Many are familiar with the salty tales of the pirates of the Caribbean, but there were pirates, shipwrecks and plunder all along the Gulf of Mexico.
Before there were cowboys, gun fights and cattle drives, Texas adventurers were Spanish conquistadors, sea faring warriors and rouges who fought along the shoreline between Galveston and Tallahassee.
When civilization's foothold on the region was weak, men of desperation seized opportunities to fight for God, gold and glory.
These stories are not lost to Davy Jones' locker, but captured to history and retold in the book Pirates, Raiders and Invaders of the Gulf Coast. Ryan Starrett and Josh Foreman are co-authors.
They tell us the real-life swashbucklers were nowhere near the glamorous romantic lovable villains of Hollywood lore. They lived lives much more gritty, cruel and short.
Pirates, Raiders and Invaders of the Gulf Coast, is published by The History Press.
