10 Horrifying Facts about Pirates
10.
Blackbeard’s Reign of Terror
Born sometime around 1680, Blackbeard’s real name was probably Edward Teach.
He became among the most notorious pirates to have ever terrorized the Caribbean and
the American East Coast.
Initially serving under another pirate who later retired, Blackbeard became captain in
1717, and commandeered a French merchant vessel which he renamed Queen Anne's Revenge.
He fitted it with 40 cannons, made it his flag ship, and together with three other smaller
vessels (sloops) under his command, Teach plagued the West Indies and the Atlantic coast.
His best weapon of all was fear.
He made himself appear ferocious; like a psychopath addicted to violence.
He always had at least six loaded pistols, a cutlass and a musket with him, and wore
a big feathered tricorn on his head.
He sported a huge black beard in which he would tie hemp and light it during battle.
The governor of Virginia eventually put a bounty on his head and on November 21, 1718
a small group of men ambushed him and nineteen others within an inlet on Ocracoke Island,
in North Carolina.
Following a fierce battle the following day, Blackbeard was dead.
Blackbeard’s reign of terror lasted a little over 2 years, even though he was among the
most feared pirates of the 18th century.
9.
The Privateers and Buccaneers
At first glance, the words pirate, privateer and buccaneer seem to mean the same thing.
And while this is true to a certain extent, there certainly are some differences.
For instance, privateering made use of private ships for attacking foreign vessels under
the approval of a country’s government.
In a sense, piracy in the Caribbean started off as privateering under the British government.
As early as the 16th century, many private English ships carried letters of marque, entitling
them to attack, loot, sink or capture ships belonging to all enemy nations; especially
Spain.
They would then give part of the spoils to the government, while the rest, they would
keep it for themselves.
The most famous privateer was Francis Drake.
In 1567 he made one of the first English slaving voyages, bringing African people to the New
World, and was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world.
In 1577, under secret orders from Queen Elisabeth herself, Drake went around South America,
plundering Spanish ports on the undefended Pacific coast.
Buccaneers on the other hand were mostly felons, many of them facing capital charges.
They were former sailors who’ve jumped ship or servants who ran away from their contracts
working the sugar plantations on the many Caribbean islands.
Whenever there was a ship close by, a handful of buccaneers would jump into a small rowing
vessel and board the unaware ship.
8.
Pirate Weapons
Buccaneers made good use of the Buccaneer Musket.
It was a large and heavy gun, measuring almost 6 feet in length.
They used it initially for hunting boar on the islands, but also to shoot the helmsman
off an enemy deck some 300 yards away.
Pirates also made use of the Blunderbuss.
It was loaded with a handful of pistol balls and when it was fired it created absolute
devastation over a broad area of decks.
It had a massive recoil and it had to be fired from the hip, otherwise the Blunderbuss would
break the shoulder.
Grenades were also used extensively by pirates.
Basically a spherical-cast hollow iron ball about 5 inches in diameter, loaded with 5
ounces of gunpowder, the grenade had a wooden fuse sealed with wax.
Once lit, it took about 6 seconds to explode.
Pirates and buccaneers would throw these onboard an enemy vessel just before boarding it, creating
utter chaos and devastation.
However, all of these firearms were one-shot weapons, so the backbone of any boarding action
was the cutlass.
Used for both thrusting and slashing, the cutlass was short so it wouldn’t become
a hindrance on a crowded deck.
7.
Hooks for Hands and Wooden Legs
When thinking about a pirate, it’s almost impossible not to imagine him without either
an eye-patch, a hook for a hand, or a wooden stump.
The reason for why so many had missing limbs has more to do with infection than the many
wounds they were subjected to.
For instance, musket balls had the nasty habit of taking a piece of fabric with them when
passing through its victim.
And while doctors may have been able to take out the ball, the piece of cloth most likely
stayed behind.
This in turn caused the wound to fester, and many were subject to gangrene.
With no anesthetics or antiseptics, they were aware that if the limb was not amputated it
would “mortify”, as they called it, and they would die in severe pain.
So, the only effective method available was to amputate.
6.
Captain Charles Vane – Years Active: 1716-1720
Pirate life was brutally violent and extremely short.
A good example was Charles Vane, a notorious pirate, contemporary and friend to the infamous
Blackbeard.
His pirating days began in 1716 and in 1718 became captain himself.
He was renowned for his violence and ill temper, being hated even by his own crewmen.
He is one of the few pirates who didn’t accept the King’s pardon, and in a mere
four years since his “career” began, he would be hanged.
After a mutiny aboard his ship, he was left behind on a small sloop together with a few
loyal comrades.
In a hurricane, he would miraculously survive, being washed ashore a small fishing island.
However, the man who found him there recognized him and brought him to justice.
Before his death however, in April 1718, Vane and his men came upon a sloop somewhere in
the Bahamas and attacked it.
They violently beaten up the crew, stole everything onboard, and chose one man, Nathaniel Catling,
to be hanged.
He remained suspended until everyone believed him dead, and the pirates brought him down.
He somehow survived, but seeing this, one of the pirates hacked him across the collarbone
with his cutlass.
Vane and the other pirates then set the ship on fire and left.
