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8 Mostly Untrue Myths About Pirates
Credit: Neil Lockhart - Shutterstock

You probably weren’t thinking that Pirates of the Caribbean was a documentary (or Treasure Island before it). But somehow we’ve all absorbed the stereotype of a pirate as a swashbuckling adventurer with a certain accent, a few loose teeth, and a treasure map in his pocket. Let’s take a look at some of the most pervasive pirate tropes—and separate myth from fact.

The “Arrr, matey” stuff came from a movie

There’s an accent we famously think of as the way pirates talk. This doesn’t come from any specific historical source, but pop culture historians tend to trace it to Robert Newton’s portrayal of Long John Silver in Disney’s 1950 Treasure Island. Newton grew up in Cornwall, England, and played up the local accent for his pirate character. Cornwall did produce a lot of sailors, so it’s possible that some pirates spoke with some version of a Cornish accent.

Some of the pirate lingo is real, though

If the pirate talk is fake, it must all be fake, right? Not quite: Several of the terms popularized by novels and movies are embellishments of things seafarers actually said. “Avast” is a real bit of sailing lingo, taken from a Dutch phrase meaning “hold fast,” that is, stop what you’re doing. “Shiver me timbers” likely owes its popularity to Treasure Island, but it does actually make sense in context. The timbers are the masts of the ship, and it was not unheard of to swear on your ship—as in, “may the timbers be smashed to splinters (or ‘shivers’) if I’m lying.” We don’t know if actual pirates ever said this phrase—it’s not a direct quote—but it’s sort of plausible.

Scurvy is not just your teeth falling out

Scurvy was a real disease, and it really did strike sailors who were at sea for months at a time—but that doesn’t necessarily mean just pirates. In any case, your teeth don’t just merrily fall out while you’re drinking grog and singing shanties. First you feel weak and fatigued, with muscle aches. Then you start showing bruises as connective tissue all over your body begins to fall apart. Here’s one account from the 16th century:

It rotted all my gums, which gave out a black and putrid blood. My thighs and lower legs were black and gangrenous, and I was forced to use my knife each day to cut into the flesh in order to release this black and foul blood. I also used my knife on my gums, which were livid and growing over my teeth. . . . When I had cut away this dead flesh and caused much black blood to flow, I rinsed my mouth and teeth with my urine, rubbing them very hard. . . . And the unfortunate thing was that I could not eat, desiring more to swallow than to chew. . . . Many of our people died of it every day, and we saw bodies thrown into the sea constantly, three or four at a time.

Nobody has ever found a pirate treasure map

Pirates weren’t hoarding gold and jewels like dragons in Middle Earth. They stole stuff to pay their crew, replenish their supplies, and ultimately to sell, because piracy was a business venture. The booty they seized was often along the lines of spices, textiles, or wine—not exactly the kind of things that keep well underground.

The myth of buried pirate treasure likely comes from a story about Captain Kidd, when he knew he was in trouble with the British government. He reportedly traded with a man on an island near New York (handing over some fancy fabric and three enslaved people, among other things) and then asked the man to bury some gold and other goods for him. Kidd had a whole plan that involved getting the governor to bring him back to the island, but in the end Kidd was arrested and the man turned over the goods. The idea of buried treasure became legendary, though, and Treasure Island made the trope even more popular.

Piracy’s “golden age” didn’t last very long

Pirates as we (think we) know them only operated in a fairly short time period, from the mid-1600's until 1730 or so. This is when various European countries were engaging in trade across the Atlantic, and were also intermittently all at war with each other. At the time, privateers were authorized by a nation to attack ships from that nation’s enemies, and would carry a “letter of marque” that was essentially their license to pillage. (This was supposed to ensure that they were treated as prisoners of war if they were captured.) Pirates were more or less the same thing, but without the letter.

The concept of piracy existed long before and after this era, of course. People have been attacking each other on boats for probably as long as people have had boats. And there are still pirates today, famously including those off the coast of Somalia. Fun fact: The U.S. never signed onto the treaty that made piracy illegal in Europe, and could still issue letters of marque today if it wanted.

They really did fly the Jolly Roger

Cheesy skull-and-crossbones flags seem like they must have been another bit of fictional fancy, but pirates did often fly a flag meant to terrorize their targets—and, potentially, negotiate their way out of a battle.

While tootling around the ocean, pirates would likely display whatever national flag they thought would bring them the least trouble—essentially disguising themselves as a military or merchant ship. But when it came time to attack, the jolly roger was raised. A red or black flag (or, later, a flag with skeletons or bleeding hearts or some other dramatic motif) was a convention from siege warfare on land, and was meant to convey “surrender or we kill you.” Surrender of the cargo, of course, being the pirates’ preference.

They didn’t make people “walk the plank”

In the movies, pirates have been known to make a captive walk out on a plank that hangs over the edge of the ship like a diving board. There’s no record of this occurring on a real-life ship. A popular 1724 book, A General History of the Pyrates, claimed that ancient pirates would throw a ship’s ladder over the side and tell captives they were free to leave, if they want to make a swim for it. That idea evolved into the “plank” in fiction.

That said, pirates did have plenty of creative ways to torture and kill people. Keel-hauling means throwing a person overboard on a rope, and passing them underneath the ship (the keel being underneath the ship). Maybe you’ll drown, maybe you’ll be ripped apart on the barnacles, or, hey, maybe you’ll survive.

Pirates weren’t all white men

While most pirates were dudes from Europe, there were plenty of folks on pirate ships who didn’t fit the demographic. We know of at least a dozen women who sailed in the “golden age” of piracy. And historians have estimated that as many as one-third of pirate crew members of the time were Black.