Pirate Facts Part 2
And now, more fun facts about pirates. For a pirate captain, it was important that they kept a full crew. A lot of the times when they would capture a ship they would force the survivors to become part of their crew. Pirating has been around for a long time since the 15th century and there are still pirating that goes on today.
However, the Golden Age of pirating only lasted for about 30 years and that was from 1690 to 1720. If you became a pirate, you would sign a document or an article which outlines the rules of being a pirate. For example, no gambling, no fighting except for own land, no stealing and it would tell you the punishments for breaking those rules and it would tell you how each pirate would be paid.
Why the eye patch? Pirates typically didn’t the amount of vitamins that they needed while on long voyages. This caused the disease called crickets which causes one of your eyes to go blind. That is why is a pirates are typically depicted with an eye patch.
So you have two kinds of pirates, a pirate and a privateer. The pirate will attack any ship regardless of the nation just for the money. The privateer is contracted by a country to attack opposing merchant ships. If you were a pirate crew member and you were caught, they would either execute you and bury you face down under the high water mark. They wanted you face down because you were looking at hell and they believe that that’s where you’re going. Or to make an example out of you, they would leave you hanging for three tides as a warning for all potential pirates and all current pirates.
A lot of the times, pirates didn’t have to attack the ships. Just the sight of an approaching pirate ship would make a captain surrender immediately. He wanted to avoid the most blood shed and injuries possible. This works sometimes, however, there were many pirates. For instance black beard who were ruthless and bloody just for fun.
You know pirate treasure maps and X marks to spot, well that’s another Hollywood invention. No one has ever found a treasure map and there is no historical record of one ever being made.
The Portuguese were responsible for populating much of the Caribbean with species to wild boars. They would take a male and female boar and put them on an island in hopes that they would breed and have many other boars. So just in case they ended up getting stranded, they would have enough food to survive. With no natural predators, these boars ended up ruining the eco-system of these islands.
Pirates had a sort of insurance policy. For instance if they lost their right arm, they would be rewarded 600 pieces of eight. For their left arm its 500, right leg, 500 pieces of eight, left leg, 400 pieces. An eye or a finger would get you 100 pieces of eight and if you lost both of your legs or both of your arms because you would have such trouble taking care of yourself, you would get 800 pieces of eight and a slave.
Pirates did have a particular way of speaking especially the British pirates. However, the phrases are and mayday that were familiar with today are inventions of Hollywood. In fact, pirates didn’t are at all. The actor who played Long John Silver in the Hollywood movie added that and it just kind of caught on. So here's a question for you, do I look better with my glasses on, or ended another video, interesting facts about glasses.
And in other video, facts about girls. Thanks again for watching. If you have any questions, please leave a comment and rate my video. See you next time.
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