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A lot we know about pirates is not true, and a lot of what is true is not known
- apsec112 10y agoAn interesting comment on studying pirates, from /r/AskHistorians: "Pirate questions are often difficult, because pirates as a group have been so heavily fictionalized -- and were often fictionalized even in the "golden age" of piracy (or shortly thereafter) -- that it becomes hard to separate reality from fiction. Indeed, there is evidence that later sailing crews, including pirates, took on behaviors that they may have read or heard that "pirates" did -- even if these accounts were fictional, meaning that fictional accounts of pirate activities actually became reality due to people acting out what they'd seen in fiction." https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60deda/how_historically_accurate_is_walk_the_plank_how/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60deda/how_h...
- Sniffnoy 10y agoA note, you seem to have linked to the whole thread, rather than the specific comment you mention: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60deda/how_historically_accurate_is_walk_the_plank_how/df5wxtp/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/60deda/how_h...
- bitwize 10y agoWell, that's something they have in common with ninjas then. :) Ninjas had lots of rumored abilities and practices ascribed to them which they didn't really have, and the ninjas of the day did nothing to counter the rumors. In fact they helped spread the rumors since it enhanced their fearsome reputation to do so.
- dhimes 10y agoAlso: Samurai. They're know for their Bushido code of honor but there seems to be evidence that the code came about much later, perhaps as a result of the elite trying to get some control over them.
- d0mine 10y agoPirates are not unique in that respect. All mass media is heavily fictionalized. Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell(1807): I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false. https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=text https://www.loc.gov/resource/mtj1.038_0592_0594/?sp=2&st=tex...
- unavoidable 10y agoOT, but, Jefferson appears to have anticipated fake news and the thirst for eyeballs. >To your request of my opinion of the manner in which a newspaper should be conducted, so as to be most useful, I should answer, “by restraining it to true facts & sound principles only.” Yet I fear such a paper would find few subscribers. It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more compleatly deprive the nation of it's benefits, than is done by it's abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle.
- ivarious 10y agoHe was Hamilton's contemporaries, of course he know a thing or two about fake news.
- beaconstudios 10y agoI think it's less that he anticipated fake news, and more that it's always been a problem. Journalism has always been self-serving - after all, it's a business.
- toyg 10y agoBut politics and industry are similarly self-serving, and that's what journalism is supposed to balance. Everyone lies all the time, and that's always been the case - after all, they are human.
- bimjam27 10y agoInteresting because alot of modern day pirates/hackers are exactly the same. Co-opting their identities from movies like "Hackers" and "Sneakers". If you read any of the interview sections of Phrack articles these movies and their aesthetics are all referenced heavily. I think it was ironic/toungue in cheek at first but then turned into something sincere as new generations looked up to the old without context.
- harryf 10y agoGreat point. V for Vendetta / Anonymous would be the most visible example
- efdee 10y agoIndeed. I'm quite sure many of today's Anons wouldn't even know that the mask is a symbol of failure in their own lore.
- blincoln 10y agoCan you elaborate on this? I'm not a member of Anonymous, but I've read the graphic novel version of _V For Vendetta_ as well as seen the film, and I didn't get that impression at all.
- InitialLastName 10y agoThe mask didn't originate with V for Vendetta. It comes from a likeness of Guy Fawkes, whose 5th of November (Gunpowder) plot to blow up the British parliament and impose a Catholic theocracy was thwarted. To celebrate that failure, Brits light fireworks and burn dummies wearing that mask every 11/5.
- Nadya 10y agoYes, but the `Anonymous`/4chan usage is inspired from V for Vendetta, at least to my knowledge of chan history. It just so happens to be the Guy Fawkes mask which holds another meaning for Brits. It might change how some people, especially British people, see the mask but that isn't the intention. For example, a pink triangle means something different now than it did during the 40s and pointing to its historic usage instead of its reclaimed/new usage would be disingenuous and missing the point of how it is being used in the modern context. Pointing to Guy Fawkes instead of Vendetta for Anonymous' usage of the mask is missing the point.
