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PIRATE OF PUERTO RICO by Lee Cooper

PIRATE OF PUERTO RICO

By

Pub Date: Feb. 1st, 1971
Publisher: Putnam

Based on the exploits of the legendary Puerto Rican pirate Roberto Cofresi, this short, young looking, easy reading narrative introduces its anti-hero as an ambitious youth who finds an abandoned pirate ship, is thwarted by the ruling Spaniards in his plan to outfit it as a merchant ship and trade among the islands, and consequently hires a crew of cutthroats and sails as an enterprising buccaneer. Cofresi uses the loot from his maiden voyage to buy his friend from slavery, and before being hanged at 27 he assigns his last haul to the freeing of the friend's mother. In between he cleverly captures a Dutch and a Spanish merchant ship, outwits a small fleet of Spanish warships, and tricks the governor of Cuba into supplying him with food, ammunition and repairs. Cofresi's feats have the usual rogue-trickster appeal, but as the telling here has neither the flavor of folklore, the managed tension of adventure fiction, nor any endorsement as fact, it would take an urgent need for Puerto Rican material to arouse much interest in this version of his story.