Home » History » Pirates and Privateers » The Lure of Piracy - Realty vs. Romanticism, Part 2

The Lure of Piracy - Realty vs. Romanticism, Part 2

© Cindy Vallar

Films often portrayed galleons and ships with three masts as the vessel of choice for pirates. In reality, writers came closer to the mark when their pirates sailed sloops and brigs. Pirates favored small vessels because they were faster than their prey and could navigate shallow waters, where naval vessels hunting pirates could not follow. Hollywood preferred large ships because they were more impressive. The heroic pirate had room to fight a duel with the villain and more actors could fit on the deck during a battle. Climbing aloft on the rigging of a galleon was far more exciting than doing the same on a smaller ship.

If you learned of pirates from the seventy plus films produced during the 20th century, you would have a skewered picture of pirates. Most of these movies depicted pirates who lived during the Golden Age of Piracy, which began in 1690 and ended around 1730. In truth piracy predated the pyramids of Egypt. Heroic pirates did not rescue beautiful women from villainous ones. In 1825, Lucretia Parker witnessed the brutal slaying of the ship's crew by pirates and then was taken prisoner although she was eventually released. Chinese pirates often held women for ransom. One such incident involved about 100 women, one of whom was Mei Ying who fought the pirate who took her captive. In the ensuing struggle, he broke two of her teeth. Rather than submit, she seized him and flung them both into the river, where they drowned.

Hollywood also gave us the impression that pirates were only found in the Caribbean. The Barbary corsairs, however, hunted the merchant galleys that traversed the Mediterranean Sea. Kanhoji Angria preyed upon East Indiamen and terrorized the city of Bombay. Kuo Hsing Yeh, a pirate warlord, frequented the South China Sea and in death became a Chinese folk hero.

Perhaps the most visually awesome pictures of pirates, though, were those that illustrated pirate stories. In the 1920s one artist rendered the majority of paintings - Howard Pyle. "Marooned," "An Attack on a Galleon," "The Buccaneer was a Picturesque Fellow," and "So the Treasure was Divided" were several of his more famous pirate scenes. His artwork possessed an element of realism that books, films, and plays often lacked. He did not include traditional props found in the majority of pirate stories since the publication of Treasure Island. Rather his paintings fascinated and compelled viewers to consider the true nature of pirates and the harsh life they led. N. C. Wyeth, one of Pyle's students, also became known for his renderings of pirates. He illustrated the 1911 edition of Treasure Island and Rafael Sabatini's "The Duel on the Beach," a story that appeared in the September 1931 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. Recently, the United States Post Office included two stamps featuring the works that portrayed pirates by Pyle and Wyeth in their series of American Illustrators.

Spanish Galleon

The copyright of the article The Lure of Piracy - Realty vs. Romanticism, Part 2 in Pirates and Privateers is owned by . Permission to republish The Lure of Piracy - Realty vs. Romanticism, Part 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.