Why were pirates so angry all the time, anyway?

We look at Black Sails through the lens of history!

As a historian, this resonated strongly with me.

I wanted the audience to be shown the horrors that life at sea could become.

Obviously, a TV show cant do this.

It distracts from the story at hand, and would introduce confusing, one-shot characters.

But its a story that needs to be told if viewers want to understand pirates.

Its easy for people in todays world to say Be a pirate!

But in the early 1700s, piracy was a serious matter.

Pirates were criminals, despised by society while free, and hanged if they were caught.

Pirates were also cut off utterly from families they had left behind.

Their options were limited and their lives were almost guaranteed to be short.

What made a man become a pirate?

The eighteenth century was a time almost beyond understanding for modern folk.

For one thing, going out and getting a job was a new idea.

For hundreds of years, people had been born into jobs as farmers or craftsmen.

Very often, opportunity meant going to sea.

Merchant ships, engaged in long range trading with Africa and the West Indies the Caribbean needed sailors.

This was work, not for a share of the profits, but for wages.

And it created a system of unbelievable brutality.

Sailors, always on the move, owned little.

Many of them had spent time in jail.

They were seen as the lowest of the low by those who employed them, and were treated accordingly.

And in the 18thcentury, there were no safe food regulations at all.

It did no good to complain.

Once at sea there was nothing else to eat.

At sea, a captains power was virtually unlimited and often personal.

Captains felt a need to keep their crews in a state of fear.

Captain Francis Rogers ofThe Crowntold several of his crew that he would Skin them alive.

Nor were these threats idle.

Merchant captains employed the cat o nine tails, a vicious whip of nine strands.

They also used horse whips, canes, ropes, clubs, and whatever came to hand.

One seaman was beaten with a dryd Elephants pizel.

Captains were only legally allowed to administer moderate punishment according to law.

But this seems to have stopped nothing.

Cut down at last, he died four days later.

A modern mind says yes.

But it wasnt nearly so obvious in the 18thcentury.

Master Robert Hartley beat a man severely, then sent him up the mast to grease the halyards.

When the man fell into the sea, Hartley refused to let anyone rescue him.

Hundreds of these cases can be read in historical records.

Even when sailors managed to pay for a court case, captains were rarely convicted.

The word of a gentleman captain would be taken over that of a low class sailor.

Of course, these incidents were unusual, which is why they ended up in court.

And these were the good guys.

Coming from a place like this, its easy to see why sailors would be angry.

Sometimes they staged work stoppages, or confronted captains, usually as a group.

The crew took over the ship and forced it back to Charleston Harbor, then fled.

The captain tried to gather a new crew.

These men did the exactly the same thing.

Several pirates, including Charles Vane, thought it their duty to obtain justice for sailors.

The pirate captain sat as judge.

When this happened, the merchant vessel became a pirate ship.

The merchant captain and whatever officers remained loyal to him were put off in a small boat.

The pirates supplied necessities, such as a navigator.

Often at this time, the ship would be re-named.

And now you know why the most popular name for a pirate ship wasRevenge.

TS Rhodes is the author ofThe Pirate Empireseries.

She also blogs about pirates atthepirateempire.blogspot.com

This article originally ran in January of 2014.

It has been updated slightly.