How did pirates survive at sea?

A pirate is classed as someone who attacks ships at sea with the intention of stealing their cargo. There are still pirates operating today in certain areas of the world, but to the average person the idea of a pirate is someone with a peg-leg and a flintlock pistol standing onboard a sailing ship. The golden age of piracy ran from the mid 1600s until the late 1730s, during this time there were thousands of pirate ships operating around the world and every single one had to be manned by skilled sailors and stocked with ample supplies. The fighting part of their job would be situational and last for as little time as possible, the faster they got out of there with the goods the less chance they had of being caught by another ship. This meant large periods of time spent at sea sailing thousands of miles, so what would life be like on a pirate ship during this down time?

What did pirates eat?

The food eaten by a pirate would have been similar to the food eaten by every other sailor of the day, the only major difference would be the pirates wouldn’t be restricted in what they could acquire. After first leaving land a pirates diet would be made up of dairy, fresh vegetables, meats and fruit, but as the voyage went on and these goods began to spoil they would be stuck eating the same as everyone else.

To make their fresh food last longer a small flock of chickens or a single milking cow would be brought onto the ship and kept alive as long as possible for their milk or eggs. After the animals food ran out or it became unpractical to keep it for any longer, it would be butchered and provide a much welcomed supply of fresh meat for the crew. One of the favorite places for a pirate to top up their supplies when in the eastern Pacific Ocean was the Galapagos islands because of their large population of turtles. The giant turtle species they used to capture are now extinct due to over-hunting, but these large turtles were able to survive for a very long time without food, and provided the crew with fresh red meat whenever they needed to butcher one.

After the fresh food they had at the start of their voyage had all gone, and any animals they brought were butchered, the crew would be stuck with the same long-lasting food as everyone else. There were only so many things you could bring that would last for longer than a few weeks, and they made up the bulk of the diet for anyone at sea for more than a month. These foods included hardtack, dried grain, salted pork, stock fish, pickled goods and dried fruit, herbs and spices.

What did pirates drink?

The link between alcohol and sailing is no accident as water had a tendency to go bad after being kept in wooden barrels for so long. Fresh water would be taken in as large a quantity as needed, but sometimes it could go stagnant and harbor bacteria so a safer and more reliable way of preserving their drinking supply was needed. The answer was something called small beer which is simply beer that has a very low alcohol content, usually between 1% and 2.5%. The reason the alcohol content was so low was to stop the entire crew from being permanently wasted, but it was high enough to kill the bacteria that formed in the barrels and stopped the contents from going bad. During the 1500s the standard ration for a sailor in the British navy was one gallon of small beer and one pound of hardtack per day.

The other drink heavily associated with pirates is rum, and for good reason. Whiskey was expensive and hard to find, and Gin wasn’t as popular during the earlier centuries, but sugar cane was being grown in huge amounts across the Caribbean and surrounding territories, making rum plentiful and cheap. Rum would have been the most readily available spirit across all the Americas and given the crew a chance to get drunk during their off duty hours. Grog is the other drink sometimes associated with ships, but this drink is nothing more than rum with water added to make it stretch a little further.

What did they wear?

The idea of eye patches and bandanas wrapped round their heads is an image given by the media and story tellers and is no more accurate than the myth of pirates constantly saying “Rrrrrr”. In truth, they wore the exact same clothes as everyone else did, with linen and cotton clothing available to them just like everyone else. Leather coats and boots would help protect them from the weather while on deck, but mostly a pirates clothing would depend on the climate and whatever the port they brought their clothes from was selling. Sometimes pirates would dress to scare their enemies by covering themselves in an unnecessary amount of knives or putting something on that made them look dangerous, but generally they wouldn’t spend their everyday life on the ship sat around covered in weapons.

What did pirates actually do?

The goal of a pirate was simple, get very rich as quickly as possible and then retire before getting caught. To achieve this goal they would attack ships and steal their cargo, hoping to later sell it and somehow launder the money so no one would find out about their crime. Trade ships were a favorite target as the spices were valuable and easy to sell, but stealing gold and silver was another matter. By the time the golden age of piracy started, every country that had ships at sea had their own form of printed currency that identified it as belonging to its home nation.

When a pirate turns up at a port with a chest of pressed coins bearing the crown of its home nation, it raises questions to say the least. A pirate can’t just walk up to a British bank with a chest of stolen British coins and hope no one notices, and taking it to a rival nation wouldn’t usually fair any better as they would probably just kill you and take it, knowing you’re a criminal pirate that no one would miss, they could even send the body back to its home nation and collect a reward.

Stealing the bounty was the easy part, the hard part was finding a way to safely keep it without being hunted for the rest of your life by the authorities. The only way around this was to work as a privateer which was a pirate that worked for its home nation. If you lived in England during the 1600s and had your own ship and crew, you could work as a privateer and commit acts of piracy against the enemies of your home nation. You would only be allowed to attack ships from a nation your own country was at war with, but it meant having somewhere to take everything you stole without being hung as a thief.

How long did they last?

Piracy is still going today, but the main age of piracy has long been over. During the late 1700s the practice gradually faded away after many nations made huge advances in their navies. In the early part of the 1800s, everyone was so fed up with pirates attacking their trade ships that entire fleets were dedicated to hunting them down and capturing or killing the crews. The average life span of a pirate was between 1 and 3 years, with anything longer than that very unusual. Even the more famous pirates like Blackbeard only had a couple of years or fame before being hunted down. In an age of unreliable sailing ships, limited foods and no such thing as real medicine, it’s not hard to understand why a life of combat and avoiding pirate hunters meant your life span wouldn’t be very good.