Cayla Delardi

Lawlessness and Order: Piracy in the Early Modern Period

The early modern seaparticularly the Atlanticcan be characterized as a space of great
instability. It was here that communication and trade between nations became easily accessible,
but the lack of uniform maritime regulations and commercial competition fostered hostility
between states, resulting in prolonged periods of war. One distinct product of this environment
was pirates, who took to the high seas in search of ships to illegally capture and raid of their
goods. For the great maritime nations of the 16th to 18th centuries, pirates were simply criminals
that threatened the progress of the world economy, but history has shown that they were much
more complex figures. At the same time as they were violent, ruthless, and defiant outlaws, they
were also cosmopolitan, highly skilled, organized and tolerant of one another. Although these
more positively connoted attributes are not justification for acts of piracy by any means, they are
some of the key traits which allowed pirates to operate successfully in such dangerous
conditions.
In order to form an accurate picture of piracy in this period, it is firstly necessary to
define pirates against other groups that inhabited the maritime world contemporaneously. The
first class of mariners that played a significant role in seafaring practices were privateers, who
were formally licensed by the state to raid enemy ships during wartime. Although the state
granted them paperwork in the form of letters of marque, privateers were not actually operating
in its service, but were instead commissioned by a group of private, well-respected merchants.
Closely linked to privateers are corsairs, as they were also privately contracted and operated
legally under letters of marque. Corsairing is differentiated from privateering mainly because of
its locale; the term is typically used to refer to North African, Muslim mariners who were
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involved in the Ottoman slave trade and sought to capture both the goods and people onboard
Christian ships. Also, because they had religious motivations, corsairs were not auxiliary military
vessels in the same way that privateers were. In contrast to both, pirates were stateless
communities of mariners who had no legal permission to engage in sea raiding, but did so
anyway. They operated completely outside the confines of society as it was known, subscribing
not to admiralty law or accepted maritime procedures, but to their own sets of articles that varied
from ship to ship. These distinctions are significant because the violence and brutality of these
groups actions were largely the same, and it was only legalities that set them apart from one
another.
The reasons for becoming or turning pirate have been widely theorized, and it seems as
though a multitude of social, political, and economic factors were at play. On an individual
level, the dangerous and almost inevitably fatal nature of piracy makes it improbable that one
would join a crew if they felt as though they had other alternatives. Instead, it is more likely that
piracy was a last resort refuge for a dejected class of sailors who did not fit in with normative
cultural standards, but could not escape the fact that society dictated that they must work to
survive regardless. Because piracy stemmed from a distinctly maritime class and not the general
landed population, it is easier to understand why it may have been seen as a viable option. These
men were already familiar with the principles of teamwork, harmony, and trust that were
necessary to survive on a ship, and their lengthy voyages often made them ill-adjusted to life on
land.
There are two main reasons why a sailor would have crossed the line between legal and
illegal maritime service: perceived injustice and peacetime layoffs. Unlike the pirate ship, both
navy and merchant ships were more dictatorial than democratic; their captains were not elected
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by the crew, nor were they necessarily the most skilled or humane people on board. This meant
that sailors were subject to a variety of injustices ranging from underpayment (or, worse, never
being paid at all), to poor working conditions, to physical and mental abuse. One such example
of how mistreatment could lead to a sailor turning pirate can be seen in the case of William Fly
who, before being publicly hanged for acts of piracy in 1726, urged any captain that might be in
the crowd to pay Sailors their Wages when due, and to treat them better; saying that their
Barbarity to them made so many turn Pyrates (Rediker, 2).
International conflict also had a hand in drawing sailors towards a life of piracy. War was
the normal condition of the Atlantic world between the 17th and 18th centuries, and the
widespread maritime developments of the period meant that more of these battles were taking
place at sea. The increase of naval capacity that came with each conflict meant an increase of the
number of mariners who joined the service, but because this type of employment was reliant on
war, peacetime meant an abrupt reduction of work. As David Starkey writes in Bandits at Sea,
Such flaws in the labor market were at the root of the business of piracy in the Atlantic during
the early modern era. Underlying each wave of lawlessness were discrepancies between the
demand for, and supply of, labor (117). Unfortunately for the sailors in question, not all
economies could sustain the reintegration of so many people at once, which meant that they
would need to find work in another field until the next war. While some did manage to find
legitimate work on merchant ships, othersespecially during longer periods of peacetimefelt
that piracy was the only viable option left. Apart from the employment opportunity that the
pirate world provided, one of the major draws for recruits was its advanced medical benefits.
