Aaarr Matey! Life on a 17th Century Pirate Ship Was Less Chaotic Than You Think

upstart writes:

Some excerpts from an Ars Technica interview with historian Rebecca Simon on the real-life buccaneer bylaws that shaped every aspect of a pirate's life:

One of the many amusing scenes in the 2003 film Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl depicts Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightley) invoking the concept of "parley" in the pirate code to negotiate a cease of hostilities with pirate captain Hector Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush). "The code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules," he informs her. Rebecca Simon, a historian at Santa Monica College, delves into the real, historical set of rules and bylaws that shaped every aspect of a pirate's life with her latest book. The Pirates' Code: Laws and Life Aboard Ship.

Ars Technica: How did the idea of a pirates' code come about?

Rebecca Simon: Two of the pirates that I mention in the book-Ned Low and Bartholomew Roberts-their code was actually published in newspapers in London. I don't where they got it. Maybe it was made up for the sake of readership because that is getting towards the tail end of the Golden Age of Piracy, the 1720s. But we find examples of other codes in A General History of the Pyrateswritten by a man named Captain Charles Johnson in 1724. It included many pirate biographies and a lot of it was very largely fictionalized. So we take it with a grain of salt. But we do know that pirates did have a notion of law and order and regulations and ritual based on survivor accounts.

You had to be very organized. You had to have very specific rules because as a pirate, you're facing death every second of the day, more so than if you are a merchant or a fisherman or a member of the Royal Navy. Pirates go out and attack to get the goods that they want. In order to survive all that, they have to be very meticulously prepared. Everyone has to know their exact role and everyone has to have a game plan going in. Pirates didn't attack willy-nilly out of control. No way. They all had a role.

[...] Ars Technica: Some of the pirate codes seemed surprisingly democratic. They divided the spoils equally according to rank, so there was a social hierarchy. But there was also a sense of fairness.

Rebecca Simon: You needed to have a sense of order on a pirate ship. One of the big draws that pirates used to recruit hostages to officially join them into piracy was to tell them they'd get an equal share. This was quite rare on many other ships. where payment was based per person, or maybe just a flat rate across the board. A lot of times your wages might get withheld or you wouldn't necessarily get the wages you were promised. On a pirate ship, everyone had the amount of money they were going to get based on the hierarchy and based on their skill level. The quartermaster was in charge of doling out all of the spoils or the stolen goods. If someone was caught taking more of their share, that was a huge deal.

You could get very severely punished perhaps by marooning or being jailed below the hold. The punishment had to be decided by the whole crew, so it didn't seem like the captain was being unfair or overly brutal. Pirates could also vote out their captain if they felt the captain was doing a bad job, such as not going after enough ships, taking too much of his share, being too harsh in punishment, or not listening to the crew. Again, this is all to keep order. You had to keep morale very high, you had to make sure there was very little discontent or infighting.

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