However Nathaniel Catling not only survived a hanging and a slash to the neck, but also
escaped to describe the events in an official deposition.
5.
Edward Low – Years Active: 1721 – 1724
Edward Low got his notoriety as being a psychopath first, and a pirate second.
He made his fleet in Nova Scotia where he managed to capture 13 fishing vessels, and
then he moved south, to the more lucrative Caribbean.
As his pirating career went on, his infamy grew.
A few surviving victims recalled his brutal nature where he often chained, mutilated,
burned, and even forced some of his captives to eat the heart of their captain.
In one particular incident, Governor John Hart describes as Low was attacking a ship
from Portugal bound for Brazil.
As they were being boarded, the captain of the Portuguese vessel dropped a bag of gold
into the ocean to keep the pirates from taking it.
Seeing this, “Low cut off the said Master's lips and broiled them before his face, and
afterwards murdered the whole crew being thirty-two persons."
Due to his increasing violent nature, both against his victims and his own men, in 1724
the crew mutinied and left him marooned on an island.
4.
Henry Morgan, King of the Buccaneers – Years Active: 1655-1682
Henry Morgan is one of the successful few who managed to live to the prestigious age
of 53, and die of tuberculosis, not by hanging or decapitation.
And he did so by staying somewhere in the gray area and not going full on “black”,
as many other privateers or buccaneers did back then.
Throughout his life he acquired a reputation as a remarkable leader and a fearsome conqueror.
For his many victories for the English crown against the Spanish, Morgan was honored by
the King and promoted as deputy governor of Jamaica.
Nevertheless, a pirate is still a pirate even if he’s made governor.
The booty Morgan collected as a pirate had made him a very rich and highly influential
man.
In the city of Maracaibo, he and his buccaneers tortured many citizens in order to find the
hidden valuables.
In Porto Bello he burned the private parts of his women prisoners and even roasted a
woman alive on a stove, in order to get the information he so desperately desired.
3.
Montbars the Exterminator – Years Active: 1668 – 1670’s
A French buccaneer, Daniel Montbars was born in a wealthy family, he was well educated
and raised as a gentleman.
He developed a deep hatred for the Spaniards after learning of their savage treatments
of the indigenous people in the New World, and would become a fierce enemy of the Spanish
Empire throughout his career.
In 1667 he left France for the West Indies together with his uncle, where they served
in the Royal French Navy.
Their vessel was later sunk by the Spanish and his uncle perished.
Montbars then moved to Tortuga and joined the buccaneers, where he became captain.
He distinguished himself during an attack against a Spanish galleon where: “his only
pleasure seemed to be to contemplate, not the treasures of the vessel, but the number
of dead and dying Spaniards.”
He attacked and set ablaze many Spanish strongholds and settlements across the Caribbean, giving
no quarter to his enemies.
2.
Francois L'Ollonais – Years Active: 1660-1668
While on the subject of psychotic Frenchmen, let’s take a look at Montbars’ predecessor,
Francois L'Ollonais, another Spanish-hating buccaneer.
His real name however, was Jean-David Neu, but also went by "Flail of the Spaniards".
In 1660 he joined the buccaneers stationed in Saint-Domingue and his reign of terror
began.
In 1663 he survived a shipwreck where all of his crewmates died, and when the Spanish
came to investigate, he covered himself with his crewmates’ corpses and smeared himself
with their blood as to appear dead.
He then dressed himself as a Spaniard, released some slaves and escaped on some small canoes.
On his way to Tortuga he and his small crew destroyed an entire Spanish ship and left
only one man alive to tell the story.
From Tortuga, L'Ollonais launched an attack on Maracaibo and Gibraltar, hunted down the
people trying to escape through the jungles, then raped, tortured and murdered everyone.
1.
Olivier Levasseur – Years Active: 1716-1724
Ok, let’s move out of the Caribbean for this last one.
Olivier Levasseur, aka La Buse (The Buzzard) was a French privateer in service to the French
crown during the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714).
After the war he was ordered to return home, but instead joined a pirate company in 1716.
The Buzzard decided to try his luck in the Indian Ocean, of the Western coast of Africa.
He and some other famous pirates like Edward England or John Taylor raided and plundered
ships and ports in the region.
Taylor and Levasseur later marooned England on the island of Mauritius on the account
of him being too humane with his prisoners.
In any case, the two pirates managed to accomplish one of piracy’s greatest exploits.
Without even firing a single cannon, they captured the Portuguese great galleon Nossa
Senhora do Cabo (Our Lady of the Cape).
This ship was carrying the treasures of the Patriarch of the East Indies, and the Viceroy
of Portugal, who were both on board, on their way home to Lisbon.
Since the galleon went through a severe storm, the crew had dumped all of its 72 cannons
overboard, preventing the ship from capsizing.
The booty was huge, consisting of many bars of silver and gold, countless chests full
of golden coins, jewels, pearls and other valuables, as well as many religious artifacts.
This treasure-trove made all the pirates rich beyond their wildest dreams.
In 1724 he sent an emissary to discuss an amnesty on his behalf.
But since the French government wanted a sizable chunk of his loot (estimated at over £1 billion),
he instead settled down in secret somewhere on the Seychelles archipelago.
Eventually he was captured and hanged in 1730.