Historical pirates vs. their portrayal in media

[Dat Scharger]

Ahoy!

After playing Sea of Thieves for some time and following the forums, it seems that most of those players who just kill and sink everything they see for no reason, appear to be honestly believing that that was what historical pirates truly did: murdering everyone and sinking every ship they came across. Just because.
Which I think stems from their portrayal in media like Pirates of the Carribean: You either have some handsome rogues who are so cool and actually pretty friendly that you wouldn't mind being robbed by them; or the absolute scum of the earth, whose main purpose in life seems to be causing as much pain and suffering as possible.

Of course, I don't deny that some individuals like that didn't exist, but thinking about documentations and some research, I think that those kinds of pirates were pretty rare. Most were actually interested in gaining their loot without bloodshed and were perfectly fine with leaving the enemy crew alive if they just surrendered.

So in some efforts to clear some misconceptions about them...
...what do you think about some collaboration to create a list with some short historical facts?
Like this:

-No, pirates weren't good-looking sunnyboys. Due to being on sea for days or weeks depending on their destination, they hadn't the opportunity to visit bathhouses or even washing themselves (Which is why things like soap were highly popular goods for stealing) that often. Also, scurvy was running rampant on ships without access to fruits.

-Pirates didn't sail large ships like galleons, as they were just too slow, cumbersome and had too much draught. Instead, they prefered sloops for quick hit-and-run-tactics and then escape with their plunder in shallow waters where larger navy ships couldn't follow them. The biggest ships they ever had were frigates, and they didn't last long.

(If I'm telling nonsense here or such a thread already exists, please correct me)

Those were just examples.

Well, what do you think?

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Pirates in popular culture and pirates in reality are indeed wildly different.
After all, why sink ships when you can profit from them? Or kill everyone when you need crew?
I think the whole story about Blackbeard is that he was a master at managing his reputation.
But that's real piracy and not make-belief.

The same goes for the public perception on all manner of seafaring, such as "the captain actively steers the ship".
There is very little truth in any of that, of course. It's just people being ignorant.

 

[Dat Scharger]

Isn't it the case that those reports about Blackbeard's cruelty were actually greatly exagerrated and that he wasn't that of a bad guy? He simply built up that reputation to make his "job" easier.

Except of shooting his first mate, of course and that rumour that he married a young girl, only to cut off her head.

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

Pieter is absolutely correct. What people think they know about pirates and piracy is, more often than not, a load of fiction. If you would like to learn the unvarnished and eye-opening truth about the Golden Age of Piracy, check out How History's Greatest Pirates Pillaged, Plundered, and Got Away With It by Benerson Little. It's a great read, well written and highly informative. I highly recommend his other books on piracy and pirate hunters as well.

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

Isn't it the case that those reports about Blackbeard's cruelty were actually greatly exagerrated and that he wasn't that of a bad guy? He simply built up that reputation to make his "job" easier.

Except of shooting his first mate, of course and that rumour that he married a young girl, only to cut off her head.

Angus Konstam wrote an excellent book about Blackbeard that shows him in a decidedly different light than all the legends.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Isn't it the case that those reports about Blackbeard's cruelty were actually greatly exagerrated and that he wasn't that of a bad guy? He simply built up that reputation to make his "job" easier.

That's indeed what I understood as well.

Except of shooting his first mate, of course and that rumour that he married a young girl, only to cut off her head.

Great way to build a fearsome reputation!

 

[Jack Rackham]

Except of shooting his first mate

This and other scenes from Blackbeard's career will all be in WoodesRogers part 2.
Or test it: StartStoryline.c remove the // from line 349 and talk to the beggar behind you.

 

[Paul Tolliver]

I am trying to compile a table of various naval guns and the amount of powder it took to arm them for a single salvo. I have found a listing for an English eight pounder (considered a light deck gun) that it took about six pounds of powder per shot. I know this is an approximation, but it is roughly all I could get on the gun in question. I found a partial description of a brass swivel gun that said it took nearly a pound of powder for each shot and this sounds rather high to me, but then swivel guns varied a great deal in size and this could have been a big swivel gun. There is also a lot of difficulty in dealing with gun sizes when English pounds and French "livres" are often treated the same. Anyone with more historical knowledge who can educate me on naval gunnery is welcome to do so.

