Historian Angus Konstam joins WIRED to answer the internet's swashbuckling questions about pirates and piracy. Where did the stereotypical pirate accent come from? What did pirates do for fun? Why do we associate parrots and eyepatches with pirates? Who’s the most famous non-fictional pirate in history? Is Jack Sparrow real? Did pirates use sunscreen? Answers to these questions and many more await on Pirate Support.
Thank you to Osprey Publishing for kind permission to use several of their images in this video. You can discover more in these great books:
Pirates 1660-1730: https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/pirates-16601730-9781855327061/
Pirate: The Golden Age: https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/pirate-9781849084970/
The Pirate Menace: https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/pirate-menace-9781472857736/
Director: Anna O'Donohue
Director of Photography: Mateo Notsuke
Editor: Richard Trammell
Expert: Angus Konstam
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White; Jasmine Breinburg
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer
Camera Operator: Cameron Hall
Gaffer: Jake Newell
Sound Mixer: Michael Panayiotis
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Paul Tael
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Thank you to Osprey Publishing for kind permission to use several of their images in this video. You can discover more in these great books:
Pirates 1660-1730: https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/pirates-16601730-9781855327061/
Pirate: The Golden Age: https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/pirate-9781849084970/
The Pirate Menace: https://www.ospreypublishing.com/uk/pirate-menace-9781472857736/
Director: Anna O'Donohue
Director of Photography: Mateo Notsuke
Editor: Richard Trammell
Expert: Angus Konstam
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Brandon White; Jasmine Breinburg
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Casting Producer: Nicholas Sawyer
Camera Operator: Cameron Hall
Gaffer: Jake Newell
Sound Mixer: Michael Panayiotis
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Ian Bryant
Supervising Editor: Doug Larsen
Additional Editor: Paul Tael
Assistant Editor: Billy Ward
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00I'm historian Angus Connistown. Let's answer your questions from the internet.
00:04This is pirate support.
00:11At Straight Grubbin asked, where did the pirate accent come from?
00:14Because there's no way in hell that people really talk like that.
00:17It was invented by the actor Robert Newton when he did the Walt Disney film Treasure Island
00:22back in 1950. He used his native Somerset accent and embellished it a bit.
00:27And that created the sound of the pirate, essentially.
00:33It's a great accent, but it's just one actor's view of what a pirate would sound like.
00:37Pirates would have come from just about any port in Britain or Europe, or even colonial America.
00:43Robert Newton chose that accent. He'd no idea 60, 70, 80 years later,
00:48people are using it as the established pirate accent.
00:52Thank you kindly, doctor. You came in the nick of time.
00:55It shows you the power and the impact of that film at the time,
00:58and how it captured people's imagination.
01:00At Corbynest asks, why are pirates called pirates?
01:04Pirates really comes from a Greek word, which means to attack or to rub.
01:09Pirates existed as far back as the ancient Egyptians.
01:14And then when the Romans came along, their word pirates essentially meant a sea rubber.
01:19They had whole naval patrols out trying to hunt down pirates.
01:24Famously, Pompey the Great organized a sweep through the Mediterranean
01:28to capture all the pirates he found.
01:30They were using the term then, so it's kind of stuck.
01:33At Luca Don Mews says, what's your favorite rule of the pirate code?
01:38We have a few examples of pirate codes.
01:40And they're really codes of conduct within the ship
01:43to govern how the pirates operate on board the ship.
01:47I like the fact that they're very democratic.
01:49For instance, how any plunder is held in common by the pirates and divided up.
01:55They also have ones that give you an idea of what life was like on board.
01:59Basic things like no candles while you're gambling and drinking below decks.
02:03That's a very sensible one.
02:04Knock over a candle in a wooden ship and all hell breaks loose.
02:07At Sean Rome 1 asks, what do pirates do for fun?
02:11We don't know an awful lot about what pirates did on board.
02:15But we have a few records from merchant captains
02:19taking prisoner and held on board pirate ships.
02:21There was a lot of card playing and an awful lot of drinking.
02:24Pirates essentially, every time they looted a ship with drink in it,
02:28they would lay into the stuff.
02:30Ships carrying things like Madeira wine was regularly imported to colonial America.
02:36Pirates were well stocked with drink.
02:38But also an awful lot of just lying around looking bored
02:41because they were waiting for a victim.
02:44That involved a lot of long passages at sea doing very little.
02:48Great Sambino, I wonder if pirates really did use wooden peg legs
02:53or is this just common folklore?
