pirates lifestyle essay

Essay on Pirates

Students are often asked to write an essay on Pirates in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Pirates

Who were pirates.

Pirates were people who attacked ships at sea. Long ago, they searched for treasure and took it by force. They lived a life of adventure and danger, sailing across oceans.

Pirate Ships

Pirate ships were their homes. These ships were fast and easy to steer. Pirates used them to chase and rob other ships. They had flags with skull designs.

Pirate Life

Life as a pirate was tough. They had strict rules and shared everything. Pirates worked together but could be punished for breaking rules.

Famous Pirates

Some pirates became famous, like Blackbeard and Anne Bonny. Stories and movies often tell about their wild lives and treasure hunts.

250 Words Essay on Pirates

Pirates were sailors who attacked other ships and stole from them. They lived many years ago, and their stories are still famous today. They sailed the seas, looking for boats to rob, and they didn’t follow the rules. Pirates are known for their love of treasure, especially gold and jewels.

The Pirate Ship

The pirate ship was their home and their way to travel across the ocean. It was also their main tool for attacking other ships. These ships were fast and could move quickly to catch up with the ships they wanted to steal from. The most famous pirate flag had a skull and bones on it. When other sailors saw this flag, they knew pirates were coming.

Being a pirate was not easy. The sea was often rough, and the work was hard. Pirates had to be strong and brave. They also had to be good at working as a team to sail their ship and fight battles. Sometimes, they would get hurt or even lose their lives while trying to take over other ships.

Pirates in Stories

In books and movies, pirates are often shown as exciting and adventurous. They search for hidden treasure and explore unknown islands. Even though they were not good people, their stories can be thrilling. We should remember that real pirates were thieves and could be very dangerous. But in stories, they take us on wild adventures across the seas.

500 Words Essay on Pirates

Pirates were sailors who attacked other ships and stole from them. They lived many years ago, mostly during a time we call the ‘Golden Age of Piracy,’ which was between the 1650s and the 1730s. These sea robbers would take gold, silver, and other valuable things from the ships they captured. They sailed in their own ships, often with skull and crossbones flags, which were known as the Jolly Roger.

Pirate Ships and Life at Sea

Pirate ships were not like the big navy ships of countries. They were often smaller and faster, which helped them catch up to the ships they wanted to rob. Life on a pirate ship was tough. Pirates had to deal with storms, get food and fresh water, and keep the ship in good shape. Unlike navy sailors, pirates had their own rules and chose their own leaders. The captain had to be strong and smart to keep the crew happy.

Some pirates became very famous and are still talked about today. Blackbeard, whose real name was Edward Teach, was known for his fearsome look and for putting slow-burning fuses in his beard during battles to scare his enemies. Anne Bonny and Mary Read were women who dressed as men to become pirates, which was rare because most pirates were men. These famous pirates are often shown in movies and books, making them seem exciting and adventurous.

The Pirate Code

Pirates had their own set of rules called the ‘Pirate Code.’ These rules decided how they would share the stolen goods and how they should treat each other. If someone broke the rules, they could be left on an island or punished in other ways. The Pirate Code was not the same on every ship, but it helped keep order among a group of people who were often seen as outlaws.

The End of the Golden Age of Piracy

Piracy became less common when countries started to fight back more strongly against pirates. They sent out navy ships to chase and capture them. Also, as trade between countries grew, it became more important to keep the seas safe for merchant ships. By the 1730s, many of the famous pirates were caught or had stopped being pirates, which marked the end of the Golden Age of Piracy.

Pirates in Popular Culture

Today, pirates are often shown in movies, books, and TV shows. They are usually shown as exciting and daring characters, searching for treasure and having adventures. This picture of pirates is more fun and less scary than what real pirates were like. But it’s important to remember that real pirates were thieves at sea and could be very dangerous.

In conclusion, pirates have a rich history that is both interesting and a bit scary. They were thieves on the sea, living by their own rules and often causing trouble for ships carrying valuable goods. While the Golden Age of Piracy is long over, the stories of pirates continue to capture the imaginations of people everywhere, especially in movies and books.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

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A Lot of What Is Known about Pirates Is Not True, and a Lot of What Is True Is Not Known.

The pirate next door..

Howard Pyle / DoverPictura

In 1701, in Middletown, New Jersey, Moses Butterworth languished in a jail, accused of piracy. Like many young men based in England or her colonies, he had joined a crew that sailed the Indian Ocean intent on plundering ships of the Muslim Mughal Empire. Throughout the 1690s, these pirates marauded vessels laden with gold, jewels, silk, and calico on pilgrimage toward Mecca. After achieving great success, many of these men sailed back into the Atlantic via Madagascar to the North American seaboard, where they quietly disembarked in Charleston, Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Newport, and Boston, and made themselves at home.

When Butterworth was captured, he admitted to authorities that he had served under the notorious Captain William Kidd, arriving with him in Boston before making his way to New Jersey. This would seem quite damning. Governor Andrew Hamilton and his entourage rushed to Monmouth County Court to quickly try Butterworth for his crimes. But the swashbuckling Butterworth was not without supporters.

In a surprising turn of events, Samuel Willet, a local leader, sent a drummer, Thomas Johnson, to sound the alarm and gather a company of men armed with guns and clubs to attack the courthouse. One report estimated the crowd at over a hundred furious East Jersey residents. The shouts of the men, along with the “Drum beating,” made it impossible to examine Butterworth and ask him about his financial and social relationships with the local Monmouth gentry.

Armed with clubs, locals Benjamin and Richard Borden freed Butterworth from the colonial authorities. “Commanding ye Kings peace to be keept,” the judge and sheriff drew their swords and injured both Bordens in the scuffle. Soon, however, the judge and sheriff were beaten back by the crowd, which succeeded in taking Butterworth away. The mob then seized Hamilton, his followers, and the sheriff, taking them prisoner in Butterworth’s place.

A witness claimed this was not a spontaneous uprising but “a Design for some Considerable time past,” as the ringleaders had kept “a pyratt in their houses and threatened any that will offer to seize him.”

Governor Hamilton had felt that his life was in danger. Had the Bordens been killed in the melee, he said, the mob would have murdered him. As it was, he was confined for four days until Butterworth was free and clear.

Jailbreaks and riots in support of alleged pirates were common throughout the British Empire during the late seventeenth century. Local political leaders openly protected men who committed acts of piracy against powers that were nominally allied or at peace with England. In large part, these leaders were protecting their own hides: Colonists wanted to prevent depositions proving that they had harbored pirates or purchased their goods. Some of the instigators were fathers-in-law of pirates.

There were less materialist reasons, too, why otherwise upstanding members of the community rebelled in support of sea marauders. Many colonists feared that crack-downs on piracy masked darker intentions to impose royal authority, set up admiralty courts without juries of one’s peers, or even force the establishment of the Anglican Church. Openly helping a pirate escape jail was also a way of protesting policies that interfered with the trade in bullion, slaves, and luxury items such as silk and calico from the Indian Ocean.

These repeated acts of rebellion against royal authorities in support of men who had committed blatant criminal acts inspired me to spend about ten years researching pirates, work that resulted in my book, Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 . In it, I analyzed the rise and fall of international piracy from the perspective of colonial hinterlands, from the inception of England’s burgeoning empire to its administrative consolidation. While traditionally depicted as swashbuckling adventurers on the high seas, pirates played a crucial role on land, contributing to the commercial development and economic infrastructure of port towns in colonial America.

Pirates could be found in nearly every Atlantic port city. But only particular locations became known as “pirate nests,” a pejorative term used by royalists and customs officials. Many of the most notorious pirates began their careers in these ports. Others established even deeper ties by settling in these cities and becoming respected members of the local elite. Instead of the snarling drunken fiends that parade through children’s books, these pirates spent their booty on pigs and chickens, hoping to live a more placid and financially secure life on land.

I was wholly uninterested in piracy as a child. I never dressed as a pirate on Halloween or even read pirate books. I went to graduate school at Harvard, intending to write about fatherhood in early America. In my third year, I presented to colleagues a 30-page essay that I hoped would be a chapter of my dissertation.

The paper was about William Harris, one of the first settlers of Rhode Island, who accumulated a massive estate through shrewd business tactics and slick legal dealings. A Puritan, Harris styled himself as an Abraham of the New World who would people a New Canaan. He composed a will that went to seven generations. In 1680, however, the elderly man was sailing toward London when Algerian pirates captured his vessel.

In the central market of the great walled city of Algiers, Harris was sold into slavery to a wealthy merchant. The once powerful man sent pitiful letters to Rhode Island, begging friends to ransom him and asking his wife to sell parts of his estate. He pleaded, “If you fail me of the said sum and said time it is most like to be the loss of my life, he [my captor] is so Cruel and Covetous. I live on bread and water.” After nearly two years of abject slavery, Harris became one of the lucky few to be ransomed. He made his way back to London, where, after a few weeks on Christian land, the exhausted patriarch died.

Painting of a fleet of ships in the Bay of Algiers

The Anglo-Dutch fleet in the Bay of Algiers, which thrived on an economy of piracy in the 17th century.

Wikimedia / Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

The Algiers episode was marginal to my larger points about fatherhood. But, as the discussion went around the room, all that anyone wanted to talk about was pirates. This was a few years before Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl became a worldwide sensation. One colleague working on Atlantic families had noticed that locals in South Carolina seemed strangely unsurprised when pirates came ashore in the 1680s. Another colleague came upon a pirate who arrived in Newport in the 1690s, bought land, settled down, and became a customs official. This more-than-passing interest in pirates, as opposed to fathers, left me quite concerned. I had already taken my qualifying exams. I knew nothing about piracy. And since few scholars had written about piracy, I assumed it was not an important topic. Yet there it was, boarding the ship of my research agenda without permission.

Distraught, I cut a deal with my adviser that I would spend a month in the archives, examining government records and official correspondences to find out more. Sure enough, pirates were everywhere. But they were not who we thought they were. They were not anarchistic, antisocial maniacs. At least not in the seventeenth century. Like Moses Butterworth, many were welcome in colonial communities. They married local women, and bought land and livestock. Pirate James Brown even married the daughter of the governor of Pennsylvania and was appointed to the Pennsylvania House of Assembly.

Engraving portrait of a man, Sir Henry Morgan

Notorious buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan, shown in a Dutch engraving, raided Spain's Caribbean colonies from his base in Jamaica.

Private collection / Bridgeman Images

Pirates, it seemed, could be civil, neighborly, and law-abiding. Why hadn’t this been noticed before? I chalk it up to specialization. By focusing so closely on their own areas of expertise, historians had overlooked how piracy permeated colonial life.

Piracy has not achieved its rightful place in the narrative of American history precisely because it was so familiar to the people of the English-speaking world of the seventeenth century. In the early days of the colonies, pirate attacks were considered a commonplace, inevitable feature of the maritime world, and noted only as entertaining asides. The prevalence of piracy in children’s stories and blockbuster movies has likely also made it difficult for historians to study the topic without romanticism. This was where my childhood disinterest in piracy paid off. I embarked on my research as a historian rather than as a fan.

Historians and fiction writers alike have portrayed pirates as inherently removed from civilized society. Hubert Deschamps in his 1949 Les pirates à Madagascar voiced what has become a standard trope: “[Pirates] were a unique race, born of the sea and of a brutal dream, a free people, detached from other human societies and from the future, without children and without old people, without homes and without cemeteries, without hope but not without audacity, a people for whom atrocity was a career choice and death a certitude of the day after tomorrow.” Seventeenth-century lawyers defined pirates, in the words of Admiralty judge Sir Leoline Jenkins, as hostis humani generis , or “Enemies not of one Nation or of one Sort of People only, but of all mankind.” Since pirates lacked the legal protection of any prince, nation, or body of law, “Every Body is commissioned and is to be armed against them, as against Rebels and Traytors, to subdue and root them out.”

Contemporary historians have tended to use pirates for their own ends, depicting them as rebels against convention. Their pirates critique early modern capitalism and challenge oppressive sexual norms. They are cast as proto-feminists or supporters of homosocial utopias. They challenge oppressive social hierarchies by flaunting social graces or wearing flamboyant clothing above their social stations. They subvert oppressive notions of race, citing the presence of black crew members as evidence of race blindness. Moses Butterworth, however, did none of these things.

Engraving of a crowd surrounding a man with a noose around his neck

A pirate faces hanging by the River Thames in the eighteenth century.

Private collection / Peter Newark Historical Pictures / Bridgeman Images

The true rebels were leaders like Samuel Willet, establishment figures on land who led riots against crown authority. It was the higher reaches of colonial society, from governors to merchants, who supported global piracy, not some underclass or proto proletariat.

Popular culture has invested heavily in the image of pirates as anarchists who speak in colorful language and dress in attire recognizable to any five-year-old. In fact, what we imagine pirates to look and sound like matches only one decade of history: 1716 to 1726. Before that, piracy consisted of a spectrum of activities from the heroic to the maniacal. Many historians, like many pirate fans, write about piracy as a static phenomenon. This is the basis of popular events like International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19) or the costume worn by Jack Sparrow. When asked if these common tropes are true, I give a typical historian’s answer: It depends on when and where.

For the period before the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, it makes more sense to talk about a sailor who commits piracy, rather than an actual “pirate.” Imagine a ten-year-old boy caught stealing candy from the store. If he learned his lesson, it would be ludicrous to call him a “thief” when he reached adulthood. If he goes on to get a PhD and becomes a respectable historian, it makes more sense to call him “professor.” Certainly there were flamboyant captains of legendary status who would never consider legitimate commerce as a way of life. But most sought one large prize and hoped to use their plunder to join the middling to upper echelons of colonial society.

One reason piracy was often an act or a phase, and not a way of life, was simply because humans have not evolved to live on the sea. The sea is a hostile place, offering few of the pleasures of terrestrial society. Pirates needed to clean and repair their ships, collect wood and water, gather crews, obtain paperwork, fence their goods, or obtain sexual gratification. Simply put, what is the value of silver and gold in the middle of the ocean? Why would someone risk his life in a hostile maritime world if there was no chance he could actually spend his booty?

“A Merry Life and a Short One” was not the motto of most pirates of the late seventeenth century. Until the 1710s, English pirates almost always had somewhere to go to spend their money, either for a few days or to settle down for good. The British National Archives holds a petition from 48 wives of known pirates, begging the crown to pardon their husbands so they could return home to care for their families. Returning to London was not an option for most sea rovers, but a life in the American colonies offered the closest proxy.

Painting of a 17th century man in golden clothing and orange cape

Robert Rich, Second Earl of Warwick, who was instrumental to the development of the American colonies and commanded a fleet of privateers, was painted by Anthony van Dyck around 1632.

Support of piracy on the peripheries of the British Empire dates to the first forays of English sea captains overseas. Pirate Nests begins in Elizabethan England with the active protection of piracy by port communities in Devon and Cornwall. The ascension of James I coincided with the migration of a plunder economy from England to farther shores. Puritan communities in Ireland, and soon the fledgling colonies of Jamestown, Bermuda, New Plymouth, and Boston all supported illicit sea marauders. Upon the conquest of Jamaica in 1655, Port Royal became a renowned pirate nest, led by Henry Morgan, whose attacks against the Spanish were defended by the colony’s governor and council. By the 1680s, pirates who plundered along the Spanish Main or in the “South Sea” coasts of Chile and Peru dropped anchor in the North American colonies. In the 1690s, men like Moses Butterworth joined crews heading out of colonial ports to the Indian Ocean, basing themselves on the island of Madagascar.

Illustration of woman standing over injured man, exposing herself to him

English pirate Mary Reed, who dressed as a man, reveals herself to a victim.

Private collection / DoverPictura

Beginning in 1696, support for piracy was threatened by Parliament’s efforts to reform the legal and political administration of the colonies. Initial attempts to better regulate the colonies faced heated resistance like the riot that sprang Moses Butterworth in 1701. Royal officials battled with colonial elites over control of their court system, choice of governors, economic policies, and other issues. But the transformation of law, politics, economics, and even popular culture in a relatively brief period of time soon persuaded landed colonists of the long-term benefits of legal trade over the short-term boom of the pirate market. After being sprung from jail, Moses Butterworth eventually headed to Newport, where, in 1704, he captained a sloop that sailed alongside a man-of-war in pursuit of runaway English sailors. The former pirate had turned pirate-hunter.

Illustration of a bearded pirate preparing to swing a sword

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, has inspired the depiction of pirates in fiction, film, and on stage.

New York Public Library / Art Resource, NY

The expansion of commercial trade, particularly the slave trade, cemented a colonial social order increasingly threatened by instability at sea and less tolerant of social mobility on land. This change in attitudes led to the period we call the “War on Pirates”—roughly 1716 to 1726—and the advent of sea marauders who, with little hope of ever resettling on land, attacked their own nation. This is the era of characters like Blackbeard (Edward Teach), Bartholomew Roberts, and female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, colorful rebels who lived dangerously and fit the legend. Where for centuries pirates had sailed under the flags of their own nations or of foreign princes, they now sailed—and were hanged under—flags of their own construction. No longer welcomed by the colonial elite, outlaw vessels were routed from shores that once harbored pirate nests. In 1718 and 1723, the ports of Newport, Rhode Island, and Charleston, South Carolina, tried and hanged crews of 23 and 26 pirates, respectively, the two largest mass executions not involving a slave insurrection in colonial America. As a result, by the late 1720s the pirate scourge had largely abated.

