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Matthew Bevis

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, edited by John Sutherland
Broadview, 261 pp, £10.95, December 2011, ISBN 978 1 55111 409 5

Silver: Return to Treasure Island by Andrew Motion
Cape, 404 pp, £12.99, March 2012, ISBN 978 0 224 09119 0

Treasure Island!!! by Sara Levine
Tonga, 172 pp, £10.99, January 2012, ISBN 978 1 60945 061 8

The first return to Treasure Island was made by Robert Louis Stevenson himself. Fourteen years after the novel was published, Longman's Magazine published 'The Persons of the Tale', in which Captain Smollett and Long John Silver step out of the narrative after the 32nd chapter to have a chat 'in an open place not far from the story'. Stevenson has the two men wonder whether there is 'such a thing as an Author', and - if there is - whose side he's on. The captain berates Silver for being a 'damned rogue'; the rogue retorts: 'Now, dooty is dooty, as I knows, and none better; but we're off dooty now; and I can't see no call to keep up the morality business.' The captain is sure that the author is 'on the side of good' (he means on his side). '"And so you was the judge, was you?" said Silver, derisively ... "What is this good? ... by all stories, you ain't no such saint ... Which is which? Which is good, and which bad?"' As the captain starts to denounce Silver again, the piece ends with the captain saying: '"But there's the ink-bottle opening. To quarters!" And indeed the author was just then beginning to write the words: chapter xxxiii.'

'The Persons of the Tale' isn't a sequel in the conventional sense, and it doesn't rely on the reader's interest in something 'to be continued' (we know how the story continues). Instead it entertains possibilities that lie within or behind the pages of the original book, in the gaps between words and chapters. The characters take orders from the storyteller, but the tale can't contain their whole story: after all, 'the ink-bottle opening' also led to this 'open place not far from the story'. In one sense, all spaces and characters are open places in Stevenson's writing. 'The reader never does feel quite at home with Stevenson's characters,' Chesterton observed. 'He cannot get rid of an impression that he knows too little about them; though he knows that he knows all that is important about them. His tragedy is that he knows only what is important.' It's true that we're rarely at home with these people - in part because home is one of the places they are least interested in - but this needn't be a tragedy. Henry James saw Stevenson as 'the writer who has most cherished the idea of a certain free exposure', adding that, 'to his view the normal child is the child who absents himself from the family circle.' Stevenson's most valued version of the normal is the intrepid or the agitated: if the author is at home with anybody, it's with those who can't be house-trained. Sargent's portrait of Stevenson and his wife, Fanny, captures this mood.

Stevenson saw 'comicality' and 'wit' in the painting, writing appreciatively to Sargent about the 'caged maniac lecturing about the foreign specimen in the corner'. But there are possible escape routes from the cage (Fanny said the painting was like 'an open box of jewels'): the door which leads to other doors, or the pictures on the wall which offer portals to partially glimpsed elsewheres. Our eyes, like the eyes we see in the image, are encouraged to search for what is absent from it or just out of view. Stevenson had hoped that Treasure Island - a story of strange absences and absentings - would appeal to a similar need to go looking for adventure, or for trouble. He said that the tale was 'as original as sin ... If this don't fetch the kids, why, they have gone rotten since my day.' Gone rotten, he meant, by not being nearly rotten enough.

The difficulty we have with Stevenson's people and places is often related to a weird precision in his writing. Take one sentence from early in the book, just after Long John Silver makes his first entrance 'with a face as big as a ham', all 'intelligent and smiling'. Silver has left the room and the squire shouts after him that all hands should be on deck by four in the afternoon: '"Aye, aye, sir," cried the cook, in the passage.' Grumbling to his publisher about emendations to a manuscript, Stevenson wrote: 'I must suppose my system of punctuation to be very bad; but it is mine; and it shall be adhered to with punctual exactness.' A proofreader might have been tempted to cut the comma before 'in the passage', but then readers would have been less likely to notice the oddity of the phrase, one that seems to keep Silver in our mind's eye for a shade longer than is necessary. Perhaps we are being asked to imagine how he might look as he acknowledges the order, or even simply to think about why we are given this detail at all. (Is Silver somehow different in the passage? Should we pay closer attention to him when we can't see him?) In its very assiduity to locate the man, the phrase arouses the feeling that he can't be located. The comma is like the wall between the characters, or like the half-open door in Sargent's painting - a barrier that obscures and lends significance to the view.
The full text of this book review is only available to subscribers of the London Review of Books.

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LRB · Matthew Bevis · Kids Gone Rotten: 'Treasure Island'

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John Singer Sargent's 'Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife' (1885). The first return to Treasure Island was made by Robert Louis Stevenson himself. Fourteen years after the novel was published, Longman's Magazine published 'The Persons of the Tale', in which Captain Smollett and Long John . . .

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Homework! Due Date: 30th April 2018

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Treasure Island and Stevenson's Techniques 

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Treasure Island and Stevenson's Techniques 

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This site is for educational purposes and no profit shall be derived by its creator.

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Robert Louis Stevenson | The most comprehensive web resource dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson

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The most comprehensive web resource dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson, designed for all: academics, school children and everybody interested in learning about RLS.

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From Elizabeth I's "Sea Dog" to the best-known pirate of the buccaneering era, here's a look at eight of the most notorious swashbucklers to find their sea legs.

1. The Barbarossa Brothers
Sailing from North Africa's Barbary Coast, the Barbarossa (which means "red beard" in Italian) brothers Aruj and Hizir became rich by capturing European vessels in the Mediterranean Sea. Though their most lucrative early victims included two papal galleys and a Sardinian warship, they began targeting the Spanish around the time Aruj lost an arm to them in battle. By 1516 the Ottoman sultan had essentially put Aruj in charge of the entire Barbary Coast, a position that Hizir took over two years later following his brother's death. Hizir, otherwise known as Khair-ed-Din, then spent the rest of his days fighting various Christian enemies, including a "Holy League" fleet specifically formed by the pope to destroy him.

2. Sir Francis Drake
Francis Drake, nicknamed "my pirate" by Queen Elizabeth I, was among the so-called "Sea Dog" privateers licensed by the English government to attack Spanish shipping. Drake sailed on his most famous voyage from 1577 to 1580, becoming the first English captain to circumnavigate the globe. On that same trip he lost four of his five boats, executed a subordinate for allegedly plotting a mutiny, raided various Spanish ports and captured a Spanish vessel loaded with treasure. A delighted Queen Elizabeth immediately knighted him upon his return. Eight years later, Drake helped defeat the Spanish Armada.

3. L'Olonnais
L'Olonnais was one of many buccaneers-a cross between state-sponsored privateers and outright outlaws-who plied the Caribbean Sea in the mid- to late 1600s. Also known as Jean-David Nau, L'Olonnais is believed to have begun raiding Spanish ships and coastal settlements-and cultivating a reputation for excessive cruelty-soon after arriving in the Caribbean as an indentured servant. Seventeenth-century pirate historian Alexander Exquemelin wrote that L'Olonnais would hack his victims to pieces bit by bit or squeeze a cord around their necks until their eyes popped out. Suspecting he had been betrayed, L'Olonnais supposedly once even cut out a man's heart and took a bite. Karma came back to haunt him in 1668, however, when, according to Exquemelin, he was captured and eaten by cannibals.

