Who were the pirates?
Christine Hawkins
Owner KMEC Hunter
Daring characters who swooped on treasure ships and returned home with golden cargoes? Brutal sea-thieves who showed no mercy to their victims? Bold adventurers, who paid for travel by theft at sea? In fact, pirates were all these things and more. For centuries, pirates have sailed across the seas and oceans of the world.
Piracy began more than 2000 years ago in Ancient Greece when sea robbers started flocking around the trading routes. These sea robbers challenged all those who passed from there and looted them mercilessly.
Organized piracy and privateering were finally ended in the nineteenth century as governments of most countries increased the sea patrols and made piracy punishable by death. However, piracy has not completely disappeared. It is still flourishing from Sumatra to Somalia, and today’s pirates are quite different from the lovable rogues shown in movies such as ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’
7 Fun Facts about Pirates
1. Although Hollywood pirates, such as Jack Sparrow’s friends, like to grumble “arrr” frequently, real pirates were not known to do so.
2.Pirates may have thrown men overboard, but no one was ever known to have “walked the plank”. Again, this one is a Hollywood myth.
3. Pirates pierced their ears, with precious metals like silver and gold, because it was believed that it improved their eyesight.
4. The most successful pirate ever was probably Bartholomew Roberts, known as Black Bart. He captured around 400 ships in the 1720s.
5. Pirates believed that having women on board their ship brought bad luck. Women, therefore, had to disguise themselves as men. However, there have been some extremely powerful women, pirates, such as Ching Shih, Anne Bonny, and Mary Reed, documented in the history of piracy.
6.They also believed that whistling on a ship would turn the weather stormy. The phrase ‘to whistle up a storm’ owes its origin to this.
7. The Jolly Roger is the most famous pirate flag. The skull and crossbones came from the symbol used in ships’ logs, where it represented death on board.
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