- peterwwillis 10y ago"A History of American Privateers" (1899) https://archive.org/stream/historyofamerica017401mbp/historyofamerica017401mbp_djvu.txt https://archive.org/stream/historyofamerica017401mbp/history... A few blog posts on Baltimore's history as a "nest of pirates" and stories about privateering: https://maryland1812.wordpress.com/category/privateers/ https://maryland1812.wordpress.com/category/privateers/
- CM30 10y agoIt's an interesting read, though to be fair a lot of what popular culture and fiction says about any romanticised group is not true/heavily exaggerated. Most of what people think they know about ninjas isn't true. Most of what people think about the wild west isn't true. Same with everything from medieval times to Roman soldiers to ancient egypt. And also like mentioned in the article, much of what we think about when we hear those words/terms is based on a subset of these groups/populations as well.
- Turing_Machine 10y agoHeck, most of what people know about any other group (romanticized or not) isn't true. For instance, visitors to the United States often worry that they're going to see running gun battles on the street on a daily basis.
- Swizec 10y agoI mean, within a month of my moving to San Francisco somebody got shot and killed on my street corner. And within the first two months I saw police barricade an intersection walking around with shotguns and automatic rifles due to a bank robbery of some sort. We were told to just walk around and in general nobody seemed to find this event to be anything special. I've since stopped paying attention to these things. Better that way. Feels more peaceful. Then again, just last week a guy got shot by police in broad daylight 3 blocks from me because he was actively in the process of stabbing someone. No running gun battles yet that I know of. It's been 2 years or so.
- Turing_Machine 10y agoHere is the thing: your neighborhood is only a very, very, very small portion of the United States. in 2014, 2% of the counties in the United States accounted for about 51% of the murders, and 54% of the counties had zero murders.
- dragonwriter 10y ago
- rectang 10y agoI blame https://damnationkane.wordpress.com/ https://damnationkane.wordpress.com/ the time-traveling pirate.
- rnnr 10y agoA fun book I recommend is the 'Invisible Hook' by Leeson. Excellent as a summer book, a Libertarian view on the subject with good info on pirates even if you don't agree with the author's view.
- ryandvm 10y agoBy far the most interesting book I've ever read on piracy was The Invisible Hook, by Peter Leeson. It's an analysis on the economics of piracy. It was so profound in fact that much of it was the inspiration for our business model: https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate-code-1aa1b2e02bf6 https://blog.fountstudio.com/yes-we-have-a-pirate-code-1aa1b...
- trevyn 10y agoI suspect this probably works well for you because you're a studio model -- you're billing for hours. In the case where there is disagreement about what product to build, I could see this more rapidly going sideways. Sometimes having one person with a specific vision can be very helpful.
- vinceguidry 10y agoNot the parent, but what I learned about this is that when it comes to decisions that really matter, most people are afraid of the responsibility. Any working system of politics has to take the few ambitious people that remain and work out a bloodless system of resolving disputes between them.
- profalseidol 10y agoBlack Sails a good tv series.
- Xophmeister 10y agoThere are a handful of good performances involved -- e.g., Stephen's Flint -- but by in large, the acting is terrible. Which is such a shame because the actual story is pretty decent. If you can make it through the first season, you'll be rewarded.
- spike021 10y agoI wouldn't say the acting was horrible, though some actors/actresses weren't great.
- amorphid 10y agoI loved that show.
- BurningFrog 10y agoYeah, I was really surprised how good it is. Besides all the Pirating action, I'm really surprised how credible the economics and politics of the show is. I'm often embarrassed by how naively those things are treated in TV, but here it mostly makes sense on at least some level. Aside for 1 or 2 miscasts I find the acting pretty damn great. All the 4 captains are a joy to watch. I did stop watching for a time after a really dumb plot development at the end of Season 2, but I'm glad I picked it up again.
- bholdr 10y agoThe_Buccaneers_of_America https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169961.The_Buccaneers_of_America https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/169961.The_Buccaneers_of... An insightful, nevertheless, somewhat dullfull read.
- ktRolster 10y agoThe headline could be shortened to "A lot we know is not true, and a lot of what is true is not known." That's an unfortunate reality but on the other hand, it keeps life interesting.
- guiriduro 10y agoBoth halves of the sentence contain wrong and rendundant statements. Since truth is a relation of correspondence between a proposition and reality and knowledge is justified true belief or it is not knowledge; it is both impossible for us to know untruths if we believe them to be true (we can believe falsehoods but we can only know truth), and likewise truths, being essentially propositions, cannot not be known (can only be known by someone, or there is no one proposing them therefore no truth relation subsists - ergo no 'truth' can be wholly unknown to everyone.) You may say instead: A lot we believe is not true, and we don't know much.
