circa 1650 – 1730

The finest eighty years in human history.

Historians call it the Golden Age of Piracy. We call it the golden age of everything. Tall ships, black flags, tricorn hats, doubloons, shanties, parrots: all of it, in one magnificent stretch of time. We love every bit of it, and we would like to tell you about it at length.
We love all of it

The era, in its glory

Ships

Built of oak and audacity

Sloops were fast enough to catch anything and small enough to hide in a cove. Galleons were floating fortresses. Every one of them was made of wood, rope, canvas and sheer nerve, and every one of them was beautiful.

Flags

The Jolly Roger

A skull. Some bones. Sometimes an hourglass, to let you know time was running out. The single greatest piece of graphic design ever flown, and it was made by people who never once had a branding meeting.

Fashion

Absolutely immaculate

Long coats. Sashes. Boots to the knee. Gold earrings. Tricorn hats. A pirate dressed like they were the main character every single day, and they were right.

Money

Pieces of eight

The Spanish silver dollar, cut into eight bits when you needed change. Money you could break in half with your hands. Modern currency could never.

Pirate democracy

Pirates voted. Pirates had articles. Pirates were ahead of their time.

Here is the part landlubbers never know: many pirate crews elected their captain, and could vote him out. They sailed under written articles that every hand signed, which set out how the plunder was shared and what a crew member was owed if they were hurt. The quartermaster was elected too, to keep the captain honest.

A ship run by a vote of its crew, under rules everyone agreed to, in the 1700s. We are not saying pirates invented fairness. We are saying they had a very good go at it, between all the plundering.

Hand Shares of the plunder
Captain Under Bartholomew Roberts' articles of 1721 2.00
Quartermaster The same as the captain, and elected to stand up to him 2.00
Master, boatswain, gunner The skilled hands, rewarded for it 1.50
Other officers 1.25
Every other hand Everyone aboard got a share 1.00
Pirate Enjoyers Club, any rank One share of the shanty each. It is a very large shanty 1.00
The articles, continued

What a lost limb was worth

Alexandre Exquemelin, who sailed with the buccaneers, recorded in 1678 the compensation a buccaneer crew agreed for wounds, paid out of the common plunder before anyone took a share. It is the earliest injury insurance scheme we can think of, and it was written by pirates. We find this incredible.

Loss Pieces of eight
Right arm 600.00
Left arm 500.00
Right leg 500.00
Left leg 400.00
An eye 100.00
A finger 100.00
An arm in VR Respawns. Please keep both of your real ones away from the furniture 0.00
One very unlucky buccaneer 2,200.00
The soundtrack

Sea shanties: work songs that slap

Shanties were work songs. A shantyman sang a line, the crew answered, and on the beat of the answer everyone hauled together. That is why they are so catchy: they were built to make tired people pull a rope in time. Most of the shanties we know were written down in the 1800s, long after the Golden Age, but we are not going to let a century get between a pirate and a good song.

Halyard shanty

For the long, heavy hauls

Raising a sail, a few hard pulls at a time. A verse, then a big shouted line where the whole crew heaves at once.

Capstan shanty

For walking in circles

The crew pushed bars round and round to raise the anchor. Long, rolling songs for a long, rolling job.

Short-drag shanty

For one great heave

Short, sharp and over quickly. One pull per chorus. Perfect for a crowd of fifty with no rope at all.

History, now in VR

Come and live the Golden Age on Friday.