Max Keen was his usual ebullient self, in the guise of an 18th century pirate

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He began his talk with a question and answer session aimed at separating the known facts about pirates from ideas held in the popular imagination.  Funnily enough a lot of what is commonly believed about pirates is actually true.  They did fly the Jolly Roger (thought to be a derivation from the French “jolie rouge”), they had a pirate code, they kept parrots and might well wear an eyepatch (to preserve night vision in one eye - apparently US air force pilots do something similar to this day.) They also wore earrings – clamped to an earlobe to ward off seasickness.

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One useful item of information - a piece of eight is a Spanish silver dollar (nearly an ounce of pure silver), so-called because it is the value of eight smaller coins – reales.

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The “golden age” of piracy stretched from about 1650 to 1750.  Initially Port Royal, Jamaica, was what might be termed the pirate headquarters.  This was a Spanish town until 1655  when it was taken by English forces. It soon became what might have been the wickedest place on earth.  In 1692, an earthquake destroyed the town.

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Pirate lives tended to be brutal, exciting - and short.  Captain Willliam Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock, Wapping, in 1701; Edward Teach (Blackbeard) was killed in 1718 in a fight with a small force of sailors deputed by the Governor of Virginia to capture him, and the Welsh pirate known as Black Bart (Bartholomew Roberts) was killed in Battle with the Royal Navy in 1722.

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An exception was the pirate (or more strictly, privateer) Henry Morgan.  He arrived in Jamaica about the year 1655 as a member of Oliver Cromwell’s forces and died in 1688 at the age of 53 (from alcohol poisoning) after a career in which he received a knighthood from Charles II and served as Governor of Jamaica.

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With the growth in strength and power of the Royal Navy later in the 18th century. piracy declined. Pirates had a tendency, when they attacked slave ships, to free the slaves and offer them the opportunity of a life on the ocean wave - and it was mainly to protect the British slave trade that the navy patrolled the seas.

 

This was an exciting and informative talk