4. Henry Morgan
Perhaps the best-known pirate of the buccaneering era, Henry Morgan once purportedly ordered his men to lock the inhabitants of Puerto Príncipe, Cuba, inside a church so that they could plunder the town unhindered. He then moved on to capture Porto Bello, Panama, in part by creating a human shield out of priests, women and the mayor. Over the next few years, other brutal raids followed against two towns in Venezuela and Panama City. Though Morgan was briefly arrested in 1672, he ended up serving as acting governor of Jamaica in 1678 and again from 1680 to 1682. Ironically, the Jamaican legislature passed an anti-piracy law during his administration, and Morgan even assisted in pirate prosecution.

5. Captain Kidd
Once a respected privateer, Captain William Kidd set sail in 1696 with the assignment of hunting down pirates in the Indian Ocean. But he soon turned pirate himself, capturing vessels such as the Quedagh Merchant and killing a subordinate with a wooden bucket. A massive defection left him with a skeleton crew for the journey home, which included a stop at New York's Gardiners Island to bury treasure. Having run afoul of the powerful British East India Company, Kidd was arrested before making it back to England. He was then tried and executed, and his decaying body was displayed from the banks of the River Thames as a warning to other pirates.

6. Blackbeard
Born Edward Teach, Blackbeard intimidated enemies by coiling smoking fuses into his long, braided facial hair and by slinging multiple pistols and daggers across his chest. In November 1717 he captured a French slave ship, later renamed the Queen Anne's Revenge, and refitted it with 40 guns. With that extra firepower he then blockaded the port of Charleston, South Carolina, until the town's residents met his demands for a large chest of medicine. After laying low for a few months in North Carolina, Blackbeard was killed in battle with the British Navy. Legend holds that he received 20 stab wounds and five gunshot wounds before finally succumbing. The so-called Golden Age of Piracy, of which Blackbeard was a major part, would only last a few more years. But countless books, plays and movies-from "Treasure Island" to "Pirates of the Caribbean"-would later bring a romanticized version of that era squarely into the public eye.

7. Calico Jack
John Rackam, better known as Calico Jack, received a pardon for previous piracy acts in 1719. Nonetheless, he headed back out to sea the following year after seizing a 12-gun sloop from Nassau harbor in the Bahamas. Among Rackam's dozen or so followers were two of the only women pirates ever to ply Caribbean waters. One, Anne Bonny, had left her husband to be with Rackam, while the other, Mary Read, had purportedly been sailing for quite some time disguised in men's clothing. In October 1720 a pirate hunting boat overtook Rackam's drunken band. Only Bonny, Read and perhaps one man are believed to have offered any resistance. Though Rackam was executed the following month, his female crewmates escaped the hangman's noose because both were found to be pregnant. Read died in prison soon after, and no one knows what became of Bonny.

8. Madame Cheng
In 1805 Madame Cheng's husband, Cheng Yih, formed what quickly became the largest pirate confederation in history. Upon his death two years later, Madame Cheng took over the business and expanded it even further, commanding an estimated 1,800 ships and 70,000 men at the height of her powers. With the help of Cheung Po Tsai-the adopted son of her husband and also her lover-she demanded protection money from coastal communities, attacked ships in the South China Sea and once even kidnapped seven British sailors. Madame Cheng then took a pardon in 1810 when Chinese authorities began cracking down on piracy. A prostitute in her youth, she lived out her golden years running a large opium smuggling operation.

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8 Real-Life Pirates Who Roved the High Seas

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From Elizabeth I's "Sea Dog" to the best-known pirate of the buccaneering era, here's a look at eight of the most notorious swashbucklers to find their sea legs. 1. The Barbarossa Brothers Sailing from North Africa's Barbary Coast, the Barbarossa (which means "red beard" in Italian) brothers Aruj and Hizir became rich by capturing European vessels in the Mediterranean Sea.

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The Victorians

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Explore the Victorians and discover facts about their houses, clothes, inventions and health. What were the major events of Queen Victoria's reign?

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It was once a common belief among pirates that having women aboard a ship was bad luck, but that didn't stop a few swashbuckling ladies from joining and even leading bands of buccaneers. Take a look back at the criminal careers of five of history's most ferocious seafaring women.

Cheng I Sao

One of history's most influential raiders began her career in a Chinese brothel. Cheng I Sao, or the "wife of Cheng," was a Cantonese former prostitute who married a powerful corsair named Cheng I in 1801. The husband and wife team soon raised one of China's most formidable pirate armies. Their outfit boasted hundreds of ships and some 50,000 men, and it preyed on the fishing vessels, supply junks and the coastal villages of Southern China with impunity.

Upon her husband's death in 1807, Mrs. Cheng elbowed her way into power and partnered with a trusted lieutenant and lover named Chang Pao. Over the next few years, she plundered her way across Southeast Asia and assembled a fleet that rivaled many countries' navies. She also penned a rigorous code of conduct for her pirates. Rape of female prisoners was punishable by beheading, and deserters had their ears lopped off. Mrs. Cheng's bloody reign made her public enemy number one of the Chinese government, and in 1810, the British and Portuguese navies were enlisted to bring her to justice. Rather than duking it out at sea, she shrewdly agreed to surrender her fleet and lay down her cutlass in exchange for the right to keep her ill-gotten riches. Mrs. Cheng retired as one of history's most successful pirates, and went on to run a gambling house until her death in 1844 at the age of 69.

Anne Bonny

The notorious pirate Anne Bonny began her life as the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Irish lawyer. In an effort to hide her dubious parentage, her father had her dress a boy and pose as his law clerk for part of her youth. She later moved to America, where she married a sailor in 1718 and journeyed to the pirate-infested island of New Providence in the Bahamas. There, she abandoned her husband and fell under the spell of "Calico" Jack Rackam, a flamboyant buccaneer who plied his trade in the Caribbean.

Bonny had always been known for her "fierce and courageous temper"-according to one legend, she nearly beat a man to death when he tried to force himself on her-and she quickly showed she could guzzle rum, curse and wield a pistol and cutlass with the best of Calico Jack's crew. She later forged a friendship with fellow female pirate Mary Read, and the pair played a leading role in a spree of raids against small fishing boats and trading sloops in the summer and fall of 1720. Bonny's stint on the high seas was cut short that October, when Calico Jack's ship was captured by a band of pirate-hunters. Calico Jack and several other men were executed, but Bonny and Read dodged the noose after they were both found to be pregnant.

