In the Golden Age of Piracy sailors needed haircuts and shaves, got toothaches, and occasionally
needed surgery the same as today. You couldn’t just plug a pair of clippers in for a quick
trim and Gillette would not introduce the safety razor until 1903. You also couldn’t
visit a 24 hour emergency room for tooth pain or something more serious. No, if you were
on a pirate ship you would go to see the trusty Barber Surgeon.
Up until the 1900’s most men went to barber once or twice a week for a shave. Barbers
were trained in using straight razors, scissors, and sharpening stones. They were not cheap
in those days either. Barber Surgeons learned their trades by apprenticeship, which lasted
7 years, and they started off by cleaning up and disposing of amputated limbs. Eventually,
they’d perform operations under the supervision of their master before going off on their
own. However, the need for Barber Surgeons on ships was so great that many apprentices went
to sea before they completed their training. Barber Surgeons were found on most warships of the
day and, occasionally, on a merchant ship as well. The procedures they carried out were
very crude and, aside from shaving the men, would have including blood letting, leeching,
treating STI’s by injecting mercury into the tip of the pirates.. yeah , and, of course,
amputation when it was needed. Blood letting was based on the theory that if a person didn’t
bleed from time to time they developed too much blood and the medical theories of the
day thought that to be the cause of a lot of issues.
In the 1660’s Alexandre Exquemelin, Author of The Buccaneers of America, was a
barber surgeon for several crews of buccaneers out of Tortuga. Exquemelin was originally
forced into indentured servitude but, after being sold to a physician who trained him,
he went out on his own and joined the pirates, staying with them until 1672. Following his
return to Europe he wrote his book and was successfully sued by Sir Henry Morgan for
libel due to Exquemelin’s description of Morgan using religious men and women as human
shields during his attack on Portobello in 1668. Richard Browne was another barber
surgeon who worked under Henry Morgan onboard his flagship Oxford. Browne arrive in Port
Royal in 1668 and was present during the explosion on Oxford that he and Morgan survived. Ernest
Alexander Cruikshank, who wrote “The Life of Sir Henry Morgan” described it by saying: “While
the officers then assembled were dining together on the quarter-deck of the Oxford, which
had been chosen by Morgan as his flagship, her magazine exploded from some unknown cause,
and besides several of the guests, nearly the whole of her crew of two hundred men were
killed, drowned, or horribly wounded. Surgeon Browne, after being hurled through the air
into the sea, saved his life by getting astride of a floating fragment of her mizen-mast.
He reported that only six men and four boys belonging to her crew were rescued.”
These kind of accidents were exactly why pirate crews were willing to keep a barber
surgeon onboard. They knew all too well the dangers of associated with long voyages. Besides
battle wounds sailors had to deal with animal bites, eye injuries, broken bones, dislocated
joints, toothaches, and on and on. Imagine a toothache at sea in a time when anesthetics
were almost never available. While liquor would have helped with the pain it still must
have been excruciating to have a barber-surgeon ripping your tooth out with a pair of rudimentary
forceps. When pirates joined a crew they almost always had to sign a copy of the ships
articles, the rules and regulations the pirates agreed upon. If the ship was captured those
articles were proof that the members were all pirates by their own free will and, therefore it was
enough to convict them to hang. The doctors, on the other hand, were usually not required
to sign. It’s likely that the captains, hoping to encourage the doctors to do their
duty, were willing to allow them the freedom of not signing so they could claim to be prisoners.
In other cases the surgeon would have been a bonafide prisoner and would've flat out refused
to sign. When Blackbeard captured La Concorde and turned her into his flagship
La Concorde had 3 surgeons according to the ships muster. Archaeologists that have examined
the Queen Anne’s Revenge wreck found a number of medical instruments, some of them with
French markings that likely were captured with the ship. We also know that in May 1718
Blackbeard blockaded the port of Charles Town, South Carolina and held a number of people
hostage demanding medical supplies. Once the drugs made it back to his ship, which was
delayed due to the pirates that were sent to pick them up getting drunk, he released
the prisoners and ended his blockade. If you’re enjoying these videos it
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