20 Pirate Myths Hollywood Made Even More Ridiculous

The most well-known version of a horned skeleton piercing a bloody heart is often associated with Blackbeard, though this famous image was first published in 1912 in an issue of the nautical magazine The Mariner’s Mirror. Historian E.T. Fox’s research has since shown it was falsely attributed to Blackbeard decades later. Contemporary accounts describe Blackbeard flying black flags with a skull, or plain red ones; on June 16, 1718, for instance, the Boston News-Letter merely noted these flags. No reference to any skulls with hearts or horns is made in contemporary documents.

In Disney’s 1950 Treasure Island, Robert Newton, who played Long John Silver, gave the character a booming West Country growl, taken straight from Newton’s own native accent. The actual Golden Age pirates of roughly 1650 to 1730 came from all sorts of places, including London, Wales, Ireland, France, the Netherlands, West Africa, and the American colonies. Their accents were as diverse as their origins, and they didn’t sound like something out of a theme park.

After her husband, the pirate commander Zheng Yi, died, Ching Shih took command of his Red Flag Fleet off the south coast of China. Between 1807 and 1810, she commanded more than 1,800 ships and about 70,000 pirates, far more than could ever be found in the Caribbean. No pirate captain, male or female, in all recorded history ever commanded a fleet of that size.

More often than not, victims were simply thrown overboard, shot, hacked to death with a cutlass, or marooned on an island. The expression “walk the plank” did not appear in print until 1788, in a slang dictionary compiled by Francis Grose. Authors Charles Ellms and Robert Louis Stevenson, along with illustrator Howard Pyle, popularized the image in later years.

The usual booty, namely sugar, timber, cloth, and cocoa, had to be sold fast; if pirates took coins instead, those were simply split up among the crew. No point burying it, then. Captain William Kidd is the only known pirate to do so, burying some cash on Gardiners Island in New York in 1699, in case he was arrested. The X-marks-the-spot map was invented by Robert Louis Stevenson in his 1883 novel, Treasure Island.

Blackbeard’s actual name was Edward Teach, but he’d knot burning fuses into his beard and appear as Satan himself to intimidate sailors into hastily handing over their ship’s valuables. He was, after all, just an armed robber. And although there are many depositions from his victims recording his crimes, there is no evidence that Blackbeard killed or tortured any prisoners before his death in battle at Ocracoke Inlet, North Carolina, on November 22, 1718.

The notion that pirates would wear eye patches to leave one eye dark-adapted below deck was investigated by MythBusters. Dark adaptation is a real thing, but there are no logbooks, trial transcripts, or depositions from the Age of Sail that mention pirates doing it. The only genuine eye patches at the time were those worn to cover an eye lost to flying splinters during battle, wounds, or illness. The science is real, but the myth isn’t.

While South American and Caribbean parrots were indeed a highly valuable trading commodity, that doesn’t mean every pirate had one perched on his shoulder while hauling rope on deck in the midst of wind and rain, or boarding another ship. There’s no evidence of that. The concept likely comes from Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 classic Treasure Island, in which Long John Silver’s parrot was named Cap’n Flint.

Ship surgeons often performed amputations when a man was seriously wounded, but most amputees died of shock or infection. The ones who survived were given either a peg or an iron hook. If they were too injured to continue at sea, they were discharged or assigned to shore duty. There’s no evidence any pirate ever walked around with a cutlass in one hand and a hook in the other. That was the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, who invented Long John Silver. Silver’s image later got conflated with Captain Hook from J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, though Hook lost his hand, not his leg.

The pirate ship articles, which were the code of conduct that crew members had to follow, were written and voted on by the members of the ship. Pirates punished people for stealing, deserting, and other major offenses by marooning them, which meant putting them on an island with a canteen of water, a piece of bread, a gun, powder, and shot. This didn’t necessarily mean certain death, as it often does in movies; it was sometimes possible to be rescued or survive on your own.

A typical Golden Age career lasted only a couple of years, sometimes just a few months, before ending through disease, combat with a warship, or hanging. With “no prey, no pay,” treasure was shared out immediately and squandered as quickly as possible in Port Royal, Jamaica, and Nassau, Bahamas, on drink, dice, and a bed. No one was saving up to buy a private island.

The cutlass was pirates’ standard weapon, but they didn’t invent it. It was a short sword with a curved blade, the official sidearm of the British, French, and Spanish navies, as well as the merchant and privateer fleets. The privateers were sailors hired by their government to capture enemy vessels. The shape and length were perfect for swinging around in a tiny space like the deck of a ship without getting stuck in the sails and rigging.

When their ship was captured, most of the crew joined the pirates voluntarily, since pirating was more egalitarian and lucrative than a sailor’s life, which was characterized by near-starvation wages and the lash. Skilled craftsmen such as surgeons, carpenters, and navigators were occasionally captured or forced onto pirate ships, but overall, piracy was a voluntary profession.

In most cases, pirates would hoist a false flag, typically British, French, or Spanish, to approach the merchant ship without raising suspicion; they would fly their true flag, often a skull design or a plain red flag, only when they were about to board. That skull flag’s nickname, “Jolly Roger,” was first printed in 1724. The notion that it derived from the French joli rouge, meaning pretty red, remains an unproven folk etymology.

The captain was in command during a fight. Otherwise, important decisions were taken by a democratically elected crew council and quartermaster. The quartermaster was a popularly elected ship officer who maintained the rules and order, provided food, and distributed the loot. Surviving ship articles from the 1680s to the 1720s show that the captain’s power was restricted.

The big Spanish galleons were slow, heavy ships with crews too large and hulls that sat too deep in the water for use along the coast. Pirates usually sailed a small sloop or schooner of 60 to 80 tons, armed with a battery of six to ten small cannon. Their shallow hulls let them slip into narrow channels and hide behind shoals where a ship of greater tonnage might run aground trying to follow.

Ordinary seamen wore slops: basic canvas trousers, linen shirts, woolen jackets, and felt hats. They did not sport velvet frock coats and plumed hats. Even if a captain had taken a silk outfit from a captured ship, which could serve as a status marker or a way to intimidate prisoners when boarding, this was not typical attire

Raw rum could be tough on the gut (particularly in the tropics), and the water on board ships often went bad. So rum was routinely mixed with water and a bit of sugar and nutmeg to create “bumbo,” or with water and citrus for “grog.” Pirates also drank the booty they took: wine, brandy, beer, cider, and more than just rum. The British Royal Navy’s famous “grog” order wasn’t issued until 1740, and it applied to sailors, not pirates.

Prior to departure, pirate crews would hold a vote over the Articles, a set of rules outlining behavioral expectations, the division of spoils, and compensation for injury. Surviving codes drawn up by pirate captains Bartholomew Roberts, George Lowther, and John Phillips show how this worked. The captain would be voted in and could be removed from his position if a majority of the crew voted to oust him (unless he was in combat at the time). There were no grand principles at play; they simply wanted to avoid mutiny and ensure an equitable split of their bounty.

Davy Jones’s Locker in movies and other pirate fiction is now portrayed as a supernatural place associated with the ocean. In the 18th century, though, it was just the English sailors’ term for “the bottom of the ocean, where all dead sailors lie.” First printed in 1726 in Daniel Defoe’s Four Years’ Voyages of Capt. George Roberts, it was given additional notoriety by Tobias Smollett’s novel in 1751.

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