Mark G. Hanna is associate professor of history at the University of California–San Diego and the founding associate director of the UCSD Institute of Arts and Humanities. He received an NEH research fellowship that supported his work on Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570–1740 , which won the 2016 Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians and the 2016 John Ben Snow Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies.

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The Pirate’s Life at Sea

Author: Cindy Vallar

We harbor romantic ideas about life aboard a wooden ship, but Doctor Samuel Johnson once wrote, “No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in jail with the chance of being drowned…. A man in jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.”1 His words painted a far closer image to reality, for a mariner’s life was anything but comfortable. He lived belowdecks in dim, cramped, and filthy quarters. Rats and cockroaches abounded in the bowels of the ship. Privacy was nonexistent, especially aboard a pirate ship where two hundred men might inhabit a world measuring one hundred twenty by forty feet. Within the pages of Five Naval Journals 1789-1817, an anonymous sailor said, “On the same deck with me…slept between five and six hundred men; and the ports being necessarily closed from evening to morning, the heat in this cavern of only six feet high, and so entirely filled with human bodies, was overpowering.”2

Bathroom facilities were primitive. Rotting provisions, bilgewater, and unwashed bodies made the air rank. A storm meant days of dampness after it passed. Headroom between decks posed problems for taller men. Captain Rotheram of the HMS Bellerophon, whose gun deck headroom measured five feet eight inches, surveyed his crew and found they averaged five feet five inches in height.3

According to a sailor named Barrow, “There are no men under the sun that fare harder and get their living more hard and that are so abused on all sides as we poor seamen…so I could wish no young man to betake himself to this calling unless he had good friends to put him in place or supply his wants, for he shall find a great deal more to his sorrow than I have writ.”4 For these reasons most sailors were in their mid-twenties, having gone to sea much earlier. Whether pirate or seaman, they had to have stamina and dexterity that older men no longer possessed. They also spent from three months to several years away from home.

Added to these problems were the dangers inherent in a sailor’s life. He might plummet to his death while working the sails high above the deck. He might fall overboard, in which case the ship rarely returned for him and few sailors knew how to swim. Plus there was the danger of sharks in tropical waters. Then there was the danger of fire or shipwreck. Also, the dull routine that was the norm between the sighting of sail and boarding a prize, numbed sailors’ minds. Accidents and natural disasters certainly claimed sailors’ lives, as did sea fights, but men were far more likely to succumb to disease than anything else. Scurvy, dysentery, tuberculosis, typhus, smallpox, malaria, and yellow fever killed half of all seamen. According to David Cordingly, “It has been calculated that during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France of 1793 to 1815 approximately 100,000 British seamen died. Of this number 1.5 per cent died in battle, 12 per cent died in shipwrecks or similar disasters, 20 per cent died from shipboard or dockside accidents, and no less than 65 per cent died from disease.”5

Drinking water, stored in kegs, turned foul and sailors were sometimes forced to drink this water. More often, though, they drank rum or grog rather than the brandy and wine that officers imbibed. Pirates, on the other hand, drank a mixture of rum, water, sugar, and nutmeg; rumfustian, which blended raw eggs with sugar, sherry, gin, and beer; and sherry, brandy, and port. The two most common foods sailors ate were salted meat and hard tack. The former might be kept in barrels for years before use. The latter was oftentimes invested with weevils. In the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic period, seamen ate a rather bland and routine diet. On Mondays they ate cheese and duff (flour pudding), Tuesdays and Saturdays boiled beef, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays dried peas and duff. On Sundays they were served dried pork and Figgy Dowdy or a similar treat. Supper consisted of leftovers from dinner, a biscuit, and a pint of grog. In contrast, on 14 August 1781, a rear-admiral served twelve dinners one meal that included: boiled ducks smothered with onions, roast goose, tarts, beaten butter, potatoes, French beans, whipped cream, fruit fritters, bacon, apple pie, boiled fowl, carrots and turnips, albacore, Spanish fritters, boiled beef, and roast mutton.6

It mattered not whether the salted meat and fish turned rancid. It wasn’t thrown away. “Merchants and owners of ships are grown to such a pass nowadays…for when they send a ship out for a voyage they will put no more victuals or drink in the ship than will just serve so many days, and if they have to be a little longer in this passage and meet with cross winds, then the poor men’s bellies must be pinched for it, and be put to shorten their allowance.”7

To restock their provisions, pirates stole from the ships they seized. They also supplemented their diets with dolphins, albacore tuna, and other varieties of fish. One particular food was the green turtle. They “are extremely good to eat--the flesh very sweet and the fat green and delicious. This fat is so penetrating that when you have eaten nothing but turtle flesh for three or four weeks, your shirt becomes so greasy from sweat you can squeeze the oil out and your limbs are weighed down with it.”8 They enjoyed salamagundi, which resembled a chef’s salad. Marinated bits of fish, turtle, and meat were combined with herbs, palm hearts, spiced wine, and oil, then served with hard-boiled eggs, pickled onions, cabbage, grapes, and olives. Pirates also ate yams, plantains, pineapples, papayas, and other fruits and vegetables indigenous to the tropics.

When their provisions ran scarce, pirates did resort to extreme measures. Charlotte de Berry’s crew purportedly ate two slaves and her husband. In 1670, Sir Henry Morgan’s crew ate their leather satchels. According to written accounts, they cut the leather into strips. After soaking these, they beat and rubbed the leather with stones to tenderize them. They scraped off the hair, then roasted or grilled the strips before cutting them into bite-size pieces.

Another aspect of life at sea involved sailors’ leisure time. Whether pirate or not, they enjoyed many of the same activities, only the amount differed, particularly where drink was concerned. While gambling did occur, it wasn’t conducive to harmony amongst the men, and even the pirates included it as an intolerable infraction in their articles of agreement. Chewing tobacco, scrimshaw, and embroidery were popular pastimes. They also spun yarns about fearsome ghosts and goblins. When pirates boarded a prize, musicians were among the most sought after sailors enlisted into the ranks of the pirates, whether they joined willingly or were forced, because pirates loved entertainment.

Why did sailors take the extra risk of going on the account? Piracy offered a number of advantages, not the least of which was freedom from the harsh discipline suffered in the Royal Navy or aboard a merchantman. Pirates rarely flogged their mates, and while marooning and death were severe forms of punishment, they never endured six hundred lashes, swallowing cockroaches or iron bolts to learn a lesson. Nor would a pirate captain dare to cut out an eye as happened to Richard Desbrough.9 Life on land was equally fraught with cruel punishments, for use of the thumbscrew, pillory, and branding iron were still in use. “Children as young as seven, both boys and girls, were hanged. …[I]n 1698, Parliament had passed a law that the theft of good, worth more than five shillings, rated the death penalty.”10

When a sea captain refused to join his crew, one pirate said, “Damn ye, you are a sneaking puppy and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security, for the cowardly whelps have not the courage otherwise to defend what they got by their knavery. But damn ye altogether. Damn them for a pack of craft rascals, and you, who serve them, for a parcel of hen-hearted numbskulls. They vilify us, the scoundrels do, then there is only this difference, they rob the poor under the cover of law, forsooth, and we plunder the rich under the protection of our own courage; had ye not better make one of use, than sneak after the arses of those villains for employment?”11

Aside from freedom, the financial rewards were far greater as a pirate than as a legitimate sailor, especially since pirates shared their plunder more equitably than privateers or the navy did. Gold, silver, silks, spices, timber, and a variety of other commodities made lucrative prizes. A privateer in the early seventeenth century might receive £10, the wages of most sailors for one year. A pirate, on the other hand, had the potential of earning up to £4,000 in a year, although he rarely held onto his ill-gotten gains for long. In 1695, Captain Avery and his men captured the Gunsway, and netted about £1,000 each. In 1721, pirates under John Taylor and Oliver la Buze netted £875,000 after seizing a Portuguese East Indiaman.

Even so, not all sailors turned pirate when their ships were taken. Captain William Snelgrave spent time as a captive of Howell Davis. He published an account of his experiences in 1734. His descriptions of pirate life weren’t complimentary. “[T]he execrable Oaths and Blasphemies I heard among the Ship’s Company, shocked me to such a degree, that in Hell its self I thought there could not be worse; for though many Seafaring Men are given to swearing and taking God’s name in vain, yet I could not have imagined, human Nature could ever so far degenerate, as to talk in the manner those abandoned Wretches did.”12 “They hoisted upon Deck a great many half-Hogsheads of Claret, and French Brandy; knocked their Heads out, and dipped cans and bowls into them to drink out of: And in their Wantonness threw full Buckets of each sort upon one another. As soon as they had emptied what was on the Deck, they hoisted up more: and in the evening washed the Decks with what remained in the Casks. As to bottled Liquor of many sorts, they made such havoc of it, that in a few days they had not one Bottle left: For they would not give themselves the trouble of drawing the Cork out, but nicked the Bottles, as they called it, that is, struck their necks off with a Cutlace; by which means one in three was generally broke: Neither was there any Cask-liquor left in a short time, but a little brandy. As to Eatables, such as Cheeses, Butter, Sugar, and many other things, they were as soon gone. For the Pirates being all in a drunken Fit, which held as long as the Liquor lasted, no care was taken by any one to prevent this Destruction….”13

Pirates, however, saw life from a different perspective. While some regretted going on the account, most laughed in the face of death. All sailors knew they might die before a voyage ended, and pirates weighed past experiences against the promise of wealth beyond their wildest dreams. Even though few attained such wealth, they still opted for freedom and potential riches. Perhaps Bartholomew Roberts best summed up their philosophy. “In honest service there is thin rations, low wages and hard labour; in this [service], plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worse, is only a sour look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto.”14

Endnotes: 1 Rediker, Marcus. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea (1987), page 258. 2 Patrick O’Brian’s Navy (2003), page 87. 3 Cordingly, David. The Billy Ruffian (2003), page 209. 4 Gill, Anton. The Devil’s Mariner (1997), page 75. 5 Cordingly, page 165. 6 Blake, Nicholas, and Richard Lawrence. The Illustrated Companion to Nelson’s Navy (2000), page 99. 7 Gill, page 77. 8 Exquemelin, Alexander O.. Buccaneers of America (1969), page 73. 9 Ibid, page 79. 10 Zacks, Richard. The Pirate Hunter (2002), page 357. 11 Gill, pages 79-80. 12 Breverton, Terry. Black Bart Roberts (2004), page 29. 13 Ibid., page 35. 14 Gill, page 80.

By Tim Hayburn

Philadelphia, like many cities throughout the Atlantic world, encountered a new threat in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries from pirates who raided the numerous merchant vessels in the region. Several historians have labeled this era as the golden age of piracy. Pirates also remained active after 1730, using the city as a staging ground, especially during conflicts such as the Revolutionary War. While Pennsylvania authorities sought to end piracy throughout the colonial and early national periods, their policy appears ambivalent as they sometimes extended leniency toward pirates rather than confront them with the full force of the law.

Pirates were outlaws on the sea who attacked all ships, regardless of their nation of origin. They plagued shipping routes, which had at times a devastating effect on trade in Philadelphia. Many pirates first served as privateers, who were employed by nations such as England as alternatives or in addition to a formal navy during times of war. Privateers received a letter of marque, or commission, to raid enemy ships. When the conflicts came to an end, however, many of the privateers became pirates, continuing to rob ships of their cargoes, which the pirates shared.

Soon after Philadelphia’s founding, the city’s growing population and economic importance attracted pirates who threatened the region’s thriving trade. Piracy offered local sailors the opportunity to earn higher profits and benefits that they would not receive on merchant or naval vessels. Life on board pirate ships tended to be much more democratic than on other ships as pirates could even depose an unpopular captain and discipline was much more lax.

Pirates regularly operated around the Delaware River by the late seventeenth century, which fueled fears about the safety of the local waterways. In 1699, the colony arrested four men believed to serve under the notorious pirate Captain William Kidd (c. 1645-1701) . The Pennsylvania Assembly enacted several statutes to prevent pirates from moving freely in society and to keep others from collaborating with them. Some merchants in the Delaware Valley willingly tolerated piracy, however, because of its economic benefits. Pirates spent their booty freely in port cities such as Philadelphia and contributed to the region’s economic development. William Markham (1635-1704), Pennsylvania’s deputy governor, even allegedly received a bribe from the pirate John Avery (1659-c. 1696), who raided ships throughout the Indian Ocean and was subject to an English manhunt. Markham’s relationship with Avery extended beyond simply accepting a bribe as he also allowed one of his daughters to marry the infamous pirate captain.

Piracy continued to be a major concern for many merchants in the early 1700s, despite the unofficial toleration of some officials and the potential benefits of piracy for some segments of the Delaware Valley economy. Lieutenant Governor William Keith (1669-1749) issued a warrant for the arrest of Edward Teach (c. 1680-1718), better known as Blackbeard, for his attacks on merchant ships. Keith feared that Blackbeard maintained contact with former pirates, who now lived in Philadelphia and aided him in his raids against Philadelphia’s merchants. The local newspaper provided periodic reports of pirate activity in the Philadelphia region by the early 1720s. Pirates even managed to prevent ships from leaving Philadelphia for an entire week in 1722. The Pennsylvania Assembly sought to eliminate property crimes such as robbery by making them subject to capital punishment, which could be used in cases against pirates.

A Trial for Piracy

Perhaps because local authorities realized the financial contribution of pirates to the region, Philadelphia witnessed only one trial for piracy in the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1730, English sailors serving on board a Portuguese ship mutinied and became pirates before finally being arrested and condemned to death in Philadelphia. During an era when pirates could hope for little mercy, four of these condemned pirates surprisingly received a pardon from Pennsylvania authorities after their ringleader escaped. Indeed, many Philadelphians may have supported pirates, as testimony in a 1718 case alleged that Pennsylvania merchants provided pirates with ammunition and supplies.

After 1730, piracy ceased to be a major problem for Philadelphia although privateers occasionally disrupted the city’s shipping. Both colonial officials and the British government sought to reduce the threat of piracy. The Revolutionary War, however, allowed for a resurgence of pirates by the 1780s. When the Continental Congress employed privateers to supplement its meager naval forces, several crews turned to piracy. Local newspapers complained about these “villains” who disrupted the Revolutionary War effort, but Pennsylvania’s courts condemned only four men for piracy in the 1780s. One condemned pirate was even sentenced to have his body gibbeted to deter other potential pirates. Nevertheless, Pennsylvania’s government again surprisingly opted for leniency in his case as well as most of the other condemned pirates and executed only one convicted pirate during this time.

By the 1790s, the Pennsylvania legislature removed piracy from the list of capital crimes. Cases of piracy declined into the nineteenth century. The state did witness several cases of piracy in the early nineteenth century, but applied the death penalty only in cases in which the pirates committed murder as well. Indeed, in 1837, convicted pirate James Moran was the last individual publicly executed in Pennsylvania for any crime. Although Philadelphia merchants could occasionally fall victim to pirates in other corners of the globe such as the Mediterranean Sea, piracy ceased to be a major concern in the Delaware Valley, thus ending Pennsylvania’s ambivalent policy towards piracy as well.

Tim Hayburn received his doctorate in Colonial American History from Lehigh University.

Captain Kidd in New York Harbor

Library of Congress

This romanticized view of pirate life is what drove many young sailors to become pirates. Many pirates were former sailors in the Royal Navy during the War of the Spanish Succession (or Queen Anne’s War, 1701-1713). At the close of the war Britain no longer needed the many sailors it had impressed into service, and after the war fired many sailors. Lack of work drove men who had no other skills to become sailors on merchant vessels, or pirates. For many, piracy was their last hope to make a living, and some dreamed to strike it rich, like Captain Kidd in this painting.

In 1699, the Pennsylvania colony arrested four men believed to serve under Kidd.

Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was an infamous pirate who operated across the Atlantic coast of North America and the Caribbean between 1716 and 1718. There was speculation he was a privateer for the British Royal Navy during the War of the Spanish Succession (also known as Queen Anne’s War), but he was eventually hunted down and killed by a British naval force under the command of Lieutenant Robert Maynard.

Earlier, Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor William Keith issued a warrant for the arrest of Blackbeard for his attacks on merchant ships. Keith feared that Blackbeard maintained contact with former pirates who lived in Philadelphia and aided him in his raids against Philadelphia’s merchants.

The Pirate's Ruse

This work is a nineteenth-century interpretation of pirates attempting to lure in a ship so they can board it. While pirate ships in many cases were armed with naval cannons, it was bad for business to use them. A damaged or sunk ship made it harder or impossible to steal the valuable items on the ship, or the ship itself. Instead, pirates lured a merchant ship, or naval vessel, close to their own, using tactics such as flying the flag (or colors) of a friendly nation and appearing harmless. When the prize they were seeking to plunder came close, they raised their pirate colors and boarded the enemy vessel, fighting the crew in close quarters.

Pirate Troubadors

Good-humored pirates sing sea shanties during the annual pirate day at Fort Mifflin. The Delaware River fort's early history included defending Philadelphia from pirates. The singers are members of the Sea Dogs, a New Jersey-based band and pirate/privateer reenactment group. (Photograph by Donald D. Groff for the Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia)

Time Periods

Capital of the United States Era
American Revolution Era
Colonial Era
Center City Philadelphia
Privateering

Related Collections

Courts of Oyer and Terminer and General Goal Delivery, Court Papers, 1757-1761, 1763, 1765-1766, 1778-1782, 1786-1787, Records of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, RG-33, Pennsylvania State Archives , 350 North Street, Harrisburg, Pa.