02:55They must have gotten seriously bad splinters.
02:57Often people with peg legs were used as kooks
03:01just as Long John Silver was in Treasure Island.
03:04Peg legs are probably the only kind of prosthetic available.
03:07As for splinters, I'm sure that happened.
03:10At Wheely Average, what's the most famous non-fictional pirate through history?
03:15There's a lot to choose from.
03:16Probably the instant iconic pirate is Blackbeard, Edward Teach.
03:21Instantly recognizable, he did things like placate Charleston
03:25which really upset the apple cart in colonial America.
03:29People didn't know where he was going to attack next
03:31and for a short period merchant ships wouldn't go to sea
03:35for the risk of being attacked by pirates.
03:37His parents owned a plantation in Jamaica they were well off
03:40but he got the bug when he was a privateer.
03:43He obviously liked it, he was good at it
03:45and so when he grabbed the chance he went out pirating on his own account.
03:50At Luke4337 says,
03:53weren't pirates democratic and overthrew bad captains?
03:56Pirates were very democratic.
03:58At the time, we're speaking about the early 18th century,
04:01it was a very strained, constricted sort of lifestyle
04:06ruled by the church, ruled by laws.
04:09Pirates were rebelling against that.
04:11They were rebelling against tyrannical merchant captains
04:14who could have them flogged or even killed without any recourse to the law.
04:18They could vote in a captain they liked
04:21and vote out one who didn't suit their needs
04:24and that happened several times.
04:26If the pirates weren't happy, they'd call a meeting
04:28and they would decide if the captain should stay or go.
04:32Pirate captains like Charles Vane were deposed by their crew.
04:36He and his crew that supported him were shoved onto this other ship
04:41and told to fend for themselves
04:43while the pirates elected a new captain, in this case Jack Rackham
04:47and he sailed off to continue his piratical career somewhere else.
04:51At Honey Nut Berrios says,
04:54pirates never actually made people walk the plank.
04:56There's no real evidence that pirates ever did.
04:59It came largely from J.M. Barrie who wrote Peter Pan.
05:03J.M. Barrie used the whole plot device of walking a plank
05:07to add dramatic impact to his story
05:10because pirates wouldn't bother sticking a plank out
05:12and making people walk it except in fiction.
05:15Normally a pirate would just cut your throat
05:17and throw your body overboard
05:18and there's plenty of examples of that happening.
05:20Pirates could be nasty.
05:22Some like George Lowther made a name
05:24for being almost psychopathically vicious
05:27and they would often pick on the captain of a ship
05:30that they captured as a figure of authority
05:33and they'd often torture him just to make his life a misery
05:36before killing him and throwing him overboard.
05:39At Roars 3 said,
05:40so you're telling me Jack Sparrow wasn't a real pirate?
05:44Well no, he was a character beautifully played by Johnny Depp.
05:47His inspiration for it was largely Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones
05:51because he just liked that crumpled but dynamic look.
05:54Johnny Depp just took that, embellished it and ran with it.
05:57Just like Robert Newton did all those years before with Treasure Island.
06:01He's actually basing his look not just on Keith Richards
06:04but on real pirates.
06:05Look at the hair, that's straight from Edward Teach from Blackbeard.
06:08He's got a captain's coat,
06:10the kind of fancy coat that a pirate captain would wear
06:13albeit kind of shabby.
06:14This is the sort of thing they'd steal from a boat.
06:17The whole thing is kind of exaggerated
06:19but underlying it there's a sort of real pirate look in there.
06:22Another thing with Johnny Depp is he's always a bit drunk.
06:26Pirates did steal a lot of rum from ships.
06:28At Beth a Cowboy makes a good point and he says,
06:31how am I supposed to pay attention in class when gay pirates exist?
06:34There were gay pirates.
06:35Bartholomew Roberts, probably the most successful pirate
06:38in terms of the number of ships he captured,
06:40was definitely a gay pirate.
06:42His partner was one of the crew and was equally ferocious.
06:46In a very constricting society, being a pirate was a great place to be.
06:51You were part of that pirate crew
06:53and they all looked after each other very well.
06:56FischerbeckPB asks a great question.
06:58What's the difference between a privateer and a pirate?
07:02In time of war, governments give privateers a letter of mark,
07:07basically a license to become a licensed pirate.
07:10For instance, during Queen Anne's War, anyone could go get a letter of mark
07:14and if they had financial backing,
07:16they could gather together a crew for a ship,
07:19buy a ship and go off hunting.
