Real pirates don't wear boots or puffy shirts or carry cutlass swords in their mouths. But some kept diaries that describe in detail adventures that give rise to the unofficial pirate motto, "a merry life and a short one".
Writer and artist Keith Thomson has loved pirate stories his whole life.
He came across journals written by captain Basil Ringrose and some of his crew who plundered their way around South America in the late 1600s while on a rescue mission for a golden reward.
He tells their story 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.
Keith Thomson with book cover of 'Born to Be Hanged: The Epic Story of the Gentlemen Pirates Who Raided the South Seas, Rescued a Princess, and Stole a Fortune'. Photo: Supplied
Ringrose grew up in London, imagining himself slashing his way to wealth and glory in father’s sword store, Thomson says.
“His dad wanted Basil to be an apprentice there, and Basil wanted to go to sea but he was an educated guy, educated well enough to have a healthy aversion to risk, and so he ended up just being an [shipboard] accountant.
“But ultimately by the time he was 27 years old, it just wasn't enough.
“He made less money in a year than some of the Buccaneers spent in Port Royal taverns in a night.”
So he cashed in with the pirates and went on an expedition with about 370 of them to what’s now known as Panama between 1680-82.
“[The Buccaneers] were enlisted by an indigenous chieftain to help rescue his daughter, who was being held captive and raped repeatedly in a Spanish garrison in Santa Maria,” Thomson says.
“The chieftain said to them, well, if you can rescue her, you can have all the gold there, which they thought would be about £18,000 to £20,000 worth.”
But the pirates unwittingly tipped off the Spaniards to their arrival when one of them broke their own rule of not firing a gun on their way to raid the place, he says.
“One pirate, actually the guy who made up the rule [of] no firing the guns in the jungle, got really mad at another pirate and tried to blow his head off, and that tipped the Spanish, the Spaniards, off to the pirates’ arrival so they got the gold out of there.
“There wasn't quite as much gold [by the time the pirates arrived], but they managed to rescue the princess and then from there decided to raid Panama City and other major Spanish cities on the Pacific Coast of South America.”
Meanwhile, Ringrose was basically recording all their crimes in his journal, which historians have been fascinated by over the centuries, he says.
“I'd only written fiction beforehand, but I just think that this is better than any fiction.
“The stuff that they did, if you read it in a novel, you’d throw the novel in the fire because it's just so preposterous, they're so crazy. The stakes are so high, the twists and turns are almost just unbelievable.”
But Thomson was surprised to learn Ringrose wasn’t alone, with six other pirates writing smaller diaries of their adventures too.
“Through the seven [diaries], there is a clear love of chocolate and I had no idea how crazy pirates were about chocolate.
“I mean, it was definitely higher than wenches and rum among their favourite things.
“At one point during the cruise, they decided to attack the city of Guayaquil for one reason only, which was that Guayaquil reputedly had the best cacao beans in the world.”
Now Thomson is delving into the pirate life of Walter Raleigh, who tried to find the Golden City of El Dorado in South America in 1595.
“I actually just got back from Trinidad, which was his base of operations, which as you probably know is about 5 or 10 miles off the Venezuelan coast, which is where he entered South America.
“I wanted to get out to the Gulf of Paria, which is the sort of sliver of Caribbean between Trinidad and South America.
“And I just I couldn't find anyone to take me or anybody to rent me a boat or anything, because ironically there are just so many pirates there now, so many out of work Venezuelans that have just been driven by desperation to raid any and every ship or boat that comes past there.”
Keith Thomson is the author of several novels, including Pirates of Pensacola and the New York Times bestseller Once a Spy. The former Columbia history major also writes nonfiction for several publications on a range of topics, including national security and piracy.
