Myth Busters: Pirates

The Golden Age of Piracy gave way to many different myths and legendary tales about great pirates like Blackbeard and Bartholomew Roberts. But are many of the well-known legends of the Pirates of the Carribean actually true? 

Henry Morgan in colour.jpg
Woodcut portrait from the 1700s
There are a lot of different myths surrounding the pirate of the mid to late 1600s and into the early 1700s. One of these myths being that all Pirates were lawless. In reality, a lot of the pirates that we think of from this time period actually were Privateers. This means that notable pirates like Sir Henry Morgan and Sir Francis Drake were actually given seals by the King of their respective countries to be out in the open waters and pirate from ships belonging to other countries. 

These Pirates, under the authority of their King claimed riches and treasures from various ships and settlements of other countries and claimed them to return to their homelands. There were of course, privateers like Henry Morgan, who kept most of the riches for himself and only gave back a small portion of the findings to England.

Other legends like peg legs, for example, aren’t true either. Both the legends of Peg legs and parrots stem from books like Treasure Island.

Of course, many of the myths and legends about Pirates are true as well. They were very much so just as ruthless as they made out to be in stories. However, a lot of the true nature and personality of pirates have been lost to time.

It is also true that many people played many different roles aboard the ships they were apart of. Like pirates who were both surgeons and barbers and carpenters. This is because for all three of these roles you needed to have a steady hand and be good with chopping off limp (or wood) and steady cuts of a scissor.

It is hard to truly decipher what about pirates is actually truth rooted into fact and what is legend pulled from the strings of fiction. Because why there are a lot of different things that people think that they know about the pirates of this time. Actual firsthand accounts of the pirates of this time are few and far between. Many of the pirate captains were illiterate and did not keep journals or records of their own.

There are only a few Primary sources of tales of this time, so sadly a lot of information about these men have been lost. 

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