07:22Anytime that ship was captured,
07:23it was taken back to port and legally sold.
07:26The government would get its cut about 20%
07:28and the rest was sheer profit
07:30shared between any shareholders in the enterprise and then amongst the crew.
07:34The trouble is, when the war stopped, those licenses were terminated.
07:39A lot of pirates had spent a lot of time learning the skills.
07:43They didn't want to go back to the drudgery of being a regular merchant seaman.
07:47They decided to keep going.
07:48A pirate attacks any ship regardless of nationality.
07:53They're just there to hunt the seas.
07:55At about 1713, 1714, there was an immense upsurge of piracy,
08:00mainly in the Caribbean and the American seaboard,
08:03but also over in coasts of West Africa.
08:06The Golden Age of Piracy, a modern term for a deadly problem.
08:11Atmarcofic says, why is it trying to drink off rum while watching Pirates of the Caribbean?
08:16Rum and the Caribbean kind of go together.
08:19The main trading good of large parts of the Caribbean was sugar.
08:24Sugar was used to make rum and now we associate rum with pirates,
08:28largely because they operated a lot of the time in the Caribbean,
08:33captured rum and drank it.
08:35At Charlotte Murray says, get out of here with your misogyny.
08:39There are plenty of female pirates in one piece
08:42who were inspired by real life female pirates.
08:44There are not many examples of female pirates,
08:47but in the contemporary, very strict society of the 18th century,
08:52the whole idea that women would become pirates and go to sea,
08:55that was truly shocking and sensational.
08:57So people loved it.
08:58Anne Bonny and Mary Read were part of a pirate crew,
09:02one of Captain Calico Jack Rackham.
09:05They both dressed like men and fought and drank
09:10and did all the things other pirates did.
09:13Anne Bonny was recruited first.
09:16She was probably the lover of Jack Rackham,
09:18at least that's what the records suggest.
09:21Then Mary Read, who was a friend of hers, joined as well.
09:24They weren't just going along for the ride.
09:26They were full-on cutthroat pirates
09:29and they, in the last battle before they were captured,
09:33were the only ones who were able to put up a real fight,
09:36mainly because the men had all been drinking.
09:38When Jack Rackham's ship was captured off the western end of Jamaica,
09:42they were taken to Port Royal as prisoners and thrown in the jail.
09:46It was a sensation that shocked the world that women would be pirates.
09:50Almost all the crew were taken away and hung,
09:53but Anne Bonny and Mary Read,
09:55they both pleaded that they were pregnant
09:57and they managed to throw themselves in the leniency of the court
10:02and they got away with it.
10:03At Yahaf Sal says,
10:04how does one get an access code to become a pirate?
10:07How do you become a pirate?
10:08You needed to be a sailor.
10:10Landlubbers were of no use.
10:12Pirates were merchant seamen.
10:13If they mutinied against a nasty, tyrannical captain
10:17and took over a ship,
10:19that was one of the first access codes to becoming a pirate.
10:23The other one is once pirates were at sea,
10:25they captured a merchant ship.
10:27They'd often ask the crew,
10:28do you want to join us?
10:30That's a big step though,
10:31because once they do,
10:32they couldn't go home.
10:33They couldn't go back to their families.
10:35That was it.
10:36They were a pirate until they died.
10:38At whalefan69 asks,
10:40what did pirates do before sunscreen?
10:42We have accounts of them using tallow,
10:44the stuff they used to grease ropes.
10:47They often put that on their faces
10:49to block themselves from the sun,
10:50but what pirates tended to do
10:52is have a very big straw hat.
10:54At fyslalrb4 asks,
10:58has any pirate treasure been found?
11:01Buried treasure.
11:02That's a modern invention.
11:03That was a main plot in Treasure Island
11:06written by Robert Louis Stevenson.
11:08Pirate treasure,
11:09while there probably is some out there,
11:10it's probably lost by accident
11:12because anytime they captured a ship,
11:14often it didn't have treasure on board.
11:16They were capturing the regular merchant ships
11:18of the time,
11:18so they would have things like rum
11:20or sugar or clothing.
11:22The only occasion when treasure was buried
11:26that I know of is when Captain Kidd
11:29came back to New York
11:31from his pirating exploits
11:33in the Indian Ocean,
11:34and he wasn't sure how he'd be received.
11:36So he buried his treasure
11:38on the coast of Long Island,
11:39just outside New York,
11:41and then went into the city
11:42to see the governor.
11:44It didn't really work out for him.