Courts of Oyer and Terminer and General Goal Delivery, General Gaol Delivery Dockets, 1778-1828, Records of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, RG-33, Pennsylvania State Archives , 350 North Street, Harrisburg, Pa.

Related Places

Philadelphia History Museum , 15 S. Seventh Street, Philadelphia. (This museum possesses the gibbet that was supposed to have been used in 1780.)

Independence Seaport Museum , Penn’s Landing, Philadelphia.

Backgrounders

Connecting Headlines with History

45-foot ship to tell story of the American Revolution (WHYY, July 31, 2016)
Top Earning Pirates of All Times (Forbes, September 18, 2008)
On Front Street, Digging Through Time (Hidden City Philadelphia, October 17, 2012)

Connecting the Past with the Present, Building Community, Creating a Legacy

The Golden Age of Piracy

Though pirates have existed since ancient times, the Golden Age of piracy was in the 17th and early 18th centuries. During this time more than 5000 pirates were said to be at sea.

Throughout history there have been people willing to rob others transporting goods on the water. These people, known as pirates, mainly targeted ships, though some also launched attacks on coastal towns.

Many of the most famous pirates had a terrifying reputation, and they advertised this by flying gruesome flags, including the 'Jolly Roger' with its picture of skull and crossbones. Captives were famously made to ‘walk the plank’ – though this doesn’t appear to have been as common in reality as in fiction; in fact, it's likely that most victims of piracy were just thrown overboard.

Pirates have existed since ancient times – they threatened the trading routes of ancient Greece, and seized cargoes of grain and olive oil from Roman ships. The most far-reaching pirates in early medieval Europe were the Vikings.

Thousands of pirates were active between 1650 and 1720, and these years are sometimes known as the 'Golden Age’ of piracy. Famous pirates from this period include Henry Morgan, William 'Captain' Kidd, 'Calico' Jack Rackham, Bartholomew Roberts and the fearsome Blackbeard (Edward Teach). Though this Golden Age came to an end in the 18th century, piracy still exists today in some parts of the world, especially the South China Seas.

Pirates of the Caribbean

The explorer Christopher Columbus established contact between Europe and the lands that were later named America at the end of the 15th century. As he was working for the Spanish monarchy, these 'new lands' were claimed by the Spanish, who soon discovered them to be a rich source of silver, gold and gems.

From the 16th century, large Spanish ships, called galleons, began to sail back to Europe, loaded with precious cargoes that pirates found impossible to resist. So many pirate attacks were made that galleons were forced to sail together in fleets with armed vessels for protection. As Spanish settlers set up new towns on Caribbean islands and the American mainland, these too came under pirate attack.

Corsairs, buccaneers and privateers

Corsairs were pirates who operated in the Mediterranean Sea between the 15th and 18th centuries. Muslim corsairs, such as the Barbarossa (red beard) brothers, had bases along North Africa’s Barbary Coast, while Christian corsairs were based on the island of Malta. Both used to swoop down on their targets in oar-powered boats called galleys, to carry off sailors and passengers. Unless these unfortunates were rich enough to pay a ransom, they were sold as slaves.

Buccaneers lived on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola and its tiny turtle-shaped neighbour, Tortuga, in the 17th century. At first they lived as hunters, but later the governors of Caribbean islands paid the buccaneers to attack Spanish treasure ships. Although raids began in this way, with official backing, the buccaneers gradually became out of control, attacking any ship they thought carried valuable cargo, whether it belonged to an enemy country or not. The buccaneers had become true pirates.

Privateers, meanwhile, were privately owned (rather than navy) ships armed with guns, operating in times of war. The Admiralty issued them with 'letters of marque' that allowed them to capture merchant vessels without being charged with piracy.

Why did pirates become pirates?

In England there was social disruption. Smaller farmers were forced off the land by ruthless landowners and smaller tradesmen were challenged by larger businesses. These displaced people flocked to urban areas looking for work or poor relief.

In London especially there was overcrowding and unemployment and funds for the poor could not meet the need. People had to shift for themselves. Distressed people weren't simply worse off, they had no hope of making a better life. Piracy tempted poor seamen because it offered them the chance to take more control of their lives.

In an age when few people travelled and young men might have to work seven-year apprenticeships before they could make an independent living, many were tempted to go to sea anyway, though the life was a tough one.

Adolescents who longed to escape could get a job on a sailing ship before they were fully grown: agility was needed as much as brute strength.

Yet ordinary seamen toiled for modest wages and were subject to strict discipline. In contrast, piracy not only offered them a chance to get rich quick but also a rare opportunity to exert a degree of power over others

More about pirates

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Letters of marque

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Infamous pirates

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The image of the pirate never fails to capture the imagination. Browse our range of publications to inform and entertain

Grim Life Cursed Real Pirates of Caribbean

What was life really like for an early 18th-century pirate? A world of staggering violence and poverty, constant danger, and almost inevitable death.

Pirates have been figures of fascination and fear for centuries. The most famous buccaneers have been shrouded in legend and folklore for so long that it's almost impossible to distinguish between myth and reality.

Hollywood movies—filled with buried treasures, eye patches, and the Jolly Roger—depict pirate life as a swashbuckling adventure.

In the latest flick, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which sails into theaters today, the pirate hero, played by Johnny Depp, is a lovable rogue.

But what was life really like for an early 18th-century pirate? The answer: pretty grim. It was a world of staggering violence and poverty, constant danger, and almost inevitable death.

The life of a pirate was never as glorious and exciting as depicted in the movies, said David Moore, curator of nautical archaeology at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort. "Life at sea was hard and dangerous, and interspersed with life-threatening storms or battles. There was no air conditioning, ice for cocktails, or clean sheets aboard the typical pirate ship."

While the period from the late 1600s to the early 1700s is usually referred to as the "Golden Age of Piracy," the practice existed long before Blackbeard and other famous pirates struck terror in the hearts of merchant seamen along the Eastern Seaboard and Caribbean. And it exists today, primarily in the South China Sea and along the African coast.

For Hungry Minds

Valuable loot.

One of the earliest and most high profile incidents of piracy occurred when a band of pirates captured Julius Caesar, the Roman emperor-to-be, in the Greek islands. Instead of throwing him overboard, as they did with most victims, the pirates held Caesar for ransom for 38 days.

When the money finally arrived, Caesar was let go. When he returned to port, Caesar immediately fitted a squadron of ships and set sail in pursuit of the pirates. The criminals were quickly caught and brought back to the mainland, where they were hanged.

It's no coincidence that piracy came to flourish in the Caribbean and along America's Eastern Seaboard during piracy's heyday. Traffic was busy and merchant ships were easy pickings.

Although pirates would search the ship's cabins for gold and silver, the main loot consisted of cargo such as grain, molasses, and kegs of rum. Sometimes pirates stole the ships as well as the cargo.

Neither Long John Silver nor Captain Hook actually existed, but the era produced many other infamous pirates, including William Kidd, Charles Vane, Sam Bellamy, and two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

The worst and perhaps cruelest pirate of them all was Captain Edward Teach or Thatch, better known as "Blackbeard." Born in Britain before 1690, he first served on a British privateer based in Jamaica. Privateers were privately owned, armed ships hired by the British government to attack and plunder French and Spanish ships during the war.

After the war, Blackbeard simply continued the job. He soon became captain of one of the ships he had stolen, Queen Anne's Revenge, and set up base in North Carolina, then a British colony, from where he preyed on ships traveling the American coast.

Tales of his cruelty are legendary. Women who didn't relinquish their diamond rings simply had their fingers hacked off. Blackbeard even shot one of his lieutenants so that "he wouldn't forget who he was."

Still, the local townspeople tolerated Blackbeard because they liked to buy the goods he stole, which were cheaper than imported English goods. The colony's ruling officials turned a blind eye to Blackbeard's violent business.

These pirates left the Caribbean behind—and stole the biggest booty ever

These treasure-hunting pirates already came from riches

Irish Claddagh rings have an unexpected history—it involves pirates.

It wasn't until Alexander Spotswood, governor of neighboring Virginia, sent one of his navy commanders to kill Blackbeard that his reign finally came to an end in 1718.

True or False

The most famous pirates may not have been the most successful. "The reason many of them became famous was because they were captured and tried before an Admiralty court," said Moore. "Many of these court proceedings were published, and these pirates' exploits became legendary. But it's the ones who did not get caught who were the most successful in my book."

Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson, may be the most famous pirate story. But the most important real-life account of pirate life is probably a 1724 book called A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, by Captain Charles Johnson.

The tome depicts in gruesome detail the lives and exploits of the most famous pirates of that time. Much of it reads as a first-hand account by someone who sailed with the pirates, and many experts believe Johnson was actually Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, which was published in 1719.

What is not in doubt is the book's commercial success at the time and the influence it had on generations of writers and filmmakers who adopted elements of his stories in creating the familiar pirate image.

So what part of the movie pirate is true and what is merely Hollywood fiction? What about, for example, the common practice of forcing victims to "walk the plank"?

"Not true," said Cori Convertito, assistant curator of education at the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in Key West, Florida, which is putting on a piracy exhibit this October called "Reefs, Wrecks and Rascals." (The pirates' favorite form of punishment was to tie their victims to the boat with a length of rope, toss them overboard, and drag them under the ship, a practice known as "keel hauling.")

Sadly, buried treasures—and the ubiquitous treasure maps—are also largely a myth. "Pirates took their loot to notorious pirate hang-outs in Port Royal and Tortuga," said Convertito. "Pirates didn't bury their money. They blew it as soon they could on women and booze."

Eye Patches, Peg Legs, and Parrots

On the other hand, pirate flags, commonly referred to as the Jolly Roger, were indeed present during the Golden Age. And victims were often marooned on small islands by pirates. Eye patches and peg legs were also undoubtedly worn by pirates, and some kept parrots as pets.

Some pirates even wore earrings, not as a fashion statement, but because they believed they prevented sea sickness by applying pressure on the earlobes.

In the new movie Pirates of the Caribbean, prisoners facing execution can invoke a special code, which stipulates that the pirate cannot kill him or her without first consulting the pirate captain.

Indeed pirates did follow codes. These varied from ship to ship, often laying out how plundered loot should be divided or what punishment should be meted out for bad behavior.

But Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp's hero, probably wouldn't have lasted very long among real pirates. In the movie, he will do anything possible to avoid a fight, something real-life pirates rarely did.

The endless sword duels, a big part of all pirate movies, probably happened on occasion. But real-life encounters were often far more bloody and brutal, with men hacking at each other with axes and cutlasses.

In one legendary account, a notorious pirate, trying to find out where a village had hidden its gold, tied two villagers to trees, facing each other, and then cut out one person's heart and fed it to the other.

As Captain Johnson wrote in his book:

In the commonwealth of pirates, he who goes the greatest length or wickedness is looked upon with a kind of envy amongst them, as a person of a more extraordinary gallantry, and is thereby entitled to be distinguished by some post, and if such a one has but courage, he must certainly be a great man.

Where did pirates spend their booty?

Forget 'walking the plank.' Pirate portrayals—from Blackbeard to Captain Kidd—are more fantasy than fact.

Ahoy! It's the real pirates of the Caribbean—and the Carolinas

Queen Elizabeth I's favorite pirate was an English hero, but his career has a dark side

Pirates once swashbuckled across the ancient Mediterranean

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Samuel Diener

Expository writing 20. “a pirate’s life for me”: legends of buccaneers at sea (harvard writing program), semester: , offered: .

In this course, we will read (and watch!) some of the best-known stories about pirates in the age of sail. We’ll explore both the myths and realities of these infamous outlaws, and ask why their crimes were treated so uniquely: sometimes the stateless “villains of all nations,” society’s most wanted criminals; sometimes celebrated for their daring, or even seen as patriotic heroes. We’ll also consider what work stories about pirates do in our culture. The “wooden world” of the ship’s decks offers a space for thinking about how communities are made. It is a space where state violence is enacted and ideas of criminality are formed. It is also a space where norms and perceptions about gender, sexuality, race, and class can be re-imagined in new ways. But does this translate into subversive potential? Or are tales of life at sea just places where society can make castaways of its own inner demons? And, perhaps most strangely of all, how do the murderous escapades of society’s villains become the stuff of Disney rides and cartoons for children? In other words: why are pirates "fun"?

We’ll begin the class with some stories of real-life pyrates, both men and women, from the Golden Age of Caribbean piracy that were collected by the pilloried, exiled, and nine-times-imprisoned opposition journalist Nathaniel Mist in his bestselling General History of the Pyrates. We’ll examine the rhetoric of these tales and think about the way they are told and the political and social “work” they do. Then, in the second unit of the class, we’ll read the most famous fictional tale of piracy, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and think about the role it (and stories like it) played in reshaping the pirate’s modern myth as one of boyhood and masculinity. In the class’s final weeks, we’ll look at some film and popular culture and consider the ongoing life of the legends of piracy today.

c/o Department of English

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[email protected]

(he/him/his)

10 Facts About Pirates

Library of Congress / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

Caribbean History
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African American History
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Ph.D., Spanish, Ohio State University
M.A., Spanish, University of Montana
B.A., Spanish, Penn State University

The so-called “Golden Age of Piracy” lasted from about 1700 to 1725. During this time, thousands of people turned to piracy as a way to make a living. It is known as the “Golden Age” because conditions were perfect for pirates to flourish, and many of the individuals we associate with piracy, such as Blackbeard , “Calico Jack” Rackham , and “Black Bart” Roberts , were active during this time. Here are 10 things you maybe did not know about these ruthless sea bandits.

Pirates Rarely Buried Treasure

Some pirates buried treasure—most notably Captain William Kidd , who was at the time heading to New York to turn himself in and try to clear his name—but most never did. There were reasons for this. First of all, most of the loot gathered after a raid or attack was quickly divided up among the crew, who would rather spend it than bury it. Secondly, much of the “treasure” consisted of perishable goods like fabric, cocoa, food, or other things that would quickly become ruined if buried. The persistence of this legend is partly due to the popularity of the classic novel “Treasure Island,” which includes a hunt for buried pirate treasure .

Their Careers Didn't Last Long

Most pirates didn’t last very long. It was a tough line of work: many were killed or injured in battle or in fights amongst themselves, and medical facilities were usually non-existent. Even the most famous pirates , such as Blackbeard or Bartholomew Roberts, only were active in piracy for a couple of years. Roberts, who had a successful career as a pirate , was only active from 1719 to 1722.

They Had Rules and Regulations

If all you ever did was watch pirate movies, you’d think that being a pirate was easy: no rules other than to attack rich Spanish galleons, drink rum and swing around in the rigging. In reality, most pirate crews had a code that all members were required to acknowledge or sign. These rules included punishments for lying, stealing, or fighting on board. Pirates took these articles very seriously and punishments could be severe.

They Didn't Walk the Plank

Sorry, but this one is another myth. There are a couple of tales of pirates walking the plank well after the “Golden Age” ended, but little evidence to suggest that this was a common punishment before then. Not that pirates didn’t have effective punishments, mind you. Pirates who committed an infraction could be marooned on an island, whipped, or even “keel-hauled,” a vicious punishment in which a pirate was tied to a rope and then thrown overboard: he was then dragged down one side of the ship, under the vessel, over the keel and then back up the other side. Ship bottoms were usually covered with barnacles, which often resulted in very serious injuries in these situations.

A Good Pirate Ship Had Good Officers

A pirate ship was more than a boatload of thieves, killers, and rascals. A good ship was a well-run machine, with officers and a clear division of labor. The captain decided where to go and when, and which enemy ships to attack. He also had absolute command during battle. The quartermaster oversaw the ship’s operations and divided up the loot. There were other positions, including boatswain, carpenter, cooper, gunner, and navigator. Success on a pirate ship depended on these men carrying out their tasks efficiently and supervising those under their command.

The Pirates Didn't Limit Themselves to the Caribbean

The Caribbean was a great place for pirates: there was little or no law, there were plenty of uninhabited islands for hideouts, and many merchant vessels passed through. But the pirates of the “Golden Age” did not only work there. Many crossed the ocean to stage raids off the west coast of Africa, including the legendary “Black Bart” Roberts. Others sailed as far as the Indian Ocean to work the shipping lanes of southern Asia: it was in the Indian Ocean that Henry “Long Ben” Avery made one of the biggest scores ever: the rich treasure ship Ganj-i-Sawai.

There Were Women Pirates

It was extremely rare, but women did occasionally strap on a cutlass and pistol and take to the seas. The most famous examples were Anne Bonny and Mary Read , who sailed with “Calico Jack” Rackham in 1719. Bonny and Read dressed as men and reportedly fought just as well (or better than) their male counterparts. When Rackham and his crew were captured, Bonny and Read announced that they were both pregnant and thus avoided being hanged along with the others.

Piracy Was Better Than the Alternatives

Were pirates desperate men who could not find honest work? Not always: many pirates chose the life, and whenever a pirate stopped a merchant ship, it was not uncommon for a handful of merchant crewmen to join the pirates. This was because “honest” work at sea consisted of either merchant or military service, both of which featured abominable conditions. Sailors were underpaid, routinely cheated of their wages, beaten at the slightest provocation, and often forced to serve. It should surprise no one that many would willingly choose the more humane and democratic life on board a pirate vessel.

