John A. Boyd

I live alone on a hill on St. Croix overlooking Christiansted Harbor in a fantasy world of my own creation. I am a time traveler, researching people and events back to the beginning of written history. I am frequently contacted by my grandchildren and others who are fascinated by searching for pirate treasures and seeking out other great adventures. I live alone but will never be lonely so long as there are mysteries to be solved, granddaughters to be loved and wine to be drunk.

I have a dominant ADHD pattern which sculpts my life and work; and a measurable ASD trait. One of the interesting aspects of ADHD which many educators and parents find frustrating, and perhaps negative, is the ability to get hyper focused on a topic that is interesting and avoid those activities which require structure.

In my case, I love the chore of fact checking so can get lost for days trying to find the most minuscule piece of information. The ASD trait in me allows me to be somewhat antisocial on my own terms. I can avoid human interactions for days on end while focused on problems I am trying to solve. Over the past decade, I have become obsessed with the pirates who operated from St. Croix, Virgin Islands, from 1500 to 1800.

My first book, "The Caribs", focuses on the Kalinago tribe and their pirate activities which disrupted the European settlement of the Caribbean from the time of Columbus in 1493 until the time of Napoleon in 1803. In my second book, "The Lost Pirate Treasures of St. Croix", I focused on the European pirates who made St. Croix home and may have left treasure on the island. The principle pirates included Governor Phillippe de Longvilliers de Poincy, a French nobleman and Bailiff Grand Cross of the Knights of Malta. He is discussed extensively in my second book because he was most likely to have left a fortune on St. Croix.

Captains Samuel Bellamy, Paulsgrave Williams and Oliver La Buse were also discussed but, as noted in the Chapter devoted to them, only La Buse might have left a small amount of treasure on St. Croix. Since my second book was more about the treasure left behind and the reasons it might still be on the island, I did not dwell on the scarcity of credible information about these men. I do not consider myself a Pirate Historian and probably would have stopped at this point, if I had not been given access to a manuscript allegedly written by Bellamy himself.

I found the story to be fascinating but have no ability to document the authenticity of the claim nor the era in which it was written. All I could do was use my ability to focus on fact checking to the extent possible. Finding the substance of the story to be unchallenged, I decided to write the story as presented to me. Since publication of the "Memoirs of Captain Sam Bellamy, The Prince of Pirates", several readers and reviewers have challenged the provenance of the documents which means to challenge the authenticity. And in this case I have no defense.

However, fact checking the histories and cultures of the various pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy was a delightful chore and I took three years doing it. I did not commit the background research to paper but would be delighted to recheck the facts where possible and share the results in my blog without regard to whether the facts support or contradict my story.

I pride myself that I am on a never ending search for truth and wisdom but the two are not always connected. Regardless, a foundation of truth is desired because lies can never be used as a stable foundation for wisdom. Join me in the discussions at the blog on my author page or the discussion forum associated with this book.