How Pirate Crews Voted, Punished, and Cut Each Other Open

Pirates of the so-called Golden Age (roughly 1650-1720) were hardly the romantic rogues of legend. At best they ran their vessels like rough-and-ready democracies. A captain’s power was limited: outside battle he often “had no more power than every other pirate on board,” and major decisions – destinations, prizes, even punishments – were usually voted on by the crew^[1][2]. Captains were typically elected by their men for good reason: a weak or unpopular skipper might be marooned or overthrown by consensus at any port. Indeed, “pirate crews also elected their captain” under a signed articles-of-agreement that spelled out rules and shares^[3][2]. In battle the captain took charge of navigation and combat strategy, but ashore or at sea he was more like a chairperson: one vote among many.

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Boatswains, Carpenters, and Surgeons

Pirate ships, being full-fledged sailing vessels, needed skilled hands. Aside from captain and quartermaster, every pirate crew prized carpenters, coopers, and gunners. A carpenter was essential: battle and storms inevitably damaged wooden hulls. He patched holes, shored up masts, and often kept ships afloat by jury-rig repairs. Because pirates lacked access to dry docks or friendly navy yards, they made do with primitive repairs on beach or any deserted shore^[11]. Notably, these rugged shipwrights frequently doubled as battlefield doctors: after a raid the carpenter could be found sawing off mangled limbs to save a man’s life^[11]. (Surgeons were prized, but rare; one famous pirate demanded medical supplies instead of gold after a raid^[12], revealing just how precious a doctor’s kit could be.) At least one crew member typically served as the ship’s surgeon or “bonesetter.” Sometimes this was a captured barber-surgeon pressed into service; other times the ship’s carpenter or even a cook with a steady hand would don the scalpel. In short, pirates assigned medical chores to whoever had the rudimentary skills and tools – from basic amputations to setting fractures.

A cooper kept the barrels in working order – an unsung but vital role. Wooden casks were the ship’s pantry and pharmacy: water, salted meat, gunpowder, and rum all relied on sound barrels for storage^[13]. Without a cooper to make, patch or reassemble casks, a ship could quickly run out of drinkable water or dry provisions.

Gunnery also had its masters. A master gunner knew how to load and fire cannons without blowing up the ship. (This was arcane art: a single cannon’s 12-pound balls could weigh over 1,500 kg, and misloading had blown decks apart.) The gunner trained crewmen in aiming and powder-handling. He was aided by powder monkeys – often pressed young boys who ran powder from the magazine to the guns during battle^[14]. When needed, pirates simply conscripted any able boys as makeshift “powder monkeys.”

Not all specialists were martial. Many pirate ships had musicians on board for entertainment and morale. Shanties aboard ship were good for keeping rhythm at work or easing boredom – so a talented fiddler or piper might enjoy privileges (like playing while others toiled, or an extra share)^[15]. Often these musicians were snagged from captured vessels. One amusing case: when some pirates raided a Scottish farm, they “left two young women, and brought a piper back instead”^[15], evidently thinking music more valuable than livestock at that moment.

Piratical Democracy and Discipline

For all their chaos, pirate crews typically operated under strict codes of conduct – quite literally. Each ship sailed under an “article” (a kind of contract signed by every crew member) that laid out rights and duties. These articles guaranteed the captain and quartermaster their larger shares, fixed the shares for all, and specified punishments for theft, dereliction or fighting. Breaking the code (for example, stealing from the booty) might mean amputation of an ear and nose, followed by being set ashore (a half-marooning)^[16] – a punishment infamously codified by Bartholomew “Black Bart” Roberts^[16].

Unlike merchant or naval ships, pirates did not tolerate tyrannical captains. In most cases the crew held ultimate power. One vessel’s manual notes that outside battle the captain “had no more power than every other pirate on board,” and if he defied a crew vote it was considered mutiny and he would step aside^[1][2]. Crucial shipboard matters – where to sail next, whether to attack a target or make for port – were settled by majority vote^[2][3]. Even punishments aboard often required a crew consensus. Only the quartermaster could carry out a flogging or marooning, and he did so usually at the direction of the articles (or a vote)^[17][18].

This rough-and-ready democracy had its rationale: many pirates saw the royal navies as rife with inequality and bribery. In stark contrast, pirate navies paid all crewmembers shares and even compensation for injuries. Under popular codes, amputation of a limb or loss of an eye in battle earned a wounded pirate a cash award from the common fund, ensuring no man was left destitute by injury^[18]. The upshot: a pirate’s voice and vote truly meant something (even female pirates like Anne Bonny signed articles and voted^[3], though that was exceptional for the time). One writing of the era sums up this appeal: piracy offered ordinary sailors “freedom, adventure and choice”, and “all men ^{[on board]}…treated equal” – a stark allure compared to the rigid class system ashore^[19][3].

