." Commander Darner Powell's book is the outcome of much patient research, and forms a really valuable contribution to the history of English maritime enterprise. It is well produced and admirably illustrated, and, as is fitting, comes from a Bristol press.
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