They auction off women from there too.
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Yeesh. Looks like someone did something to her hand to make her talk…or maybe stop singing.
It’s a world of laughter, a world of tears
It’s a world of hope and a world of fears
It’s a Maul world.
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Holy carp, I had no idea. Thanks for that! (Yes I have seen the original.)
You know, I’m a little disappointed by how little everyone involved in this seems to know about the Caribbean pirates and their treatment of white christian women.
Caribbean buccaneers weren’t typically farmboys from Clonagh who decided one day to drop the plough and take up a glamorous life of piratin’. Nor did they appear from thin air, fully formed.
Many were simple men who left the countryside for the big city to make their fortune, who were then seized by quasi-official “press gangs” of duplicitous thugs and forced into slavery aboard British privateers or warships, under horrifyingly harsh conditions. Hundreds of thousands of such impressments occurred, and pressed men took every chance to desert that was presented to them - sometimes, that chance was specifically piracy. Such men were not predisposed by their circumstances to hold white Christian women in exceptionally low regard - quite the opposite.
And while certainly many pirates were brutal, rapacious men, and the treatment of both male and female non-Europeans by pirates in the age of sail was indefensibly appalling, the treatment of captured* white Christian women compares fairly well with the treatment of such women in so-called “civilized” cultures of the time. A married woman in London or Paris could be terribly mistreated by her husband with considerably less recourse than a woman in New Providence or Tortuga. And while there were no women captaining British warships, privateers, pirate hunters or merchantment, there were certainly women pirates, including female pirate captains, who held power and position in their own right.
So strangely enough, the imagery of some women being cheerful and others weeping at a pirate bride auction is probably more accurate than any politically correct version ever could be, while the image of pirates as jolly, happy-go-lucky heroes is a pretty insane mischaracterization. It’s just that bride auctioning was no doubt quite rare, if it ever happened.
From Black Bart’s Articles:
No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man shall be found seducing any of the latter sex and carrying her to sea in disguise he shall suffer death.
From the Articles of the Revenge, 1724:
If at any time we meet with a Prudent Woman, that man that offers to meddle with her, without her Consent, shall suffer Present Death.
* because of the surety of conflict among the crew when a woman was aboard a pirate vessel, some captains simply executed or threw overboard any woman, instead of taking them captive. Blackbeard was said to strangle them personally. Permitting such captives to be raped was a sure way to breed mutiny; Morgan, for example, treated white Christian women captives with courtesy and respect, despite his frequently demonstrated callousness and cruelty towards men and all natives.
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I think the videogame Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag depicts this background, but not 100% sure - it’s been a few years, plus I tend to skip cutscenes if I can…
It also has at least one female pirate (maybe captain). It’s a good game, too.
From its wikipedia entry:
Meanwhile, a band of notorious pirates—including Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch, Benjamin Hornigold, Mary Read (under the alias “James Kidd”) and Charles Vane, among others—dream of a pirate utopia where man is free to live beyond the reach of kings and rulers. With Kenway’s help, they seize control of Nassau and establish a pirate republic. However, poor governance, a lack of an economy and an outbreak of disease bring the pirate state perilously close to collapse, with the founders divided on the best way forward. Kenway attempts to resolve the dispute, but is too late to stop the Templars from exploiting the situation for their own ends.
Also:
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Oddly enough, there’s a reference to Bluebeard in Disneyland… not at Pirates, but at the Haunted Mansion.
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Different motivations, same results.
And while I’m at it:
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As long as they don’t show his mancave I’m sure it’ll be fine.
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Now THAT would make for a dandy movie spinoff!!
See my previous comment about Mary Read
The court documents say that she was arrested with Anne Bonny for stealing and wearing two man’s jackets and stealing some fish.
Everything else is a myth that grew out of the unreliable A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates.
Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag admits to taking liberties with history in-game though, so I’ll give it a pass.
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With some exceptions! There was a bit of a tradition of taking young men on board as cabin boys, who could be brought up into a life of piracy. The youngest known was a boy named John King, who was a passenger on a ship with his mother when they were attacked by Capt. Sam Bellamy. He immediately insisted he wanted to be a pirate, against the protests of the captain and his mother, and said he’d kill himself if he wasn’t taken on as crew. So they took him, and he became a pirate at age 8.
Here’s the interesting thing: Bellamy’s ship, the Whydah, wrecked about a year later, and his logbook was found, describing his growing fondness for the boy; John King’s remains were found in the wreck, wearing fine ladies’ silk stockings that the captain’s log recorded as being an expensive purchase as a gift. The assumption is that the Captain and his young charge had a very close, um, relationship.
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But not those who are perpetually offended, and always looking for changes they can chalk up to other people being perpetually offended so they can complain?
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Why not? You keep showing up for em.
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