3. Pirate Chronicles

Before we dive into the five stages of change that will help you to be more pirate, I’d like to present a timeline of the very best dates in pirate history. I know timelines are boring with a capital T, but this one is full of intriguing pirate facts that will also give context to your understanding of the Golden Age of Piracy, how they came about and how they changed the world. Though interesting, it’s not mandatory reading, so please feel free to skip it if you’re not up for a pirate nerd-off.

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(ROUGHLY)

Leif Erikson the Viking is the first European to ‘discover’ the Americas after being blown off course on his Viking way to Greenland.

1492

Christopher Columbus ‘discovers’ America and introduces its inhabitants to industrial-scale slavery, torture, forced labour, disease and near extinction.

1533

Queen Elizabeth I is born to Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She was later nicknamed the Pirate Queen by the Pope and the king of Spain owing to her informal network of dashing and seafaring adventurers. By the liberal use of Letters of Marque she created hundreds of privateers who stole for the state and were handsomely rewarded for basically carrying on like pirates. Liz was the last monarch of the House of Tudor and the grandmother of the British Empire. She infamously never married, but her love of Francis Drake, Walter Raleigh and robbing Spanish gold was legendary.

1579

In his prime, Sir Francis Drake loots $7m from the Spanish ship Nuestra Señora de la Concepción, nicknamed Cagafuego (Fireshitter) for its furious firepower.

1647

The Putney Debates are held after the English Civil War. With King Charles I under house arrest in Hampton Court, the idea of universal suffrage is discussed and modern citizenship born as the soldiers and officers of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army ponder how a country might be governed without a monarch. This milestone in democracy was lost to history for decades, but at the time these ideas were inspiring and empowering for those who witnessed them. Some of Cromwell’s men were rewarded with positions in the Caribbean and may have sowed the seeds of suffrage that the pirates pillaged for their ships.

1664

New Amsterdam is renamed New York after the English beat the Dutch out of town and decide to name the bustling city after the Duke of York.

1667

Henry Morgan is handed his first Letter of Marque granting him royal permission to attack and loot ships, starting life as a privateer that in time led him to piracy.

1671

Henry Morgan leads the largest ever pirate action, heading a force of 2,000 in the audacious and unprecedented sacking of Panama, allegedly having failed to receive the memo that Britain is now at peace with Spain. This decimation of a strategic Spanish stronghold by an English-led force set a precedent whose waves were felt all the way to the formation of the British Empire.

1678

The Buccaneers of America: A True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of late upon the Coast of the West Indies by the Buccaneers of Jamaica and Tortuga by Alexandre Exquemelin is published. Exquemelin is then promptly sued by Henry Morgan on the grounds that it is not such a true account after all. But what was true to life were the articles or code that Exquemelin set down. Henry Morgan’s articles were, therefore, the first recorded use of the Pirate Code, a raft of policies and principles that were applied consistently throughout the Golden Age of Piracy to hold crew members accountable.

1687

Isaac Newton supposedly watches an apple fall from a tree and discovers gravity.

1690

The first pirate republic in Madagascar begins to settle and will become the first republic on earth with a written constitution declaring all men equal regardless of colour.

1691

Pirate/privateer Admiral William Dampier completes his first of three circumnavigations of the globe and begins writing his memoirs that would later be used by Captain Cook, Horatio Nelson and Charles Darwin. Dampier also stands out as a most unusual pirate for his significant contribution to the English language, with over eighty words cited to his provenance, his contributions ranging from avocado to barbeque to chopstick.

1701

Captain Kidd is tried and hanged for piracy after unsuccessfully attempting to deny his entire career as a pirate by saying the stories were made up by ‘perjured and wicked people’.

1707

(ISH)

First known use of the Pirate Flag, aka the Skull and Crossbones, aka the Jolly Roger, aka the Black, aka Surrender or Die, aka the world’s first global superbrand.

1710

Benjamin Hornigold grows a following for his vision of a pirate republic, taking the democratic organizing principles they used aboard their ships onto land at Nassau in the Bahamas.

1713

The end of the Spanish War of Succession, which marks the start of the third and busiest period of the Golden Age of Piracy.

1717

Woodes Rogers, the ultimate anti-pirate, is commissioned to crush piracy. An ex-privateer who knows their tricks, a dead brother to avenge and some arch-villain facial scars secured him the starring role in kicking the pirates out of Nassau.