Something I have noticed in both movies and computer games is that the powder used by both handheld and ship-mounted guns seems remarkably clean burning compared to 19th century powder or even modern black powder. I own and fire a muzzle-loader and use modern pyrodex powder that is remarkably cleaner than that used at the turn of the twentieth century. Civil-war re-enactors often add cornmeal, cream of wheat, or other cereal products to their powder to get it to produce more and heavier smoke during their battles. Even without it, a few salvos and a heavy wall of smoke hangs between the combatants on the battlefield unless there is a breeze to carry it away. It does not take much imagination to picture the effects of a naval barrage by a ship of the line discharging many guns at relatively short range with the powder available during the time. The other ship would disappear behind a dense bank of blue-black fog for at least a few seconds and possibly more until wind and movement changed the face of the battlefield. Combat at sea was rarely a static affair; one or both combatants were usually constantly on the move. The wind was almost certainly blowing and there were currents to be taken into account.

When I fire my .50 caliber rifle, there is a tongue of flame and sparks six-feet in length. The column of smoke is bluish and about twice as long as the fiery display. The smell of the discharge is like that of a modern gun shot, but stronger. The report is very loud, as loud as that of a 12-gauge shotgun. Imagine a volley by a rank of Imperial Marines firing .62 caliber muskets! I have been to both revolutionary war reenactments and I can describe them to you. The British troops move and act with great discipline and precision. When they fire, it is almost, but not quite as one. A very few fire a split second early and a very few a little late. Most participants are using replications of 18th century British muskets, but a few are using carefully restored antiques. Misfires are rare, but do occur. They are rarely serious, but I have seen some that required medical attention. The fire and smoke from these muskets is much like that from my rifle, but some participants make the smoke heavier and denser by adding cereal as I described above. Others insist on using modern black powder. Modern black powder is not the same as that used in the 17th or 18th centuries. It has a regulated formula and consistency, even the grain size is consistent. This means it detonates more cleanly and consistently than the powder available to earlier users could hope to. Modern black powder produces a flame that is more yellow and smoke that is heavier and more black in color. It also has a much stronger odor of sulfur. The black powder of earlier times frequently varied in composition from maker to maker and batch to batch, even when regulations were passed to attempt to assure quality. Grain size also varied a great deal, too. The greatest difference between the flash powder used in the pans of muskets and mounted guns, the gun powder used in their chambers, and blasting powder used in torpedoes, explosive shells, and demolitions is in the size of the powder grains, not the composition of the powder. All of these variables in earlier black powder would have invariably meant more misfires. They also would have meant that the discharge from the muzzle would have had more sparks and embers from partially burnt particles of carbon with impurities in them and more and heavier smoke.

I have already read a wonderful article on the firing procedure and the size of naval guns on this forum and found them to be most excellent. If these amounts are accurate, the amount of powder carried in a ship's magazine would be quite substantial if the ship was intended for war or piracy and could be a severe limitation on its combat capabilities otherwise. A large magazine could lead to an increased vulnerability to explosions. Larger magazines would also mean larger explosions, naturally, to within certain limits. I have yet to explore your historical archives much further, but look forward to it. I am more of a dice-rolling rpg gamer who plays face to face with people and less often on a computer, but I do enjoy a well-written and thoroughly immersive computer rpg as a way to relax. Fantasy pirate adventures are much better than the gritty reality and brutal nature of true piracy which continues on to this day.

 

[Pieter Boelen]

Something I have noticed in both movies and computer games is that the powder used by both handheld and ship-mounted guns seems remarkably clean burning compared to 19th century powder or even modern black powder.

True point!
I've got a faint memory that we once experimented with letting the smoke linger around for a more realistic period of time, but that really slowed down the PotC game engine because of the closeness of the particle effects.
Maybe the wind didn't affect the smoke either, so it would linger around even more than realistic. So in the end, we decided to not do it. But I do believe it could potentially add a great deal of extra realism!

I have already read a wonderful article on the firing procedure and the size of naval guns on this forum and found them to be most excellent. If these amounts are accurate, the amount of powder carried in a ship's magazine would be quite substantial if the ship was intended for war or piracy and could be a severe limitation on its combat capabilities otherwise. A large magazine could lead to an increased vulnerability to explosions. Larger magazines would also mean larger explosions, naturally, to within certain limits.

I wonder how often powder magazines would explode. I do know they used to be VERY touchy about it back in those days; and for good reason too!