Fantastic pirates spark imaginations

Marcus Rediker delves into the romantic image of 18th-century seadogs.
By GLENN C. ALTSCHULER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age," by Marcus Rediker (Beacon, $24)
If this book were a film, it would be a swashbuckler starring Johnny Depp and Drew Barrymore. According to Marcus Rediker, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh, pirates created an attractive alternative to the brutal world sailors endured in the early 18th century: "They transformed harsh discipline into a looser, more libertarian way ... the realities of chronically meager rations into riotous chronic feasting, an exploitative wage relation into collective risk bearing, and injury and premature death into an active health care and security."
A unique population
Most pirates had been common seamen, twentysomethings who despised the disease, discipline and meager wages of the navy and merchant service. Disdaining the nation-state, they established multiethnic and racial communities. Sixty of the 100 crewmen on one of Blackbeard's ships, for example, were of African descent. They even made way for women, including the notorious Ann Bonny and Mary Read, who cursed and carved with the best of them.
Pirates drew up written agreements governing each voyage. They elected their captain, who had absolute authority only during combat or chases and no right to extra food or a bigger cabin. Meeting in a council, the crew made all important decisions. A quartermaster, part treasurer, part custodian of pirate traditions, distributed the booty according to a formula based on the skills and responsibilities of each individual. Pirates marooned (and sometimes executed) malingerers, thieves and deserters. When conflicts could not be resolved, dissidents commandeered another ship and struck out on their own.
The pirate way of life threatened merchants and government authorities. Between 1700 and 1725, pirates plundered about 2,400 ships, wreaking havoc with trans-Atlantic commerce, especially the slave trade. Equally disturbing to magistrates was the sympathy shown by the populace, who sold pirates ammunition and provisions and, on occasion, took to the streets on their behalf. So the forces of order and property sent the Royal Navy to the African coast to wipe out the brigands. Between 1716 and 1726, the British hanged at least 418 pirates -- and the job was done.
Popular image
Pirates have "captured the good ship Popular Imagination," Rediker concludes, because Americans love rebels who resist "powerful people and oppressive circumstances."
But have they -- and he -- romanticized the actual experiences of pirates? In response to what Rediker calls "the broad, violent redefinition of property relations" in England, pirates did, on occasion, sound class-conscious. But they were not Robin Hoods on the high seas: They robbed the rich and gave to themselves. Some pirates enriched themselves by engaging in the slave trade.
Nor should we conclude that they actually created a new social order based on the agreements they signed. The lives of most pirates were nasty, brutish and short. Even if, as Rediker suggests, authorities invented some accounts of atrocities, pirates were surely a violent lot.
Nor is it likely that they had "a profound sense of community" or that they "consistently showed solidarity for each other." Ned Low's crew, for example, deposed him in a bloody coup. Those who remained with Low then instigated a second rebellion, leaving the captain and a handful of allies to almost certain death in a boat without provisions.
To be sure, pirates also could be "thick as thieves," but their behavior, akin to the fraternity of the foxhole, did not constitute a conscious critique of capitalism or a coherent alternative world view.
To those of us who are buttoned-down, office-bound and passively antiauthoritarian, pirates are fun to fantasize about, even if we know in our heart of hearts that they don't have all that much to tell us about their society -- or ours.