They Came From All Social Classes

Not all of the Golden Age pirates were uneducated thugs who took up piracy because they lacked a better way to make a living. Some of them came from higher social classes as well. William Kidd was a decorated sailor and very wealthy man when he set out in 1696 on a pirate-hunting mission: he turned pirate shortly thereafter. Another example is Major Stede Bonnet , who was a wealthy plantation owner in Barbados before he outfitted a ship and became a pirate in 1717: some say he did it to get away from a nagging wife.

Not All Pirates Were Criminals

During wartime, nations would often issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal, which allowed ships to attack enemy ports and vessels. Usually, these ships kept the plunder or shared some of it with the government that had issued the letter. These men were called “privateers,” and the most famous examples were Sir Francis Drake and Captain Henry Morgan . These Englishmen never attacked English ships, ports, or merchants and were considered great heroes by the common folk of England. The Spanish, however, considered them pirates.

The Pirate Hunters
The Golden Age of Piracy
Famous Pirate Flags
Real-Life Pirates of the Caribbean
Understanding Pirate Treasure
Biography of John 'Calico Jack' Rackham, Famed Pirate
Pirates: Truth, Facts, Legends and Myths
Famous Pirate Ships
Biography of Mary Read, English Pirate
Facts About Anne Bonny and Mary Read, Fearsome Female Pirates
The History and Culture of Pirate Ships
5 Successful Pirates of the "Golden Age of Pirates"
The 10 Best Pirate Attacks in History
Pirate Crew: Positions and Duties
Biography of Anne Bonny, Irish Pirate and Privateer
Biography of Stede Bonnet, the Gentleman Pirate

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“Well-Behaved Pirates Seldom Make History: A Reevaluation of English Piracy in the Golden Age” In Governing the Sea in the Early Modern Era, Edited by Peter C. Mancall and Carole Shammas

Related Papers

Nathan Petch

The word “pirate” stems from the Classical Greek word “peirates”, which means an attempt or attack. Some scholars have defined it as “violent maritime predation” or “the indiscriminate taking of property with violence”, whereas others have focussed on the economy to understand it as “tribute taking”, “commerce raiding”, or as “a business”. There is substantial debate between maritime historians regarding the main representations of and motives for piracy. Rediker’s Marxist and bottom-up interpretation has inevitably caused controversy, following on from that surrounding historian Eric Hobsbawm with his suggestion of “social banditry” some decades earlier. Several historians, such as Dawdy & Bonni and Curtis, have supported Rediker’s view on piracy as social banditry. According to them, it was an ideologically-driven undertaking that directly challenged the ways of the society from which they had excepted themselves. Many others on the other hand have either criticised or contradicted Rediker’s assertion. Starkey has argued in favour of economic factors as being the main motive for pirates, and that there were “cycles” with this phenomenon. This essay considers the “Golden Age” of piracy – lasting roughly from the start of the eighteenth century until 1730 – and its Atlantic theatre. Overall, it seems that piracy was not social banditry – as suggested by Rediker, but rather a response to economic factors.

Martin Mares

This work analyses the public perception of the role of privateers and their transition to pirates and examines both negative and positive outcomes in various areas like diplomacy, international trade, legal, racial and gender issues. The entire topic is examined through various cases of pirates including Bartholomew Roberts, Sir Henry Morgan, Thomas Tew, William Kid, Jack Rackham, Stede Bonnet, Edward Teach, Samuel Bellamy, Mary Read, Anne Bony or Henry Avery as well as historical records including letters, trials and pamphlets. Further, this essay discusses an interesting development of piracy from state-funded expeditions into utterly illegal activity driven by various reasons. Particularly the transition between legal, semi-legal and illicit separates England and Great Britain (from 1707 onwards) from other colonial powers such as France, Spain or Dutch. Despite the fact that they all issued privateering licenses and therefore they had to face similar problems connected to privateering, the outburst of piracy in the case of England was so dangerous that England (Great Britain) during the late 17th and early 18th century was called a “nation of pirates”. Hence, this work analyses both legal and practical actions against pirates in British colonies and their effectiveness after 1715. The last part of this essay is dedicated to piracy regarding an alternative way of life for disadvantaged social groups in the 17th and 18th century and contemporary negative or positive portrayal of piracy. The role of liberated “Negroe” and “Mullato” slaves is also examined throu

Pirates, Slaves, and Profligate Rogues: Sailing Under the Jolly Roger in the Black Atlantic

Victoria Barnett-Woods

The age of piracy in the Atlantic world spanned nearly a century, beginning in 1650 and ending in the late 1720s. The rise of Atlantic piracy coincides with the rise of the increasing maritime trade, particularly with the establishment of the transatlantic slave trade between the African continent and the American colonies. There are multiple accounts of pirate ships that have attacked slavers along the littoral states of either side of the Atlantic. In these moments of piratical enterprise, the “thieves and robbers” of enslaved Africans themselves become themselves the victims of robbery and violence. Also, in these moments, the very embodiment of liberation (the pirate) encounters the distillation of oppression and disenfranchisement (the enslaved). This chapter will discuss the significance of these encounters through the lenses of both transatlantic commerce and the human condition. At the intersection of piracy and the slave trade, there are dozens of stories to be told, and with their telling in this chapter, a new vision of the maritime world demonstrates what it may cost to truly be free. In a series of case studies, this chapter will examine an arc of Atlantic piracy during its golden age. I will establish piratical views toward the enslaved with a close reading of Dampier’s New Voyage Round the World specifically focusing on his time on the Bachelor’s Delight (1697), to then discuss the accounts of four pirate captains at the height of piracy’s “golden age.” These men—Hoar, Kidd, Roberts, and Teach—all gained significant notoriety during their exploits, but also represent the ways in which pirate captains viewed men of African descent within their framework of being “gentlemen of fortune.” For Bartholomew Roberts, for example, one-third of his crew was composed of formerly enslaved men. Both Hoar and Kidd, with unique visions of the capacity of the formerly enslaved, had black men as their Quartermaster-- one of the most critical administrative positions of any vessel. The stories of these men and pirates will be at the heart of this discussion, hopefully illuminating the raw and powerful intersection of trade, slavery, and freedom on the high seas in the early eighteenth century.

Claire Jowitt

This contribution focuses on a particular group of maritime agents in Shakespeare’s plays, namely pirates, and the cultural-political questions they raise.

Voces Novae

Bijan Kazerooni

In September 1717, King George I issued a royal proclamation calling for the suppression of piracy and offered amnesty for those individuals who would abandon their ways. For decades, pirates were the scourge of the Atlantic, committing the most heinous acts of robbery, murder, and terror at sea. The result of the War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) and the Whig Ascendancy in 1715 placed Britain in the prime opportunity to expand its commercial markets while its imperial rivals attempted to recover from war. This study explores the relationship between the campaign against pirates and state building by examining the British government’s efforts of publicizing its anti-piracy campaign through books, newspapers, and pamphlets in order to affirm state power that maintained the Whig Oligarchy. I argue that the discursive formation of piracy emerging in the public sphere reveals the state’s exercise of power in reclaiming political dominance over both the center and periphery. Pirates threatened the relationship between Britain and its colonies. Discourse became the principle means of changing the subjectivity of piracy, which influenced how the inhabitants of colonial communities came to regard pirates. By altering the piratical subject position—from legitimized marauders to criminal others—Britain would force the alignment of political values and customs between the periphery with the metropole, thereby, moving in the direction of realizing its larger goals of further imperial expansion.

This article explores the figure of the pirate in literature and criticism. In particular it pays attention to some of the ways literary critics and cultural historians have suggested pirates should be understood: whether as political or sexual radicals, as interceptors of and disrupters to networks of economic and cultural exchange, or as key, if often unrecognised, players in the formation of Empire. The role of pirates and piracy is examined in a number of genres here, but the complex and contradictory ways these exciting but dangerous figures are represented in Renaissance drama is of central concern.

Bruce Tomecko

Kevin P. McDonald

Katherine McAlpine

democracy makgale

Gender plays a poignant role in almost any historical narrative, particularly in the record of piracy and government sponsored privateering. The opportunity for women to embrace various social classes at will in the late 18th century came out of an environment in which ideas about politics, economics, and race continually shifted. Society was in chaos, and social mores, therefore, changed constantly. Even as some pirates transported slaves for profit, others took on former slaves as captains, rejecting religions, nationalities, and former loyalties for the sake of freedom. Female pirates such as Ann Bonny and Mary Read exemplify a case of crossing sexual borders in search of social and economic liberation. They forfeited their femininity to steal, sail, and drink with men, like men. Yet in the end, they intentionally became pregnant – a decidedly female enterprise – to escape imprisonment and death. In the midst of nations' transAtlantic battles for God and money, pirates wrote their own rules. Women fought like men, slaves captained ships, and entire cities fell overnight. Identity, as well as gender, was a mercurial feature, and important so long as it served a purpose. This paper therefore considers not only the motivations that women had for turning to piracy, but also the social conditions that allowed for such radical opportunities.

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Introduction: The Pirate as a Figure of Crisis and Legitimacy

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First Online: 12 August 2020

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Alexandra Ganser 5

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The introductory section begins with a brief account of the role of piracy in transatlantic popular culture from the early modern times to the nineteenth century as well as a semantic contextualization of piracy as a political and historical legal categorization. It presents a theoretical discussion about piracy in the context of historical scenarios of crisis, followed by a critical debate about the romance with piracy that has characterized much scholarship on this figure. In addition, it includes an outline of the chapters and a section on its method, inspired by Edward Said’s contrapuntal reading approach.

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Pirates are everywhere today. Over the last decade, there have been numerous reports of Somali and new Caribbean ‘piracy’ in the news; data ‘pirates’ are persecuted by the defendants of copyright law and intellectual property; eco-activist groups on the high seas, often on the border of transgressing laws that protect global corporate business rather than oceanic ecosystems, are termed pirates in the media while they themselves have also adopted piratical symbols like the skull and crossbones. Similarly, “Pirate Parties” throughout Europe, though perhaps past their heyday, have used the label to question the future of representative democracy in favor of more direct forms of government. In popular cultural contexts, pirate symbols are used by the fashion and many other industries and, since Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean series and a number of pirate-themed computer games, have become prominent figures on the screen again. All of these examples actively draw on the figure of the pirate and its ambiguous semiotic qualities as a symbol used for both Othering and identification.

In an Anglophone Atlantic context, it is between the colonial era and the mid-nineteenth century that pirates emerged as prominent figures. In prose writing alone, the popular cultural, sensational appeal of pirate-inspired adventure stories, captivity narratives, popular histories and romances, and many other genres-in-the-making, was used in terms of the figure’s potential to articulate moments of ontological instability and epistemological crisis through an adequate ambivalent trope. 1 The present study critically examines literary renditions of the pirate from 1678, the publication year of the earliest and probably most widely known book-length pirate narrative, A. O. Exquemelin’s Buccaneers of America , to the American Civil War, when the pirate figure was used in battling the legitimacy of Southern Secession. Prose narratives of piracy were significant for the formation and development of a number of popular genres in print culture across the Atlantic: published trial reports, gallows narratives, execution sermons, broadsides, and criminal biographies in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, in which condemned pirates occasionally found an opportunity to justify their actions; popular history and the historical romance in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which romanticized the pirate as a revolutionary outlaw; the captivity narrative during the so-called U.S. ‘Barbary Wars’ against North African city-states (1801–1805, 1815), in which former American captives of Muslim ‘pirates’ in the Mediterranean who were sold into slavery compared these corsairs to the triangular slave-traders; or caricatures of Southern ‘pirates’ at the beginning of the Civil War, which were printed on Union envelopes to deplore Secession.

The etymological source of the word “piracy,” the Greek verb peiran (to attempt, attack, from the root per -, which literally means “to attempt something”), refers to ventures into risky business or the unknown, activities which characterized Mediterranean marauders in classical antiquity who became known as pirates (Rennie 2013 , 11). Historians often characterize pirates by their shifting, and hence unreliable, national, racial/ethnic, and at times even gender affiliations (e.g., Rediker 2004 ; Creighton and Norling 1996 )—the main reason why they have vexed political theorists and legal scholars for centuries in their attempts to define the pirate’s legal status and his/her illegitimacy. Disputes about who was to be called pirate have always articulated power relationships and struggles over authority and legitimate violence, as the famous anecdote of the pirate and the emperor, related in St. Augustine’s City of God , illustrates: “For elegant and excellent was the pirate’s answer to the great Macedonian Alexander, who had taken him: the king asking him how he durst molest the sea so, he replied with a free spirit, ‘How darest thou molest the whole world? But because I do with a little ship only, I am called a thief: thou doing it with a great navy, art called an emperor’” (Book IV, quoted in Pérotin-Dumon 1991 , 196). 2 Taking up related questions raised by various strands of pirate scholarship (e.g., Rennie 2013 ; Schillings 2017 ), I explore the pirate’s primary discursive function as that of a personified question about legitimacy in diverse critical contexts. Throughout this book, I am asking in what ways a transoceanic American cultural imaginary teased out the pirate’s ambivalent potential as a figure of identification and Othering, as outlaw folk hero and deplorable criminal, to negotiate scenarios of legitimacy and crisis in Anglophone North America. 3

Because of their semantic ambiguity and the elusiveness of their identity, pirates have defied normative regimes of representation; as a literary trope, piracy has allowed for a symbolic (re-)negotiation of various identity constructions (such as British colony versus independent Republic; or united versus divided, free or slaveholding States during the War of Secession). My study inquires into ways in which narratives of piracy articulate, on both the textual and the meta-textual levels, oppositional discursive positions regarding questions of legitimacy, using piracy’s destabilizing potential with regard to constructions of racial, ethnic, and gender difference. I argue that narratives of piracy continuously and dynamically swerve between dominant and resistant cultural positions, between, for instance, resistance to the Atlantic slave trade and participation in it; or between the subversion and affirmation of normative gender roles. In addition, narratives of piracy frequently turned the pirate from an agent of disruption, questioning the social order, into a figure of affirmation and containment. 4 This study hence casts piracy as a discursive category on a continuum between the propagation of colonial adventure and accumulation on the one hand and critical commentary on exploitation, colonial violence, and racialized, gendered, and class oppression on the other. This dismantles the mythology of piracy as either leftist, anarchic utopia (e.g., Bey; Kuhn; Wilson) or capitalist avant-garde (e.g., Leeson, Storr)—one of the main oppositions critics have relied on in various conceptualizations of the pirate. In what follows, pirates appear as repentant sinners on the verge of execution; as defiant rebels against colonial authorities; as crafty tradesmen whose aim is profit and gain, but also as fast and excessive spenders; as radical philosophers and religious dissenters; as slave-holders and as liberators of slaves; as cartographers, scientists, and picaresque traveler-adventurers on the margins of empire; as atrocious and as egalitarian masters; and as multinational proponents of an alternative order.

One of my main hypotheses is that pirate narratives articulate a Freudian return of the repressed—of colonial violence and resistance—in critical moments of North American history. Defined by maritime theft and illegitimacy, the pirate figure represents the “specter of slavery” and “the phantom of luxury,” as David Shields labels the two crucial hauntings of colonialism (and later imperialism) in the Americas in reference to the British imperium pelagi (‘empire of the seas,’ 1990 , 18). I aim to show that textual economies of piracy, despite their narrative resistance to a race-, class- and increasingly nation-based Atlantic order, are always already undermined by the enslavement and exploitation of indigenous and African/Afrodiasporic populations as well as by the triangular trade increasingly encompassing the entire Atlantic world in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Literary and cultural studies of piracy by scholars such as Gesa Mackenthun, Nina Gerassi-Navarro, or Paul Baepler—to name but a few—have explored the narratives forming the basis of most theories of piracy, contributing significantly to the current state of piracy research and enabling us to see piracy as a complex phenomenon that cannot be contained within either a Marxist or a free-market grand narrative. Instead, the figure of the pirate is informed by both its implication in colonial political economies and its dissociation from, even scorn of, dominant colonial practice. The plethora of Anglo-American texts on piracy from the late seventeenth until the mid-nineteenth centuries dismantles any ‘either/or’ preconceptions in the characterization of piracy. In any case, pirates appear as textual constructions recalling historical agents that provoked colonial authorities in a multipolar (post-)colonial Atlantic world to write back, to contain the pirate: to turn him (and to a much lesser extent her) from an agent of disruption, questioning the social order, into a figure of affirmation.

The simplistic opposition between pirates as figures either of a colonial avant-garde or of resistance will be complicated by a close analysis of a variety of pirate narratives. My study introduces pirates as figures symptomatic of intense ontological and epistemological periods of crisis, in which perpetual struggles over (cultural, legal, political, economic) categorization and meaning were more intensely debated than at other times and intermittently resolved—in one direction or another—by a plethora of cultural narratives. These texts tease out the complexity of piracy as a cultural and economic phenomenon as well as the many contradictions at the heart of the fledgling merchant empires and their slave economies. Voicing both critique and complicity, pirate narratives and images, I am arguing, functioned as seismographs for the turmoil and upheavals produced by this trans-Atlantic and increasingly trans-Pacific economy. Located at the intersections of Atlantic American and hemispheric studies, (post-)colonial studies, and a New Historicist approach that reads texts from the angle of their historical-cultural context while viewing literature itself as productive of this very context, this book sets out to explore the pirate’s popular appeal in Anglophone America from a transatlantic angle, taking into account the figure’s history of translation from Europe to the Americas and focusing on the function of pirate narratives and the “cultural work” (Tompkins 1985 ) these texts perform.

