The Last Pirate of New York: A Ghost Ship, A Killer, and the Birth of a Gangster Nation

Cohen (Sweet and Low), a self-declared aficionado of gangster stories, delivers a doozy of a tale that no fan of true crime will be able to put down. In 1860, near New York harbor, a ghost sloop, adrift and unmanned, appeared out of the fog, awash in blood with severed fingers lying on its fore deck. The investigation of these shipboard murders (there had been a crew of four) dominated headlines and fascinated New Yorkers, and the culprit, eventually captured by police in Providence, R.I., turned out to be one of the most feared and shadowy figures of the 1800s New York underworld: pirate Albert Hicks. He was responsible for decades of mayhem on the seas, hundreds of murders, and countless robberies. He was convicted of piracy, sentenced to death, and executed by public hanging (but not before P.T. Barnum sent someone to make a premature death mask). Drawing on old newspaper clippings, police reports, and court records, Cohen leads readers through the dank streets of Lower Manhattan when pirates anchored off of 14th street, and argues that Hicks, perhaps the last of the American pirates, may also have been the first of the mobsters who would soon be a New York fixture. This riveting yarn will enthrall fans of Gangs of New York aficionados. (June)