Mary Read

Born in England in the late-17th century, Mary Read spent most of her youth disguised as her deceased half-brother so that her penniless mother could scam the boy's grandmother. Hoping to quench her thirst for adventure, she later adopted the name Mark Read and took on a succession of traditionally male jobs, first as a soldier and later as a merchant sailor. Read turned pirate in the late-1710s, after buccaneers attacked the ship she was working on and impressed her into their ranks. She later found her way aboard Calico Jack Rackam's boat, where she met and befriended Anne Bonny and revealed herself to be a woman.

Read only sailed with Calico Jack for a few months, but during that time she won a fearsome reputation. One of her most famous exploits came in October 1720, when she and Bonny fought like banshees during an attack by pirate-hunters. "If there's a man among ye," she supposedly screamed at the male buccaneers cowering below decks, "ye'll come up and fight like the man ye are to be!" Despite Read's heroics, she and the rest of Calico Jack's crew were captured and charged with piracy. Read avoided execution by admitting she was "quick with child," but she later came down with a fever and died in prison.

Grace O'Malley

During a time when most women were denied an education and kept restrained to their homes, pirate Grace O'Malley led a 20-ship fleet that stood up to the might of the British monarchy. Also known as "Granuaille," or "bald," for her habit of cutting her hair short, O'Malley was born into a powerful clan that lorded over the coastlines of western Ireland. After taking the reigns in the 1560s, she continued a family tradition of piracy by plundering English and Spanish shipping vessels and attacking rival chieftains. Her escapades were legendary-one tale claims she did battle at sea only a day after giving birth-but they also drew the ire of the authorities. She was forced to repel a siege against her stronghold at Rockfleet Castle in 1574, and later did 18 months behind bars after she was captured during one of her raids.

O'Malley resumed her marauding after her release, but more trouble arrived in the early 1590s, when British authorities impounded her fleet. With nowhere else to turn, the 63-year-old buccaneer appealed directly to Queen Elizabeth I for assistance. During a famous royal audience in London, O'Malley portrayed herself as a tired and broken old woman and begged the Queen to return her ships, release one of her captured sons and allow her to retire in peace. The gambit worked, but it seems that "Granuaille" didn't keep up her end of the bargain-records show that she and her sons continued pirating until her death in 1603.

Rachel Wall

Rachel Wall's biography is peppered with myths and legends, but if certain tales about her are true, she was one of the first and only American women to try her hand at piracy. As the story goes, Wall was a Pennsylvania native who ran away from home as a teen and married a fisherman named George Wall. The couple settled in Boston and tried to scrape out a living, but constant money problems eventually led them to turn to a life of crime. In 1781, the Walls procured a small boat, teamed with a few low-life mariners and began preying on ships off the coast of New England. Their strategy was as ingenious as it was brutal. Whenever a storm passed through the region, the buccaneers would dress their boat up to look like it had been ravaged by rough seas. The comely Rachel would then stand on the deck and plead for aid from passing ships. When the unsuspecting rescuers came near, they were promptly boarded, robbed and murdered.

Wall's siren song may have lured as many as a dozen ships to their doom, but her luck ran out in 1782, when a real storm destroyed her boat and killed George. She continued her thieving on land, and was later arrested in 1789 for attacking and robbing a Boston woman. While in prison, she penned a confession admitting to "Sabbath-breaking, stealing, lying, disobedience to parents, and almost every other sin a person could commit, except murder." Unfortunately for Wall, the mea culpa was not enough to sway the authorities. On October 8, she became the last woman ever executed in Massachusetts when she was hanged to death in Boston

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According to legend, New York's Hudson River was once the territory of a gang of buccaneers led by a woman nicknamed "Sadie the Goat." Starting in 1869, Sadie sailed a stolen sloop on raids against boats and riverside mansions, all while flying the famous Jolly Roger flag.

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Close your eyes and imagine a pirate. Was he wearing an eye patch, burying some gold and overusing the letter "r"? If so, we're here to tell you that the image of pirates that Hollywood has taught you isn't just wrong -- in most cases, the truth was even more badass.

For example ...

The Myth:
Quick -- do a pirate voice.

We don't care if you can't imitate any other accent in the world, if we ask you (or anyone else on earth) to talk like a pirate, you'll go, "ARRRR, MATEY!"

This is thanks to decades of cartoons and movies where everyone playing a pirate was legally obligated to litter their speech with "arrs" and the like while assuming the intonation of a rowdy drunken Englishman. Unless your name is Johnny Depp, that is; then you're obligated to assume the intonation of Johnny Depp in every Johnny Depp movie ever.

Granted, outside of the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise there haven't been a lot of pirate movies in the past few decades, but at the same time there's been no shortage of pirate or pirate-talking characters invading other genres: Like the Pirate Captain in The Venture Bros., the other Pirate Captain in The Simpsons, Steve the Pirate in Dodgeball and Agent Scurvy Pirateson in CSI: Miami.

Obviously, we know the "pirate accent" we hear in these shows and films is exaggerated, just like they would exaggerate a French or Mexican accent, but it must be based on something real, right?

The Venture Bros. wouldn't lie to us.
The Truth:
Phrases like " shiver my timbers" and traditional pirate songs like " Fifteen Men on the Dead Man's Chest" were made up by Robert Louis Stevenson for his novel Treasure Island, published in 1883 -- over 150 years after the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. We might as well tell you right now that 90 percent of all pirate tropes come from the same book: One legged pirates, squawking parrots, drunken mutinies ... all that stuff can be traced back to Treasure Island.

Yes, pirates did lose limbs in battle, mutiny on occasion and get shitfaced a lot, but Stevenson was the first to combine those elements into one package, creating the popular image of pirates.

But what about the "arr" voice? That actually comes from the West Country accent from the southwestern portion of England. In the 1950 Disney adaptation of Treasure Island, Robert Newton played a pirate from the West Country and overdid it a little with the accent, throwing "arr" into every other sentence. Two years later Newton used the same accent in Blackbeard the Pirate, and the stereotype was cast.

To put this in perspective, if Newton played a pirate from Boston, we'd all be imagining pirates shouting "wicked pissah" as they boarded enemy ships.

So what did pirates actually sound like? In reality, there never was one "pirate accent" at all, mainly because that makes no damn sense. The idea of a pirate dialect assumes that all pirates spoke English and used the same slang, when in fact many pirate crews were from different countries. If pirates did have a distinct way of speaking, it was only in the sense that they needed to employ nautical terms on a daily basis. You can take solace in the fact that English-speaking pirates did use the word "avast," but the probability of it ever being combined with "mateys" is slim at best.

The Myth:
The eye patch the single most recognizable feature of a pirate -- when putting together a Halloween costume, it can make the difference between "badass sea warrior" and "asshole in a puffy shirt." In every pirate movie there's always at least one crew member who wears an eye patch, usually due to some hideous disfigurement. Like the guy with the wooden eyeball in the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

With all those peg legs, hook hands and eye patches, it's like these movies are trying to tell us that pirates, more so than any other group of people in history, were remarkably good at misplacing body parts. At other times they were simply born without them -- like One-Eyed Willie from The Goonies, who didn't even have an eye socket under that patch.