Health at Sea: Surgeons and Scurvy

Aboard pirate ships, illness could be as deadly as any cannon volley. Scurvy (from vitamin C deficiency) was common on long cruises, as was malaria in tropical harbors. Add gonorrhea and syphilis from contact ashore, and the need for medical care was urgent. Pirates appreciated doctors; one famous negotiation had Blackbeard demanding “a large chest of medicines” as ransom after blockading Charleston in 1718^[12]. In truth, a medical chest with preservatives and treatments was often deemed as valuable as a chest of treasure.

Yet trained physicians were rare. Many crews simply co-opted whoever had rudimentary skills. As mentioned, the ship’s carpenter often pulled double duty as surgeon^[18][11]. There are accounts of carpenters or even cooks performing amputations with saws to save critically injured shipmates. Some pirates grabbed surgeons from captured vessels by threat; if a ship carried a barber-surgeon, he might be forced to stay on board (sometimes even without pay) to tend to wounds. Others might designate a “bonesetter” among themselves – an able seaman who knew how to set broken bones from previous experience. But inevitably, medical care was primitive. Gangrene was common after wounds, and amputations were often the only hope. Pirate crews did their best in the open air and spasmodic stops at uninhabited islands to lick wounds or craft poultices. It’s no wonder Blackbeard, whose crew reportedly suffered from disease, craved a chest of medicines over bullion^[12].

Aside from surgeons, one practical health role was the surgeon’s assistant (called a “loblolly boy” in the British Navy). These were often new, inexperienced crewmates or impressed lads who ran surgical tools and cleaned wounds. In short, pirate medicine was first aid in extreme conditions – a far cry from tropical resorts, more like frontier surgery on the frontier sea.

Ancient Piracy: When Raids Were Normal

Long before Blackbeard or Kidd, piracy was as old as organized sailing. In the ancient Mediterranean, raiding the coastal trade was routine. Early records from Bronze-Age Egypt (the Amarna letters, c. 14th century BCE) bemoan pirate kings like the Lukka and Sherden preying on shipping. The legendary King Minos of Crete even claimed to have built a fleet to end piracy around 1400 BCE – an early evidence that government navies were raised specifically against raiders^[20]. Greek mythology and literature tacitly celebrate sea bandits: in Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus boasts that after sacking an island he left “their wives made captive, / their possessions shared,” implying such raids were almost heroic conquest^[21]. Thucydides notes that in archaic Greece piracy was “the main source of ^{[some peoples’]} livelihood,” without stigma, and sometimes even “glory.”^[22]

By the classical era, attitudes shifted somewhat: with expansive commerce, piracy became a scourge. Greeks colonized the seas, and coastal city-states (notably Rhodes and Athens) patrolled their waters partly to suppress pirates. Ransoms for captured civilians became a severe worry; in fact, Julius Caesar’s own kidnapping by Cilician pirates in 75 BCE is famous. Caesar apparently treated his captors like jesters (reading them poetry and jokes) even as they demanded ransom^[23] – until he escaped or was freed and later hunted them down, crucifying the lot in revenge^[23].

The Romans eventually had to address piracy in earnest. Mediterranean pirates, especially the Cilicians along Asia Minor, were so bold that Rome initially paid them to leave Italy alone, profiting from their slave raids elsewhere^[24]. But when pirates began seizing grain shipments to Rome (and again took Caesar for ransom), the Senate finally acted. In 67 BCE it granted Pompey extraordinary powers. Pompey divided the entire Mediterranean into sectors, assigned fleets to sweep each in turn, and crushed the pirate strongholds – “eradicat^[ing] the piracy, transforming the Mediterranean into Mare Nostrum (‘Our Sea’)”^[25][26]. Thousands of pirates were killed or crucified at the water’s edge; others were enslaved and even resettled as farmers far from the coast^[25][27]. (Interestingly, some ancient states profited by absorbing pirates: after Pompey’s purge Rome actually settled many former pirates in farms to keep them busy, and wealthy slave traders cooperated with piracy economically^[28].)

In other eras, similar patterns repeated. The Greek city-states at times hired pirates as mercenaries (e.g., Demetrius of Macedon’s flotilla of privateers) or fought them. Augustus famously blockaded and bribed Cilician pirates before annexing their refuges. Long after Alexander the Great, Mediterranean piracy flared again whenever central power waned. England’s Barbary corsairs and Ottoman-sanctioned pirates of later centuries have roots in this ancient tradition: all thrived on kidnapping and enslaving. Indeed, piracy’s oldest business was the slave trade. In antiquity, every major port from Crete to Cilicia was paired with slave markets fed by pirate raids^[24][29]. Romans even admitted they needed the slaves; Pompey’s memoirs hint that Rome sometimes preferred a piratical status quo to starving its mines and fields^[24].