- ihaveahadron 10y agoI guess you gotta decide if you like the "person" or something. Yea I don't know much/care about this topic.
- cubano 10y agoI believe we are all "pirates" at heart, which is why they so easily assimilate into society and why we usually ignore them around us as long as they no longer overtly act in that manner. Obviously, the magnitude of our decent in piratehood varies from person to person, and at some level (murder being obviously a issue) we stop accepting them post-haste. I find a close analogy to doing drugs and drug dealers in modern society. A lot of upstanding citizens enjoy doing drugs and actually like and feel safe around their drug dealers, but rarely if ever does popular culture show that side of reality. I don't think its any coincidence that TV and movies show the murderous and thieving side of piracy as to condition us to be appalled by them, in general.
- leggomylibro 10y agoPulp Fiction was a popular (and extremely violent) movie which depicted exactly what you're describing. John Travolta is comfortable with his heroin guy - they banter, talk about travel, and then discuss the dope in genial terms. When money changes hands, it's practically a formality between two people who are acting out a ritual, like a regular at a coffee shop. I guess it doesn't end up too well for Travolta, but I think his dealer made it out okay. Come to think of it, that guy had a negative body count by the end of the film; he saved Uma Thurman's life.
- nickik 10y agoEconomist and political sience study markets without third party enforcment. There many ways to do it, one of them is to use personal investment to build trust. Invitation to ones house is building up a trust relationship, both offer each oother higher risk of exposure but build up a long running buissness relation.
- tps5 10y ago> I don't think its any coincidence that TV and movies show the murderous and thieving side of piracy as to condition us to be appalled by them, in general. Is this really true? There's a long history of sympathetic portrayals of drug culture, from Trainspotting (novel and movie) to A Scanner Darkly (novel and movie) to Jesus' Son (novel and movie) to Pineapple Express (mainstream movie), and a whole lot more.
- metaxy2 10y agoWhat's always surprised me is how much of the cartoony image is real. There really were pirates with peg legs, hooks for hands and eye patches, pirates that talked with lower-class English accents and kept parrots as pets. There were swashbuckling captains feared all over the seas that held their crews of convicts and scalawags to surprisingly strict codes of honor. As the author says here, a lot of these things only happened in certain places and times, but the fact that these people did really exist is pretty fun and amazing.
- raverbashing 10y agoWell, accident prone work places and rudimentary medical practices lead to those kind of prosthetic devices (and not exclusive to them)
- Digit-Al 10y agoIs it really an accident if someone slashes half your leg off or bursts your eyeball whilst you're trying to murder them? :-)
- firethief 10y agoIt seems like a gray area. Accidental Death and Dismemberment insurance generally covers death by homicide, although it can have an exclusion for homicide or dismemberment that occurs in self-defense (for example, war injuries are usually excluded). So in this particular legal sense, the "accident" can be seen as on the part of the assailant, who did not intend to be injured (regardless of their victim's intent to injure). But in general, accident is not a very well-defined term; in this case "occupational injury" may be more appropriate.
- doodlebugging 10y agoMy favorite read on pirates and historical events is probably the book about an actual pirate raid on Ireland in 1631 where most of the inhabitants of a coastal village were carried away to slavery by Barbary pirates. [The Stolen Village: Baltimore and the Barbary Pirates](https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0862789559 https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0862789559) The book ends up giving the reader background on the Barbary pirates - a mix of Turks, Dutch, Algerian, and Moroccan pirates led by a Dutch convert to Islam (from Catholicism). It also attempts to tell the stories of as many of the slaves as possible using historical information from people known to suffered a similar fate. It details some of the stories of Algiers and the Ottoman empire and how Europeans were enslaved by the Muslims who controlled the Mediterranean at the time and who targeted English shipping and later American shipping leading us to dispatch Marines to the shores of Tripoli. In the end it describes the roundabout way that one of the pirates may have ended up on Manhattan and may be one of the founders of some of America's oldest monied families with descendents that may include people such as Kasey Kasem and Jon Voigt. Really a great story. I'll have to check out some of these other books mentioned on this thread since history is one of my favorite subjects.
