13 Bizarre Pirate Traditions Most People Don't Know About

Pirates have a reputation, certainly earned, for being ruthless and bloodthirsty killers. Life on the high seas demanded so much of those willing to face it that it became customary for new

pirate

s to develop an honorable arrangement. Pirates had a surprisingly complex culture. And what's crazier to us is that the movies have barely scratched the surface of their

traditions

. Today we'll look at strange

pirate

traditions

you may have never heard of. But before you do that, use that mouse. Click and subscribe to Weird History and leave us a pirate-inspired line or two. Now here we are, friend.

Above! Blackbird's ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, brought 40 cannons to each boarding party. The same goes for Black Bart's real fortune. Sam Bellamy seized a British slave ship, the Whydah, and immediately mounted 28 guns on the port and starboard sides. William Kidd was 34. You get the idea. If you don't want a short descent and a sudden stop at the nearest port, you better be prepared to sink whoever comes your way. We understand. It is difficult to oppose the thunder of 40 cannons. Unfortunately, it's literally deafening to your crew. What is a captain going to do? Remember your Homer, then your Jack Sparrow.

The pirates discovered that they could hang balls of wax from those big earrings they had. Dig a little into the old tune receivers. Pack the barrel. Light the fuse. And boom. Moderately less severe atrial damage. However, you could probably still benefit from a visit to a good ENT doctor. In addition to being useful for wax storage and personal expression, buccaneer bling served as an eminently practical insurance policy. Pirates love the sea, but there's nothing romantic about forever floating in the bottom drawer of Davy Jones' locker, slowly being devoured by hungry halibuts. A pair of gold or silver earrings meant that a pirate could breathe easy in that regard.

Melt them down and sell them and you'll have enough money to pay for a coffin. And if they're really brilliant, your own funeral. Even if his corpse is not so fresh because it appeared on some beach. Pirates also had many superstitions about hoops. Fish stories about bling abound. They prevent dizziness. They cure bad eyesight. A gold earring can prevent you from drowning. Those pirates who had homes to return to engraved their home port and the contact information of their home

people

inside their earrings. But considering the penalty for piracy and the public spectacle that accompanies it, many of those trinkets probably went toward wigs, opium, or a new garden fence.

Despite the free swashbuckling image we like to put on our rum bottles, pirate life was a bit like a prison. You spend 20% of your time fighting, stealing or smuggling. And the rest pretty much consists of doing housework, following exactly the same routine every day. Most of the pirates were guys. But guys have needs. And even pirates need love. Pack 100

people

into a small space for weeks. Put them on hot, sweaty, adrenaline-filled adventures, and bromance will be in the air. The best thing about bromance is that nugget of real, manly love that lies deep inside. And there was no shortage at sea.

Pirates who shared a connection deeper than "we're good friends, buddy," entered matelotage, a sexy word for a special, serious type of sailing. Men joined the matelotage and shared property, affections, and even sexual partners if that suited their purposes. They often wore gold rings. And they got death benefits in case their partner met a premature end. The French were so upset by all this brotherly love, situational or not, that in 1645 the French governor of Tortuga sent hundreds of prostitutes to the ports of the new world, which naturally led to an increase in the number of threesomes, instead of a drop in the number of couples. the DL.

Edward Teach, also

know

n as Captain Blackbeard, was possibly the world's scariest pirate. And he owes that credibility to a combination of hemp and psychological psychology. He would weave the handy little plant into his beard and under his hat, and then set it on fire. With smoke coming out of his head and smelling like the wrath of a stoner god, not to mention the pair of swords, guns and knives he carried at all times, and those 40 cannons he talked about, or the fact that he regularly, voluntarily stuck a syringe into his urethra, Blackbeard scared everyone. He first cut it to make the cap.

As long as there have been builders there have been afflictors. Likewise, for as long as humans have been messing with ships, pirates have been attacking. Not everything was buried treasure and great hydroelectric theft. You could also make a killing if you take the right hostage. In the year 75 BC. C., a group of pirates captured Julius Caesar. But in reality, he wasn't the one. When they demanded a ransom of 20 talents (that is, between $20,000 and $600,000), he laughed and told them it was worth at least 50. He serenaded them with poetry, made the ransom pay, and then crucified everyone. Under the ever-present threat of scurvy, tetanus, syphilis, gangrene, and bodily injury, veteran pirates could become quite ragged.

