Why did they do it? The 1724 book “A General History of the Pyrates” speculated that Bonnet was driven to piracy by “some discomforts he found in the married state.” His nagging wife, in other words. PSAĬall them trust fund pirates - slumming it with the outlaws and scoundrels when their pedigrees could’ve gotten them vocations where the retirement plan didn’t involve walking the plank or a hangman’s noose. Basil Ringrose crossed the Isthmus of Darien in 1680 with a group of pirates. And Basil Ringrose, a gifted 26-year-old mathematician and navigator from London, fluent in Latin and French, who “had his pick of employment opportunities in the West Indies” but opted for a pirate’s life instead, writes Thomson. Other less famous but equally unqualified buccaneers included Lionel Wafer, a 20-year-old surgeon whose “life was laid out before him like a golden path,” writes Thomson.
#Pirate silver coins for sale series#
(His life has been fictionalized in the HBO Max series “Our Flag Means Death.”) They include men like Stede Bonnet, a wealthy plantation owner in Barbados who abandoned his wife and kids to become a full-time pirate, befriending actual criminals like Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch and earning the nickname “the Gentleman Pirate,” a not entirely complimentary nod to his embarrassing lack of experience. Some, like Dampier, were well-off or well-connected young men looking to pirate ships either as a way to sow their oats or find something they couldn’t get in their otherwise genteel existence. But not all of them were stereotypical pirates, rum-soaked degenerates with no education and few other career options. More than 5,000 buccaneers chose a life at sea during the 17th and early 18th centuries, sometimes called the Golden Age of Piracy. This apparently meant joining the crew of Captain Bartholomew Sharp and leaving his wife to explore (and plunder) the world. Before settling down to the life his late parents wanted for him, he decided to indulge his “inclination for the sea,” as he described it in his journal. His commercial success and life as a gentleman had been all but guaranteed for him.īut Dampier had other ideas. His parents, both farmers, had died while he was still a child, but had secured for Dampier a scholarship at King’s Bruton, a posh Somerset boarding school where he received a classical education and “an open door to the prestigious career of his choice,” Thomson writes.
Joining them was not the smart move for a man with his opportunities. William Dampier passed up a stately British prep school to become a buccaneer. They “wore elegant silk waistcoats, colorful sashes, and gold and jewels to excess,” writes Keith Thomson in his new book, “Born to Be Hanged: The Epic Story of the Gentlemen Pirates Who Raided the South Seas, Rescued a Princess, and Stole a Fortune” (Little, Brown), out now. He abhorred the experience, writing in his journal that he was “clearly out of my element.” He found distractions at the nearby Port Royal, where he noticed that visiting buccaneers - a k a pirates - were different from the typical scruffy seafarers. It happened during a plantation management apprenticeship in Jamaica. He seemed destined to become a wealthy and respected British gentleman, and that might have been his path. The 28-year-old from a small village in Somerset, England, had a young wife-Judith, a relative of the Duchess of Grafton-and a small estate of his own in Dorsetshire. In 1679, William Dampier had a bright future ahead of him. Striking pics show traffic jam behind stuck ship as vessels fear pirate attacks Taika Waititi: ‘Only eight year olds think pirates are cool’Īncient coins may solve mystery of murderous 1600s pirate But where’s One-Eyed Willy’s treasure? Missing 17th-century ship that inspired ‘Goonies’ is found
0 kommentar(er)
