[HN Gopher] A lot of what is known about pirates is not true (2017)
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A lot of what is known about pirates is not true (2017)
Author : Thevet
Score : 83 points
Date : 2022-10-18 17:54 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neh.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neh.gov)
| jtbayly wrote:
| You mean they don't laugh and jump off of things?
| [deleted]
| vlunkr wrote:
| It makes sense that pirates like Blackbeard dominate our view of
| pirates and probably distort it significantly. They were
| intentionally going for shock value and it obviously worked.
|
| Much like dinosaurs and knights, this brand of pirates is very
| appealing to kids, so we're kind of stuck with them.
| [deleted]
| handedness wrote:
| The same could also be said for the Wild West, and even the
| greater Old West period in general.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| It's interesting how genre fads have come and gone in the
| Hollywood era. For a while there swashbucklers with Errol
| Flynn et all were the biggest thing ever. Now that along with
| westerns are nearly a dead genre.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Expected the article to be about BitTorrent users.
| ankaAr wrote:
| I remember reading an history book about pirates when I was very
| young, from ancient history to modern days. How I loved it..
|
| I will try to remember the name of the German author.
| realce wrote:
| https://piratehistorypodcast.com/
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| Ok, I'll say it: contrary to popular belief, people who engage in
| unauthorized copying of files _are not pirates._
| WalterBright wrote:
| Words change meaning all the time. For example, to "dime"
| someone these days means call them on the phone.
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| I've been using the 2010's dime slang and didn't know about
| this one.
| jjk166 wrote:
| I have never heard the word dime used that way, nor do I see
| anything in the first few google results about it being used
| that way.
|
| There was a 60s slang term "drop a dime" which meant to call
| someone, and nowadays that phrase means to call the cops or
| to snitch.
| WalterBright wrote:
| It's used in the miniseries "Power".
| Retric wrote:
| Which doesn't make the above statement false.
| oever wrote:
| And people who engage in unauthorized wiretapping for
| governments are not privateers.
| brightball wrote:
| But you have heard of them...
|
| EDIT: I know, I'm sorry. I couldn't help it.
| [deleted]
| dragontamer wrote:
| I wouldn't say I'm very well studied in Pirates, but I've played
| "Sid Meyer's Pirates" and loved it.
|
| A common theme in the game is that there are 4 great powers of
| the Caribbean sea: the British, the French, the Dutch, and the
| Spanish. Different cities have different allegiances (and as the
| Navies of the respective powers move, those cities could change
| sides). There's also trade winds to account for, the value of
| plunder (wheat, guns, and other goods you capture). There's also
| different statistics for different ships... and those statistics
| depend on the direction on of the wind (the canoe being the
| fastest against the wind for example).
|
| ----------
|
| Anyway, where I'm going with this is that you're a Pirate in the
| game. However, your first goal is almost always to obtain a
| Letter of Marque from one of the great powers. The game even
| allows you to obtain a letter of marque from all 4 great powers
| (though unrealistic, its kinda funny to think you're a Privateer
| authorized to plunder all other powers)
|
| This is a bit of a sarcastic wink that the difference between a
| "Pirate" and a "Privateer" really isn't much. You go off on your
| sea vessel, you attack trade ships and plunder them. The
| Privateer just has a piece of paper (the Letter of Marque) that
| shows that you're doing it on behalf of a power.
|
| ------
|
| John Paul Jones is perhaps the most famous American Privateer. In
| 1776, when the Revolutionary War started, John Paul Jones and his
| ship was off in Europe on other business. Hearing that war has
| been declared, he began to attack the British Isles on behalf of
| the USA.
|
| John Paul Jones was captured however and charged for Piracy.
| Fortunately, he had an American Flag flying on his ship, so he
| was "legitimate".
|
| Alas: the American Flag was described to him through letters. So
| he really didn't know what it looked like. He just... kinda drew
| the flag as best he could:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serapis_flag (13 stripes of red-
| white-and blue, with 13 stars on the top left? Gotcha. Totally
| the American flag, right?). At least, the Dutch thought it was an
| American flag (probably a political statement on behalf of the
| Dutch against the British, but hey, politics always existed).