In the context of historical crisis scenarios (see below), the figure of the pirate raises questions about the stability and legitimacy of (legal, political, cultural) categorization. I ask in what ways narratives of piracy act as manifestations of a perceived crisis and analyze the pirate in popular narratives as negotiating interlocking ideas of legitimacy not only due to the figure’s ambivalent discursive position but also because the term “pirate” itself evokes a categorical putting-at-risk of self and society. Reading narratives of piracy as symptomatic of categorical crisis, I explore in what ways the pirate was imbued with (de)legitimatory meaning in the context of historical crisis scenarios, both in canonical and popular literature, which each interpellated their readerships to reflect on pressing issues of legitimacy.

The oceanic element in definitions of piracy has traditionally contributed an element of wilderness (as historically opposed to civilization) that has been crucial for various political and juridical debates over piracy and its definition, in which legitimacy has always been decisive: “The binary opposition between the pirate and civilization is … manifested by an actor who represents piracy and a state which represents civilization” and “civilized order” (Schillings 2011 , 297; also 2017 for a more detailed analysis). Consequently, the pirate has been imagined as lacking allegiance with any state, as “a fragment of the sea, i.e. the ungovernable wilderness” (297). Piracy’s oceanic setting, defined by “exceptional legal rules” (Heller-Roazen 2009 , 10), has invited the proclamation of a state of exception that legitimizes the reduction of political subjects to “bare life.” Civil rights and other norms are fully suspended (though not abandoned) and exceptional measures are taken, as Giorgio Agamben explores in his work on biopolitics and Western political thinking’s definition of sovereignty as power over life. The state of exception, Agamben explains, “is neither external nor internal to the juridical order, and the problem of defining it concerns precisely a threshold, or a zone of indifference, where inside and outside do not exclude each other but rather blur with each other” ( 2005 , 23). Defined in such a relation of exception, the pirate is included in the legal order only by her/his exclusion through the sovereign ( 1998 , 18). Conceptualizing exception as a “limit figure” that embodies the “radical crisis” at the heart of legitimacy and political authority (24–25), Agamben highlights its ambiguity as a ‘both/and’ concept that cannot be made to denote one thing or the other (here: inside or outside). 5 The operation of sovereignty—the inclusion of subjects that essentially defy categorical insertion into a binary order by the claim to an exception—thus produces “bare life” as its originary activity (83).

Since classical antiquity, maritime pirates have been contrasted with land-based thieves because of their greater motility (i.e., capability of movement) and the sea allowing for a more rapid escape: 6 piracy negated territorial and political borders, operating from spaces which were initially beyond the claims of states and empires (Beasley-Murray 2005 , 220, 222). In the mobile world of the various Atlantic migrations, from the Puritan Great Migration to the triangular slave trade and nineteenth-century immigration, the figure of the pirate encompasses traits of all the major characters of that mobile world: the trader, the adventurer, the pilgrim, the slave, and the indentured laborer as well as the slave-holder and-trader. In historical and literary discussions of piracy, major anxieties about an increasingly mobile society were voiced. Discourses about legitimate and illegitimate mobility appear as a defining aspect in pirate narratives, as piratical mobilities have been cast as both a threat to and as supportive of European colonial expansion and the imperialist project. The menace of uncontrollable geographical and social mobility that pirates signified was therefore closely related to social mobility and discontent with one’s inherited class position. In the early modern era, just as control over people’s mobility was increasingly nationalized (Cresswell 2006 , 12–13), pirates emerged as emblematic of another new world: “the world of Hobbes, Galileo, and Harvey, … an infinite, restless entanglement of persistent movement” in which “happiness itself was based on the freedom to move” (14). Piracy narratives articulated this emergent world, a world full of colonial dreams and nightmare realities. Ships and the sea, coasts and islands are main settings of this literature, which presents them as paradoxical spaces in which the dream and the nightmare are articulated in conjunction—as conflicted imperial and resistant sites and as fluid, permeable spaces of conflict and struggle, all the more so because ships and the coasts and islands they populated signified major stages of cultural contact and encounter. Because of their central position in the colonial economy in general and for slavery in particular, pirate ships became a popular literary topos, especially for writers critiquing slavery (see Sect. 3.1 ). As such, the ship and the sea emerge as the main textual spaces in which hegemonic and anti-hegemonic mobilities take effect. 7 The double nature of the pirate ship, mirroring colonial relations while simultaneously inverting them in critical moments, can be read as a Foucauldian ( 1986 ) heterotopia of the crisis of colonial legality and of deviation: a site outlawed by a dominant order that labels it piratical, thus placing the enslaved or otherwise colonized subject, whose economic and military actions are unsanctioned, into a realm of illegitimacy and disenfranchisement. Unlike the prison, however, the pirate ship can function as a mobile inversion of dominant social relations and hence is also a site of social experimentation and potential empowerment—arguably the reason why it represented an attractive setting for revolutionary or abolitionist writers.

Salvatore Poier summarizes that “the status of ‘pirate’ is not related to a specific set of activities that are, in and of themselves, ‘criminal’ as “this category took shape through the relationships with those who were labelled ‘pirates,’ the constituted power, the mob, and the future of a newly discovered territory” ( 2009 , 39) such as America. The post-classical, modern development of the category of piracy is thus intricately tied to a liminal geography of American coloniality. Especially in the discourse of international law, the pirate emerged as a foil for the integration of European nation-states, which tried to project the law of the land, a territorial order, onto maritime spaces (Heller-Roazen 2009 , 100–101). Yet what is at stake in critical discussions of piracy is clearly not just legalistic description—after all, as Anne Pérotin-Dumon reminds us, “there is not, and never has been, an authoritative definition of piracy in international law”—but also the analysis of “what authority made the laws” and “what power was at stake” ( 1991 , 198) in definitions—and representations, as I am arguing—of maritime piracy. Jon Beasley-Murray suggests that the historical legal construction of piracy as Other obfuscates that “[p]iracy cannot be simply demarcated as a constituent exterior to the civilized state” as “[t]he pirate is not the colonial other; the pirate inhabits and crosses the permeable membrane that divides enemy from foe, civilization from its other” ( 2005 , 224). In the aftermath of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century debates over law-making, power, warfare, and violence, especially with regard to the seas and whether they were to be mare clausum or mare liberum (Pérotin-Dumon 1991 , 205; Thomson 1994 , ch. 4 & 5; Heller-Roazen 2009 , ch. 11), early eighteenth-century images of the pirate increasingly drew on a lack of national and ethnic character and an alleged non-humanity. Pirates were at times represented as cruel, subhuman, cannibalistic Others on a continuum with the ‘Indian’ or ‘savage’; a monstrous, uncivilized, animal-like creature and a parasite (Kempe 2010 , 160, 263) that threatened the translatio imperii et studii once he left his assigned role of privateer or military aid in national endeavors (Kempe 2008 , 397). Indeed, as Schillings remarks, the difference between pirate and privateer marks a threshold between “the inside and the outside of the law” which “renders certain forms of reference to sovereignty by violent actors … potentially legitimate to the sovereign, and therefore worthy of re-inclusion in the law” ( 2015 , 31). Along similar reasoning, western states also framed non-Christian sea actions as piracy, such as in the so-called Barbary conflicts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Pérotin-Dumon 1991 , 213). When non-state, allegedly uncivilized and/or indigenous agents that cooperated with each other diverged from the course of a state-controlled imperialism (and, for instance, started building alternative social communities), legal and political theorists and decision-makers sought to delegitimize such endeavors.

Following Pérotin-Dumon and others, I interpret the pirate’s primary discursive function as that of a personified question about legitimacy (304)—hence the pirate’s discursive ambivalence between ‘good’ and ‘bad,’ folk-hero and criminal, Othering and identification. This ambivalence also marks the figure of the pirate as more than well suited for a leading role in narrative negotiations of various scenarios of crisis. Historically, piracy has led states to take exceptional measures from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Such measures are, in Agamben’s view, always results of (what is constructed and represented as) political crisis ( 2005 , 1). The semantic category of piracy, defined by its legal and spatial exceptionality, has indeed been mobilized most frequently in times of crisis—cultural-symbolic, political (foreign and domestic), economic, and social. Of course, crisis is not factual, but is itself a narrative construction, produced by a discursive environment that frames individual or collective perceptions of crisis (Fenske et al. 2017 ; Grunwald and Pfister 2007 ). Sociologists and political scientists have theorized crisis using various approaches, most notably Marxist (in reference to the repeated crises of capitalism discussed by Gramsci; see Jones 2006 , ch. 7) and governmental ones. 8 The concept of crisis, from the Greek verb krinein (“to select and judge, to decide, struggle,” Koselleck 1978 , 617), has been used in different contexts, all of them referencing a point in which an existential decision, such as that between an old order or a new one, needs to be made. The problematic of crisis as a dualistic concept (between justice and injustice, or freedom and slavery, for instance) has been countered by Goethe’s notion of crisis as a process and as transformation (624) as well as by the inclusion of what Reinhart Koselleck, in his classical 1982 summary of the conceptual development of crisis, has termed “possibilities crossing dualistic conceptions of crisis” (“quer [zur dualistischen Krise] verlaufenden Möglichkeiten,” 626; my translation). Crisis, in Koselleck’s understanding, implies a transformation of difference categories and of loyalties (630); it entails “transdifferent” (Breinig and Lösch) moments of semantic and symbolic instability. 9 In any case, the diagnosis of crisis, he argues, has always served as a “title of legitimation for political action” (625: “Legitimationstitel politischen Handelns,” my translation). This makes the nexus of crisis and legitimacy a highly productive categorical point of departure and frame of inquiry for the present study.

As Ansgar Nünning and others argue, narrative is central to the construction (and resolution) of scenarios of crisis, as crises constitute “medial transformations and (re-)presentations of situations in specific stories and narratives” (“mediale Transformationen und [Re-]Präsentationen von Geschehen in bestimmten Geschichten und Erzählungen,” my translation): “Thus crises are observable in literary and cultural studies only in their textual and medial manifestations, i.e. in the discursive presentation of a particular story as a narrative of crisis” (“Literatur- und kulturwissenschaftlich beobachtbar sind Krisen somit erst in ihren textuellen bzw. medialen Manifestationen, d.h. in der diskursiven Präsentation dieser bestimmten Geschichte als Krisenerzählung,” Nünning 2007 , 61, my translation; see also Nünning 2009 ). Similarly, Stuart Hall suggested that in times of greatest crisis, the manufacture and manipulation of public consent is crucial to the maintenance of power: “[M]oments in which the equilibrium of consent is disturbed, or where the contending class forces are so nearly balanced that neither can achieve that sway from which a resolution to the crisis can be promulgated, are moments when the whole basis of political leadership and cultural authority becomes exposed and contested” (quoted in Davis 2004 , 111). In what ways do narratives of piracy expose, and at times contest, such cultural-symbolic structures, and how do they act as manifestations and negotiations of crisis? These are the primary questions discussed in my readings.

In my study, I am not myself diagnosing historical moments from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century as marked by crisis, but rather look at periods that have been perceived and analyzed as such in both contemporaneous and historical accounts. The ‘discovery’ of America, for instance, was characterized as a pivotal crisis for the political system of Europe (Koselleck 1978 , 634, 639), resulting, in the seventeenth century, in a “foundational” (82) “crisis of legitimation, an overlapping set of political crises, involving religious and civil wars, and international conflict” (Kahn 2002 , 67). The epistemological crisis concerning the establishment and maintenance of difference categories at the basis of western knowledge-production was triggered by the scientific revolution and the simultaneous contact with America: beginning with Columbus’ letters, many reported wonders had to be integrated into existing symbolic orders and emergent western systems of knowledge/power (Foucault); the quantity and quality of sensational news from faraway corners of the globe provoked a crisis of the concepts of truth and authority as well as of the cultural meaning of testimony and witnessing. This crisis was answered symbolically by the transformation of the pirate into a colonial agent and scientist before and around 1700, which I examine in the opening chapter. This period was also a time of crisis in colonial relations: when colonized groups turned against their colonizers and started to collaborate, both politically and economically, with illegitimate agents such as pirates or smugglers, as was the case at the end of the seventeenth century, piracy became an important literary topos. I begin with an analysis of A. O. Exquemelin’s Buccaneers of America , reading the text’s staging of cultural encounter as reflective of these crises. The text inspired a series of ethnographic narratives about the New World by former ‘pirates’ at the close of the seventeenth century (e.g., William Dampier, Basil Ringrose, Bartholomew Sharp, and Lionel Wafer), written as evidence of their authors’ gradual transformation into scientists (which I compare to Exquemelin’s): they adopted a discourse of science and helped legitimize colonial plunder—material and symbolic—as beneficial to the European “empire of knowledge.”

The second part of that chapter moves, together with historical pirates, from the Caribbean to the coasts of New England in the early eighteenth century. It focuses on Puritan anti-piratical sermons and gallows narratives which prominently articulated piracy in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as sinful, devilish, and destructive for the community. In fact, the condemnation of piracy served to consolidate the society of third-generation Puritans, many of whom saw the increasing secularization of a theocratic society and the colony’s socioeconomic developments as a threat to their covenant with God. This crisis was not only of a religious kind; in the Puritan understanding, the concept of crisis had distinct medical connotations and related to existential questions of survival or death. Thus, public executions of pirates and the sermons and broadsides produced for these events used the figure of the pirate as an Other against whom to renew social cohesion. In this sense, I read Cotton Mather’s and other Puritan comments on piracy as a second discursive moment around 1700 responding to the perception of a collective crisis.

In Chapter 2 , I explore the trope of piracy as it was summoned in the context of the (post-)revolutionary Atlantic that culminated in the crisis of colonial legitimacy in the North American colonies. It is no coincidence that Thomas Paine titled his revolutionary pamphlet series The American Crisis (1776–1783), bolstering the morale of the American colonists in “times that try men’s souls” (91). Neither is it a coincidence that at the very moment of the political declaration of independence, in which the crisis of colonial legitimacy was performatively resolved (Derrida 1986 ), the sign of the pirate was externalized by the claim that the British monarch was a pirate, thus lending America the natural right to independence. Historical romances in early American literature, such as James Fenimore Cooper’s The Red Rover (1827), used romantic/Byronic piracy to narrate the legitimacy of the revolution, appropriating the pirate as a foundational figure and an ideal type of patriotic outlaw masculinity, suffering a tragic end for a just cause. Even in narrating the crisis in gender relations, as revolutionary femininities first gave way to Republican motherhood and then to the “cult of true womanhood” (Welter) in the course of the nineteenth century, revolutionary pirates were prominent figures in popular literary production geared toward a broader and increasingly female readership, as in Lieutenant Murray’s (i.e., Maturin Murray Ballou’s) Fanny Campbell ( 1844 ). Former revolutionary heroines (here in the form of a patriotic female pirate) were domesticated in such historical romances and novelettes to make palpable the ongoing transition to a more conservative nineteenth-century femininity. Nevertheless, the text at the same time betrays a discourse of nostalgia for an earlier, revolutionary version of womanhood, disturbing any smooth transition from pirate to “angel of the house.” Read side by side, these historical fictions perform similar cultural work in legitimizing America’s revolutionary past and imperial future for different audiences.

The first foreign policy crisis with which the young Republic was confronted was the war with the so-called Barbary pirates at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Here, again, the delegitimizing rhetoric of Othering foreign agents—in this case, an Oriental(ized) Other—by calling them pirates was prominent in popular narratives. Captivity narratives about the experience of abduction and enslavement by Muslim ‘pirates’—like Royall Tyler’s Algerine Captive (1824)—redirected piracy from North Africa to North America, thus questioning the legitimacy of slavery in the United States, taking up the conjuncture of piracy and slavery that had been voiced in the Declaration of Independence and preparing the grounds for nineteenth-century abolitionist discourses. During the crisis over slavery in the nineteenth century, piracy signified the criticality of legitimacy in the context of a Black Atlantic literature (Gilroy 1993 ), exemplified by Trinidadian M. Maxwell Philip’s little-explored novel Emmanuel Appadocca ( 1854 ) and Herman Melville’s canonical novella “Benito Cereno” ( 1855 / 1856 ), both of which I explore in my third chapter. While Philip explores piracy as a plot of revenge, Melville reflects on the slavery crisis as fundamentally a crisis of knowing and telling, voicing ontological insecurity as masters and slaves become indistinguishable once the tale introduces the suspicion of piracy. The conjuncture of piracy and slavery is also used (in a different context) in popular anti-Southern discourses during the Civil War, the major domestic crisis of the nineteenth century. Decorated Union letter envelopes depicted Jefferson Davis and the seceded South as prototypical pirates, stealing Africans and betraying the United States by means of a Secession thus delegitimized. These envelopes also epitomize the shift toward the visual in representations of piracy beginning in post-Civil War America.