But what was it about pirates that made them more likely to lose an eye than, say, Vikings or something?
The Truth:
Actually, it looks like the only reason pirates wore eye patches was to keep one eye adjusted to darkness while boarding another ship. That's right: If this theory is correct, they only wore the patch before and during a raid.

Think about it: Pirates needed to be able to fight and ransack both above and below deck, and since artificial light wasn't a thing, it could get pretty dark down there. A guy could trip on a treasure chest or something. It takes the human eye several minutes to adjust to darkness -- however, this way, pirates could simply swap the eye patch and immediately be prepared to fight in the lower decks without constantly running into walls, which is something you'd probably want to avoid if you're carrying a cutlass.

Obviously we don't know for sure that this was always the case, but this explanation does make more sense than "they all happened to lose one eye" or "they thought it would look cool." True, you're sacrificing your peripheral vision, but it's better than having no vision at all. If you don't believe us, it's easy enough to try this yourself -- just cover your eye with your hand for the next half hour and then walk into a dark closet.

In fact, this method works so well that it's still used by the American military today. Nighttime survival guides recommend keeping one eye closed during bright lights to preserve night vision, and the same goes for military pilots. So all those movie pirates wearing eye patches all the time? Turns out they're just being extra careful.

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The Myth:
The classic Jolly Roger is so representative of pirates that we shouldn't even have to type the word "pirates" by now; a little symbol of a skull and some crossbones should suffice (we're lobbying hard to get that added to every keyboard). The flag has been used in virtually every movie where pirates appear, ever, from the really old ones with Errol Flynn ...

... to Veggie Tales.

Or Disney's Peter Pan. Sometimes the skull is replaced with two cutlasses, like in Barbossa's flag in Pirates of the Caribbean, but other than that and how expertly or crappily it is drawn, it's always pretty much the same thing.

But this makes sense, right? The purpose of the flag was to intimidate sailors and steal their loot while they were too busy shitting their pants, so it makes sense that they should all choose something ominous like a skull on a black background.
The Truth:
Actually, if there was a pirate ship approaching and you saw a black flag waving, you were in luck: It meant the pirates were willing to give quarter. The real "Oh shit we're completely fucked" flag sported a decidedly more minimalistic "completely red" design -- in fact, historians believe that the term Jolly Roger comes from " jolie rouge," which is French for "pretty red," which in turn sounds like the name of a romantic comedy starring Emma Stone.

Also, the design of the black flag varied a lot from ship to ship: Only a few pirate captains used the skull and crossbones design, like Edward England and Christopher Condent. On the other hand, a pirate that you may have actually heard of, Blackbeard, used a bizarre flag with a skeleton holding an hourglass and stabbing a bleeding heart:

The hourglass was actually a common element in many pirate flags, since it symbolized the inevitability of death (more so than a freaking skull, apparently). Captains Walter Kennedy and Jean Dulaien also incorporated the hourglass, except in their case it was being held by a naked guy swinging a sword at a perplexed floating face:

Olek Remesz
His lack of genitalia was meant to represent the inevitability of your dick being cut off.

And some of them didn't give a shit, like Thomas Tew and his magnificently lazy flag of an arm holding a cutlass:

There are a lot of designs to make fun of and not enough time, sadly, but we should also mention that most pirates stuck to all red or all black flags. Also, all these designs are only recreations of the real thing based on descriptions like this one, so there's a huge chance that they all looked completely different in reality. For example, a museum in Florida has one of the only two authentic Jolly Rogers that remain, and it looks pretty far from the detailed skull drawing that we're used to. It's almost like it was shoddily put together by some sort of uncultured ... oh wait.

St. Augustine Pirate & Treasure Museum
It was actually supposed to be a little guy dancing, but no one got it.

The Myth:
Based on what we've learned from the singing pirates on Peter Pan, the life of a pirate was all about stealing, fighting and collecting booty, and therefore the decision to become one must have depended entirely on how much you enjoyed those things. Pirates of the Caribbean adds "ingesting massive amounts of alcohol" to the mix. Look at any pirate song and you'll see the same basic ingredients repeated over and over.

Above: Roughly
three-tenths of a pirate.

In fact, the entire twist of movies like The Princess Bride (we're assuming you've either seen it by now or don't care) depends on people taking for granted that the only way to become a pirate was by being a complete wreck of a human being -- not even Westley's own crew knows he sort of stumbled upon his "Dread Pirate Roberts" title out of necessity, not criminal tendencies, because that would kill his reputation.

More so than those
Saw movies he'd go on to make.

After all, it's not like decent citizens just went and became pirates all the time ...
The Truth:
Wait, no, it did happen all the time. The overwhelming majority of pirates were honest sailors who ditched their jobs because the conditions were awful. Only a small minority became a pirate because they actually enjoyed being an outlaw. Being a sailor during pirate times was one of the shittiest jobs ever, and if they lived under British rule, most of them didn't so much "sign up" as "get kidnapped by the Royal Navy."

Seriously, at one point, half the British Navy consisted of men forcibly recruited by hired thugs who scoured the harbors looking for anyone with a full set of limbs. If they didn't have enough money to pay off these thugs, they were suddenly sailors. " Pressed men" were paid less than volunteers (if they were paid at all), were shackled to the ships while on port so they didn't try to make a run for it and were flailed for any minor offense in a naval handbook that they probably didn't even get a chance to read.

Getty "That's the last time
he'll hum "Karma Chameleon" on deck."

That's without counting all the storms, crowded quarters and tropical diseases that made life so shitty for sailors in general. As a result, 75 percent of men who were press-ganged ended up dead within two years. So when a pirate crew captured their ship and offered them an alternative to certain death and constant humiliation, a lot of them understandably replied, "Fuck yeah!" In pirate movies, there's always a huge difference between the clean-cut lawful sailors and the nasty, deformed pirates, but it turns out they were basically the same thing.

Wouldn't the older pirates basically treat the fresh meat like slaves, though? Apparently not. We've told you about Black Bart, the sailor who was captured by pirates and six weeks later became their captain -- kinda like Westley's story in The Princess Bride, except for the fact that his crew knew exactly where he came from and didn't give a shit.

"This guy has fewer visible open sores than
any of us. He should be captain!"

The Myth:
This is like the main thing that pirates do, right? Steal treasure, put it in a chest, bury it someplace and then draw a map to remind themselves where they left it? If we are to believe RPG games, the whole world is littered with treasure chests that someone forgot about -- and according to The Goonies, the map could very well be hidden in your attic.

The Pirates of the Caribbean movies notably found more things for the pirates to do than just bury and search for treasure, but those are still important parts of the story. After all, they couldn't get away with ignoring such a central part of real-life pirating, because this was totally a real thing that people did (we sure hope the next paragraph doesn't disprove it).
The Truth:
Pirates did bury their treasure ... like three times. None of those three guys made a map, meaning that authentic pirate treasure maps have simply never existed.

