Bucaniers of America: Or, a true Account of the Most remarkable Assaults Committed of late years upon the Coasts of The West-Indies, by the Bucaniers of Jamaica and Tortuga, both English and French. Wherein are contained more especially, The unparallel’d.EXQUEMELIN, Alexandre Olivier (1645-1707) – RINGROSE, Basil (died 1686). London: William Crooke, at the Green Dragon, 1684 – 1685. 2 volumes. 4to., (8 4/8 x 6 4/8 inches).Physical Description: 2 volumes. 4to., (8 4/8 x 6 4/8 inches). Volume I: title-page (lightly soiled, a bit creased), double-page engraved map of Panama, 2 double-page plates, 4 full-page portraits of the buccaneers, 2 full-page plates, engraved vignette head-piece, one or two woodcuts in the text (some browning, one or two mostly marginal stains). Volume II: one folding engraved map of “A Description of the South Sea & Coasts of America…” (short separation and a bit browned at folds, creased), 13 full- or part-page maps and one full-page plan, illustrated throughout with woodcut coastal profiles. Contemporary mottled calf, each cover decorated with blind panels of floral roll tools and fillets, each outer corner decorated with an elaborate fleuron (rebacked to style, front free endpaper to volume one supplied, a bit scuffed).First edition in English of Exquemelin’s account (volume I), first published in Dutch as De Americaensche zee- rover in Amsterdam, 1678, and then in Spanish as Piratas de la America in 1681. First edition of Ringrose’s account (volume II). Exquemelin, possibly a Dutchman, sailed with the French East India Company to Tortuga in 1666, where, along with everything else owned by the Company, he was sold to a “most cruel tyrant and perfidious that ever was born of woman, who was then Governour, or rather Lieutenant-General of that Island.” After a bout of sickness brought on by ill-treatment Exquemelin was sold on to a much more sympathetic “Patron” whom he served for more than a year before buying his freedom and “entering“ into the wicked Order of the Pirates, or Robbers at Sea. “Into this Society I was received with common consent, both of the Superior and vulgar sort, and among them I continued until the year 1672” (pages 10-11). Ringrose, an English Buccaneer “may have taken part in the assault on Porto Bello in 1679 before joining a party of some 330 buccaneers who, under Captain Peter Harris, landed at Golden Island on 5 April 1680 with the intention of marching over the Isthmus of Darien to sack Panama. On 15 April he was active in the assault on the Spanish town of Santa Maria and later was in a sea battle in the Bay of Panama when three armed Spanish vessels were seized. Thus equipped to mount unlimited operations against the Spaniards, and under the new leadership of Captain Bartholomew Sharpe, the buccaneers scoured the length of the Pacific coast of America in pursuit of prizes… He was also one of five buccaneers, including William Dampier and Lionel Wafer, who kept a journal of the expedition. His narrative is by far the most detailed account of the voyage and it was published as the second volume of A. O. Exquemelin’s Bucaniers of America (1685) (as here). The publisher’s preface summed up Ringrose’s achievement very fairly: “[he] not only fought with his sword in the most desperate engagements and battles of the Buccaneers against the Spaniards, but with his pen gave us a true account of those transactions, and with his pencil has delineated unto us the very scenes of those tragedies” (Exquemelin, 2.290; recorded by James William Kelly for DNB). Wing E-3896 and 3897; Sabin 23481; Hill 579.Provenance: Purchase details inscribed in Latin on each paste-down; with the 17th-century engraved armorial bookplate of an Italian nobleman, his coat of arms with the motto “Tempus Edax Rerum” on the verso of each title-page; with the inscription “R. Graves Hosp. (?)Liniston 1697 on page 20 of volume I; with the pen trials of John Noval dated 1701 on the front paste-down of volume II; with the engraved armorial bookplates of Arthur Bastard Eastabrook Holdsworth and his wife Elizabeth on the front paste-down of volume I and the rear paste-down of volume II.