Everybody loves a pirate. Pirates were great! Their cool hats, perfect beards and amazing fashion sense has always appealed to me; Plus, who doesn’t want to drink rum and sail the seven seas searching for treasure and learning the true value of friendship. Obviously the last one is subject to whether you’ve played sea of thieves or Dragon Age, but nevertheless! I once again digress from the reason you are taking time out of your day to read this blog and that is to see what a real pirate’s life was like! So, hoist the colours, grab your rum and put on that hat, as we delve into the

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Blackbeard made all his crew members adhere to strict rules

Blackbeard may have been feared as one of the scariest pirates, but his ship was run by rules which were pretty important to the running of the ship. Loot was always split equally between the crew and votes were taken on anything that involved the crew, this included raids. The best and probably weirdest part was that he had invoked a bedtime for the crew. Yes, Blackbeard’s crew had to make sure they were in bed by 8pm to make sure they were rested and ready for the long day of pirating ahead of them.

One Pirate stole cows from dry land and stored them on his ship

Basil Hood decided it would be a great idea instead of having to commandeer ships and risk his and his crew’s lives to instead just steal cows from a farm and sell them to other traders. However, putting cows on a ship is about as good as it sounds and the cows all got seasick, filling the lower quarters of the ship with a dreadful smell and sight! It made Basil Hood and his crew feel so dreadful, that to ‘save’ themselves from the sick cows, they handed themselves over to the Navy to escape the ship!

In a maddeningly stupid turn of events, the navy noticed the cows onboard the ship and the sick covered floors and refused to take Basil and his crew into custody, leaving them to sail back home with the seasick cows!

Pirates didn’t talk like you think they did.

No, of course pirates didn’t use “Arr me” hearties’ or “Mateys”. There was pirate slang that was used especially within British pirates, but I’m sure that accent would get pretty annoying, pretty quickly [Kind of like mine].

Pirates were mostly ex-privateers

Privateers were basically the ‘legal’ pirates. Privateers worked for the British government, similar to hired-mercenaries. They protected the seas from invaders and even pillaged settlements of other countries, after doing this they got to keep any loot they came across.

Even though privateers were legally allowed to do what the pirates were doing, some of them resorted to revolting against their government orders and attacking any ship they came across. This (to me, at least) makes them pirates and the line between the two is often a thin one.

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Buried Treasure wasn’t really a thing.

Even though some pirates buried treasure, most of them never did. The loot gathered was more likely to be split up between the crew, who would see no point in hiding it when they could spend it on women and booze; another reason is that most treasure was perishable good like cocoa or fabric and food. Can you imagine eating a nice sandwich that you’d dug up after a month? No, thanks.

They’d often go and sell any perishable loot in Tortuga and Port Royal where they would sell it and spend the money as quickly as they could.

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Pirates were a lot more gruesome than the movies make you think

You’ve seen Jack Sparrow or Peter Pan, where pirates are really kind to one another and only have the occasional fight, but a real pirate never backed down from a fight for fear of cowardice and they never let their counterparts live. Fingers would be cut off for rings, punishments were brutal and fights were bloody and brutal.

Pirates NEVER EVER made anyone walk the plank

Okay, this is the only pirate myth that really, really annoys me. Pirates were not those for ‘dramatics’ and making someone walk a plank to their demise would be far too dull. If a pirate was going to kill you, he’d have simply thrown you overboard or just stabbed you.

However, there were pretty brutal punishments for insubordination such as whipping or being marooned on a desert island! But, the worst of all the punishments was known as ‘Keel-Hauling’ which involved being tied to a rope and thrown overboard: then once that was over, you’d be dragged down one side of the ship, underneath the barnacle-covered bottom, over the keel (the big timber structure along the base of a ship that supports the framework), the back up the other side.

There we go, that’s a list of pirate facts that turned out to be nothing but fiction!

Thanks for reading and as always, look after yourselves!