Not only did treasure maps not exist -- they were never even necessary, because the buried booty was usually found right away. The first pirate that we know for sure buried a treasure was Sir Francis Drake, who in 1573 robbed a Spanish mule train loaded with gold and silver and buried some of it along the road because it was too heavy to carry in one trip (if only there had been some mules nearby). Apparently the treasure wasn't so expertly hidden, though, because by the time Drake and his men came back to retrieve it the Spanish had found and dug up most of it.

Another famous pirate, Roche Brasiliano, confessed to burying more than a hundred thousand pieces of eight near Cuba after being tortured by the Spanish Inquisition, who thanked him for the tip and killed him. Captain William Kidd is said to have buried some treasure near Long Island in 1699, but again it was found by the authorities almost right away and used as evidence against him in England. And that's about it. If there were more, no one's been able to prove it.

Maybe if those guys had been more successful, treasure-burying might have caught on among pirates, but that doesn't seem to be the case. However, there were still persistent (unfounded) rumors that some of Captain Kidd's treasure was never found, and that was enough to capture the imagination of writers and painters everywhere.

Original gangster.

Kidd's legend inspired Washington Irving's Tales of a Traveller in 1824 and Edgar Allan Poe's " The Gold-Bug" in 1843, among others, which incorporated the idea of a treasure map. Irving's work influenced Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, and the rest was (a gross misconception of) history.

So if they never buried it, what did pirates do with all that gold that they obviously collected? Well ...

The Myth:
Pretty much every pirate movie we've mentioned so far involves some sort of massive stash of pirate gold: There's the room full of treasure in The Goonies ...

Horror Film Props

The haunted gold cavern in Pirates of the Caribbean ...

And the entire treasure island in Treasure Island (we're guessing, we've never seen it). Often the entire plot revolves around getting or keeping the gold, like in Roman Polanski's Pirates or Cutthroat Island.

But pirates did raid ships and steal their gold: That's a historical fact, and don't you dare take that away from us, Cracked. Why else would they raid ships? What could possibly be more important to pirates than riches?
The Truth:
How about soap? Or food? Or candles, sewing tools and other horribly mundane household supplies? When a ship was taken by pirates, the loot was more often that not a cargo of salted fish or supplies going to the colonies -- and they were pretty OK with that.

Pirates were big fans of gold and silver, but they were even bigger fans of not starving to death in the middle of the ocean or accidentally drowning because they didn't have the equipment to perform necessary repairs on their ships. Being outlaws, they knew they couldn't just pull into the local 7-Eleven and load up on provisions and spare parts, so they had to be judicious when it came to their loot. They also raided ships for slightly less boring stuff like gunpowder and navigational tools. For those sailing in tropical climates, however, the real treasure was actually a chest filled with medical supplies.

And if they did come across a spectacular amount of money (which did happen on occasion), they preferred to spend that shit right away in a place like Port Royal -- the pirate harbor so licentious that God pulled a Sodom and Gomorrah on it -- rather than save up to invest in some sort of 17th century 401k.
Read more of Yosomono at his headquarters at the GaijinAss Web page or follow him on Twitter @GaijinAss. For the truth behind other historic lies, check out The 5 Most Ridiculous Lies You Were Taught In History Class and 6 Ridiculous History Myths (You Probably Think Are True). And stop by LinkSTORM to see how you can get a piece of David Wong's booty. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed. Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infograpic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!

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6 Absurd Pirate Myths Everyone Believes (Thanks to Movies)

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Close your eyes and imagine a pirate. Was he wearing an eye patch, burying some gold and overusing the letter "r"? If so, we're here to tell you that the image of pirates that Hollywood has taught you isn't just wrong -- in most cases, the truth was even more badass.

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Выживание в городе

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Treasure Island, by Robert Stevenson (audiobook)

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Summary of Treasure Island

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson tells the story of Jim, a young boy who watches over an inn in an English seaside town with his mother and his gravely ill father. A new guest at the inn, Bill, terrifies everyone at the inn with his raunchy sea songs and threats of violence.

Bill falls ill and dies just as pirates descend on the inn to kill Bill and to ransack his things. Just before the pirates can burst in and find Jim and his mom, the two of them escape with a number of coins and a pouch. Jim finds out that there is a treasure map hidden in the pouch.

After showing this map to the doctor that waited on his father and Bill, Dr. Livesey, the doctor and his friend Squire Trelawney decide to set sail to uncover the treasure. Jim goes along as a member of the crew.

The squire and doctor hire a number of men to head the voyage, including Long John Silver as the ship's cook. Along the journey at sea, Jim falls asleep inside a barrel and awakes to hear that Long John Silver has planned a mutiny along with most of the crew!

Once they reach the island with the treasure, Jim slips onshore with Silver and some of the mutineers. After the mutineers kill two men that don't want to join the mutiny, Jim runs away into the jungle on the island. While there, he meets an abandoned man, Ben Gunn.

Meanwhile, Trelawney, the doctor, and the other men get ashore and find a stockade, or a giant wooden enclosure, something like a mini-fort. Eventually, after a meeting between Silver and the captain of the ship in the stockade, there is a battle. While a number of mutineers are killed, two men die and one is injured within the stockade, and Dr. Livesey goes out to find Ben Gunn and enlist his help.

Jim sneaks out of the stockade and cuts the ship loose, crashing it on the beach, securing it for the crew, and killing a pirate left on the ship in self-defense. Jim sneaks back to the stockade where, to his surprise, Long John Silver and his men are now staying! Silver explains that the captain and Dr. Livesey agreed to give up the map and the stockade for free passage. However, when the mutineers get to the treasure, they find that someone has already dug it up! Before the angry mutineers can attack Silver and Jim, the original crew pop up and ambush them with guns, having already dug up and hid the treasure.

Though Silver slips away from the crew during the journey back to England, evading a trial and hanging, Jim still has terrifying dreams of him for many months afterward.

The Main Characters

Jim Hawkins: The young son of the owners of the Admiral Benbow Inn, Jim is impulsive and adventurous by nature. He agrees to spy for Bill the pirate, helps his mother get her deserved payment from Bill's room even as they know pirates are coming for them, and twice slips away from the crew to explore the island or to try and hurt the mutineers.

Dr. Livesey: The doctor is fairly brave as well; he is the only one who dares to stand up to Bill at the inn, and he goes out to track down Ben Gunn and trick the pirates by digging up the treasure and giving them the now-worthless map. He is also very principled; even though he finds Bill and the mutineers to be scummy, he still treats their illnesses and injuries to the best of his ability.

Long John Silver: Long John Silver is the dreaded one-legged pirate that Bill asks Jim to watch out for at the beginning of the book. He is friendly to Jim initially; his charisma is usually enough to get anyone to like and follow him. He is also a schemer; he arranges the mutiny and then manages to stay alive when the mutineers want to dispose of him. He is also clever enough to escape imprisonment at the end of the book as the surviving crew sails back to England with the treasure.

