– “Pirate” means a lot of things. Though, unless I state otherwise, assume I’m talking about The Golden Age of Piracy and all the men and women who stole stuff from the French, English, and Spanish when “the new world” was first a thing.
– Pirates usually attacked merchant ships. Depending on where they were headed to, the most valuable things abroad could be spices or fabrics. Privateers, on the other hand, were men hired by their governments to attack the ships of enemy nations and steal all their stuff. (Technically it was to “recover” whatever worth of things they’d had stolen by pirates flying that country’s flag but it was also often to just steal stuff. *cough cough Sir Walter Raleigh cough*) The difference between a pirate and a privateer? A Letter of Marque.
– Cheng I Sao was one of the most feared pirates in history and definitely the most infamous pirate in the South China Sea. And piracy in that area is waaaay older than The Golden Age. I’m talkin’ 10th century CE and earlier. Other notable lady pirates include: Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Grace O’Malley, Rachael Wall, and Mary Crickett. There are many, many more.
– Buccaneer comes from the bastardized French word boucainer, who were French hunters in Hispanola. The smoked their meats, hence why they were known as boucainer. These hunters often turned to piracy because it made a lot of money and was super easy to do.
– Scurvy is actually a vitamin C issue and could be avoided with oranges. Fresh water is hard to get ahold of on a ship so they wouldn’t waste it bathing. They bathed as much as everyone else – which is to say not that often. And they didn’t mask their scent in perfume because perfume was valuable and often stolen.
– Madagascar was an anarchy pirate safe haven for a time. Didn’t last long though.
– Pirates had codes that dictated behavior on the ship. Most banned gambling, staying up too late, and fighting. They also outlined who got hom much of the take when they took things from other ships. Captains were elected.
– Pirates were as brutal as you think and sometimes not. Some captains tortured innocent people before killing them some captains didn’t care what happened to innocents and some banned their men from torture and cruelty. It really depended on who ran the ship.
– Calico Jack, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read are the people you’re thinking of for that poly deal. Anna actually called her husband (Jack) and damned coward on his execution because he was drunk below when they were captured. Anne and Mary were both pregnant when they were captured and thus escaped execution for a time. (Keep in mind these women were fighting while pregnant while the were too sloshed to fight.) Read died in prison in childbirth but we don’t completely know what happened to Bonny. There are dodgy and conflicting accounts.
– Pirates really didn’t give a shit who you had sex with. Sexuality on pirate ships was much more fluid than it was on the mainland. Navies on the other hand….
I suggest the following for more reading: Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean by B. R. Burg Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700 – 1750 by Marcus Rediker
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