The Many Appeals of Piracy

Why was piracy so attractive in Britain? The prospect of all those stolen riches, you say. Yes, obviously, but there were other aspects of piracy back then that added to it appeal, explains Steven Johnson in Enemy of all Mankind.

 

Unlike the East India Company, unlike every modern-day corporation:

“The distribution of profits on almost all pirate ships was radically egalitarian.”

Think of the ratio of the salary of any CEO and its average employee. It’s a big number, right? In the British Navy of the 1700’s, the ratio of the captain’s salary to the average seaman was about 10 times. On privateer ships (if you forgot the difference between privateers and pirates, see my earlier blog), the ratio was 5 times.

 

How about pirate ships? The ratio of the share of the captain to the lowest seaman was (hold your breath) just 2 times. But wait, the egalitarianism didn’t stop at just salaries, at least based on the surviving documents from the pirate ship/incident described in Johnson’s book.

 

At least on that one pirate ship, each man had an equal vote on immediate matters, and an equal right to fresh provisions and liquor. Anyone caught cheating or stealing more than his share would be marooned. Gambling was forbidden since it led to fights and grievances within the group. No boy or women were allowed on the ship for the same reasons. Any disputes between pirates on the ship could only be settled when they were on land next, never on the ship itself. Interestingly, a minimum limit was set on the loot to be achieved – before that limit was reached, the “enterprise” could not be disbanded (a majority vote could disband it earlier though). Pirate communities even had insurance built in – those injured grievously in battle were entitled to a larger share of profits.

 

As Johnson remarks wryly about the one man-one vote principle on that list:

“The pirates encoded these democratic principles into their constitution almost a century before the American and French Revolutions.”

Put differently, compared to all other institutions of the era – monarchies, navies, you name it:

“The pirate ship, by contrast, was a floating democracy.”

All of which is why Johnson says:

“A pirate ship in the late 1600’s and the early 1700’s operated both outside the law of European nation-states and, in a real sense, ahead of those laws.”