WHEN PIRATES OWNED THE SEAS - # 4
# 1 > Pirates dominate movie box office profits, they are the theme park entertainment, and they occupy a place in popular culture that has outlasted the era when they originally ruled the seas. Contemporary audiences who are safe from the pistols and cutlasses of the men who sailed the Caribbean, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans to prey upon ships and claim their cargo may find it hard to reconcile the perceived glamor of Captain Jack Sparrow with the authentic blood-lust and greed of the real pirates who killed without conscience, kidnapped innocent victims for ransom, and ravaged, bribed, and robbed their way into legend. Tragut Rais, Grace O'Malley, William Kidd, Blackbeard and their colleagues were dangerous adventurers who lived at a time when piracy was an economic enterprise which yielded both wealth and hangman's noose. Most pirates had a short life before they were captured and executed. A few lucky ones did die of natural causes, but they were rare. Nonetheless, those tales of swashbuckling adventure under the Jolly Rodger continue to mesmerize us.
# 2 > Read more about the reality of the Golden Age of Piracy to find out whether or not Hollywood's version can possibly compare with the truth. We already know what occupation is regarded as the world's oldest profession, but if we try to rank the longevity of the employment which has enjoyed an impressive lifespan, piracy might well come in at a close second. The Golden Age of Piracy arose from a time when the powers of Europe were locked in a fierce battle for naval and mercantile supremacy, and as the fortunes of the nations ebbed and flowed, so did piracy. The popularity of pirate legend did not surface when Johnny Depp and Disney combined creative forces to create cinema's Pirates of the Caribbean franchise; even in classical tales, piracy takes a place of literary celebrity. Homer refers to pirates in the Iliad and Odyssey. Piracy was even, according to Plutarch, a somewhat glamorous option for men of high standing who were seeking adventure and profit at a time when merely to stay at home was to forsake a chance at wealth and glory.
3. Pirates have been an economic force to be reckoned with ever since ships set sail with cargo deemed alluring and profitable. But the reality of the pirate menace has been varnished by the images created by Hollywood and popular fiction. Silver screen icons who flew the Jolly Roger included Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, and Douglas Fairbanks. Fictional pirates such as Sabatini's Captain Blood and The Princess Bride's Dread Pirate Roberts contributed to the gallery of rogues who have entertained us. But when we think of pirates, some names immediately spring to mind, names that in their heyday would have elicited apprehension and terror for those who were about to come face-to-face with them. The likes of Stede Bonnet, Calico Jack rackham or, most feared of all, the bloodthirsty Blackbeard, whose ships plundered the oceans during the 17th and 18th centuries, were not Hollywood creations.
4 - However, piracy has impressive pedigree reaching back even farther than its Golden Age. There was John Hawkins a century earlier, whose raids against the Spanish played a role in the Armada which threatened England's existence, but earned him a knighthood from Queen Elizabeth I; the man memorialized on the liquor bottle, Sir Henry Morgan, started out as a pirate and ended up as an appointed governor. The Middle Ages had the Vikings, whose sailing skills and lust for treasure rendered them dangerous for three centuries. Before that, the Ancient World knew piracy well; Julius Caesar himself had an encounter with pirates, although he was one of the few who managed to turn the episode to his own advantage. All these ancestral pirates played a part in the evolution of the Golden Age of piracy, a fascinating and ruthless period in history when ships and the men ( and sometimes women ) who sailed them turned the oceans into an adventurous drama.
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