Myth Busters

When you think of pirates you think of buried treasure and pirate ships and someone in an eye patch wearing an eyepatch. This was what the movie made the pirates look like when in real life they were not like that at all. They were very harsh to prisoners and were not as much worried about burying their treasure as they were having it on board or wearing it. 
When reading Under The Black Flag by David Cordingly he talks about how some pirates would keep their prisoners in very tight quarters with not enough room to even lay down and bring them about for them to be beaten and abused by him or the members of his crew. When they were done with the prisoners they are often cut into pieces and thrown overboard. This came as a shock to me that pirates were actually this cruel to people.Now this is a very different story from what Disney and the others have made pirates out to be. They were much more harsh and aggressive with people them most would think. These true facts were covered up so that they were not so gruesome and could be seen by a majority of the people today.
They also talk about how it is a myth that a pirate treasure is gold and it is buried somewhere where no one else could find it. This is also not true a real pirates treasure was tools he could use food or spices and slave and the little gold or expensive things they got were often worn by the pirate himself. There was no gold doubloons these were often made up by book or movie writers to soften the image of the actual pirates. 

 
The death of Blackbeard.
                 DEA Picture Library/Getty Images


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