ARCHER, William. The Pirate's Progress [A Short History of the U-Boat]. London: Chatto and Windus. 1918.
8vo. Original paper covers with illustrated front; pp. [8], 96; foot and head of spine with signs of indentation and generally rubbed; back of cover slightly soiled; sewn hinge binding coming slightly undone; otherwise good copy.
First edition.
As William Archer speicifices of his intent in The Pirate's Progress, "The following pages contains a sketch of the general decline of Germany's deployment of the U-Boat, for honourable to dishonourable, and finally to atrocious, uses". William Archer was a Scottish author who was famously a lifelong friend and supporter of the prolific Norweigian playwright Henrick Ibson and a keen associate and fan of George Bernard Shaw, whose work he encouraged for translation in German.
During the First World War, Archer worked for the War Propaganda Bureau and The Pirate's Progress is, in Archer's work, an opportuntiy to analyse how "the annals of the sea contain many stories of disaster…." as "we have all been accustomed from childhood to read with deep emotion of the accounts of historic shipwrecks", talking of this in relevance to the deployment of weapons of war at sea and the need to "review the legimitate exploits of the German undersea fleet, before pasisng on to the immeaurably longer catalogue of its crimes".
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