Injury compensation on the pirate ship was much better and more secure than in the legitimate
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maritime world, which was a conscious part of the pirate business strategy. The assurance that a
sailor would be taken care of in case of an accident caused them to more aptly join the crew and
to take more dangerous physical risks once on board.
Once a sailor turned pirate, he would immediately integrate himself into a culture which
was entirely different to that of the warship or merchant ship. While it is true that even
legitimate vessels did not reflect conventional society because they gave sailors an unmatched
sense of freedom and the ability to see parts of the world that landed people could hardly
conceive of, they still had their own codes and conditions which left many feeling just as
ostracized as they would on land. For example, homosexuality was an offense punishable by
death on the navy ship, but there was a high degree of tolerance for it aboard the pirate ship.
This is a testament to the fact that pirates existed partially because they were looking for an
escape from those kinds of inflexible and oppressive standards, causing them to foster more
accepting environments for their crew.
Women also had an interesting role in piracy during this period, which might illuminate
the acceptance of homosexuality to some extent. It is no secret that piracy was more or less a
mans world, and that women often played more passive roles of landed spouses, prostitutes or
barmaids who temporarily serviced pirates upon docking in a port city. There is, admittedly,
very little known about the extent of women pirates, but the cases of Anne Bonny as documented
by John C. Appleby and Dian Murrays account of Cheng I Sao both show that women did
occasionally take active roles in the pirate world. It seems that the reason why the pirate ship
was largely devoid of women was not only because they were harsh and dangerous
environments, but also because women were seen as a potential threat to the harmony amongst
the crew, clearly more so than homosexual men. In fact, while a ships articles rarely addressed
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homosexuality directly, they did have articles in place which prevented women from coming
aboard. Again, there is not much primary evidence in this realm of pirate culture, and it is
difficult to accurately examine from a more informed contemporary perspective, but perhaps
homosexual activity was simply seen as a situational byproduct of a male-dominated world, and
was thusly less threatening than a preventable female presence.
The reason why pirates social dynamics are critical to understand is because they had a
huge bearing on the operation of the ship itself. As previously mentioned, pirate ships were
unique to all other maritime vessels in that they were remarkably democratic spaces. Unlike on
the navy ship, where captains were trained from childhood to fulfill their role, pirate captains
were elected by the crew. The crew also had the power to replace a captain who was perceived
to be unjust or incompetent, and could vote on the punishment of other crew members for
wrongdoings according to the articles of the ship. This participatory approach to governing the
pirate ship was effective because there was a mutual understanding between both the crew and
the captain on multiple levels. On one hand, everyone understood that a competent captain was
needed in order for everyone to remain safe, while the captain understood that if they didnt take
their crews wishes into consideration, there was a high likelihood that they would be ejected.
Furthermore, operating a ship successfully required not only the physical skills, but also civility,
stability, and order, so disruptions of any kind were not to be tolerated. Even a fight between two
crew membersbe it over a woman, wages, or living conditionswould be enough to upset the
balance of the entire ship, leaving it vulnerable to malfunctioning and, even worse, attack by
another ship. This left the crew with an understanding that they didnt necessarily have to like
one another, but they did have to work together and maintain order for the sake of their survival.

Once they were on land, it was an entirely different story, and they were free to hash out any
disagreements as violently as they saw fit.
Pirate voyages were able to yield considerable profits not only because their crew worked
well together, but also because they were operated efficiently and tactfully. This meant keeping
operation costs low and profits high; it was equally important to choose the right ships for
themselves as it was to find the right ships to raid. One of the most common ways pirates kept
their costs low was by sailing in stolen ships, which would ideally be either brigs, snows, sloops,
or schooners. These vessels were moderately sized, reasonably fast, maneuverable, and could be
easily hauled up and kept clean from any barnacles that might slow them down. The pirate
generally targeted ships that were the opposite of this which, at the time, were trading ships.