11:45He was immediately arrested.
11:47He was interrogated
11:48and had to reveal where the treasure was.
11:51Here's one from adkora.
11:52What's an average pirate's life expectancy?
11:55Hollywood seems to give the idea
11:56that they can be old and grizzled.
11:58Life expectancy at the time,
11:59we're speaking about the early 18th century,
12:01for a seamen, was fairly short.
12:03A lot of pirates were young.
12:05Teenagers are in their 20s.
12:07You knew you were eventually
12:08going to be captured,
12:09hunted down, and executed.
12:11So the chances of being old and grizzled
12:14and retiring as a pirate, kind of slim.
12:16At T.S. Morehouse says,
12:18I wonder why pirates are associated with parrots
12:21and what started the trend.
12:22Parrots are exotic creatures.
12:24They're novelties in Europe.
12:26Any seaman in the Caribbean
12:28would pick up things like parrots
12:30and take them home
12:31and sell them as exotic pets.
12:34Ant Virgil of Limbo said,
12:36I wonder why they gave Blackbeard his name.
12:39He's not the only one with a black beard,
12:41or was he the only one at the time?
12:42Here's a picture of Blackbeard at the time.
12:44He was described with a great big beard.
12:47He had it tied up often with ribbons.
12:49He also had bits of burning slow match
12:52used to fire guns,
12:53basically burning cord stuck under his hat
12:56to make him look more ferocious.
12:57So he looked kind of satanic,
12:59and that's exactly what pirates wanted.
13:02At Bruminate asked,
13:04what did pirates wear?
13:05What we've kind of established nowadays
13:08as the pirate look
13:10was essentially not worn at the time at all.
13:13It was created by an American artist,
13:16Howard Pyle, in the late 19th century,
13:18who did a lot of illustrations for kids' books.
13:21Before he did these children's books,
13:23Howard Pyle studied Spanish gorillas,
13:26and he had lots of sketches of them
13:28with head scarves and the whole look.
13:30And he said,
13:31right, that's a great look for pirates.
13:33Here's an example of what pirates
13:36actually dressed like.
13:37They wore the clothes of seamen at the time.
13:40They were, after all, sailors.
13:42So they'd have shirts, they'd have sun hats.
13:44Very popular is the tricorn like this.
13:48I wish these came back into fashion.
13:49I love these things.
13:50But that's not that practical on a ship.
13:54What they'd often wear
13:55is something like a woolly hat.
13:57You see them wearing little bowler hats
14:01or hats like this.
14:03Sensible, comfortable clothes, even shorts.
14:06At Desert Taxol asks,
14:08what sort of weapons did pirates use?
14:10Of course, they wanted to capture a ship
14:12without having to fight on the decks.
14:15There's a risk they could be killed.
14:16The ship could be damaged
14:17that they're trying to capture,
14:19and all that plunder and board
14:20would be lost to them if it sank.
14:21When pirates captured ships,
14:23they often took the guns from it
14:25and kept them on board their own ship.
14:27So essentially, they had the best weaponry
14:29and all that they could lay their hands on.
14:32The main thing to stop a ship
14:33would be a cannon like this.
14:34They normally keep the heavy guns
14:36down in the hold where the ballast is,
14:39and then they bring them up when they need them.
14:41But you also have little swivel guns
14:43like this on the rails of the ship.
14:44They're kind of anti-personnel weapons,
14:46and you would blast out musket balls
14:49and bags of shot from these things
14:51that were designed to spray across the decks
14:54and kill people.
14:55When you got alongside,
14:56you needed things like these.
14:58These are grenados,
14:59essentially little metal balls
15:01filled with explosives.
15:02Like a modern grenade,
15:03there's no pin to pull.
15:04You just have to light the fuse and throw it
15:07and hope for the best.
15:08You'd have swords, axes, pikes,
15:10boarding pikes, cutlasses, muskets,
15:13and even long muskets like this.
15:15So the whole range of weaponry
15:17was available to them.
15:18I'm Miss Bluey says,
15:20how the hell did pirates build
15:21such awesome ships?
15:23Why are criminals so creative?
15:25Pirates didn't build the ships.
15:26They stole them.
15:27Much better.
15:28Often, pirates would start small
15:31with a single-masted sloop
15:33or even a canoe.
15:34You would build up your crew.
15:35You would often trade ships
15:37for bigger ships.
15:38What they did, though,
15:39is they embellished them.
15:40Take Blackbeard.
