Pirates: Fantasy’s Forgotten Scoundrels

I’m going to start you off with a quiz this month. Nice and simple, five questions, just to see what you really know about pirates.

1. Apart from as a propellant in their frankly dodgy weaponry, what other use did pirates have for gunpowder?

2. Why did Blackbeard appear to be “an apparition from Hell”?

3. Where did Captain Kidd bury his treasure before being twice-hanged?

4. If you wanted a drink after 8 o’clock on a ship, what did you have to do?

5. What was the main reason for men to turn to piracy?

The usual image people have when you ask them to describe a pirate is a heavy drinker, well tattooed, often with dreadlocks and various jewellery decorations. A good man at heart, driven to what he does through hard times, or a misguided youth. In short – Jack Sparrow.

Whilst there are some elements of truth in some of Sparrow’s characteristics, there is a great deal of romanticism in the image we’re fed of pirates in most fiction. Even Stevenson’s Long John Silver, probably one of the most famous pirates in literature, although based on several real seadogs, has the edge taken off him, so as not to scare the children.

And what have pirates got to do with fantasy, I hear you ask? They are ready-made scoundrels, superstitious, battle hardened, well-travelled, perfect for adding a bit of spice to your story. Yet they are so often overlooked, which I personally feel is a real shame. Hopefully by the end of this article, I will have convinced a few of you to look a little closer into their dark world.

So, the answers to that quiz:

1. A prophylactic. Blackbeard used to add his to his morning rum, most would drink it with alcohol like this, as the water on board would often be highly unsanitary, so drinking spirits was the safer option. Pity so many pirates were too riddled with syphilis for it to work. In fact, the sulphur in the saltpetre mix would likely poison them long before it cured them. The wonders of shipboard medicine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder)

2. As well as the crazy eyes and beard after which he was named, which was often braided to make it fan out around his face, Blackbeard used to often add lit fuses to his get up. That’s right, he literally set himself on fire to scare people.

3. Nowhere. There are legends to this day of Kidd’s buried treasure, which likely started the craze in pirate stories, but there is no proof whatsoever that any pirate ever buried anything. They most likely hid their goods in caves tucked away in uninhabited coves, transporting a little at a time so that if they were attacked, they didn’t lost their whole haul.

4. You had to drink in the open air up on deck. Lights went out at 8 o’clock below deck, so that everyone but those on nightwatch could sleep. That’s right, pirates had a bed time, and it was early.

5. The Royal Navy. Many pirates started their careers on Navy ships or Privateers, which were essentially pirates with a license. But the conditions and pay were so bad many felt they could better provide for their families on the other side of the law, so ran off at the first chance.

In fact, many pirate vessels were better run and equipped than their Navy counterparts; morale was higher, as every man was treated as an equal, to his station, and all on board were given an equal share of any loot, the remainder going to maintaining the ship. In the Navy, the majority of anything the ship made went to the Crown.

There were strict rules on a pirate ship, and these were strictly enforced. Men were not allowed to gamble on board, and as stated above, drinking for drinking’s sake was kept to a minimum, because you couldn’t drink if you weren’t meant to be on deck. Boys and women were not allowed on board, and anyone caught smuggling a person aboard was more often than not put to death.

The Pirates’ Code, as mentioned in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, did in fact exist. It was added to over the years, and made for rather orderly living. Rules and their punishments were clearly laid out, and when followed, allowed a ship to run smoothly.

So where did the fearsome reputation of pirates come from? The pirates themselves, more often than not. They knew they were the scourge of the Caribbean, the bane of the English Navy, and the stuff of nightmares, and so they did their best to uphold this image. In revenge attacks, whole crews could be slaughtered, ships burned, corpses desecrated and left outside townships where they could be discovered, thus creating the legends.

In most raids however, there was relative little damage done to a ship or crew. One crewman may be singled out to be tortured until the captain handed over the location of the ship’s treasures, but then often the pirates would just take their loot and leave, the raided vessel free to carry on its journey.

Of course there were exceptions to this, the men whose names made it into legend; Blackbeard, mad bastard extraordinaire, man of fourteen wives, pirate of short career, killed on his ship by having his throat slit. Captain Kidd, Scot, ran off with a Navy vessel, terrorized ships off the coast of Madagascar, though this wasn’t particularly lucrative, then ran back to the Plymouth Sound to hide. Caught and transported to London. Twice hanged on Execution Dock, as the first rope couldn’t take his weight.

Now, imagine men like that armed with magical weapons, with slave wizards, attack dragons. Ruthless, driven individuals thrown into a fantasy world. It’s something we as an audience have craved for years, and constantly complain about when we don’t get, so why don’t more people draw on this open source? Of course, I am not asking for every single fantasy novel ever written to involve pirates, but they do make a nice change from the usual bad guys.

Or good guys; we like it when our protagonists are as clean-cut and proper as they could be. A pirate could be a good man driven by desperation, or an angry man looking for a way to channel his rage. Or even a reluctant pirate, pressed into service after his ship was raided. They are flawed by definition, and in being so can make for fascinating characters.

Naturally, in fiction we can bend the rules a little, and have female or child pirates if we so feel the need – the rules are there to be broken properly after all.

Hopefully this has given you a little insight into the real world of the pirates, of men who would be abed by the time a lot of us are finishing dinner, who were treated as equals in a time of slavery, and who, with a few exceptions, were just men doing their best to survive on the harsh seas, avoiding the Navy and creating legends while they were at it.

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