|
| Anyway, my point is that a Letter of Marque was a big deal,
| making these "piracy" events legitimate. If you're just randomly
| attacking the British and stealing stuff, you're a Pirate. But if
| you're doing that because of the 1776 Revolutionary war (and you
| have a "flag", albeit a poorly drawn incorrect one + the piece of
| paper / signature from the US Congress stating the Letter of
| Marque), you're a lawful combatant and treated as such.
|
| Piracy probably never really died off. It just became legalized
| in the weirdest way possible.
|
| ------
|
| Age of Sail, in English-speaking countries, is romanticized with
| Spanish enemies (see Capt. Hook, who is clearly wearing Spanish
| Garb + a Spanish Galleon). Because the Spanish ruled the seas in
| the 1400s, while the British were the upstarts. Fighting "dirty"
| by using Pirates (and later privateers) is just the natural
| result of the politics of that age. We can reverse-engineer the
| age of sail somewhat through our legends and stories that we've
| passed down over the centuries.
|
| From an American perspective: we romanticize the British/Dutch
| trading company as the enemy somewhat. (See Pirates of the
| Caribbean), because "our" privateers/pirates attacked British
| ships.
|
| -------
|
| Given that the difference between a "Pirate" and a "Privateer"
| was simply political pieces of paper, I would not be surprised
| that Pirates were all over the US Colonies from the 1600s. The 13
| colonies issued over 1700 letters of Marque during the
| Revolutionary War IIRC, suggesting a significant number of
| "skilled sea plunderers" in the colonies, so to speak, of varying
| sizes. No, the USA never had a good enough Navy to really fight
| the British on equal terms during the Revolutionary war, but
| these Privateers were pivotal in harassing / annoying those trade
| routes / supply routes.
|
| Those skills didn't just magically appear in 1776 during the war.
| Those people "were already" pirates, and just chose to support
| the Revolutionary War and begin to organize into the USA's
| nascent Navy. There's no documentation of this beforehand because
| those people were likely illegal pirates, so its a "purposeful"
| forgetting of those old crimes in order to bootstrap the early
| Navy. IMO anyway.
|
| But yeah, not much may be known about "Pirates". But the legal
| "Privateer" is extremely well documented and well studied. And
| you can definitely see and feel the "wink-wink and nod" towards
| Piracy if you go through the historical records.
| exalted1ne wrote:
| I do not have a lot of expertise into the above nor Sid Meyers,
| but man, I just want to say that I appreciate the
| insight/opinion. Thank you for the well written response.
| twic wrote:
| English wikipedia:
|
| > Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540 - 28 January 1596)[3] was an
| English explorer, sea captain, privateer, slave
| trader,[4][5][6] naval officer, and politician.
|
| Spanish wikipedia:
|
| > Francis Drake (Tavistock, Inglaterra, 1540-Portobelo, Panama,
| 28 de enero de 1596) fue un corsario, explorador, comerciante
| de esclavos, politico y vicealmirante ingles.
|
| The two languages understandably place different relative
| emphasis on Drake's various occupations.
| dragontamer wrote:
| > corsario
|
| Good grief. The word "Corsair" in English means Pirate (or at
| least: Pirate Ship), but the word "corsario" in Spanish
| apparently means privateer.
|
| Apparently this "Pirate vs Privateer" issue turns into a
| fundamental linguistic issue depending on what side you were
| on in the 1500s age of sail.
|
| ------
|
| > vicealmirante
|
| I'm amused that Captain translates into Vice Admiral.
| svachalek wrote:
| Interesting, capitan is definitely a word (yo no soy
| marinero, as they say in La Bamba)
| jjk166 wrote:
| > I'm amused that Captain translates into Vice Admiral.
|
| Francis Drake actually was an English Vice Admiral. The
| Spanish wikipedia is just more precise than the English one
| which merely calls him a naval officer.
| bombcar wrote:
| There was (is?) a strong suspicion on the part of the British
| that the whole 1776 kerfuffle was likely caused by the colony
| being infested with pirates and smugglers, and not liking being
| cracked down upon.