15:41When he captured this French slave ship
15:44called La Concorde of Martinique,
15:46he took it to a deserted isle.
15:48He converted it to make it
15:49a better pirate ship.
15:51And that meant cutting down the decks
15:53so it was one big platform
15:55so that pirates could
15:57attack from anywhere.
15:58He added more gun ports.
16:00He essentially blinged up the ship
16:02so it was the perfect
16:04fighting platform for piracy.
16:06S.L. Morrison 9.
16:07Do you know that pirates helped free slaves
16:10in the 1700s?
16:11I don't remember seeing that
16:12in any history books.
16:13Well, yeah, they captured slave ships.
16:16The Caribbean was essentially
16:18an economy that demanded
16:20the use of slaves.
16:21But what the pirates liked
16:23was attacking them
16:24off the West African coast
16:26because they had trade goods
16:28and they often had things like
16:30gold dust on board.
16:31And when they did capture
16:32one with slaves on board,
16:34if they were a seamen,
16:34they'd recruit them.
16:36Otherwise, they put them ashore.
16:37So it was kind of a reprieve
16:39for people who were captured.
16:40They managed to get a taste of freedom
16:42thanks to the pirates.
16:43Of course, being dumped on the shore
16:45wasn't the end of the story
16:46because often in West Africa,
16:48the coastal communities
16:49were the ones who had actually
16:51gone out as slave hunters
16:52and sold you into slavery.
16:54So you'd probably have
16:56some other challenges to face
16:58once the pirates had set you free.
16:59Some pirate crews,
17:01like the ones of Bartholomew Roberts,
17:03had a lot of Africans on board
17:06and a lot of them were former slaves
17:09who decided to join the pirates
17:10and the pirates accepted them
17:12because they could fight.
17:13About a third of the crew
17:14could be Africans.
17:16At Edward G61972059,
17:20what's the name given
17:21to the skull and crossbones pirate flag?
17:23The original pirate flags
17:25were known as the Jolly Roger
17:27from the French Jolly Rouge.
17:29The red is a warning sign,
17:31but so too is the use
17:32of skull and crossbones.
17:33Hourglasses to show
17:35that your time's running out.
17:36Skeletons and skulls
17:38are signs of death.
17:39They often have ones with pirates
17:41drinking with the devil.
17:43It's all designed to intimidate
17:44and you see a flag like that coming,
17:46it means this is the fate
17:48that's going to happen to you.
17:49We're going to kill you
17:50unless you surrender.
17:51At TheVictor2 says,
17:53did pirates have pirate bathrooms
17:55on their pirate ships
17:56or did they just
17:57s*** over the side
17:58when they were at sea?
17:58In any ship at the time,
18:00there wasn't really
18:00much in the way of bathrooms.
18:02The naval word for a toilet
18:04is the heads
18:05and at the front end of the ship,
18:06that tended to be the place
18:08where the crew would use
18:09as their bathroom,
18:10so they did s*** over the side.
18:12At Cora makes the very sensible question of,
18:15did pirates live in the water
18:16or did they have homes to go to?
18:18Pirates make the choice
18:20to be a pirate.
18:21You and your pirate crew
18:23are a floating community.
18:25Once you became a pirate,
18:27that was it.
18:27You cut ties from everything
18:30you knew from society,
18:32your family,
18:33your friends,
18:34everything,
18:35until either
18:37you get a government pardon
18:39and you can walk away scot-free
18:41or else you're captured
18:42and usually hung
18:44like Bartholomew Roberts
18:46who was captured and killed.
18:48His crew were taken back
18:50and tried in a mass trial
18:52and executed.
18:53That was a signal,
18:54as much as anything else,
18:55to other merchant seamen
18:56not to become pirates
18:58or else you will face
18:59the same grisly fate.
19:01At Jeff Gill says,
19:02why do so many pirates
19:03have to wear eye patches?
19:05It's a dangerous business
19:06being a sailor.
19:07Sometimes you get your eye poked out.
19:09Yes, you'd wear an eye patch
19:11if your eye was damaged
19:13or knocked out.
19:14Probably not like this one
19:15with the skull and crossbones on.
19:17That's a kind of modern bonus.
19:18There is an idea that
19:20eye patches are useful
19:21for saving an eye
19:23for use in the dark.
19:24It improves your night vision,
19:26but there's no real evidence
19:27that pirates did that.
19:28The most likely thing is
19:29somebody's had their eye poked out.
19:31That's all the questions for today.
19:33Thanks for watching.
19:34This has been Pirate Support.