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Ahoy! Think you know the real pirates of the high seas? Separate the legendary myths from the surprising, colorful, and sometimes bizarre truths of historical pirate life.
Landlubber 0–4 · Seasoned Sailor 5–8 · Captain of the Coast 9–10
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Blackbeard captured a French slave ship named La Concorde, equipped it with 40 heavy cannons, and renamed it Queen Anne's Revenge. The shipwreck was discovered by archaeologists off the coast of North Carolina in 1996, yielding thousands of artifacts including medical equipment.
Photo: Joseph Nicholls, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Hardtack was a simple biscuit of flour, water and salt, baked rock hard so it would last for months. Sailors often soaked it before eating, and old biscuits could be full of weevils, tiny beetles that sailors learned to tap out.
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Blackbeard, whose real name was Edward Teach, understood the power of theater. He wove slow-burning hemp matches into his massive beard and lit them before boarding a ship, wrapping his face in a wreath of thick, spooky smoke. Despite his scary image, there is no record of him ever killing a captive.
Photo: Joseph Nicholls (fl. 1726–55). Although James Basire (1730–1802) is attribute, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Privateers carried official 'letters of marque' from a government, allowing them to legally attack enemy ships during wars. When peace was declared, many of these state-sponsored sailors refused to stop looting and simply turned to illegal piracy to keep their lifestyle going.
Photo: Ambroise Louis Garneray, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Sea battles, flying splinters and sword fights cost many sailors an eye, and a patch covered the injury. There is also a fun modern theory: a covered eye stays used to the dark below deck. Tests show it works, but there is no proof pirates actually did it.
Photo: National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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When their ship was captured in 1720, Anne Bonny and Mary Read were sentenced to hang. However, both successfully 'pleaded their bellies,' which delayed their execution because British law forbade executing unborn children. Mary Read died of a fever in prison, but Anne Bonny's ultimate fate remains a mystery.
Photo: Engraved by Benjamin Cole (1695–1766), Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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The idea of buried treasure is almost entirely a myth popularized by the novel Treasure Island. Pirates loved to spend their loot as fast as possible on food, drink, and fine clothes in welcoming ports. Only Captain William Kidd is reliably known to have buried treasure, and he was caught anyway.
Photo: Howard Pyle, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Pirates rarely wanted a bloody battle because it damaged the valuable cargo they wanted to steal. They often sailed under false friendly flags to get close, then quickly raised the Jolly Roger at the last second to terrify their victims into an immediate, peaceful surrender.
Photo: Karlsson, Anneli (color correction by Blockhaj), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.
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To prevent violent fights on crowded ships, many pirate captains banned gambling for money altogether. Their strict codes of conduct also regulated bedtime, chores, and how treasure was split. Pirates actually ran highly democratic societies where captains could be voted out of power.
Photo: Howard Pyle, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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Blackbeard is more famous, but 'Black Bart' Roberts was far more successful: he captured over 400 ships. He was said to prefer tea over rum and ran his ship with a strict set of written rules.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Public domain.
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