1718

Blackbeard is killed by a specially commissioned naval fleet led by Lt Robert Maynard. Blackbeard’s headless body is said to have swum three times around the boats. Upon the capture of his ship, correspondence bearing a royal emblem is found, identifying an ongoing commercial and personal relationship between Blackbeard and King George I’s colonial governors in America.

1719

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is published. The book is inspired by the rescue of Alexander Selkirk by Woodes Rogers. Originally the book credited the fictional character of Robinson Crusoe as the author, fooling many at the time into believing that the events were real. In so doing, the bestselling book marked the beginning of realistic fiction as a literary genre, created a genre of its own (about desert island castaways) and went on to become one of the most adapted books of all time.

1724

A General History of Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates is published, written by Charles Johnson, whom everyone wrongly assumes is Daniel Defoe. It becomes an immediate bestseller and is already on its fourth edition by 1726.

1771

Robert Owen, the father of the cooperative movement, is born less than twenty miles from the home town of the pirate legend Henry Morgan. Owen dedicated his life to instilling the well-trodden pirate practices of fair pay, equal say, shared ownership and social insurance that went on to influence modern business.

1773

The Boston Tea Party takes place. Republicans disguised as Mohawk Indians steal aboard English ships belonging to the East India Company and toss 342 casks of highly taxed tea into the sea, thereby setting into effect a course of events that led to American independence from English rule.

1832

The Skull and Crossbones club is formed at Yale University and has since seen some of the world’s most powerful people through its secret doors including both presidents Bush.

1883

Robert Louis Stevenson releases Treasure Island, introducing the world to Captain Flint, Billy Bones and Long John Silver. It has become one of the most dramatized books of all time, with embellishments such as black spots, parrots on shoulders, X-marked treasure maps and plank-walking defining the modern perception of pirates for ever.

1887

Coca-Cola creates ‘the world’s first global super-brand’ when it registers its now ubiquitous logo roughly 180 years after the pirates invented the Skull and Crossbones branding.

1904

J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, opens in London, building on Treasure Island to compound the world’s understanding of what it means to be a pirate with the introduction of Captain Hook.

1960s

Radio Caroline defines the idea of pirate radio, breaking the BBC monopoly of the airwaves by broadcasting some half-decent music from a ship anchored just outside UK jurisdiction.

1981

The United Nations recognizes the principles of the Open Sea, based on the exact sentiment Golden-Age pirates argued and fought for nearly three hundred years earlier.

1983

Steve Jobs hosts an offsite day with the team working on the first Mac computers and delivers the immortal line ‘I’d rather be a pirate than join the navy’ to inspire the direction of what would become the world’s most valuable company. When Jobs died forty years after founding Apple, a flag bearing a Skull-and-Crossbones was raised over its HQ.

1984

The wreck of the Whydah, the only authenticated pirate ship to be discovered, is found off Cape Cod. It had been the vessel of ‘Black’ Sam Bellamy when it was sunk in a storm in 1717 on his way to visit his witch lover (!) and has since provided a veritable treasure trove of knowledge about the pirate way of life.

2008

Facebook adds ‘Pirate’ into its platform as a legitimate language any user can choose. The software update was launched to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day and will translate most common languages into hackneyed Pirate verse.

2009

The Invisible Hook, Peter Leeson’s examination of the economics of piracy, wins Foreword Reviews’ Gold Medal Book of the Year Award in Business and Economics.

2012

The Pirates of the Caribbean franchise has three films in the top twenty highest-grossing films of all time. (Marvel Universe, Star Wars reboots and some better James Bond films have since pushed all the Pirates of the Caribbean films out of the top twenty.)

2016

The World Economic Forum convene a specialist counsel to look at the effects of Blockchain technology, and the various crypto currencies it inspired. A full eight years after its launch, the Establishment navy began to take this particular pirate seriously. One suspects they are going to wish they’d been a bit faster in getting ahead of this one.

2017

After a seven-year legal battle the European Court of Justice makes a landmark ruling that the Pirate Bay file-sharing site is directly infringing copyright. Many commentators think it could spell the end of the Bay, which proves many commentators still profoundly misunderstood online piracy.

2018

Fragments of pages recovered from the wreckage of Blackbeard’s ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge, are found to be part of a popular real-life adventure book entitled A Voyage to the South Sea, and Round the World, partly disproving a previously held notion that pirates were largely illiterate, and showing that at least some of them enjoyed a good read.