Pirates are awesome. That's a pirate fact we all know already. Here are five more true pirate facts you can use as conversation starters at pirate parties, or for picking up wenches at your local grog shop. Yarrr!
Some pirate ships were no fun
The rules drawn up by the infamous Bartholomew Roberts, for example, included such articles as “no person to game at cards or dice for money,” “no... woman allowed amongst them,” “no striking one another on board,” and “the lights and candles to be put out at eight o' clock.”
Real pirate ships were a lot smaller than they are in the movies
Some real pirate ships were big; for example, Captain Bellamy's Whydah pushed 300 tons and had 28 guns. But most pirate vessels were much smaller.
From 1710 to 1730, 55% of pirate assaults were launched from boats of the sloop class; only 45% were carried out in true “ships.” 3% of pirate attacks were actually carried out in open boats (i.e., rowboats.) A “sloop” of the era was generally anywhere from 40 to 120 tons and only 35 to 65 feet in length. Popular pirate sloops of the sort built in Bermuda and Jamaica had only one mast--most pirates never got their hands on the three-masted ships we see in pirate movies.
The legendary Calico Jack Rackham actually spent much of his career captaining a flagship that was nothing more than a fishing boat retrofitted with a few guns.
“Walking the Plank” was not a common means of pirate execution
The idea of pirates making their victims or enemies “walk a plan” off the side of the ship and into a watery grave was mostly proliferated by Peter Pan and its many spin-offs. Planks were very rarely walked in real life. Blades, blunt weapons, and other less dramatic means of disposal were far more common.
Pirate ships did not have black sails
They did have black (or red) flags which featured variations of the skull and crossbones, but the actual sails were white, the same as other ships of the era. Sails, like most nautical equipment, were expensive, and pirates naturally used the regular white sails that came with their stolen ships.
Furthermore, black sails would have made pirate ships too conspicuous. Deception was a key factor for success in piracy, so tipping off potential prey or enemies with black sails would have been an incredibly bad idea.
Piracy existed on the Great Lakes
Long after the “golden age” of piracy had ended in the Caribbean, piracy lived on in the freshwater ports of the United States. Great Lakes pirates like the infamous Roaring Dan Seavy plundered whiskey, timber, and venison instead of rum and gold.