Some of them had lost one or two eyeballs, but others wore those iconic eye patches to preserve their night vision. If you've ever squeezed one eye shut to avoid stubbing your toe on the way to the bathroom at 3:00 a.m. m., you

know

exactly what we are talking about. Even on modern boats, the quality and intensity of light changes dramatically above and below deck. And a pirate had to be able to swing, bend, and climb stairs without breaking his neck. Credit for the invention of grog goes to sailors in the British Navy, who began making the drink sometime in the 17th century.

No one wants to drink slimy draft water contaminated with algae and microbes eager to give you dysentery. But life at sea doesn't leave many options. Instead of distilling her urine or whatever, the sailors opted to kill her with the fire strategy and just dumped a bunch of alcohol in there. In 1731, that strategy became official policy. The British Navy gave each sailor half a pint of rum a day. That's about five shots, folks. Par-tay. Pirates borrowed the grog recipe and made it legendary by adding lemon juice, which helped prevent scurvy, and sugar, which made lemon water cask rum a little less gross.

Truly, a drink to tickle your tongue and tickle your chest. While it's easy to imagine a pirate burying treasure on a tropical island, there was literally one man who actually did it. Captain William Kidd of the adventure galley deposited his loot off the coast of Long Island. This backfired terribly when a not-so-good friend dug it up and used it as evidence to convict Kidd of piracy, and get him hanged twice and mocked. Pirates didn't bury treasure for good reason. Al

most

none of the royal loot was gold or jewels. Pirate booty was usually made up of food, alcohol, weapons, wood, cloth, furs, anything you could find on a trading ship in the Atlantic.

And there was no reason not to sell them immediately, and every reason, as poor Billy discovered, not to bury them. Piracy was more than a bad old men's club. So the few women who crashed in that club had to be smarter, meaner, and tougher than hell. Anne Bonnie, for example, served aboard the pirate ship Revenge as first officer and mistress of the surprisingly named Calico Captain Jack Rackham in 1720. Her friend Mary Reid also served, dressed as a man. Her career ended when the ship was captured and they went to jail, for which Bonnie blamed Calico Jack.

She cursed him after his execution, saying: I am sorry to see you there. But if you had fought like a man, they wouldn't have hanged you like a dog. While there is some evidence that pirates used plank walking as a form of psychological torture, there was no evidence to show that it was a widespread practice. It has its roots not in reality, but in the rise of pirate mania in 19th century entertainment. Do you have any last words before we set off, sir? People don't walk on the plank! The pirates became very creative when attacking people.

And they were not averse to torture. But

most

of them were ready to be done. Fast and clean was the rule. In reality, the most common form of death by torture involved something much worse than a plank. It was called a keel transport. And it's absolutely wild. You throw the victim under the boat. Then you lift him to the side, pass him under the keel of the boat, which will be covered in barnacles sharp enough to unzip your flesh, and then secure a weight to his legs to keep him underwater while the boat lifts him. drags to its end.

If you're lucky, maybe the blow from the keel will be enough to kill you before you drown. Very cold, pirates. The first mention of the Jolly Roger comes from A General History of Pirates by Charles Johnson in 1724. But there are a few different versions of it. Your alternative pirate flag might have red skeletons, hourglasses, and men standing on skulls. You see the pattern here. Blackbeard's flag, for example, had to be as tough as the man himself. He decided on a skeleton toasting the devil while he went through a bleeding heart, because that's how it rolled. However, we can't help but feel that a syphilis syringe would have been even more chilling.

The Jolly Roger flag flying from pirate masts was terrifying before it became a cliché. But the most feared maritime flag was the red one, not the black one. A ship hoisting a red flag warned her enemies that no mercy would be shown on a captured ship. Everyone on board would be slaughtered on sight. The flag was called bloody red. And if it went up, the sailors, even other pirates, under siege, would more often than not say no thanks and abandon ship. Speaking of cold mofos, historically pirates abandoned people when they did something pretty bad. It was one of the worst death sentences they could give you, because it was slow.

Usually the abandoned ones were the big messers, disgraced pirates who violated their ship's rules. They were dumped on an isolated sandbar with only the clothes on their back, a small portion of water, and a weapon for short-term survival. And if they were cowards, you know... It will be a gun like before. And you can be the knight, shoot the lady and starve to death. In fact, some men managed to survive being abandoned. Another pirate crew could discover them and rescue them. But as you can imagine, it didn't happen very often. The Atlantic is a big place.

And since pirates don't bury treasure, there's not much impetus to snoop around deserted islands. So what do you think? Do any of these facts surprise you? Let us know in the comments below. And while you're at it, check out some of these other videos from our Strange History.