Mitten's Topic - Pirate History

Discussion in 'THREAD ARCHIVES' started by Mittens83, Aug 4, 2012.

  1. The Golden Age of Pirates

    There have been many pirates through history. Stories have been told, songs have been made, movies produced. Why are we so intrigued by pirates? What is it about them that inspire us to write stories about them and take pleasure in learning about them? What is so interesting in the age of piracy? Maybe it is the simple fact that we didn’t live in the time of pirates, we haven’t been able to experience what others have so we allow our imaginations to take flight and we put ourselves in that time.

    Now it's time for some background information on pirates and like any point in history, there is a Golden Age. For pirates, this time was between 1690-1730. Many nations in Europe were at war with each other and would hire privateers with letters of mark that gave these men permission to raid and loot enemy ships and divide the proceeds with their governments. Once the war was over, these privateers continued to raid ships, but the one fact many people getting wrong is that pirates generally didn’t use violence; they hid in small coves and would fire a cannon as a warning shot.

    Pirates would generally roam the seas of the Caribbean, the Eastern seaboard of America and the oceans surrounding west Africa. Contrary to belief, pirates didn't only raid ships for treasures and gold, but also for food, water, clothing, alcohol and anything they needed to survive on the high seas, sometimes including the ships themselves.

    Famous pirates whose names were feared in the Golden Age included Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham, and Bartholomew Roberts. Around 1830, the Governments began to reject piracy, capturing many pirates and sentencing them to death while other pirates simply retired with the amount of treasures and supplies began to subside. The Jamaican government's anti-piratical policy also helped to end the Golden Age, but while it hasn't yet fully died out, there hasn't been another age where piracy was as widespread around the world as it was during the Golden Age.