Elected captains, clear rules and shared rewards kept their criminal enterprises running

Although pirates have been around forever, most of us probably associate them with what’s known as the Golden Age of Piracy, an era running roughly from the 1650s to the 1720s.

That’s the historical setting for movies like Blackbeard the Pirate and stories like Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island. Many, if not most, of the tales may be fanciful, but some of the characters were very real people.

And while we tend to think of pirates as outlaws, their status was often a tad murkier than that. There were times when European states deployed them as a low-cost way of waging war.

The state—say, France, England or the Netherlands—would issue a letter of marque, which was effectively a licence to prey on enemy shipping. Spanish vessels, particularly those bringing gold and silver from the Americas, were a favourite target. Pirates in possession of such letters were technically known as privateers, and the goods taken in raids could be freely sold in the ports of the letter-issuing states.

However, a privateer licence wasn’t necessarily issued in perpetuity, nor was it a guarantee against shifts in the political winds. Abandoned by his erstwhile patrons, Captain William Kidd (of buried treasure lore) ended up at London’s Execution Dock on May 23, 1701, and his gibbeted corpse was subsequently hung over the River Thames estuary as a warning to passing ships.

Edward Teach, the notorious Blackbeard, also had a posthumous salutary role. Killed in action by the Royal Navy in 1718, his head was displayed on a pole at the entrance to Chesapeake Bay, in what is now the United States.

Measured by the number of ships taken, the most successful of all was probably the Welshman Bartholomew Roberts. Known as Black Bart, Roberts came to piracy by virtue of being pressed into service when the ship he was serving on was captured. Valued for his exceptional navigation skills and strong personality, he became captain following the death of the prior incumbent.

Roberts may initially have been a reluctant recruit, but it didn’t take him long to enter into the spirit of things. To quote, “a merry life and a short one shall be my motto.”

His pirate career was both spectacular and brief. It began in 1719 and ended when he was killed in a battle with the Royal Navy in 1722. However, unlike Kidd and Teach, he didn’t become a grisly warning to others. Following his expressed wishes, his crew buried him at sea decked out in full regalia. Thus there were no body parts to put on display.

In the decidedly non-egalitarian, autocratic societies of the mid-17th century and early 18th century, pirates generally did things differently. Their internal arrangements can even be described as democratic. For instance, Roberts was elected captain. It wasn’t a position he took by force.

There was, of course, a practical limitation. Of necessity, the captain’s authority was unlimited in battle. But otherwise, the crew retained the right to challenge and remove all officers, captain included.

The distribution of booty was also relatively egalitarian. In Roberts’ case, he received two shares, as did the quartermaster. Other officers got one-and-a-half or one-and-a-quarter shares, and ordinary crew members got one share each.

Journalist and economist Duncan Weldon describes the internal culture this way: “Despite being entirely (and by definition) crewed by career criminals, mutiny was rarer on pirate vessels than on naval or merchant ships. The incentives of the men were almost perfectly aligned with each other and their officers, with each working towards a specific goal.”

None of this obscures the fact that pirates were a rough bunch, accurately “associated with theft and murder.” But at its most effective, piracy entailed credible fear rather than actual violence.

Engaging in combat to capture a prize entailed risk. Pirates could incur casualties or suffer damage to their own ships. Or, horror of horrors, the target ship could sink, consigning its treasure to the bottom of the sea.

So pirates maximized efficiency by deliberately cultivating an image of ruthless ferocity. A critical component was the clearly communicated “surrender-or-die” policy, whereby targets were made to understand that no quarter would be given if any resistance was offered. And there was also the adoption of the pirate flag, some variation of the Jolly Roger we’ve come to know from the movies.

To quote Weldon again: “Nothing advertised that one was a pirate credibly committed to the surrender-or-die policy more than flying this particular flag.” Indeed, the strategy was so effective that the English government tried to make resistance a legal obligation for armed merchant ships.

If all of this complicates your understanding of pirates, so be it. Real history is generally like that.

And historical inaccuracies notwithstanding, a good swashbuckler is still a fun thing.

Troy Media columnist Pat Murphy casts a history buff’s eye at the goings-on in our world. Never cynical – well, perhaps a little bit.