Nowadays we have air pirates, both in fact and in fiction, and soon we may have space pirates, but it will be surprising if schoolboys—and schoolgirls for that matter— ever tire of the stories of the sea pirates. The best known of the buccaneers, or ‘gentlemen of the high seas’ as they liked to be called, lived in the early years of the eighteenth century. For fifteen of the first twenty years of that century England was at war, first with France and Spain, later with Spain alone. Many merchant ships were given a royal commission to act as privateers: although not properly men-o'-war, they were handsomely rewarded for the interception and capture or sinking of any of the merchant vessels belonging to the enemy.

This was at a time when the riches of the West Indies, North and South America, and the African continent were being shipped to the ports of Western Europe as fast as the schooners, brigantines, galleys, frigates and sloops of five nations could carry them. What a temptation it must have been to any privateer when a heavily laden vessel belonging to one of our allies, a Dutch ship, say, or even an English merchantman, hove into view. Many a privateer soon turned pirate, attacking French, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, English and American shipping, friend and foe alike.

They were not short of men. Captured sailors, whatever their nationality, readily signed on; and many an ill-fed, poorly paid merchantman crew needed only the encouragement of a pirate sail on the horizon to mutiny against their officers and to claim their share of the gold and silver, silks and ivory, sugar, rum and slaves stowed in their holds.

For a pirate, it was usually a short life and a merry one. A few, when they tired of life on the high seas, settled in the smaller islands of the West Indies or on the Madagascar coast, to marry into friendly native tribes and live like kings. A few returned secretly to their home country and settled down as prosperous and respectable citizens. Some English pirates took advantage of a Royal Pardon, for King George soon found his own pirates far more troublesome than the enemy.