Ben Gunn: Gunn is a stranded Englishman who was left on the island by his former crew because he failed to help them find the treasure. He is desperate to get off the island, and he agrees to help Jim and the crew in exchange for some of the treasure and passage off the island. He is a major help to the crew, killing a mutineer and helping to ambush the rest of the mutineers near the end of the story.

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characters & author - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Treasure Island: Summary, Characters & Author - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson tells the story of Jim, a young boy who watches over an inn in an English seaside town with his mother and his gravely ill father. A new guest at the inn, Bill, terrifies everyone at the inn with his raunchy sea songs and threats of violence.

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Treasure Island Introduction

Picture this: it's the late 19th century and you're Robert Louis Stevenson, a struggling Scottish author who's written a number of books about traveling through Europe and the United States. Your parents kind of hate you because, in this conservative day and age (the late 1870s), you've fallen in love with a married woman who is ten years older than you. Her name is Fanny Osbourne, and you are carrying on an adulterous relationship in her hometown of San Francisco. Not only are your folks shocked and horrified by your behavior, but you are sick (you've had a severe lung disease, tuberculosis, for most of your life) and really, really poor. So you need a miracle. That miracle comes in the form of one terrific idea: you decide to write a book about pirates. And fortunately, your girlfriend's son can help you with it.

The idea for Treasure Island came from a map of an imaginary island Stevenson drew with Fanny's son, Lloyd Osbourne. Stevenson took this map and decided to write "a story for boys; no need of psychology or fine writing" ( source). Stevenson focuses almost entirely on plot in this book, with very little direct exploration of character's psychology or motivations. We don't know what makes Long John Silver a pirate, we just know that he is one - a darned good one - and that's enough to keep the book going.

This lack of psychological depth makes Treasure Island really different from another of Stevenson's famous books, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . But it's also a sign of the audience Stevenson is looking for. He's aiming Treasure Island at kids, who are more interested in cool stuff happening than in intense descriptions of characters' inner selves. Still, even if Stevenson is trying to avoid "fine writing," Treasure Island remains full of observations about human nature and interaction that keep the reader interested in the characters as well as in the story's many twists and turns.

Stevenson originally published Treasure Island under the title The Sea-Cook (referring, of course, to that fabulously tricky pirate Long John Silver) in the magazine Young Folks over a period of several months from 1881 to 1882. It didn't do that well as a series of episodes, possibly because the title is so boring (seriously, who wants to read about a chef on the ocean?). But then Stevenson repackaged the story as a book, Treasure Island, in 1883, and it became a bestseller ( source). Stevenson still wasn't exactly a lucky guy (he died young of tuberculosis), but Treasure Island made him famous in both his lifetime and long after his death - not bad for a book that developed out of an idle afternoon's sketching with his girlfriend's son.

What is Treasure Island About and Why Should I Care?

We all know what pirates are like: we've seen Captain Hook in Peter Pan and Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe we've even eaten at chain seafood restaurant Long John Silver's. Pirates sing drunkenly: "Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!" Pirates keelhaul and force their enemies to walk the plank, sending them to the depths of the ocean: "Davy Jones's locker." And pirates shout things like, "Avast!" and "Shiver me timbers." They show nothing but contempt for land-dwellers - "lubbers" and "swabs," the lot of them.

The guy who invented pretty much everything we know about pirates is Robert Louis Stevenson, in a little book called Treasure Island. Oh sure, Stevenson mixes in a lot of real sea language, with his boatswains and coxswains and jibs and bowsprits. But Treasure Island was also key in popularizing a certain idea of how pirates talk - and look, too. Peg-legged, parrot-touting Long John Silver has become everyone's image of a pirate, and we owe it all to Stevenson's gift for language, suspense, and invention. Stevenson is even the one who wrote that song, "Dead Man's Chest" - the title of the second Pirates of the Caribbean flick. So obviously Treasure Island has left fingerprints all over our popular understanding of pirate culture.

Even though Stevenson is writing over two centuries after the so-called Golden Age of Piracy (the era of the most famous real-life pirate ever, Blackbeard and a hundred years after the setting of Treasure Island itself, he still manages to give us a world of pirates that feels real, filled with greed, desperation, cynicism, strange alliances, and charismatic sea-cooks. Over hundred and thirty years after the publication of Treasure Island, Stevenson's fictional world of piracy seems more real than any factual analysis of crime on the high seas. If you've ever spent even a minute dreaming of sailing the ocean blue and digging up gold doubloons, trust us, Treasure Island is the book for you.

Treasure Island Resources

Links

Treasure Island (1909)
This online edition of Treasure Island also includes reviews and responses to the novel from some of Robert Louis Stevenson's peers.

Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850 - 1894
This exhibition of Stevenson editions and papers appeared in 1994, the centennial anniversary of his death. The online catalog has a lot of neat pictures of different editions and illustrations of Stevenson's many, many works.

"How Pirates Work"
If Treasure Island has got you thirsting for more pirates, check out this fabulous article on real-life pirates through the ages, from the Caribbean in the Age of Sail to today's Somalia.

Movie or TV Productions

Treasure Island (1934)
Classic movie production with Wallace Beery as "lovable" Long John Silver. Lovable...really?

Treasure Island (1972)
We haven't seen this one, but we're dying to. Orson Welles plays Long John Silver! You may remember him from such insanely important films as Citizen Kane and The Third Man.

Treasure Island (1990)
We've seen and loved this one: Long John Silver is played by a hale, hearty Charlton Heston, and young Jim Hawkins is...Christian Bale of Batman fame! Crazy.

Documents

A Collection of Stevenson Documents from the Thomas Cooper Library
This collection is located at the University of South Carolina; it includes an original copy of both The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Treasure Island.

Videos

Treasure Island
The opening of the 1990 film starring Christian Bale and Charlton Heston.

Muppet Treasure Island
O.M.G., we are so excited. We know what we're going to be watching this afternoon!

Audios

Treasure Island
Project Gutenberg audio book, thankfully read by a human being.

Images

So Helpful: A Map of Treasure Island
This is a relatively large, clear version of the map of Treasure Island. We don't know about you, but our paperback edition's map is practically invisible.

Embarrassing Baby Pictures Are Apparently A Tradition
Robert Louis Stevenson's mother kept a complete diary of everything young Stevenson did and (as was the tradition in Victorian times) dressed him in drag to have his photograph taken.

Fanny Osbourne
Stevenson's scandalous older lover and, eventually, wife. She was also the mother of Stevenson's stepson and collaborator on the original map of Treasure Island, Lloyd Osbourne

Valima
The Stevensons' house in Samoa, where Robert Louis Stevenson passed away.

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Picture this: it's the late 19th century and you're Robert Louis Stevenson, a struggling Scottish author who's written a number of books about traveling through Europe and the United States. Your parents kind of hate you because, in this conservative day and age (the late 1870s), you've fallen in love with a married woman who is ten years older than you.