Though the focus of my readings is on the literary representation of piracy, constructions of the pirate figure in public discourse and visual culture are included in this study as images of pirates frequently interacted with the written word, especially in popular texts. The figure of the pirate as well as the symbols associated with her/him, such as the Jolly Roger flag, have, from the day of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century broadsides, been used to market pirate texts and to evoke certain stock associations such as violence, death, and piratical nonrecognition of nation-states and their laws, even if today they have been commodified in nearly every form of material and popular culture, from coffee mugs and soccer logos to children’s toys and fashion. Rather than completely separating visual and verbal discourses of piracy during the period under scrutiny, I address their interrelatedness in cultural expressions of the pirate figure across the Atlantic. My final subchapter of analysis, examining satirical cartoons, draws special attention to the importance of visual culture for the cultural articulation and negotiation of piracy. Tapping into a vast archive that still constitutes a hidden repository of cultural expression at the onset of the Civil War, this final section also highlights the increasing importance of visual representations of piracy starting in mid-nineteenth-century print culture.

The different genres and sorts of material under discussion, spanning almost two centuries, warrant comment especially in the context of a discipline like American Studies, which is often compartmentalized into special period studies. While I certainly will not be able to delve as deeply into the details of each of the crisis scenarios that contextualize my readings as many of my specialized colleagues in colonial and early American studies or Civil War studies, I hope that the diachronic scope of this book enables a broader view with regard to a trope that itself has crossed centuries and has been adapted and changed from one decade to the next. As much as these scenarios and the corresponding pirate narratives are different from each other, they share a characteristic conjunction of maritime piracy and questions of legitimacy. The narrative and visual texts under consideration all ask their readers to investigate the nature of legitimate action, even violence, and they do so according to their own needs and means. In each chapter, I have juxtaposed canonical texts with popular and/or less well-known material that warrants closer examination: the buccaneer narratives of the late seventeenth century, which are little known except for popular versions of Exquemelin’s and Dampier’s writings, and Cotton Mather’s well-examined sermons in chapter 1; Cooper’s classic Red Rover (though little read today) and Ballou’s popular historical romance Fanny Campbell , long out of print and only recently commented upon by scholarship, in chapter 2; and in chapter 3, Melville’s “Benito Cereno,” which has received continuous critical attention since at least the 1950s, side by side with M. M. Philip’s Emmanuel Appadocca , a Black Atlantic novel rediscovered in the late 1990s that is still little discussed. Placing these texts next to each other, my study demonstrates not only how the pirate figure has moved across lowbrow and highbrow genres, adapting to different generic affordances, but also highlights once more the artificiality of these categorizations. Only by paying attention to such hitherto little explored archival material can we begin to understand the cultural mobility of the pirate: across oceans, genres, media, decades, and centuries, continuing with the new media of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from silent film to computer games. Reading such material side by side creates a dialogue between diverse genres that often drew on the same source material but was rearticulated in distinct ways and consumed by different strata of readers.

However, the present book is necessarily also limited, analyzing mostly prose narratives (with the exception of the final section). Though in the same two-hundred-year span, various other genres also engaged with and thrived on pirates and piracy—from the early modern ballad to the antebellum popular stage—I focus on prose narratives for two reasons: first, the pirate emerged as a popular figure together with the early modern development of the travel narrative and the adventure story, which led to the creation of the novel in the eighteenth century. Hence a diachronic perspective is best possible by focusing on a genre that dealt with pirates continuously for two centuries (and more). Second, I am most interested in how cultural narratives about legitimacy (with regard to the law, to maritime theft, to violence, to slavery and revolution) were constructed continuously through the figure of the pirate from the colonial era to the War of Secession. How Atlantic and later American populations told, wrote, and read stories about pirates brings to the fore prevalent anxieties with regard to shifting norms and understandings of legitimacy in conjunction with categorical differences of race, class, gender, and nation, and shows us how such anxieties were resolved in literature.

In times of collectively perceived crisis, clear-cut categories of cultural difference tend to become unhinged despite increased efforts to affirm boundaries between self and Other. While the outcome of categorical crises either reaffirms and renews or redefines and changes these boundaries, the very fact that these boundaries are discussed intensely hints at cultural and/or political anxieties and insecurities that put established categories of difference into doubt. Accordingly, pirate narratives could both question or cement cultural difference; yet reading them against the grain, the texts under consideration, informed by the crisis discourses prevalent at the time of their publication, defy any kind of dichotomous difference construction as they present multiple perspectives on piracy. They are characterized by polyphony, dissonance, and textual ambiguity, terms related to the concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia (as they are etched out by Mikhail Bakhtin in his theorizations of the novel ([ 1929 ] 1984 and [ 1934 – 1935 ] 1984 ). 10 The main mode of analysis I employ in this study is that of contrapuntal reading, a method of (post-)colonial discourse analysis proposed by Edward Said in Culture and Imperialism ( 1993 ) which brings to the fore heteroglossia, voices hidden and suppressed by the main narrative and the textual consolidation of crisis for the sake of an optimistic portrayal of colonialism or patriotism. As a practice of deconstructive reading (rather than “a statement about the actual structure of colonial texts” [Mackenthun 2006 , 12]), contrapuntal analysis shows “a simultaneous awareness both of the metropolitan history that is narrated and of those other histories against which (and together with which) the dominating discourse acts” (Said 1993 , 59).

Said’s analyses mostly refer to the canonical prose writing of the British Empire in its heyday in the nineteenth century, a fact that has often been criticized as Occidentalist or aesthetically elitist and conservative (Clark 1999 , 6; Mackenthun 2004 , 35). Further points of criticism relate to the notion of counterpoint itself, derived from Western classical music (Bach, Schoenberg, Glenn Gould), which assumes a basic unity in a piece of music in which point and counterpoint act together rather than against each other. Also, Said’s under-theorization of the process and method of contrapuntal reading and his arguably much too schematic idea of oppositionality have been criticized (Kennedy 2000 , 107, 110). While Said’s reconciliatory assumption of an ultimately harmonious text is indeed problematic, also with regard to his literary analyses (Mackenthun 2004 , 332 n. 2), the notion of the counterpoint nevertheless remains useful in its metaphorical quality, emphasizing the importance of submerged, dissonant voices that run counter to the main narrative within a cultural text. I retain the concept despite its problems because it enables readings of non-canonized texts whose polyphonic qualities have been rarely addressed. Following Mackenthun’s arguments in her examination of Said’s concept and its adaptability to the study of the oceanic context of antebellum American literature, the notion of counterpoint insinuates that aesthetic complexity in (post-) colonial texts is a result of their “‘difficult mobility’ between the metropolitan center and the colonial periphery” ( 2004 , 335; 2006 ). Contrapuntal reading presupposes the placement of imperial/colonial texts into a framework no longer limited by imperial and national borders. As Said argues, referring to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony:

Western cultural forms can be taken out of the autonomous enclosures in which they have been protected, and placed instead in the dynamic global environment created by imperialism, itself revised as an ongoing contest between north and south, metropolis and periphery, white and native. We may thus consider imperialism as a process occurring as part of the metropolitan culture, which at times acknowledges, at other times obscures the sustained business of the empire itself. The important point … is how the national … cultures maintained hegemony over the peripheries. How within them was consent gained and continuously consolidated for the distant rule of native peoples and territories? ( 1993 , 58)

Contrapuntal reading hence constitutes a form of “reading back” (Do Mar Castro Varela and Dhawan 2005 , 52), a reading from the perspective of the colonized in order to unveil the presence of the “coloniality of power” (Walter Mignolo quoting Anibal Quijano 2000 , 16), the “system that organized the distribution of epistemic, moral, and aesthetic resources in a way that both reflects and reproduces empire” (Alcoff 2007 , 83) inscribed in cultural expression, both on the level of representation and epistemology. 11 It allows for a point of view between imperial narrative and postcolonial perspective and constructs a counter-narrative in the act of reading, which time and again pierces through the surface of single texts: Kennedy calls Said’s model a “dual approach to literary texts” ( 2000 , 106) grounded in an epistemological critique of nationalism and Western humanism that rests on his understanding of cultural expression in the colonial context as hybrid. 12 For Said, the main point is to disclose the pervasiveness of imperial power in writing on the one hand and to highlight anti-imperial resistance on the other, as these resistant energies, following a Derridean, poststructural conception of textuality, can never be brought to silence but retain a spectral presence in the text. 13

The method of contrapuntal reading reverberates with similar analytical approaches to identify the fraught interrelationship between European cultures and transatlantic colonialism, including slavery and the slave trade, as they have been employed by scholars like Peter Hulme ( 1986 ) or, in the context of African American Studies, Toni Morrison (who speaks of an absent “Africanist presence” in American literature, 1992 ). My critical analyses draw on all of these approaches, their main point being to disclose the pervasiveness of white western/imperial power in these texts on the one hand and to make transparent anti-imperial resistance on the other (Kennedy 2000 , 106). Following a poststructural conception of textuality, such resistant energies can never be brought to silence but remain a disturbing presence in the text. They evoke, indeed, a much more general crisis at the heart of language-based cultural production: the continuing crisis of the sign. Pirate narratives, emphasizing shifting identities and ambivalent characters and plotlines, can be viewed as emblematic of such a logocentric-epistemological crisis, resulting, from a postcolonial perspective, from the criticality of legitimacy (of colonialism, of struggles for independence, of slavery) produced by the ‘discovery’ of the New World.

My study chimes in with a number of concerns that are currently voiced in the context of American literary and cultural studies scholarship, examining the cultural work of Anglophone American-Atlantic narratives of piracy that have been discussed so far mostly in single articles and book chapters. American Studies has turned to the sea for more than two decades: taking up earlier work like Thomas Philbrick’s James Fenimore Cooper and the Development of American Sea Fiction ( 1961 ), Paul Gilroy ( The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness , 1993 ), Cesare Casarino ( Modernity at Sea: Melville, Marx, Conrad in Crisis , 2002), Gesa Mackenthun ( Fictions of the Black Atlantic in American Foundational Literature , 2004 ), Paul Gilje ( Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution , 2004 ), Robin Miskolcze ( Women and Children First: Nineteenth - Century Sea Narratives and American Identity , 2007 ), Margaret Cohen ( The Novel and the Sea , 2008), or Hester Blum ( The View from the Masthead: Maritime Imagination and Antebellum American Sea Narratives , 2008 ), to name but a few, have rewritten American literary history, advancing the maritime imagination as a fundamental, yet neglected aspect of American culture. 14 Reverberating with Henry Nash Smith’s diagnosis that the American economic and military frontier, up to the mid-nineteenth century, was primarily imagined as maritime ([ 1950 ] 2009 , 12) as well as with the fact that the Middle Passage was constitutive of race relations in the Americas, these studies turn away from a predominantly territorial conception of American culture. Regarding the turn to the sea and the ubiquity of pirates in Atlantic American popular culture from the seventeenth century to the present, piracy has received renewed interest in literary and cultural studies. Since pirate narratives have often staged cultural encounters with regions inaccessible to the general reading public in the metropoles of Europe and North America, they are significant also in their repercussions for incipient inter-American and Orientalist discourses. Thus my book suggests that pirate narratives are valuable for colonial, early American, and antebellum literature and culture studies, debating, for instance, the legitimacy of the American Revolution or of the slave system in the context of Atlantic European empire-building and American expansion, and using moral and religious as well as racial and gendered discourses for this purpose.

In addition, I hope to contribute to popular culture studies that have, since the 1990s, begun to explore past popular cultural figures, forms, and texts, such as broadsides and ballads, pamphlets, and cheaply sold historical romances or dime novels. 15 In the context of a genealogy of popular culture in America, the pirate has always been an important figure of mass appeal. His/Her popularity was essential for appealing to a non-elite audience to whom normative concepts of nation and empire, femininity and masculinity as well as race also needed to be brokered. These readers, of course, developed their own ways of appropriation, one of them being the pirate’s heroization—whitewashing the ethnically hybrid figure along with the translation of “a revolutionary multiracial mob into storybook (white) American heroes” in early American literature, as Cathy Davidson suggests ( 2004 , 23).

Last but not least, since the threat of piracy—its instability and unreliability as a legal category and its implications of violence and uncontrollability—has always met a need to be negotiated in popular symbolic economies, I am proposing to read pirate narratives as fictions of legitimation in the context of the interdisciplinary field of Law and Literature. Historian Lauren Benton ( 2010 ) reconceptualizes early modern pirates as oceanic lawyers who knew the ropes of many legal loopholes and ruses to remain within “the precarious membrane of the law” ( qua Burgess 2014 , 5) 16 ; she describes such piratical agency as an expression of “vectors of law thrusting into ocean space” (Benton 2010 , 112), transporting legal norms across colonial spaces—not without calling these very norms into question. Pirate narratives make visible contextualized ideologies of law (McGillivray 1994 , v), and their main function can be seen in creating what Martin Kayman terms “communal narratives of justice” ( 2002 , 16). As cultural texts of “jurisgenesis,” they are concerned with the creation of a normative universe, “a world of right and wrong, of lawful and unlawful, of valid and void” (Cover 1992 , 95), and, in the context of negotiating normativity, with race, class, and gender constructions informing this creation.

I am using the term ambivalence not merely as referring to the static opposition of conflicting signs, but rather as highlighting constantly shifting dynamics of signification (see Weber 1987 , 148).

In a comment on this anecdote, Schillings argues that the binary opposition between civilization and maritime wilderness enacted in the definition of piracy is linked to the general construction of “‘civilizational’ legitimacy” ( 2011 , 301).

On the problem of the United States as a postcolonial nation, see Buell ( 1992 ) and Mackenthun ( 2000 ).

As a case in point, Mark Hanna argues that the War on Piracy (1716–1726), for instance, was “waged just as much in the rapidly expanding print media on both sides of the Atlantic” ( 2015 , 372).

In this context, cf. Agamben’s understanding of the floating signifier as corresponding to the state of exception “in which the norm is in force without being applied” ( 2005 , 37).

For an overview of legal definitions of piracy, its political significance, and its repression between 1450 and 1850, see Pérotin-Dumon, who also offers a brief “sociology of piracy” ( 1991 , 197).

Peggy Kamuf argues that fiction itself functions like a ship: “Between boarding a ship at sea and stepping into the ‘unreal’ of a fiction the difference is unremarkable, especially when fiction takes as its invented locale the very enchantment of this bordered space that emerges from the surrounding blankness [of the ocean], … always on the verge of sinking again into the formless, figureless blankness, the sea of white ink” ( 1997 , 201).

For theoretical approaches to crisis from a social science perspective, see e.g., Japp ( 1975 ).

On the concept of transdifference, see Lösch ( 2005 ) and Breinig and Lösch ( 2002 ), also Ganser ( 2008 , 25–30).

See his “Discourse and the Novel” ( 1934 – 1935 ) and Problems of Dostoyevski’s Poetics ( 1929 ). While I am drawing on Bakhtin when I use these terms, I believe that polyphony is a crucial characteristic in narratives of colonial contact in the Americas even prior to the emergence of the novel in the eighteenth century. The narratives under scrutiny here can be seen as important forebears to the novel. Yet Bakhtin’s suggestion of authorial control over multiple discursive voices is unconvincing, given the more complicated notion of text(uality) in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries. On the role of cultural contact in the Americas in the development of the novel, see Spengemann ( 1994 ).

For a lucid summary and critique of Mignolo’s concept and his overall project of a decolonial epistemology, see Alcoff ( 2007 ). Mignolo uses the notion of the coloniality of power throughout Local Histories/Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledge, and Border Thinking ( 2000 ).

Bakhtin’s distinction between intentional and organic hybridity (or heteroglossia), which Mackenthun finds important in order to differentiate between colonial texts that have unconscious contrapuntal qualities and those that intentionally employ semantic conflict at the level of historical reflection ( 2004 ), is of course problematic from a poststructural perspective on texts (which has complicated, if not abandoned, intentionality as a category for analysis).

In fact, Derrida’s notion of deconstruction rests upon a “crisis” of the sign: “the instance of krinein or of krisis (decision, choice, judgement, discernment) is itself … one of the essential ‘themes’ or ‘objects’ of deconstruction” ( 1991 , 273; Kayman 2002 , 16).

Also worth mentioning are collections of essays on this topic such as America and the Sea: A Literary History (1995, ed. Haskell Springer), The Sea and the American Imagination (2004, ed. Klaus Benesch, Jon-K. Adams, and Kerstin Schmidt) or “The Sea Is History”: Exploring the Atlantic (2009, ed. Carmen Birkle and Nicole Waller).

For influential monographs in this field, see Ashby ( 2012 ), D. Cohen ( 1993 ), Cullen ( 1995 ), Leventman ( 2006 ), Neuburg ( 1983 ), and Streeby ( 2002 ).

For the colonial era, Burgess even suggests that “the fissure between Crown and colonial law on piracy is so profound … that it goes beyond negotiation and argues instead for the germination of a completely separate Atlantic legal identity” ( 2014 , 227).

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Poier, Salvatore. 2009. “Hostis Humani Generis: History of a Multi-Faceted Word.” In Pirates and Piracy , edited by Andrew Opitz. Special issue, Darkmatter 5. http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/2009/12/20/hostis-humani-generis-history-of-a-multi-faceted-word .

Rediker, Marcus. 2004. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age . Boston: Beacon Press.

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———. 2015. “The Privateering Critic: Re-Reading the Problem of the Ban in Marie de France and Giorgio Agamben.” Krisis: Journal for Contemporary Philosophy 1: 30–38.

———. 2017. Enemies of All Humankind: Fictions of Legitimate Violence . Hanover: Dartmouth College Press.

