Close your eyes and imagine the pirate. Does he wear an eye patch, bury the gold and misbehave with the letter "R"? If yes, then we hasten to inform you that the image of pirates, as Hollywood draws it for us, is not just mistaken - in reality they are sometimes even more picturesque.
Pirates talk … well, like pirates
Myth:
The roar of pirates came to life through decades of cartoons and feature films, where every pirate was supposed to roar, imitating a bloodthirsty barmale. Except when it pleases you to be Johnny Deplom. In this case, you are supposed to speak with Depp's intonations.
Of course, we understand that the "pirate accent" that we hear in all these pirate films is somewhat exaggerated, but it's based on something, right?
True:
Phrases like "God damn me" and traditional songs like the pirate "Fifteen Men on a Dead Man's Chest" were coined by Robert Louis Stevenson for his novel Treasure Island, published in 1883 - 150 years after the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. By the way, over 90 percent of all pirate myths come from the same book: one-legged pirates, shrill screaming parrots, drunken brawls … they all originate from the book Treasure Island.
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Yes, pirates of course sometimes lost limbs in battle, but Stevenson was the first to put all the elements together, creating the popular pirate image.
How about a growling voice? It actually comes from an accent from the South West of England. In 1950, Disney adapted Treasure Island, where Robert Newton played a pirate, overdoing it with a rolling r. Two years later, Newton used the same accent in Blackbeard, which started a now-widespread stereotype.
So what did "pirate talk" actually sound like? In reality, there was no "pirate dialect". The pirate crews consisted of such a diverse audience and scum from different countries, who spoke a variety of languages, not to mention a lot of dialects and accents, that it was absolutely impossible to create some kind of special, "pirate dialect".
Instead of a missing eye, the pirates wore a blindfold
Myth:
The eyepatch is the most recognizable feature of the pirate. In every pirate movie, at least one crew member will definitely wear such an eyepatch. Like that weird pirate with the wooden eye in Pirates of the Caribbean.
With all those bandages, peg legs, and hook hands, pirate movies try to convince us that as a pirate, you’ll be lucky to lose an eye or at least one limb. Sometimes scriptwriters overdo it in creating the image of a pirate that it looks like a walking stool.
But why do pirates have a greater chance of losing, for example, an eye than, say, a Viking?
True:
It seems that the only reason the pirates wore a blindfold over their second eye was that they thus kept one eye constantly adapted to the dark when mooring to the other ship. If this theory is correct, then they wore bandages only before and during the raid.
Judge for yourself: the pirate had to fight and loot both on the deck and under it, and since artificial lighting was then a rare phenomenon, it turned out to be rather dark in the hold. And to get used to the semi-darkness of the hold, the human eye may need several minutes, which in the heat of battle, you must admit, is not very convenient.
Of course, we do not know if this is the main reason for such an abundance of bandages among the pirate fraternity, but this assumption makes much more sense than simply “and somehow he lost his eye in one of the troubles”, or “they liked to drink tea, and sometimes they forgot to take the spoon out of the glass. It would be much more plausible for a pirate to sacrifice his peripheral vision than to lose his sight altogether. You can try it yourself, put a patch on your eyes for the next half hour, and then, pretending to be a pirate climbing into the hold, go to the toilet.
In fact, this method is so convenient that it is still used by the American military today. The instructions for action at night recommend keeping one eye closed in bright light to preserve the ability to see in the dark.
All pirate ships have a skull and bones flag
Myth:
The classic Jolly Roger has become so associated with piracy that it is not even necessary to write the word "pirate" itself, and everything is clear. This attribute is necessarily used in literally every pirate movie.
Sometimes the bones are replaced by two crossed sabers, like Barbossa in Pirates of the Caribbean, but for the most part, it's always a skull and crossbones (sabers).
But that makes sense, right? The purpose of the pirates was to intimidate the sailors, and while they shake the gravy out of the over-footed underpants, unhindered by their precious loot.
True:
In fact, if you see a pirate ship approaching you and see a waving black flag, consider yourself lucky - pirates tend to spare you. The actual "battle flag" wore a decidedly more minimalist "just red" design. Historians believe that the term "Jolly Roger" comes from "jolie rouge", which in French means "red" or "reddish".
In addition, the design of the black flag varied greatly from ship to ship: only a few captains used the skull and baptized bones, in particular Edward England and Christopher Condent. And, for example, the pirate Blackbeard used a strange flag with a skeleton holding an hourglass and piercing a bleeding heart.
In general, the hourglass was a very common element on pirate flags, as it symbolizes the inevitability of death. Captains Walter Kennedy and Jean Dulayen also used watches, although in their case the watch was held by a naked man holding a sword in his other hand.
And some, like Thomas Tew, were too lazy to depict mysterious signs on flags, content with a poorly painted hand holding a dagger.
