1837: the Victorian Era approaches and the golden age of piracy draws to a close.

Worried that his pirates are getting bored with a life of winking at pretty native ladies, sitting about on tropical beaches, and trying to stick enough jellyfish together to make a bouncy castle, the Pirate Captain decides it's time they had an adventure.

A chance encounter with the young Charles Darwin - embarked upon the voyage of discovery that will one day make him famous - leads the Captain and his rag-tag crew from the exotic Galapagos Islands to the fog filled streets of Victorian London, where they encounter grisly murder, vanishing ladies, a diabolical Bishop, the Elephant Man, and have an exciting trip to the zoo.

THE PIRATES! is a rollicking read: uproariously funny, unexplainably daft, gently knowing and insightful - one of the very few books to deal with the weighty issues of science versus religion, whilst at the same time featuring a lot of roaring and running people through.