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Ganser, A. (2020). Introduction: The Pirate as a Figure of Crisis and Legitimacy. In: Crisis and Legitimacy in Atlantic American Narratives of Piracy. Maritime Literature and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43623-0_1

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Pirates You Don't Know, and Other Adventures in the Examined Life

John Griswold

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Pub Date: 03/15/2014

ISBN: 9-780-8203-4678-6

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ISBN: 9-780-8203-4703-5

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LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays

LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Composition & Creative Writing

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For nearly ten years John Griswold has been publishing his essays in Inside Higher Ed, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and Adjunct Advocate , many under the pen name Oronte Churm. Churm’s topics have ranged widely, exploring themes such as the writing life and the utility of creative-writing classes, race issues in a university town, and the beautiful, protective crocodiles that lie patiently waiting in the minds of fathers. Though Griswold recently entered the tenure stream, much of his experience, at a Big Ten university, has been as an adjunct lecturer—that tenuous and uncertain position so many now occupy in higher education. In Pirates You Don’t Know , Griswold writes poignantly and hilariously about the contingent nature of this life, tying it to his birth in the last American enclave in Saigon during the Vietnam War, his upbringing in a coal town in southern Illinois, and his experience as an army deep-sea diver and frogman. He investigates class in America through four generations of his family and portrays the continuing joys and challenges of fatherhood while making a living, becoming literate, and staying open to the world. But Griswold’s central concerns apply to everyone: What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to think, feel, create, and be whole? What is the point of this particular journey? Pirates You Don’t Know is Griswold’s vital attempt at making sense of his life as a writer and now professor. The answers for him are both comic and profound: “Picture Long John Silver at the end of the movie, his dory filled with stolen gold, rowing and sinking; rowing, sinking, and gloating.”

—Bob Shacochis, author of The Woman Who Lost Her Soul

—Debra Monroe, author of On the Outskirts of Normal

—John Warner, author of the novel The Funny Man and editor of McSweeney’s Internet Tendency

Be it for a few terms or a lifetime of semesters, Griswold's surprising, darkly comic stories of work, family life, and struggle will ring painfully familiar to anyone who's taken a few laps in the adjunct hamster wheel.

—Aaron Gilbreath, author of This Is: Essays on Jazz

—Chris Waddington, The Times-Picayune

—Patrick Wensink, American Book Review

About the Author/Editor

JOHN GRISWOLD is a staff writer at the Common Reader , a publication of Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of A Democracy of Ghosts ; Herrin: The Brief History of an Infamous American City ; and Pirates You Don’t Know (Georgia). He has also written extensively (as Oronte Churm) at Inside Higher Ed and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency . He lives in the St. Louis metro area.

50 Pirate Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Next Tale

November 21, 2023 by Richard Leave a Comment

The Swashbuckling Seas: 50 Pirate Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Next Tale

Avast ye scallywags! Prepare to set sail on a journey across the high seas with 50 Pirate Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Next Tale. These prompts offer enough intrigue, adventure, and scalawag schemers to inspire best-selling novels or blockbuster films.

Our prompts deliver morally-complex characters, daring action sequences, and imaginative worldbuilding. You’ll find fresh takes like a genderfluid pirate captain overcoming a crew’s prejudice. Or an aristocrat turning to piracy to avenge their beloved’s death by marauders. Mystical elements also await with a magical compass granting a timid soul seafaring courage or cursed Aztec gold dooming the living to serve the dead.

Beyond swashbuckling fun, thought-provoking narratives tackle imperialism, slavery, and liberation. A marooned survivor child infiltrates their family’s killers or refugees train to free indentured compatriots. Even lighthearted tales like trickster twins perplexing authorities have depth.

Whether you seek an afternoon’s escapism or inspiration for intricate sagas, these pirate story seeds offer bountiful directions to launch your voyaging creativity. Let them transport you from housebound boredom to an imaginative writerly horizon sailing farther than your eyes can see. The azure waves beckon!

A young sailor joins a pirate crew seeking a mythical island said to have magical healing treasures that could cure his ailing mother.
Ruthless pirates imprison a haughty royal navy captain in their brig, but he plots intricate escape plans to turn the tables.
A secret diary from a legendary female pirate hints at where she hid her massive hoards of treasure stolen from the richest merchant ships.
After discovering a magical compass, a timid cartographer joins a ragtag pirate crew and unexpectedly finds seafaring adventure.
After their ship sinks in a fierce storm, navy sailors end up marooned on a strange island where skeleton pirates emerge at nightfall.
Torn between family expectations and her yearning for freedom on the waves, a governor’s daughter escapes aboard a pirate ship in disguise.
An aristocrat turns to high seas piracy seeking vengeance against the pirates who brutally attacked the colony his beloved ruled.
Unlikely comrades – an estranged noble daughter sheltered from sea and a weathered old pirate longing for land must cooperate to escape a naval prison.
A cursed shipwreck with ritually sacrificed skeletal remains curses treasure hunters with greed – transforming them into ghoulish water demons if they steal artifacts.
A secret order of pirates trains naval officer hostages kidnapped as children to be elite spies ultimately loyal only to the outlaw brotherhood after years of intense indoctrination.
A Navy captain uncovers a plot by wealthy aristocrats funding pirate raids on merchant rivals to cripple competition and reap the spoils.
A sprite smuggler turned pirate awakens a mischievous sea goddess’s wrath and curses their crew after sheltering aboard her mythical floating island temple during a squall.
A disgraced royal navy lieutenant discharged and denied rightful pension turns pirate hunter by infiltrating a notorious crew then manipulating its scoundrel rivals against them.
Delighting in daring disguise outwitting restrictive mores, a feisty runaway bride realizes swashbuckling sisterhood upending merchant ships offers far greater freedom and fortune than matrimony.
A pirate captain seeks lost hardy seedlings planted centuries ago by exploring seafarers to cultivate a secret sanctuary garden oasis for scurvy-plagued outlaws to rest ashore.
Weary of cruelty in a poisonously corrupt colonial empire, an impoverished fisherwoman suffers terrifying visions prophesying a liberating pirate assault on the governor’s armada flagship.
A physician’s controversial addiction treatments seem the only relief for desperate pirates plagued by harrowing memories of torture and grisly violence suffered confined on slave ships before liberation by freebooters.
A staunch naval officer vigilantly hunting pirates begins questioning harsh treatment of common sailors spurring discontent after a provocative prophetic encounter with a defiant alluring buccaneer.
The perilous lure of forbidden wealth and power bends a shady privateer captain toward the darker side of piracy after plundering a shipwrecked slaver galleon with horrifically inhuman cargo.
Ruthless cutthroat pirates manipulate tensions between avaricious colonial empires spilling first blood while camouflaged by ostensibly legitimate letters of marque and reprisal.
A wily iron-willed captain outmaneuvers the navy by cultivating secret loyalties amongst merchant mariners suffering extortion from aristocratic trading companies abusing royal charters.
Shipwrecked on a remote island haven, an exiled prince finds a lawless refuge with tattooed natives spiritedly worshiping ancient goddesses of nonlinear time inspiring visions of potential futures.
A maddening tune haunts a cursed Aztec coin salvaged from a bewitched ship manned by the living dead until a blacksmith’s daughter braves the fiends to return their payment sacrificing her mortal lover.
Defying draconian edicts after escaping indentured servitude, a roguish sailor turned charismatic pirate wins converts by exposing the governor’s secret shareholdings in brutally run plantations and slave ships.
An orphan escapes torment in a workhouse by stowing away with rum smugglers then barely survives a vicious mutiny only to become marooned on a strange isle of hybrid beast creatures born from magic potion cargo leaking into the sea.
A fearless lady blacksmith sparks a passionate romance with a former assassin spy posing as pirate. Fleeing ruthless state agents, the daring pair must reluctantly join forces with actual opportunistic outlaws.
A physician’s daughter abducted by a ruthless pirate admires surprisingly egalitarian democracy aboard his ship until realizing outlaw governance masks a sinister brainwashing campaign orchestrated only to manipulate vulnerable seafarers into compliance.
Sent to stamp out notorious pirates menacing a contested trade route, a conflicted naval captain secretly admires their daring while navigating political landmines both amongst shrewd merchant investors back home and indigenous groups abroad allying with the independent scoundrels.
To fund their pirating sprees under guise of legitimate trading voyages, scheming aristocratic brothers extort destitute villagers by manipulating grain prices then further swindle naive investors through complex maritime insurance scams and raids staged to look accidental.
Defying family prohibiting oceanic adventures, a lady stowaway joins a motley pirate crew seeking stolen ancestral spoils but instead finds herself ultimately captaining them on a quest to free enslaved islanders oppressed by tyrannical colonial plantocrats shipping the displaced natives abroad.
A seemingly cursed coin passed amongst pirates eternally dooms its current owner to sate an insatiable ague with the crimson vitality of man accompanying escalating brazen heists until willingly relinquished unto another unfortunate seafaring gambler.
After a ruthless pirate massacre, a lone survivor child grows up infiltrating the cutthroats who orphaned him as a sleeper agent of vengeance for the governor until unexpected camaraderie complicates cold-blooded plans of retribution aboard their criminal fraternity.
The charismatic duplicitous son of a governor leads a popular mutiny against an oppressive privateer captain then rouses rowdy revelry celebrating ill-gotten gains but his entitled overconfidence hiding sinister secrets ultimately risks everything when old enemies force a reckoning.
Experiencing ominous dreams envisioning fates befalling ships during freakish storms, a reputed witch proves her inexplicable insights instrumental as the prescient navigator for a notorious captain navigating treacherous treasure voyages other less prudent plunderers might bypass.
Striving to save her pirate paramour from the gallows, an exiled Acadian healer accused of witchcraft by fearful Puritan villagers must channel herbalists’ botanical wisdom to concoct a coma-mimicking poison simulating death long enough to secure his pardoning pardon.
After brutal slave plantation owners disfigured her during a sadistic interrogation, an escaped maroon warrior woman channels her fury into guerrilla piracy sinking slave ships while liberating their human cargo.
Masking pirate origins through innovative ship outfitting adding hidden oars and pivoting cannons, legitimate privateer cover facilitates more lucrative pillaging from purported papal sanctified infidels at sea under auspice of divine blessing.
Building a reputable merchant fleet as cover, shrewd siblings sneak defectors fleeing a tyrannical plantation colony then train the refugees into a secret seaborne liberation force infiltrating slave ports to foment uprisings.
Patronizing asinine aristocrats and cheating them at cards under withering scrutiny, a wily female crossdressing con artist worms into high society as a means toward infiltrating the captaincy of an East India company vessel for spectacularly piratical deceit.
Shanghaied onto a whaling vessel outbound by deceitful crimps, green sailors find themselves soon under the democratically elected leadership of an cunning fugitive who persuades most hands piracy promises just compensation denied by their miserly shipowners.
Canny identical twin sisters take advantage of continual confusion over their shared identity to become the scourge of the seven seas – one commanding fearsome raiders from the prow as pirate captain while the other maintains impeccable social credentials as a governor’s wife unraveling diplomatic countermeasures.
Escaping forced naval service abducting innocents doomed as slaves abroad requires a slave ship crew to overcome deep bigotry accepting a gender fluid pirate captain of color before discovering shared yearning for emancipation.
Rescued by pirates after a storm capsizes an immigrant voyage, a refugee child matures into quartermaster leveraging charts and linguistic expertise from influential mentors to guide the misfit crew toward more ethical profitable freebooting.
After greedy plantation owners bilk humble colonists of promised land grants, an aggrieved frontier firefighter sparks seditious sentiment arranging resistance through hidden symbols and mountain fire beacon signals learned from indigenous tribes.
To pin their notorious crimes on scapegoats at opportune moments, ruthless pirate warlords fly multiple black flags from their flagship’s mast signaling commands to coordinated cohorts across the horizon.
Merging naval warfare tactics learned betraying his imperialist nation with ingenious innovations from a genius tinkerer allied with island natives, a roguish sea captain pioneers maneuvers baffling pursuers and fortifying sufficient firepower to deter pirate threats.
Canny slave smugglers camouflage swashbuckling abductions amidst false flagging Spanish gold ship attacks while shanghaiing plantation militia into naval service before they expose the ruse.
After avaricious conquistadors renege on promises bartering captured medical secrets, an embittered shaman masterminds an intricate generations-long curse passed to pirate anchors dooming immortal ghosts ever-restless upon gold doubloons salvaged from their haunted flagship’s timely shipwreck.
Ruthlessly pursuing legendary treasure stolen centuries ago by her notorious ancestor, a cunning marquise invests in innovative amphibious vessel prototypes and recruits ruthlessly loyal freebooters to seize ships necessary for navigating perilous uncharted waters shrouded on guarded maps.
Navigating treacherous political crosscurrents between native islanders and shrewd colonial governors, deviously wily pirate envoys secure double agent status becoming privateers legally plundering select enemy ships for authorities who dominate valuable trade routes in exchange for neutral harboring rights.

If you enjoyed these please leave us a comment. We also have a wide variety of other prompts on our site.

About Richard

Richard Everywriter (pen name) has worked for literary magazines and literary websites for the last 25 years. He holds degrees in Writing, Journalism, Technology and Education. Richard has headed many writing workshops and courses, and he has taught writing and literature for the last 20 years.

In writing and publishing he has worked with independent, small, medium and large publishers for years connecting publishers to authors. He has also worked as a journalist and editor in both magazine, newspaper and trade publications as well as in the medical publishing industry. Follow him on Twitter, and check out our Submissions page .

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The Final Battle of Blackbeard: a Turning Point in Pirate History

This essay about Blackbeard, born Edward Teach, examines his final confrontation, highlighting its impact on pirate history. It details his rise to infamy during the Golden Age of Piracy, his notorious tactics, and his eventual downfall at the hands of Lieutenant Robert Maynard. The essay underscores how Blackbeard’s death marked the beginning of the end for piracy, illustrating the shift towards a more controlled maritime environment and the enduring legacy of Blackbeard in popular culture.

How it works

The final confrontation of Blackbeard, born Edward Teach, represents a crucial juncture in pirate history. This infamous pirate, renowned for his terrifying appearance and ruthless actions, met his fate in a violent encounter that underscored the relentless pursuit by colonial authorities to eliminate piracy. This event not only marked the end of one of history’s most dreaded pirates but also highlighted the broader campaign to enforce maritime law in the Atlantic.

Blackbeard’s rise to infamy began in the early 1710s, during what is often referred to as the Golden Age of Piracy.

This period saw piracy thrive in the Caribbean, the American colonies, and along the West African coast, driven by the lucrative opportunities presented by the Atlantic shipping lanes. Blackbeard quickly gained notoriety for his fearsome look and brutal tactics. His thick, black beard, sometimes decorated with ribbons and lit fuses, became a symbol of terror across the seas.

The Queen Anne’s Revenge, Blackbeard’s flagship, was a formidable vessel armed with 40 cannons. With this ship, he executed one of his most audacious acts: the blockade of Charleston, South Carolina, in May 1718. He successfully extorted valuable medical supplies and treasure from the city, further solidifying his fearsome reputation and demonstrating the significant threat pirates posed to colonial trade and security.

Despite his terrifying reputation, Blackbeard’s career was relatively brief. By the fall of 1718, colonial authorities had become increasingly determined to end his reign. The governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, took decisive action by enlisting the Royal Navy’s help. He commissioned Lieutenant Robert Maynard to capture Blackbeard, offering substantial rewards for his capture or death.

Maynard’s mission culminated in a dramatic and bloody encounter on November 22, 1718, near Ocracoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. Blackbeard had anchored his sloop, Adventure, in a narrow channel, a strategic location that limited the approach of larger ships. Maynard, commanding two smaller sloops, Jane and Ranger, managed to navigate the channel and launch a surprise attack.

The ensuing battle was chaotic and fierce. Blackbeard and his men fought valiantly but were outnumbered and outgunned. Maynard had hidden his men below deck, launching a surprise counterattack when Blackbeard’s crew boarded the Jane. In the brutal melee that followed, Blackbeard fought with legendary ferocity, reportedly continuing to battle despite multiple gunshot wounds and numerous sword cuts. He was eventually brought down by a pistol shot, and his head was severed and displayed as proof of his death.

Blackbeard’s death was a significant triumph for the colonial authorities and a symbolic defeat for the pirate community. It marked the beginning of the end for the Golden Age of Piracy. His demise was widely publicized, serving both as a deterrent to potential pirates and as a propaganda victory for the authorities.

Following Blackbeard’s death, the campaign against piracy intensified. The Royal Navy increased its patrols in the Caribbean and along the American coast, while colonial governors continued to offer rewards for capturing pirates. Many pirates were hunted down, captured, and hanged, and once-safe havens like Nassau in the Bahamas were reclaimed by colonial forces.

The final battle of Blackbeard thus represents a turning point in pirate history, illustrating the transition from the lawless seas of the early 18th century to a more controlled and policed maritime environment. Blackbeard’s dramatic end underscored the decline of piracy in the face of increasing colonial power and the determined efforts to protect commerce and restore order.

Despite his death, Blackbeard’s legacy endures in popular culture and history. His larger-than-life persona, fearsome tactics, and dramatic final stand have made him an enduring symbol of the pirate era. The story of his last battle serves as a testament to the fierce and often violent struggle between law enforcement and the outlaws of the sea, a struggle that ultimately reshaped the history of piracy and maritime law.

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Braves' ronald acuña jr. leaves game vs. pirates with left knee soreness after leg appears to buckle.

