In the movies we always see a crew of Pirates on board a massive Spanish Galleon or large
warship but was that the case in reality? In a few cases Pirates did operate large vessels
and some were even warships, but this was certainly not the norm. Henry Every’s ship,
Fancy, was a Man-of-war that was armed with 46 guns and a crew of 150. Blackbeard captured
La Concorde in 1717 and renamed her Queens Anne’s Revenge. She was another large ship
and have held around 40 guns and a crew of 300. The Whydah Gally, captained by Sam Bellamy,
was a converted slave ship which mounted 28 guns and 145 men in her crew. Most of the
time a group of Pirates would be operating a smaller ship or a group of ships instead
of these heavily armed ships. One reason was ease of use; it was much easier to sail a
smaller ship like a sloop than to operate a large merchantman or warship. The Pirates
also took speed, maneuverability, and the draft of the vessel into account. It was smart
for pirates to operate something that could slip in and out of coastal inlets to hide
from Navies as well as to wait for targets to pass so they could ambush them. Another
issue was that it was difficult to capture a ship that was heavily armed and Pirates
tended to go after weaker prizes in most cases.
If a crew did capture a large merchant man or warship one of the first things they would
do would be to modify it to make it more effective in battle. They would add guns, tear out decks
and walls, and reinforce the hull where it would be most vulnerable. Pirates would also
throw anything that wasn’t valuable or essential overboard to lighten the ship and increase
her speed. They also would add sails if they could do so.
The most common ship and the favorite of Pirates was the agile sloop. Sloops are single masted
vessels rigged with a main sail and a jib, and the guns arranged on a single fighting
deck. They would have had far fewer guns, maybe 6 or 7, but the speed and maneuverability
allowed them to avoid a broadside and attack the weakly defended sections of their prey.
If the larger ship looked as though it had the upper hand the Pirates could outrun it
and, as I mentioned earlier, duck into a cove or inlet where the larger ship couldn’t
follow.
The guns onboard Pirate sloops were smaller too. They would usually range in size from
4 to 6 pounders but on some occasion you they may have “long nines”, which were long
barreled 9 pounders. The pirates slept either below deck or even on deck and a typical sloop
would carry between 20 or 80 depending on the size. When attacking merchant fleets Pirates
used tactics similar to those wolves use. They would pick a weak looking ship out and
try to separate it before attacking. They would approach from the bow or stern so the
main guns were facing away from them. On the other side of the law there were the
naval warships. These were, in some cases, absolutely massive and a Pirate would never
dare to approach them. The largest warships were called Ships of the Line. These ships
carried between 32 and 144 guns arranged on 3 and sometimes 4 decks. Typically the cannons
were 32 to 42 pounders, which would quickly sink a sink if they hit the hull. The Galleon
would have been the Spanish equivalent. Frigates were smaller than a Ship of the Line, and
would have carried between 24 and 40 guns, usually between 12 and 24 pounders. The USS
Constitution is a surviving Frigate.Another class was the Corvette or Sloop-of-war. These
vessels with 2 or 3 masts were, just like the sports car named after them, very fast,
and carried between 12 and 20 guns in sizes between 6 and 12 pounders. Larger 3 masted
Corvettes could carry even more guns. Most often the Pirates could easily break contact
and avoid the larger but slower Ship of the Lines and Frigates, but not the Corvettes.
I’m sure they would have been very worried if they saw one of these.
It’s important to remember that almost all of the Pirates came from either the Navy or
Merchant shipping so they all would have known how to sail a ship to a degree but beyond
that maybe not much more. Some crews had specialized crew like carpenters, navigators, and pilots
on board, but some did not. These people would have often been forced to join a Pirates crew
because of their knowledge and there are several accounts of this happening.
In other cases, like with the famous Henry Morgan, he was an experienced captain. He
ended up commanding a fleet of over 30 ships and 1200 buccaneers, so he certainly would
have had a crew that was more than competent for the day. Often this was not the case and
eventually Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy, and many other Pirates would lose their ships, and
in some cases, like Bellamy, their lives as well.
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