A Pirate's Life
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by: ToddMassey
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Word Count: 517
Is he a pirate? Pirate has become the general term used by most people today to call someone who sails the seas and commits crimes. But other names were used to help identify particular pirates through the ages.
A buccaneer was a pirate that lived in the Caribbean. They were originally French and some English that lived on the island of Hispaniola and the name is derived from the original Indians of the island who had a word called "buccan". The French word was a person or boucanier and then it became buccaneer. Due to conflicts with the Spanish, the buccaneers hated them for running them off the island.
A stretch of land and water called the Barbary Coast was home to the privateers or Islamic pirates called Barbary corsairs. The French and other non-Islamic nations considered the corsairs pirates, instead of privateers. But they focused their efforts on Christian and non-Islamic prey.
In the Mediterranean area where sea trading was extremely active was where pirates really came to grow and be very dynamic. The governments and countries fighting with each other often used pirates against their enemies. The city-states of Greece even used pirates at one time as tax collectors because they new the locals were so afraid of the pirates that the people would pay up.
France, Spain and England fought back and forth with each other many times through the years with pirates and privateers playing huge roles in the outcomes of battles and wars. Pirates could often prove so successful as to bring an entire navy to its knees or to steal government treasure or disrupt trade so badly as to bankrupt a country.
When trade would become too disrupted by pirates some governments would join together in a concentrated effort to purge the pirates from trade routes.
Buccaneers would run to the sea and a life of piracy in an attempt to break away from their cruel handling from former countries. This led to pirates creating what is known to be the first true individual democracy where every person on the boat had a vote in all activities. To enforce their own code the pirates dealt out harsh penalties to those that would violate shipboard laws.
Severe injury, lost limbs or body parts was commonplace in the dangerous life of a pirate. But pirates take care of their own, and established compensatory payment for injuries. Establishing in writing for example that the loss of a leg was worth 500 pieces of eight.
Being a pirate could be a tough existence, hazardous and lethal but your only other choice of a life at sea would have been the navy. Life in the navy gave you no choices, while pirates had a vote in many decisions. Not all men on a pirate ship were there voluntarily but even the navies used kidnapping and forced men and boys into service.
Navy pay was terrible while a pirate could receive large sums after a successful raid and the treasure had been divvied up. But as was often the case a pirate would spend or lose all his money in a few nights of celebration.
About the Author
Pirates live larger than life in our minds due to books and movies. Another great Pirate book has come out that plays up on the "Golden Age of Piracy".
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