PITTSBURGH -- — Ronald Acuña Jr. left the Atlanta Braves ' game against the Pittsburgh Pirates in the first inning on Sunday with left knee soreness after his leg appeared to buckle.

The reigning NL MVP led off the game with a double to right-center field off Martín Pérez. With Marcell Ozuna at the plate, Acuña started toward third on a stolen base attempt and his left knee gave way. Acuña remained down for several minutes while being treated, pointing at his left leg before walking off under his own power.

Acuña, a 26-year-old outfielder, is batting .250 with four home runs and 15 RBI in 49 games. The four-time All-Star hit a career-best .337 last season with 41 homers and 106 RBI.

Adam Duvall shifted from left to right in the bottom half and Jarred Kelenic entered the game in place of Acuña and played left.

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PIT wins 2-1

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First Base Umpire - John Tumpane
Second Base Umpire - Marvin Hudson
Third Base Umpire - Nick Mahrley

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A charming look at a reader’s many moods

Elisa Gabbert’s essays in “Any Person Is the Only Self” are brimming with pleasure and curiosity about a life with books.

Tell people you read and write for a living, and they picture a ghostly creature, an idea only incidentally appended to a body. What they often fail to understand is that the life of the mind is also a physical life — a life spent lugging irksomely heavy volumes around on the Metro and annotating their margins with a cramping hand. The poet, essayist and New York Times poetry columnist Elisa Gabbert is rare in grasping that reading is, in addition to a mental exercise, a movement performed in a particular place.

“If I remember anything about a book, I also remember where I read it — what room, what chair,” she writes in her charming new essay collection, “ Any Person Is the Only Self .” Writing, too, proves spatial: “I think essays, like buildings, need structure and mood. The first paragraph should function as a foyer or an antechamber, bringing you into the mood.”

The 16 delightfully digressive pieces in this collection are all moods that involve books in one way or another. But they are not just about the content of books, although they are about that, too: They are primarily about the acts of reading and writing, which are as much social and corporeal as cerebral.

In the first essay — the foyer — Gabbert writes about the shelf of newly returned books at her local library. “The books on that shelf weren’t being marketed to me,” she writes. “They weren’t omnipresent in my social media feeds. They were very often old and very often ugly. I came to think of that shelf as an escape from hype.” The haphazard selections on the shelf were also evidence of other people — the sort of invisible but palpable community of readers that she came to miss so sharply during the pandemic.

In another essay, she learns of a previously unpublished story by one of her favorite authors, Sylvia Plath, who makes frequent appearances throughout this book. Fearing that the story will disappoint her, Gabbert puts off reading it. As she waits, she grows “apprehensive, even frightened.”

There are writers who attempt to excise themselves from their writing, to foster an illusion of objectivity; thankfully, Gabbert is not one of them. On the contrary, her writing is full of intimacies, and her book is a work of embodied and experiential criticism, a record of its author’s shifting relationships with the literature that defines her life. In one piece, she rereads and reappraises books she first read as a teenager; in another, she and her friends form a “Stupid Classics Book Club,” to tackle “all the corny stuff from the canon that we really should have read in school but never had.”

Gabbert is a master of mood, not polemic, and accordingly, her writing is not didactic; her essays revolve around images and recollections rather than arguments. In place of the analytic pleasures of a robustly defended thesis, we find the fresh thrills of a poet’s perfected phrases and startling observations. “Parties are about the collective gaze, the ability to be seen from all angles, panoramically,” she writes in an essay about fictional depictions of parties. She describes the photos in a book by Rachael Ray documenting home-cooked meals — one of the volumes on the recently returned shelf — as “poignantly mediocre.” Remarking on a listicle of “Books to Read by Living Women (Instead of These 10 by Dead Men),” Gabbert wonders, “Since when is it poor form to die?”

“Any Person Is the Only Self” is both funny and serious, a winning melee of high and low cultural references, as packed with unexpected treasures as a crowded antique shop. An academic text on architecture, the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, a rare memory disorder whose victims recall every aspect of their autobiographies in excruciatingly minute detail, “Madame Bovary,” YouTube videos about people who work as professional cuddlers, a psychological study about whether it is possible to be sane in an insane asylum — all these feature in Gabbert’s exuberant essays. She is a fiercely democratic thinker, incapable of snobbery and brimming with curiosity.

Perhaps because she is so indefatigably interested, she gravitates toward writers who see literature as a means of doubling life, allowing it to hold twice as much. Plath confessed in her journals that she wrote in an attempt to extend her biography beyond its biological terminus: “My life, I feel, will not be lived until there are books and stories which relive it perpetually in time.” The very act of keeping a diary, then, splits the self in two.

Plath once insisted that bad things could never happen to her and her peers because “we’re different.” Gabbert asks “Different why?” and concludes that everyone is different: “We are we , not them. Any person is the only self.” But that “only” is, perhaps counterintuitively, not constrained or constricted. Walt Whitman famously wrote that his only self comprised “multitudes,” and Gabbert echoes him when she reflects, “If there is no one self, you can never be yourself, only one of your selves.” And indeed, she is loath to elevate any of her many selves over any of the others. When she rereads a book that she loved in her adolescence, she thinks she was right to love it back then. “That self only knew what she knew,” she writes. “That self wasn’t wrong .” Both her past self and her present self have an equal claim to being Elisa Gabbert, who is too fascinated by the world’s manifold riches to confine herself to a single, limited life.

Becca Rothfeld is the nonfiction book critic for The Washington Post and the author of “All Things Are Too Small: Essays in Praise of Excess.”

Any Person Is the Only Self

By Elisa Gabbert

FSG Originals. 230 pp. $18, paperback.

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Guest Essay

Melinda French Gates: The Enemies of Progress Play Offense. I Want to Help Even the Match.

A photo illustration showing Melinda French Gates amid a dollar bill broken up into squares on a grid.

By Melinda French Gates

Ms. French Gates is a philanthropist and the founder of the charitable organization Pivotal.

Many years ago, I received this piece of advice: “Set your own agenda, or someone else will set it for you.” I’ve carried those words with me ever since.

That’s why, next week, I will leave the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation , of which I was a co-founder almost 25 years ago, to open a new chapter in my philanthropy. To begin, I am announcing $1 billion in new spending over the next two years for people and organizations working on behalf of women and families around the world, including on reproductive rights in the United States.

In nearly 20 years as an advocate for women and girls, I have learned that there will always be people who say it’s not the right time to talk about gender equality. Not if you want to be relevant. Not if you want to be effective with world leaders (most of them men). The second the global agenda gets crowded, women and girls fall off.

It’s frustrating and shortsighted. Decades of research on economics , well-being and governance make it clear that investing in women and girls benefits everyone. We know that economies with women’s full participation have more room to grow. That women’s political participation is associated with decreased corruption. That peace agreements are more durable when women are involved in writing them. That reducing the time women spend in poor health could add as much as $1 trillion to the global economy by 2040.

And yet, around the world, women are seeing a tremendous upsurge in political violence and other threats to their safety, in conflict zones where rape is used as a tool of war, in Afghanistan where the Taliban takeover has erased 20 years of progress for women and girls, in many low-income countries where the number of acutely malnourished pregnant and breastfeeding women is soaring.

In the United States, maternal mortality rates continue to be unconscionable , with Black and Native American mothers at highest risk. Women in 14 states have lost the right to terminate a pregnancy under almost any circumstances. We remain the only advanced economy without any form of national paid family leave. And the number of teenage girls experiencing suicidal thoughts and persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness is at a decade high.

Despite the pressing need, only about 2 percent of charitable giving in the United States goes to organizations focused on women and girls, and only about half a percentage point goes to organizations focused on women of color specifically.

When we allow this cause to go so chronically underfunded, we all pay the cost. As shocking as it is to contemplate, my 1-year-old granddaughter may grow up with fewer rights than I had.

Over the past few weeks, as part of the $1 billion in new funding I’m committing to these efforts, I have begun directing new grants through my organization, Pivotal, to groups working in the United States to protect the rights of women and advance their power and influence. These include the National Women’s Law Center, the National Domestic Workers Alliance and the Center for Reproductive Rights.

While I have long focused on improving contraceptive access overseas, in the post-Dobbs era, I now feel compelled to support reproductive rights here at home. For too long, a lack of money has forced organizations fighting for women's rights into a defensive posture while the enemies of progress play offense. I want to help even the match.

I’m also experimenting with novel tactics to bring a wider range of perspectives into philanthropy. Recently, I offered 12 people whose work I admire their own $20 million grant-making fund to distribute as he or she sees fit. That group — which includes the former prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, the athlete and maternal-health advocate Allyson Felix, and an Afghan champion of girls’ education, Shabana Basij-Rasikh — represents a wide range of expertise and experience. I’m eager to see the landscape of funding opportunities through their eyes, and the results their approaches unlock.

In the fall, I will introduce a $250 million initiative focused on improving the mental and physical health of women and girls globally. By issuing an open call to grass-roots organizations beyond the reach of major funders, I hope to lift up groups with personal connections to the issues they work on. People on the front lines should get the attention and investment they deserve, including from me.

As a young woman, I could never have imagined that one day I would be part of an effort like this. Because I have been given this extraordinary opportunity, I am determined to do everything I can to seize it and to set an agenda that helps other women and girls set theirs, too.

Melinda French Gates is a philanthropist and the founder of Pivotal, a charitable, investment and advocacy organization.

Source photographs by Bryan Bedder, filipfoto, and Westend61, via Getty Images.

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COMMENTS

The Life of a Pirate: What They Ate, What They Did for Fun, and More!
In a month at sea, they might be eating rotten bread and drinking spoiled water. A large majority of pirates were alcoholics, as documented by pirates themselves, so drinking was a pastime that filled their days when the resources were available. Putting the adventures aside, pirates also had to maintain their ships.
What do pirates do?
A pirate is a robber who travels by water. Though most pirates targeted ships, some also launched attacks on coastal towns. We often think of pirates as swashbuckling and daring or evil and brutish, but in actual fact most of them were ordinary people who had been forced to turn to criminal activity to make ends meet.
Essay on Pirates
Pirate Ships and Life at Sea. Pirate ships were not like the big navy ships of countries. They were often smaller and faster, which helped them catch up to the ships they wanted to rob. Life on a pirate ship was tough. Pirates had to deal with storms, get food and fresh water, and keep the ship in good shape.
A Lot of What Is Known about Pirates Is Not True, and a Lot of What Is
I was wholly uninterested in piracy as a child. I never dressed as a pirate on Halloween or even read pirate books. I went to graduate school at Harvard, intending to write about fatherhood in early America. In my third year, I presented to colleagues a 30-page essay that I hoped would be a chapter of my dissertation.
The Pirate's Life at Sea: Myths, Realities, and Routines
The Pirate's Life at Sea: Myths, Realities, and Routines. The Pirate's Life at Sea. Author: Cindy Vallar. We harbor romantic ideas about life aboard a wooden ship, but Doctor Samuel Johnson once wrote, "No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in jail with the chance of ...
What was life on a pirate crew really like during the Golden Age of
Pirate flag (aka Jolly Roger) of John 'Calico Jack' Rackham, image from Wikimedia Commons. Ironically, the order and professionalism of some pirate crews put many merchant ships to shame. In ...
Pirates
This romanticized view of pirate life is what drove many young sailors to become pirates. Many pirates were former sailors in the Royal Navy during the War of the Spanish Succession (or Queen Anne's War, 1701-1713). At the close of the war Britain no longer needed the many sailors it had impressed into service, and after the war fired many ...
The History of Pirates: From Ancient Sea Peoples to the Golden Age
A Pirate's Life Many pirate crews mimicked Henry Morgan's corsairs, operating under a code of conduct known as "articles" or "pirate's code." These articles, which were often based on common law, laid out rules and regulations for the crew, ensuring fair distribution of loot, democratic decision-making, and the right to vote for their captain.
The Golden Age of Piracy
Though pirates have existed since ancient times, the Golden Age of piracy was in the 17th and early 18th centuries. During this time more than 5000 pirates were said to be at sea. Throughout history there have been people willing to rob others transporting goods on the water. These people, known as pirates, mainly targeted ships, though some ...
Grim Life Cursed Real Pirates of Caribbean
The answer: pretty grim. It was a world of staggering violence and poverty, constant danger, and almost inevitable death. The life of a pirate was never as glorious and exciting as depicted in the ...
Expository Writing 20. "A Pirate's Life for Me": legends of buccaneers
"A Pirate's Life for Me": legends of buccaneers at sea (Harvard Writing Program) Semester: Spring. Offered: ... We'll begin the class with some stories of real-life pyrates, both men and women, from the Golden Age of Caribbean piracy that were collected by the pilloried, exiled, and nine-times-imprisoned opposition journalist Nathaniel ...
Pirates & Privateers: the History of Maritime Piracy
At sea they chewed tobacco rather than smoked because of the ever-present threat of fire, a serious fear aboard wooden ships. They carved, sang, and danced jigs. When ashore, pirates squandered their booty on drink, women, and games of chance. They smoked clay pipes.
10 Facts About Pirates and What They Do
The so-called "Golden Age of Piracy" lasted from about 1700 to 1725. During this time, thousands of people turned to piracy as a way to make a living. It is known as the "Golden Age" because conditions were perfect for pirates to flourish, and many of the individuals we associate with piracy, such as Blackbeard, "Calico Jack" Rackham, and "Black Bart" Roberts, were active ...
From Depp to Breadth: Teaching World History with Pirates of the Caribbean
While the Pirates of the Caribbean movies present a fanciful and fun version of the world of Caribbean pirates, this essay has tried to show how they also provide an avenue to explore piracy as a general phenomenon and a way ... The Romance and Reality of Life among Pirates (New York, Random House, 1995), 76-78 and A . Konstam, ...
pirate
Pirates are criminals who attack ships at sea. The most famous pirates sailed the seas from the late 1500s to the early 1800s. A common symbol of piracy was the Jolly Roger—a black flag with a white skull and crossbones.
Forced upon the account: Pirates and the Atlantic World in the Golden
Little, The Golden Age of Piracy: The Truth Behind Pirate Myths (New York, NY: Skyhouse Publishing, 2016). For a discussion of life on the pirate ship see B. R. Burg, Sodomy & the Perception of Evil: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (New York: NYU Press, 1983); Turley, Hans. Rum, Sodomy,
(PDF) "Well-Behaved Pirates Seldom Make History: A Reevaluation of
Pirate life may have come closest to this ideal during the years 1716 to 1726. historians have depicted pirates in this period as living under a spirit of "liberty, equality, and fraternity."108 historians now accept that most inhabitants of the early modern maritime atlantic world were to some extent unfree. the simple binary of liberty ...
Introduction: The Pirate as a Figure of Crisis and Legitimacy
In an Anglophone Atlantic context, it is between the colonial era and the mid-nineteenth century that pirates emerged as prominent figures. In prose writing alone, the popular cultural, sensational appeal of pirate-inspired adventure stories, captivity narratives, popular histories and romances, and many other genres-in-the-making, was used in terms of the figure's potential to articulate ...
Pirates You Don't Know, and Other Adventures in the Examined Life
For nearly ten years John Griswold has been publishing his essays in Inside Higher Ed, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, Brevity, Ninth Letter, and Adjunct Advocate, many under the pen name Oronte Churm.Churm's topics have ranged widely, exploring themes such as the writing life and the utility of creative-writing classes, race issues in a university town, and the beautiful, protective ...
The Long-Overlooked Molecule That Will Define a Generation of Science
By Thomas Cech. Dr. Cech is a biochemist and the author of the forthcoming book "The Catalyst: RNA and the Quest to Unlock Life's Deepest Secrets," from which this essay is adapted. From E ...
Essay About Pirates
Essay About Pirates. 976 Words4 Pages. 10 weird facts about pirates. Pirates are people who are both widely known and shrouded with mystery. While some people are fascinated by the adventurous life pirates are supposed to have lived. Some are scared by their murderous and criminal fame. Who they really were? Why would they choose a pirates life ...
The Incredible True Stories Of The Golden Age Of Piracy
Sam takes to the high seas in search of the swashbuckling pirates of the golden age of piracy during the early 18th century. Sam also charts the devastating ...
50 Pirate Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Next Tale
Prepare to set sail on a journey across the high seas with 50 Pirate Writing Prompts to Inspire Your Next Tale. These prompts offer enough intrigue, adventure, and scalawag schemers to inspire best-selling novels or blockbuster films. Our prompts deliver morally-complex characters, daring action sequences, and imaginative worldbuilding.
The Final Battle of Blackbeard: a Turning Point in Pirate History
This infamous pirate, renowned for his terrifying appearance and ruthless actions, met his fate in a violent encounter that underscored the relentless pursuit by colonial. Essay Example: The final confrontation of Blackbeard, born Edward Teach, represents a crucial juncture in pirate history. ... His larger-than-life persona, fearsome tactics ...
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Men Fear Me, Society Shames Me, and I Love My Life. Ms. MacNicol is a writer, a podcast host and the author of the forthcoming memoir "I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself.". I was once told that ...
Analysis Of Pirates Of The Caribbean
This movie was released in 2003 and was directed by Gore Verbinski. The pirate lifestyle was different. Pirates were better treated and had more freedoms and rights than normal sailors.The reason why I choose pirate lifestyle because they had many accurate facts about pirates in the movie such pirates drinking rum, stealing a boat, they were ...
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