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Adapting a book is a sure-fire way of discovering its strengths and weaknesses. Its plot must prove truly dramatic; dialogue must not only ring true but reveal character and advance the action. Robert Louis Stevenson's South Sea Tales, broadcast this weekend starring David Tennant, are my 10th foray into adapting for Radio 4's Classic Serial slot - after novels by Edith Wharton, Dodie Smith and John Wyndham - and I have never felt more privileged to be let loose on another writer's work.

Both The Beach at Falesá and The Ebb Tide (novellas, in fact, at 70 pages and 131 pages respectively) were written while Stevenson lived in Samoa, from 1890-94, in the final years of his short life. He brought to them all the literary skills he had developed over his career as a bestselling writer, but beyond technique and confidence, these tales have a savage political and moral engagement, a real-world vision, and a black humour that is more distilled here than in anything else he wrote.

His attitudes to the indigenous people, who included cannibals, differed widely from that of most other white visitors

Stevenson and his wife, Fanny, set off for the South Seas in 1888, when he knew he was under sentence of death. He'd been suffering lung haemorrhages for years and doctors advised a warmer climate. Exploring the islands gave him a new energy and engaged his passionate curiosity about the islanders, both colonisers and colonised. From the start, his attitudes to the indigenous people, who included cannibals, differed widely from those of most other Europeans. In his journalism about his travels, he reveals that he found many resemblances between them and Scottish highlanders and islanders of the 18th century:

In both cases an alien authority enforced, the clans disarmed, the chiefs deposed, new customs introduced, and chiefly that of regarding money as the means and object of existence ... Hospitality, tact, natural fine manners and a touchy punctilio are common to both races: common to both tongues the trick of dropping medial consonants ...

Stevenson, Fanny and numerous relatives, visitors and Polynesians settled in an estate he named Vailima in 1890. He learned to read and speak the language. His increasing knowledge of, and involvement in, island politics, and his back-breaking work clearing paths through the jungle on the estate, fed into the fiction he wrote there. It was fiction so different from or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hydethat his fans were dismayed, and Oscar Wilde wrote: "I see that romantic surroundings are the worst surroundings possible for a romantic writer."

The Beach at Falesá tells the story of trader, Wiltshire, who is welcomed by another white trader on the island, Case, and offered a native wife, Uma. Case organises a grotesque parody of a wedding between Wiltshire and Uma, and feigns ignorance when Wiltshire finds himself instantly tabooed. No one on the island will trade with him. Gradually the truth emerges. Case has driven other traders from the island and even helped to kill a couple of them; the natives are in thrall to him, convinced he has devilish powers. Blunt, racist, atheist Wiltshire is an unlikely hero, but he is revealed to be both decent and courageous, and he falls in love with Uma, who is herself extraordinarily brave. Stevenson's depiction of a strong, intelligent native woman is based on observation; in his journalism he reports that power in Samoa resided in rank, not gender.

It is Wiltshire who relates the story, opening with: "I saw that island first when it was neither night nor morning. The moon was to the west, setting, but still broad and bright. To the east, and right amidships of the dawn, which was all pink, the daystar sparkled like a diamond ...", beautifully setting up the conflicts to come: night and day, dark and light, death and love. In a letter to his close friend Colvin, Stevenson called it "the first realistic South Seas story; I mean with real South Sea character and details of life". It is fascinating to trace that realism back to actual events described in his and Fanny's journals. In the Gilbert islands a native woman proudly displayed her marriage certificate to them. It stated that she was "married for one night" and that her white "husband was at liberty to send her to hell the next morning". Uma's marriage certificate, which she guards jealously, contains the same wording, and as Wiltshire falls in love with her it gnaws at his conscience sufficiently for him to request a proper marriage by a missionary. Similarly, Case's "Devil-Church" in the bush terrifies natives with a glowing devil's face, just as Fanny frightened thieves away nightly from her piglets by painting a hideous mask in luminous paint on a cask lid.

Attwater is the most villainous villain you are likely to meet this side of Kurtz

Stevenson's letters record that The Ebb Tide, published two years later, was painfully difficult to write, and although it still contains glints of comedy, the story is dark indeed. Three down-and-outs are malingering on the beach at Papeete, scrounging food from Polynesian sailors. Davis is a disgraced US sea captain, Huish a thieving cockney, Herrick an Oxford-educated failure. Their fortunes are reversed when Davis is given captaincy of a schooner that no one else will touch because the captain and mate have died of smallpox. Our three desperadoes set sail with a Polynesian crew, and are soon tucking into the cargo of champagne and squabbling horribly. Their plans to steal the ship are thwarted by a shortage of stores, and they put in at a private island where they find a "huge, dangerous-looking fellow. His manners and movements, like fire in flint, betrayed his European ancestry". He is Attwater, the most villainous villain you are likely to meet this side of Kurtz (I am not alone in thinking Joseph Conrad may owe the older and, at that time, more successful Stevenson something of a debt for Heart of Darkness). Attwater has combined missionary zeal with ruthless efficiency in running a pearl fishery, and 29 of his 32 slaves have recently died of smallpox. The dinner to which he invites his three guests is a masterpiece of suspense, over which he presides with veiled menace. "A cat o fhuge growth sat on his shoulder purring, and occasionally, with a deft paw, capturing a morsel in the air." (A prototype for Blofeld?) Here's a morsel of dialogue from that dinner. The conversation has turned to Attwater's method of slave-driving.

"Wait a bit," said the captain. "I'm out of my depth. How was this? Do you mean to say you did it single‑handed?"
"One did it single-handed," said Attwater, "because there was nobody to help one."
"'Ope you made 'em jump," said Huish.
"When it was necessary, Mr Whish, I made them jump."

Herrick, the Hamlet of the piece, paralysed by indecision, listens in silence. Note the captain's drowning figure of speech, Attwater's upper-crust "one", and his insulting mispronunciation of Huish's name. As for Huish, his accent is written in.

Snobbery, the greed and cruelty of white people, religious hypocrisy and the casual destruction of native cultures and lives are all grist to Stevenson's mill. Yet he succeeds in exploring these dark themes in tales of high drama and suspense, with wicked humour and an infectious open-heartedness towards all his characters. They are exposed, but rarely judged.

The Beach at Falesá is on Radio 4 at 9pm on 10 December and The Ebb Tide at 3pm on 11 December. Jane Rogers's latest novel is Conrad and Eleanor.
Topics

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Why Robert Louis Stevenson's South Sea Tales go against the tides

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Adapting a book is a sure-fire way of discovering its strengths and weaknesses. Its plot must prove truly dramatic; dialogue must not only ring true but reveal character and advance the action.

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During the so-called "Golden Age" of piracy (roughly 1700-1725), thousands of pirates terrorized shipping lanes all over the world, particularly in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. These ruthless men (and women) needed good ships to be able to run down their prey and escape from pirate hunters and navy vessels. Where did they get their ships, and what made for a good pirate craft?

What Was a Pirate Ship?

