Jamie Sharpe & The Pirates of Barbary
By Gary R. Bush
2023 Release from
Three Oceans Press.
It’s 1803. The US and several other maritime nations are engaged in armed conflict over control of the oceans of the Western world and sea-borne commercial traffic, both legal and not.
Like the rest of the fledgling nation’s military services in 1803, the U.S. Navy exists more in name than in reality. Jamie Sharpe is a rising junior officer in the Navy who, along with other crew from the armed schooner Barbara Allen, is captured off the coast of Tripoli. She sailed alone into the range of the criminals then in control of the north coast of Africa. Even then, the Navy was known for its courage.
This story follows young adventurous Jamie Sharpe on his journey across the oceans and his imprisonment in Tripoli by the evil Captain Kemal Rais, military leader for the Dictator of Tripoli. Sharpe’s attempts to subvert from the inside and to call in help from across the Atlantic is carefully and interestingly documented in this spirited and engaging novel that will interest readers, young and old, and in the bargain reveals an important part of American History that rarely receives much attention in schools. It’s a good story, carefully researched and quite enjoyable. I look forward to the third in Jamie Sharpe’s odyssey in American Naval history.