These kinds of ships were much larger, slower, and had hulls which were configured for
maximum cargo capacity rather than for speed, making them an easy target for the pirate to catch
quickly, and also allowed for retreat into smaller coves and inlets when necessary.
On trading ships, a pirate could find a great variety of prizes, some with a much higher
market value than others. For example, in just one voyage made by the infamous pirate William
Teach, also known as Blackbeard, he and his crew plundered 25 Hogsheads of sugar, 11 Tierces,
and 145 bags of Cocoa, a Barrel of Indigo, and a Bale of Cotton (Defoe, 90). Another account
of Captain Edward England notes that after a long, tiresome battle with an East Indian ship
called Cassandra in 1720, he and his remaining crew divided a prize of 42 diamonds a piece.
The sum total of the diamonds alone was valued between three and four Millions of Dollars
(Defoe, 134). This example is also notable in that it demonstrates yet another difference between
pirates and privateers, which is that pirate crews always shared an equal cut of their prizes,
whereas privateer ships divided theirs based on rank. Apart from any number of exchangeable
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goods, pirates also had the opportunity to make a profit off of the people on the ships that they
raided, either by ransoming members of the crew for money, or by capturing and reselling the
cargo of a slave ship.
Regardless of what kinds of treasures they obtained on their voyages, pirates would
typically need their monetary value rather than keeping the goods as such, but conversion was a
notoriously difficult task. This was not at all a problem for privateers, since one of the functions
of admiralty courts was to seize the goods from a voyage, assess their value, and split that
amongst the crew accordingly. But because piracy was an illegal and illegitimate practice in the
eyes of these courts, pirate crews did not have opportunity to use this maritime tool. Instead,
they created a kind of black market system by selling their goods at discounted prices to
intermediary merchants, who would then take those goods back to their community and sell them
to the public. Pirates were also able to sell their goods directly to the state, though much less
often. Particularly in underdeveloped countries, government officials would sometimes use the
preexisting pirate world to their benefit rather than their detriment, by purchasing goods from
pirate voyages which they were unable to easily attain otherwise.
Despite the fact that some states did use piracy to their benefit, most were more
negatively affected by its existence, seeing it as property theft, a hindrance to the progress of
global economic development, and a general disregard of the law that needed to be eradicated.
During what is often referred to as the Golden Age of piracywhich spanned from the mid-17th
to mid-18th centurymany European nations made efforts to curb piratical activities in their
waters, though their earliest attempts were largely unsuccessful. The most impactful wave of
pirate hunting came around 1717, when the British used a combinative naval, mercantile, and
civil effort which would substantially reduce piracy in the years that followed.
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The first tactic that British officials employed was a widespread propaganda campaign
against the pirates, positioning them not only as enemies of the state, but of all law-abiding
citizens. Attached to this campaign was a call to action; the British government advised its
citizens to join in their effort to capture and kill as many of these ungodly, violent, and dangerous
criminals as they could. During this time, they also issues acts of grace which would grant
amnesty to any pirate who was willing to renounce their position as such, though not many took
the opportunity (Rediker, 137). A third effort by the British came from their merchants, whose
slave trade along the African coast was so affected by pirates that they began keeping detailed
accounts of the illegal ships in those waters, including the dates they appeared, who they were
captained by, and what ships they raided. This information was then presented to the British
government, serving as the catalyst for the final tool: the navy. Now equipped with ample
information, the British sent a fleet of warships to the African coast in 1721, who spent the next
several years in an ultimately successful battle with pirate ships, putting an end to the Golden
Age of piracy by 1726.
The difficulty with eradicating piracy completely is that it is the product of social,
economic and political instability. Now, just as in the early modern period, these circumstances
have created a class of people who feel that their only means of survival is in the world of piracy.
Throughout history, this has been a world unlike any other, one where harmony, order and
democracy are used as a framework to carry out unimaginably violent criminal acts.