The Golden Age Of Piracy | Everything You Wanted To Know - HistoryExtra
"‘One of the number one threats was scurvy, which is a lack of vitamin C. So one of the ways they kind of combated this, now, they didn't really know what caused scurvy, but they kind of had the instinct of knowing how to keep themselves from getting scurvy. And this, of course, is getting vitamin C. So pirates were generally actually known to be a bit more physically healthy than many other sailors on different ships, because of how much they would rob ships and they were constantly replenishing their food stores. They also often sailed pretty close to lots of islands where they could replenish pretty easily. So they weren't sailing very long, drawn out distances, the way merchant ships were when they were crossing the entire ocean. So this kept them a bit physically healthier. But one of the things that they were known was having a drink called grog, which, you know, we hear about in pop culture, but it's real. And it was actually drunk a lot on pretty much any major ship anyways. What it is, if you'd like to make it, it's one part rum, four parts water, like a spoonful of brown sugar, and juice of a lime. So this is kind of a treat, but the lime kind of really helps prevent scurvy from the vitamin C...
Another major threat: syphilis was huge. Pirates visited brothels and syphilis ran rampant throughout everywhere. The American colonies and Europe in particular. In fact, Blackbeard, he blockaded a port of South Carolina, Charleston port. And it's believed it was to get medicine because he was really ravaged by syphilis, and so were several members of the crew. So they would treat syphilis by, with mercury, because mercury takes away the symptoms. Does it cure syphilis? No, actually makes you sicker. Because of mercury poisoning, but takes away the symptoms such as tremors and sores that break out, that sort of thing. What you do is you fill it with a very long syringe, with a very long needle, you inject it into the penis, and that is where you inject the mercury’...
‘Women in piracy. That is a really fascinating subject, because it's a mystery in a lot of ways. So there were women who did command pirate ships, kind of throughout history. You had a, you know, powerful women in ancient Greece who commanded ships against Persian enemies and other particular competing states such as an Illyrian pirate queen who fought against a lot of Greek ships.
You go 1000 years later, you have out someone named Alwilda. Scandinavian woman who, according to legend, became head of a pirate ship as she was trying to escape an arranged marriage that she didn't want until she was eventually kidnapped by her fiance and forced to Denmark with him, but she had supposedly commanded a pirate ship when she was captured by pirates. They needed a new captain and found her to be quite a natural leader. So they appointed her to be head.
You had Sayyida al Hurra who was from Morocco, she was actually from Spain, and her family, they were kicked out of Spain for being Muslim, essentially, because it was kind of around the time of the Spanish Inquisition. She's forced to Morocco and kind of makes it her life's mission to wreak any sort of revenge onto the Spanish as much as possible. And she ends up marrying a very powerful figure. And from there, she is kind of in charge of a lot of fleets of ships. I don't know if she actually sailed with them. I think she did a few times, but she kind of commanded these ships to fight against the Spanish.
And then, of course, you have Grace O'Malley, who, who came from a long lineage of powerful maritime Irish chieftains on the, off the west coast of Ireland. And she herself became known as a very powerful pirate queen.
And then of course, we have Anne Bonny and Mary Read, who are probably two of the most infamous female pirates ever to live. They didn't captain the ships, but they did have very prominent roles. They took control and a lot of fighting. They were known to be some of the most fiercest of the fighters, cursing and swearing and brandishing their weapons, they would fight with their shirts open. So half naked, really kind of freaking out their victims. You had other other women who, who sailed.
In the later 1700s, there was an American woman, forget her name, Rachel Well, I want to say but I could be wrong, who fought as a pirate in the late 1700s. And then most famously, you have Madame Chang or Ching Shih, in 19th century China, who commanded a fleet of over 1000, she was so powerful that the British government paid her to retire. And she eventually did take the money, and she opened up a series of brothels. But she's quite fascinating because she let women onto the ship, and she had very strict rules against violence towards women, if a man was had made even just an unwanted advance towards a woman, he could get thrown overboard. So she was very strict about that. Now, that said, there probably were more women than we know, a lot of women were known to, you know, disguise themselves as men and go into the Army or the Navy or merchant ships, and probably pirate ships.
So they would disguise themselves as men. And this is how they would often find work on a ship. We just don't know the number because again, it's not documented. But since we do know of many cases of women disguising themselves or even working openly as men in the Royal Navy, such as Hannah Snell, in the later 1700s, we can therefore, again, make the educated guess that there were probably a lot more women than we know of.
Women did sail on ships. There's this misconception that they said women were unlucky on ships. There is maritime lore and superstition of mermaids and sirens, female maritime mythological figures who have lured sailors into the ocean and drowned them or try to seduce them and drown them. The reality is, a lot of ships didn't allow women because they felt that women just might not be up to either the mental and physical work that it took on a ship, or could cause a lot of social complications, and jealousy. But the reality is, a lot of captains or high ranking officers would bring their wives. Sometimes women were let on ships to do work, such as, you know, in the kitchens, mending, nursing, that sort of thing. So there were women who did have their place on ships, they were just very much the minority...
Robert Louis Stevenson.. this is where we get the idea of, you know, finding buried treasure, X marks the spot. Here's something else very disappointing. Pirates did not bury treasure. They had no reason to. They took goods to sell. I think there are only one or two cases where they actually got gold from Spanish ships, but that was super rare. They were stealing goods. Treasure in the 1700s just meant valuable. They wanted things like textiles, spices, medicines, alcohol to sell… Robert Louis Stevenson…
This is where we get this whole new idea about pirates where he becomes kind of this fun anti hero. Adventure, treasure, wealth, riches. This guy with a pegleg and an eyepatch. Very cool. That image was very much inspired by Robert Louis Stevenson’s travels to America after the American Civil War, where many veterans were missing limbs and eyes and had eye patches. So he took that as kind of inspiration, rationalizing that many sailors would have similar injuries and applied this to Long John Silver. And so this is kind of where we get that idea.
And then we get JM Barrie's Peter Pan, a couple, you know, just a short time later with Captain Hook, and then eventually this is of course is going to translate into ultimately, Jack Sparrow from the Disney ride Pirates of the Caribbean turned into the film franchise. You know, Treasure Island was adopted numerous times, the most famous of which was the 1950s version starring Robert Newton, playing Robert Louis Stevenson, who kind of created what we think of as the, the stereotypical pirate accent with arr matey. Those phrases do come from Robert Louis Stevenson, but Robert Newton, he applied his own accent. He's from Cornwall, from a maritime community in Cornwall. And he heavily, heavily, heavily exaggerated his own accent to a real bad stereotype. And that is what became the pirate accent...
I actually love the first Pirates of the Caribbean film, not a fan of the others. But I love the first one because they do take a lot of maritime superstition and lore and pirate details and apply it to the film in a fun way… I was really impressed with was how diverse the pirate crews were, if you want to see a really great representation of what a typical pirate crew looked like, watch Pirates of the Caribbean The Curse of the Black Pearl. Take a look at Jack Sparrow’s crew, take a look at Captain Barbossa’s crew and you'll see just how diverse it was. You have Pirates of many, you know, people of color. You've got a woman on Jack Sparrow's pirate ship’"
