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Rebels at Sea: Author Talk with Eric Jay Dolin

  • James Library & Center for the Arts 24 West Street Norwell, Ma 02061 (map)

October 20, 2022 | 7pm

Rebels at Sea: Privateering in the American Revolution

Author Talk with Eric Jay Dolin

Sponsored by Axiom Architects and Joseph’s Garage


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TICKETS: $20 | $10 STUDENTS

A limited number of free tickets are available to seniors, courtesy of a grant from the Cordelia Family Foundation.

Please be prepared to show a student ID at the door if purchasing a discounted ticket.

About Rebels at Sea

The best-selling author of Black Flags, Blue Waters reclaims the daring freelance sailors who proved essential to the winning of the Revolutionary War.

The heroic story of the founding of the U.S. Navy during the Revolution has been told before, yet missing from most maritime histories of America’s first war is the ragtag fleet of private vessels, from 20-foot whaleboats to 40-cannon men-of-war, that truly revealed the new nation’s character―above all, its ambition and entrepreneurial ethos. In Rebels at Sea, best-selling historian Eric Jay Dolin corrects that significant omission, and contends that privateers, though often seen as profiteers at best and pirates at worst, were in fact critical to the Revolution’s outcome. Armed with cannons, swivel guns, muskets, and pikes―as well as government documents granting them the right to seize enemy ships―thousands of privateers tormented the British on the broad Atlantic and in bays and harbors on both sides of the ocean. Abounding with tales of daring maneuvers and deadly encounters, Rebels at Sea presents the American Revolution as we have rarely seen it before.

About Eric Jay Dolin

Eric Jay Dolin is the author of fifteen books, including Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, which was chosen as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe, and also won the 2007 John Lyman Award for U.S. Maritime History. His most recent book before Rebels at Sea is A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes, which was a Kirkus Prize finalist, and chosen as one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Booklist, Library Journal, and the editors at Amazon. It was also selected as a "Must Read" book by the Massachusetts Center for the Book for 2021. Prior to A Furious Sky, he published Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America’s Most Notorious Pirates, which was chosen as a "Must Read" book for 2019 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and was a finalist for the 2019 Julia Ward Howe Award given by the Boston Author's Club. A graduate of Brown, Yale, and MIT, where he received his PhD in environmental policy, Dolin lives in Marblehead, Massachusetts, with his family. For more information, please see www.ericjaydolin.com.