Pirates

Is he a pirate? Pirate has become the general term used by most people today to call someone who sails the seas and commits crimes. But other names were used to help identify particular pirates through the ages.

Privateers would have been pirates legally commissioned by a country or government giving them permission to wage war against another country or government. The French and English pirates that were living in the Caribbean about the time of the seventeenth century went by the name, buccaneer. Of course the name buccaneer is a very anglicized version of the French word, boucanier.

A stretch of land and water called the Barbary Coast was home to the privateers or Islamic pirates called Barbary corsairs. The French and other non-Islamic nations considered the corsairs pirates, instead of privateers. But they focused their efforts on Christian and non-Islamic prey.

Pirates really got their big start in the seas around Greece, where they raided merchants and were used by the warring countries and city-states against each other. At one time they were even used by the city-states as tax collectors due to the fact that so many people feared the pirates.

France, Spain and England fought back and forth with each other many times through the years with pirates and privateers playing huge roles in the outcomes of battles and wars. Pirates could often prove so successful as to bring an entire navy to its knees or to steal government treasure or disrupt trade so badly as to bankrupt a country.

Many times though countries or governments would ban together to help each other rid themselves of pirate infestations.

Pirates would escape to sea running from poverty, escaping the local navy or cruel laws of the land. Pirates needed their own laws on board ship so that they could come together and operate successfully. This inadvertently led to pirates creating what became known as the first true individual democracy in which every pirate had a voice by having an equal vote in what took place on board the ship. But shipboard lawbreakers found they had to face harsh penalties to pay for their transgressions against fellow crew members.

Pirates took care of their own like no other governing body had done before. Around the time in the early to mid 1600’s pirates begin to establish various payments as compensation for body parts lost in the line of duty.

While many boys and men were captured or pressed into serving on a pirate ship, most pirates joined up willingly. It provided a way to escape the navy of the day that was no better and often worse in pay and living conditions. A pirate ship provided you choices that the navy didn’t and men were often forced into the navy.

It would not be unusual for a pirate who had spent months at sea, to collect his share of the treasure and then blow it all in a night or two of excessive pleasure.