Pirates - General History

The word "pirate" was used first by the old Greek 2000 years ago. It meaned "adventurer" and is still used for sailors who plunder ships and settlements at the shore of the sea.
There are many other words that can be used for pirates. Two of them are "buccaneers" and "corfary". In a certain way all of them were pirates.
There were "legal" pirates and "un-legal" pirates.
Many respected sailors, like Francis Drake, became pirates at time and a lot governments supported piracy in secret, at least when the pirates gave them a part of the plunder.

On 12 October 1492 reached Christopher Columbus one of Bahamas islands. Columbus sailed in order of the king and queen of Spain and believed that he had found a part of Asia. But actually he reached a for Europe's people unknown "New World": America. In the next years the Spanish took over a big part of the land in middle and south America.

A huge mass of gold and silver was brought to Europe. On the Caribbean islands plantings where poor Europeans and African slaves worked.
This mix of despaired people, islands far away from Europe and Spanish treasures could only have one consequence: piracy.

In the 17th century, the Caribbean islands turned out to be a refuge place for adventurers and people who "failed" the point of living. They came from the Netherlands, of the British islands, France, Portugal, the west of Africa and from the "New World" itself.
From 1630 on, was Tortuga their base.

Stolen weapons were for the crew of a pirate ship as much important as money and treasure. They used them not only against the enemy but also fought with each other at times. As outsiders and outlaws of the normal society, they didn't really have anything to lose but their life.
Many pirate codes were about the weapons. The pirates had to keep them clean and they had to make sure that they were always ready to fire. Muskets had to be clean, the powder dry.

What kind of treasure did pirates dream about?
Gold and silver was what they all wanted. It didn't matter in what kind it came: coins or jewellery.
Things like that were easy to transport and to sell. Also things like tobacco and sugar were things the pirates liked. Spices from the far east were also valuable, but when the pirates didn't find someone who wanted to buy them, the spices had to be destroyed.
After a pirate attack, the pirates took everything they needed of the other ship. They took things like weapons, medications, sails, ropes or they took the entire ship when it was better then the one they had before. At times they forces the crew of the other ship to join them. If it was a ships they couldn't use, they made it sink.
Archaeologists didn't all the treasures that were buried by pirates, but they did find a lot of treasures that were hidden so pirates couldn't find them.