| tomrod wrote:
| I'm going to channel my inner thoughts right now:
|
| wut-literal taxation without representation
| adastra22 wrote:
| I mean, that's kinda the opinion on the American side as
| well, no? The Sons of Liberty were a loose association of
| smugglers, undoubtably with some pirate connections. The
| Boston tea party was about lowering the tax on tea, not
| raising it, which impacted the black market these guys were
| selling in.
| jjk166 wrote:
| > John Paul Jones is perhaps the most famous American
| Privateer. In 1776, when the Revolutionary War started, John
| Paul Jones and his ship was off in Europe on other business.
| Hearing that war has been declared, he began to attack the
| British Isles on behalf of the USA.
|
| John Paul Jones had been living in the american colonies for a
| few years before the war broke out. He was a member of the
| American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in 1774, and
| personally knew Richard Henry Lee. When the war broke out in
| 1775 he joined the American navy and was a lieutenant serving
| on the USS Alfred, the first ship to be commissioned by the
| Continental Navy. While many of the missions he commanded
| involved commerce raiding, he was never a privateer and never
| carried Letters of Marque.
|
| > Alas: the American Flag was described to him through letters.
| So he really didn't know what it looked like.
|
| John Paul Jones was actually the very first person to hoist
| America's official naval ensign, one of his duties on the
| maiden voyage of the Alfred. It was actually Ben Franklin who
| didn't know what an American flag looked like, and told the
| dutch it had blue stripes.
|
| > John Paul Jones was captured however and charged for Piracy.
| Fortunately, he had an American Flag flying on his ship, so he
| was "legitimate".
|
| He was not captured and charged with Piracy, he was in a Dutch
| port and the Brtish asked he be handed over as a pirate,
| instead of as a commander of an American vessel. He knew
| perfectly well what an American naval ensign looked like, and
| had been flying one, but it was shot away in battle. In fact
| the whole ship had been sunk and he transferred over to a
| British ship captured in the same battle. Further, this event
| occurred in 1779, more than 3 years after Jones had joined the
| American Navy, and was actually the last American ship that he
| would command.
| kilolima wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend_(Spain)
|
| Related to your comment on Captain Hook.
|
| Thanks for the very informative post!
| cafard wrote:
| Did the Spanish rule the sea in the 1400s? They didn't have
| full control of the peninsula until 1492.
|
| The US frigates had a good record against British frigates in
| the War of 1812, but they couldn't have fought a major
| engagement with the Royal Navy. The privateers were
| tremendously effective then.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| I don't know how accurate it is but the lost pirate kingdom on
| netflix was pretty entertaining, and included quite a bit of
| information I was not aware of.
| jghn wrote:
| I very much enjoyed "The Republic Of Pirates: Being the True and
| Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought
| Them Down" by Colin Woodward. I'm pretty sure I originally came
| across it in a thread here on HN.
|
| Not that I'm expert enough to know, but it felt well researched.
| On the assumption that what he said was as true as possible given
| the circumstances, I thought it was pretty enlightening.
| kedean wrote:
| For anyone fiction-inclined, The Silver Oar by Howard Breslin
| is the first thing that the opening part of this article
| reminded me of. It focuses on an accused pirate on the run in
| the New England colonies, and his ongoing relationship with
| various colonial characters. A fun swashbuckling read if one
| wants to branch away from prestige literature.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| _Black Sails_ was a fun fictionalization of that history,
| crossed over with the prehistory of _Treasure Island_. It 's
| opening sequence is unbeatable.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFTcA4QLHw0
| jghn wrote:
| Huge fan of this show. It started off a bit weak but really
| took off over time.
| samvher wrote:
| Since we're doing book recommendations :) I thought "The
| Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates" [1] was a fun
| read as well.
|
| [1] https://www.amazon.com/Invisible-Hook-Hidden-Economics-
| Pirat...
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _A lot we know about pirates is not true, and a lot of what is
| true is not known_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14287212 - May 2017 (90
| comments)
| Schroedingersat wrote:
| This article keeps describing anarchists and then following up
| with 'but they're not anarchists'.
|
| You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think
| it means.
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