- mirimir 10y agoI highly recommend Of Captain Mission by Daniel Defoe. And Cities of the Red Night by William S. Burroughs :)
- oska 10y ago> I highly recommend Of Captain Mission by Daniel Defoe. The authorship sometimes attributed to Defoe, but also to a Nathaniel Mist. (It was published under a pseudonym). [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_History_of_the_Pyrates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_General_History_of_the_Pyrat...
- Judgmentality 10y agoOne of my favorite books is about Captain Kidd. It's a well researched take on his life and it argues, strongly in my opinion, that he was not a pirate and goes into great detail how he (supposedly) led his life. It's a surprisingly captivating read. https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Hunter-True-Story-Captain/dp/0786884517 https://www.amazon.com/Pirate-Hunter-True-Story-Captain/dp/0...
- aaron695 10y agoI do wonder how many of these newspaper article were a realistic report - http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=junk+pirates&s=20 http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/result?q=junk+pirates&s=20
- Synaesthesia 10y agoMy favourite read about piracy was "Pirates and Emperors" by Noam Chomsky. Piracy was sponsored by states who plundered and raided coasts, such as Sir Francis Drake, who was sponsored by the English government. Only it wasn't called piracy of "we" did it, only when other countries did. Kinda similar to today with international terrorism.
- rocqua 10y agoI recall reading fiction in which there was a big difference between a privateer and a pirate. Privateers were 'licensed' pirates, given a letter of marque that allows them to attack enemies of the state. The point being that, plundering french ships under an English letter of Marque will prevent the french from calling you a pirate. Instead, you are simply an enemy combatant. I think this was from a Wilbur Smith novel.
- mariusmg 10y agoI thought this was about software pirates...
- lngnmn 10y agoJust about pirates?
- pjmlp 10y agoSince a few are mentioning pirate books. My favorite ones are the books written by Ambroise Louis Garneray, which also served under Surcouf, before eventually becoming a painter after his life as pirate. However even back in his lifetime some would state he colored his memories a bit, so that they were more interesting to read. Of course, only he knew how much that was actually so.
- VSpike 10y agoA fascinating article. There are similar parallels with the smugglers and poachers of my area of the UK - rural Dorset. Characters like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Gulliver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Gulliver managed to become respectable, but at the same time are subjects of a lot of folklore and tales.
- gadders 10y agoMy favourite story about pirates is what happened when they captured Julius Caesar: "Not everyone, though, should take the Julius Caesar approach to kidnapping. As a young man, reports Plutarch in his biography of the great man, he was kidnapped off the Dodecanese islands en route to learn rhetoric under the famous teacher, Molon of Rhodes. The Cicilian pirates (from the area of modern Anatolia north and north-east of Cyprus) he treated high-handedly. They asked for a ransom of 20 talents – he laughed at them for undervaluing him and offered them 50. While he was kept captive he treated them like bodyguards rather than prison guards, and frequently told them he would crucify them after his ransom was paid. (Better than that, "He also wrote poems and sundry speeches which he read aloud to them, and those who did not admire these he would call to their faces illiterate Barbarians.") In due course the ransom was paid, Caesar was set free – and, as promised, he crucified them to a man." https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/2009/oct/27/classics-piracy https://www.theguardian.com/culture/charlottehigginsblog/200...
- teslaberry 10y agothis story has been told many times. it's total bullshit. as are most of the stories glorifying the victors of history.
- rustynails77 10y agoA local school held a production on pirates a few years back. I noticed a significant emphasis on women on board (and it was used effectively to undermine the male actors who were all relegated to tertiary roles in the name of equality and were the brunt of derogatory comments that were not based on fact). When I looked up historical pirate codes (the several known pirate codes), the topic of women on board was mentioned once and was discouraged because it was likely to cause division among the crew. There was also explicit law to protect any female who found herself on board. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirate_code I discussed the misrepresentation with my wife who is very knowledgeable on maritime history and maritime protocol. She agreed and mentioned that it was not uncommon for merchant marine captains to take their wives with them. History is often revised for political purposes. The sad bit is how nasty some people become without even bothering to check facts.
- trustworthy 10y agoThe real history of the "golden age of piracy" is pretty fascinating. Basically you had Spain trying to claim the entire known world and everyone else fighting back by any means available. Provided a pirate limited himself to Spanish shipping, he could easily become a legitimate member of (even a hero in) one of the other Western nations.
- teslaberry 10y agoanyone who opposes the united states world domination now is a 'pirate'. or a 'terrorist'. anyone.