However, most pirates did not engage in such arts at all, limiting themselves to either completely black or completely red flags.
By the way, the Florida Museum has one of only two original pirate flags that have survived to our time. In this case, it looks as it should be in accordance with our ideas.
Sailors who are disillusioned with an honest lifestyle go to pirates
Myth:
According to popular sources about the life of pirates, their whole life consisted of robberies, battles and accumulation of trophies, so the decision to join their party was entirely based on your inclination to this way of life.
True:
In fact, the overwhelming majority of pirates were honest sailors who abandoned their jobs because the conditions were dire. Only a small fraction of them became pirates because they enjoyed being outside the law. The work of a sailor during the time of the pirates was one of the most disgusting you can imagine, and if they lived under British laws, most of them did not even have to sign up for it - the royal navy simply kidnapped them.
Seriously, at one point half of the British fleet consisted of people forcibly recruited by hired thugs who scoured the ports looking for those with a complete set of limbs. Those forcibly recruited were paid less (if any) than volunteers and were chained to the ship when it entered port.
That is, in addition to storms, a high population density per square meter of deck and tropical diseases, which made the already savory life of sailors even less attractive. As a result, 75 percent of those recruited died within the next two years. So when pirates hijacked their ship and offered them pirate life as an alternative to death and constant humiliation, most said, "Fuck it, I agree!" In pirate films, there is always a clear distinction between clean and law-abiding sailors, and disgusting, dirty and flawed pirates. In life, they were essentially the same.
The pirates' institution of salabonism was not developed, so if you are smart enough, you could very soon make a career as a successful pirate, as, for example, in the case of Black Bart, a sailor who was captured by pirates, and in just 6 weeks he became their captain.
Pirates preferred to bury their treasures
Myth:
This seems to be the main thing pirates do, right? Loot the treasures, bury them in a chest, bury it somewhere, and then draw a map so they don't forget where they buried them. According to RPG games, the whole world is littered with treasure chests that the owners have forgotten about.
"Pirates of the Caribbean" showed us that the pirate life was not limited to burying and further search for treasure, but, nevertheless, they were still quite an important part of the plot. Well, they could not completely ignore the cornerstone of a pirate existence, because pirates in real life really did it.
True:
Yes, pirates buried their treasures … three whole times. But none of them bothered to draw a map, which means that such maps do not exist in nature.
Not only did the treasure maps not exist, but they were simply not necessary, since the looted goods were found almost immediately. The first pirate who we know for sure buried his treasures was Sir Francis Drake, who robbed a Spanish pack caravan carrying gold and silver in 1573 and buried some of the loot along the road, as it was too difficult to transport in one trip. Apparently, the treasure was not very carefully hidden, because by the time they arrived for the remains, Drake and his team discovered that the Spaniards had found and dug up most of the precious stash.
Another famous pirate named Roche Basigliano, under torture by the Spanish Inquisition, confessed that he had buried over one hundred thousand pesos near Cuba. Thanking for the tip, the tormentors killed him. Captain William Kidd is said to have buried some of the treasure near Long Island (an island in New York State) in 1699, but again, almost immediately after it was hidden, the treasure was found by the authorities and used against him as evidence. That's all. If there were still buried treasures, then there is not and there was no one who could prove it.
However, rumors continue to circulate that Captain Kidd's treasure has never been found, which is enough to capture the imaginations of writers and artists around the world.
Kidd's legend inspired Washington Irving with his Voyager in 1824, and Edgar Allan Poe with his Golden Beetle, written in 1843, which, among other things, sucked at the idea of a pirate treasure map. Irving's work influenced Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and so this delusion began to roam the world.
Pirates looted mostly gold
Myth:
In almost every pirate film, mountains of pirate gold are always present (remember the gold deposits of the first "Caribbean Pirates").
Often the whole plot revolves around obtaining or saving gold, as, for example, in "Pirates", Polanski, or "Isle of Thugs".
But pirates did raid ships and plunder gold: this is a historical fact. Why else would they rob ships? What could be more important to a pirate than wealth?
True:
How about soap? Or food? Candles, sewing tools and other disgracefully vulgar household items? When pirates hijacked a ship, the plunders often turned out to be commonplace salted fish or goods for the colonies. But that was enough for them.
Pirates are big fans of gold and silver, but even more like not starving to death in the middle of the ocean, or drowning, because they didn't have the necessary equipment to repair their ships. Being outlawed, they couldn't just go to the first port they saw and boot up with everything they needed. They also carried out raids to loot something boring like gunpowder and navigation tools. And for those who found themselves in the waters of a tropical climate, a chest with medicines was a real treasure.
And if they ran into a lot of money (which sometimes did happen), they would rather immediately squander it in pirate bays like Port Royal than wisely invest in something.
E. Yosomono, D. Miller. “Interesting newspaper. The world of the unknown"