Book excerpt: This essential guide to high seas adventure features practical pirate skills, recipes, and stories of real-life rogues. Avast, ye! For anyone who has dreamed of hitting the high seas, manning a crew, brandishing a cutlass, or burying treasure, here’s The Pirate Handbook. Part how-to, part illustrated history, this detailed manual gives insight into every aspect of the pirating life: learn how to make a seaworthy raft, navigate by the stars, brew up a batch of grog, and much more. Featuring detailed illustrations, real recipes from the Golden Age of Piracy, plus the lore of the real-life pirates who roamed the waters of the Caribbean and beyond, this is the ultimate guide for salty dogs wherever they rove the seas.