Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 10:04:38 -0400
From: "Michael Walsh" <MJW at mail.press.jhu.edu>
To: <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Where Was This When Bucky Needed It?
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at keithlynch.net>

>kit at hers.com 05/21/03 09:51AM
>>Strong, Lee wrote:
>> 	Piracy as a way of life is distinctly overrated by those with
>> selective memories.  Real pirates had all the disadvantages of sailors =
in
>> the Royal Navy with few of the compensating protections.  Pirates =
worked
>> hard, ate poorly, got "paid" at the point of a gun, and could expect to =
be
>> hung by the neck until dead if they didn't die in battle with profession=
als
>> or more "imaginatively" at the hands of a "creative" court.  Their =
peers,
>> the merchant and military sailors, worked hard, but got regular food, =
drink,
>> clothing and pay, and could expect to die in bed.
>
>Not quite.  Pirates in the classical age of piracy, at least, were =
crew
>members by contract, not by being press-ganged into service as in the
>Navy.  Pirates elected their captains, earned specified percentages of
>the take, and had the potential to live a better life in terms of food
>and comfort than anyone Navy sailor ever did.  What we know of them
>comes mostly from those who were too successful to avoid being noticed
>and those who were caught.  The definition of 'piracy' also was one of
>those things that was applied to the ships and crews of whoever the
>speaker wasn't fond of at the time, often as not.  Sir Francis Drake =
was
>a pirate to the Spanish, but a hero to the English.  Granuaille =
O'Malley
>was the reigning queen of western Ireland in the time of Elizabeth I,
>but was considered a pirate and the leader of pirates by Elizabeth
>because Granuaille took Spanish sailors aboard and defended her part =
of
>Ireland against the English who were intruding.  In the Caribbean, =
Anne
>Bonney captained a pirate ship for a time, as the brains of the outfit, =

>and was respected for it.
>
>I'm not saying the life overall wasn't brutal, but it was brutal
>*everywhere*, not just because people were pirates.  The old saying of
>'rum, sodomy and the lash' as the way of life for sailors was succinct;
>but pirates could, if they wished, leave ship at the end of a voyage =
to
>settle on land, while sailors who had 'taken the queen's shilling'
>(usually by having it forced down their throats) were *never* allowed =
to
>leave until they were so badly crippled that they were no use aboard
>ship any more.
>
>Kit
>whose ancestors were sailors for four generations

For a nice compact overview of piracy in the ancient world, there is this =
book: PIRACY IN THE ANCIENT WORLD <http://www.press.jhu.edu/press/books/tit=
les/f96/f96orpi.htm>

mjw