In one sense, there was no such thing as a "pirate" ship. There was no shipyard where pirates could go and commission and pay for a pirate ship to their specifications. A pirate ship is defined as any vessel whose sailors and crew are engaged in piracy. Thus, anything from a raft or canoe to a massive frigate or man of war could be considered a pirate vessel. Pirates could and did use very small boats, even canoes when nothing else was at hand.

Where Did Pirates Get Their Ships?

Since no one was making ships exclusively for piracy, pirates had to somehow capture existing ships. Some pirates were crewmen on board naval or merchant vessels who took over by mutiny: George Lowther and Henry Avery were two well-known pirate captains who did so. Most pirates simply traded ships when they captured one that was more seaworthy than the one they had been using.

Sometimes brave pirates could steal ships: "Calico Jack" Rackham was cornered by Spanish gunships one night when he and his men rowed over to a sloop the Spanish had captured. In the morning, he sailed away in the sloop while the Spanish warships shot up his old ship, still anchored in the harbor.

What Would Pirates Do With a New Ship?

When pirates got a new ship, by stealing one or by swapping their existing ship out for a better one belonging to their victims, they usually made some changes. They would mount as many cannons on the new ship as they could without significantly slowing her down. Six cannons or so was the minimum that pirates liked to have on board.

The pirates usually changed the rigging or ship's structure so that the ship would sail faster. Cargo spaces were converted into living or sleeping quarters, as pirate ships usually had more men (and less cargo) onboard than merchant's vessels.

What Did Pirates Look for in a Ship?

A good pirate ship needed three things: it needed to be seaworthy, fast, and well-armed. Seaworthy ships were especially necessary for the Caribbean, where devastating hurricanes are a yearly occurrence. Since the best ports and harbors were usually off-limits to pirates, they often had to ride out storms at sea. Speed was very important: if they could not run down their prey, they would never capture anything. It was also necessary to outrun pirate hunters and navy ships. They needed to be well-armed in order to win fights.

Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy, and Black Bart Roberts had massive gunboats and were very successful. Smaller sloops had advantages as well, however. They were quick and could enter shallow inlets to hide from searchers and evade pursuit. It was also necessary to "careen" ships from time to time. This is when the ships were intentionally beached so that the pirates could clean the hulls. This was easy to do with smaller ships but a real chore with larger ones.

Famous Pirate Ships

1. Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge

In November of 1717, Blackbeard captured La Concorde, a massive French slaving ship. He renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge and refitted her, mounting 40 cannons on board. The Queen Anne's Revenge was one of the most powerful ships around at the time and could go toe-to-toe with any British warship. The ship ran aground (some say Blackbeard did it intentionally) in 1718 and sank. Researchers believe they have found it in the waters off of North Carolina. Some items, such as an anchor, bell, and spoon have been found and are displayed in museums.

2. Bartholomew Roberts' Royal Fortune

Most of Roberts' flagships were named Royal Fortune, so sometimes the historical record gets a little confusing. The largest was a former French man of war that the pirate had refitted with 40 cannons and manned by 157 men. Roberts was aboard this ship during his fateful final battle in February of 1722

3. Sam Bellamy's Whydah

The Whydah was a massive merchant ship captured by Bellamy on her maiden voyage in 1717. The pirate modified her, mounting 26 cannons on board. She was shipwrecked off of Cape Cod not long after she was taken, however, so Bellamy did not do much damage with his new ship. The wreck has been found, and researchers have found some very interesting items which have allowed them to learn more about pirate history and culture.

Cawthorne, Nigel. A History of Pirates: Blood and Thunder on the High Seas. Edison: Chartwell Books, 2005.

Cordingly, David. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 1996

Defoe, Daniel (Captain Charles Johnson). A General History of the Pyrates. Edited by Manuel Schonhorn. Mineola: Dover Publications, 1972/1999.

Konstam, Angus. "The Pirate Ship 1660-1730." New Vanguard, First Edition edition, Osprey Publishing, June 20, 2003.

Konstam, Angus. The World Atlas of Pirates. Guilford: the Lyons Press, 2009

Woodard, Colin. The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down. Mariner Books, 2008.

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What Is the Real History and Culture of Pirate Ships?

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During the so-called "Golden Age" of piracy (roughly 1700-1725), thousands of pirates terrorized shipping lanes all over the world, particularly in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. These ruthless men (and women) needed good ships to be able to run down their prey and escape from pirate hunters and navy vessels.

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A load of facts about Pirates and Pirating.

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Colonialism vs Imperialism
Colonialism and imperialism are often used interchangeably, but they are two different words having different meaning. As both colonialism and Imperialism means political and economic domination of the other, scholars often find it hard to differentiate the two.

Though both the words underline suppression of the other, Colonialism is where one nation assumes control over the other and Imperialism refers to political or economic control, either formally or informally. In simple words, colonialism can be thought to be a practice and imperialism as the idea driving the practice.

Colonialism is a term where a country conquers and rules over other regions. It means exploiting the resources of the conquered country for the benefit of the conqueror. Imperialism means creating an empire, expanding into the neighbouring regions and expanding its dominance far.

Colonialism is termed as building and maintaining colonies in one territory by people from another territory. Colonialism can altogether alter the social structure, physical structure and economics of a region. It is quite normal that in the long run, the traits of the conqueror are inherited by the conquered.

Colonialism is a term used to describe the settlement of places like India, Australia, North America, Algeria, New Zealand and Brazil, which were all controlled by the Europeans. Imperialism, on the other hand is described where a foreign government governs a territory without significant settlement. The scramble for Africa in the late 19th century and the American domination of Puerto Rico and the Philippines can be cited as examples of Imperialism.

In Colonialism, one can see great movement of people to the new territory and living as permanent settlers. Though they lead the life as permanent settlers, they still maintain allegiance to their mother country. Imperialism is just exercising power over the conquered regions either through sovereignty or indirect mechanisms of control.

Coming to the origin of the two, Imperialism has a longer history than Colonialism. While the history of colonialism dates back to 15th century, Imperialism has its origins dating back to the Romans.

Colonialism has its origins when Europeans started to look outside their country, pursuing trade with other nations. Though colonialism can be attributed to the trade pursuits of a country, Imperialism is just not like that and it involves individual pursuits only.

Coming to the etymology, colony comes from the Latin word colonus, which means farmers. Imperialism also comes from Latin word imperium, which means to command.

Summary
1.Colonialism is a term where a country conquers and rules over other regions. Imperialism means creating an empire, expanding into the neighbouring regions and expanding its dominance far.
2.In Colonialism, one can see great movement of people to the new territory and living as permanent settlers. Imperialism is just exercising power over the conquered regions either through sovereignty or indirect mechanisms of control.

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Difference Between Colonialism and Imperialism

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Colonialism vs Imperialism Colonialism and imperialism are often used interchangeably, but they are two different words having different meaning. As both colonialism and Imperialism means political and economic domination of the other, scholars often find it hard to differentiate the two.

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The most successful pirate of all time - Dian Murray