Golden Age of Piracy
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Pirate Funerals and Burial at Sea: What Actually Happened When a Pirate Died
Period sources describe sparse, utilitarian burials at sea, not the elaborate ceremonies of fiction, with a weighted shroud and a prayer book standing in for any pirate funeral rite.
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After the Pardon: What Happened to the Pirates Who Took the King’s Amnesty
The King’s 1718 pardon ended the pirate republic at Nassau on paper. What happened next to the men who took it, and the ones who didn’t, tells the real story.
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The Cryptogram of La Buse: Olivier Levasseur’s Unsolved Treasure Code
A pirate’s last words supposedly hid a treasure map in cipher. The real history of the code is stranger, and far more recent, than the legend admits.
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What Actually Killed Pirates: Disease, Not the Cutlass
Rats, lice, scurvy, and tropical fever did more damage to pirate crews than combat ever did, and Blackbeard’s Charleston blockade shows just how badly they needed medicine.
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A General History of the Pyrates: The Book That Invented the Pirates We Know
A mysterious 1724 bestseller by the pseudonymous “Captain Charles Johnson” invented most of what the world thinks it knows about Golden Age pirates.
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The 1715 Treasure Fleet: The Hurricane That Scattered a Fortune Off Florida
A hurricane wrecked eleven Spanish treasure ships off Florida in 1715 — and pirates, not just salvors, were first to the silver that washed ashore.
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What Pirates Actually Did With Their Prisoners
Ransom, forced recruitment, and the real meaning of the Jolly Roger: what actually happened to sailors captured by pirate crews during the Golden Age of Piracy.
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Keelhauling: The Brutal Punishment Pirates Rarely Actually Used
Keelhauling is the punishment every pirate film reaches for. The documented record points instead to the Dutch navy, with no sign pirate articles ever wrote it into their own rules.
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How Pirates Actually Navigated: Instruments, Not Instinct
Pirate crews used the same compasses, backstaffs, and dead reckoning as every other sailor of their day, and ran into the same unsolved problem of longitude.
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Nassau: Daily Life in the Pirates’ Republic, 1713–1718
For roughly five years, the Bahamian port of Nassau had no functioning government at all — just several thousand pirates, a harbor built for careening, and a rough code that passed for law.