Navies Strike Back

The Golden Age pirates (17th-18th century) operated in a different world but faced the same endgame: determined naval power. As the Caribbean and Indian Ocean became choked with pirating, the great navies of England, Spain, France, and the Netherlands launched squadrons and bounty systems to hunt them. Admirals like Woodes Rogers and Chaloner Ogle became famous pirate-chasers: Ogle’s flagship Swallow defeated Black Bart Roberts off Africa in 1722. Roberts himself – perhaps the most successful pirate ever (over 400 ships taken in a few years^[30]) – died fighting Ogle, his body tossed overboard, and a memorial cup made from his teak battle chair.

Meanwhile, corsairs in the Mediterranean and Atlantic – Barbary States, and later European colonial navies – waged similar wars. Coastal naval patrols, privateer franchises, and alliances all aimed to keep commerce free. Some pirates even switched sides as privateers during wars; Henry Every (Long Ben) had been a privateer under Charles II before going rogue in 1695. The Spanish, French and British empires sometimes licensed “letters of marque” as wartime privateers, blurring lines between state-sanctioned piracy and outlaw cruising. By the early 1700s, vast empires and trading companies funneled resources into anti-piracy. The Joint Navy vs. pirates mirrored the ancient pattern: warships blockaded suspected pirate haunts, offered pardons for those who quit, and publicly hanged those who resisted.

Fate of the Captured

For pirates unlucky enough to be captured, justice was harsh. In London’s infamous Execution Dock at Wapping or its equivalents overseas, pirates faced hanging or worse. These “pirates, smugglers, and mutineers” received no mercy: they were executed in full view of the River Thames, often chained until they died of exposure^[31][32]. The bodies were left to swing or even drown with the tide as macabre entertainment. Captain William Kidd’s end is a textbook example: on 23 May 1701 he was hanged, but not without spectacle – the first noose snapped under his weight, so he had to be hanged again minutes later^[33]. Afterward his corpse was tarred and locked in an iron gibbet for years on the Thames bank as a warning to others^[33][32].

Other famous pirates met similar grisly fates: Blackbeard (Edward Teach) fell in battle in 1718 and was decapitated, his head nailed to the bowsprit of his killer’s ship; it was later washed ashore and reportedly buried at a “John Vassal” plantation (a supposition still archaeologically murky). Bartholomew Roberts died in action and was likewise thrown into the sea, save for his head and limbs which Ogle’s men held aloft. Many lesser-known pirates were simply hanged and buried in unmarked communal graves (paupers’ graves) near jails or docks, their names lost to history. (Legend has it that Henry Every, who eluded capture, died in obscurity; one tale even claims he spent his stolen Mughal treasure on a junket and ended up buried in a pauper’s pit in Barnstaple, Devon^[34] – but this is likely folklore.)

The exact details varied by era and place, but the message was consistent: piracy was a capital crime. Some naval powers offered conditional pardons to pirates who surrendered (the British Act of Grace of 1717 tried to peel off crews by promising clemency), but many captains declined or proved untrustworthy, and were summarily executed. By the mid-18th century, the combination of naval pressure, lost safe havens, and ruthless anti-piracy law left few places left for pirates to hide.

Legends and the Golden Myth

Despite their violent trade, pirates cultivated a vivid legend. Flags like the skull-and-crossbones or skeleton-spearing-heart (Blackbeard’s flag) became symbols of their identity^[35]. They wrote articles and held elections that sound startlingly egalitarian for their time. Yet compared to legitimate mariners or even honest sailors, they lived precariously. Some, like William Kidd, had respectable careers as privateers (supposedly hunting pirates for a government commission) before falling into infamy. Others, like Black Bart and Blackbeard, relished their notoriety and never faltered in violence.

In modern eyes the Golden Age pirates seem both monstrous and oddly appealing: a self-governing gang of adventurous sailors defying corrupt empires. In truth, they were criminals who lived rough lives, but by one measure they were more democratic than any navy ship – each man drew a share of plunder, voted his fate, and even had a shot at leadership^[3][2]. We remember Black Bart’s cruelty as much as his successes, Kidd’s gibbet as often as his buried treasure (if any). Yet beneath the spectacle lay a gritty routine: sailors swabbing decks in the tropical sun, surgeons sawing off limbs by lantern light, rats gnawing in the hold, and the always-present fear of a rival warship on the horizon. For a Golden Age pirate, life was far from carefree – it was a gamble of blood, coin, and loyalty, steeped in lawlessness and as unpredictable as the sea itself.

Also, don’t forget to check out “The Charm of Hope” Behind The Screenplay page for more information on the writing inspiration and process.

Broken English stuff:

Were there women pirates? Of course. The Hidden Heroines of the High Seas The history of real mermaids and the folklore behind them The real life of pirates What exactly is “gallows humor”? What were triremes? The history of the “fetch”