The Golden Age of Piracy lasted roughly from 1715 to 1726. It produced some of the most documented criminal careers in maritime history, was extensively covered in the contemporary press, resulted in dozens of public trials whose records survive, and gave us A General History of the Pyrates — one of the most influential books of the eighteenth century. We have better primary source material for the pirates of this era than we do for many kings.

And yet the popular image of pirates is almost entirely wrong.

It is wrong in ways that are not random. The myths that have accumulated around the Golden Age of Piracy are remarkably consistent in the direction they push: they make pirates more cartoonish, more grotesque, more stupid, and more alien than the historical record supports. The real pirates were more interesting than the invented ones. They were also, in some ways, more disturbing — because what they built was not a fantasy of savagery, but a functioning alternative to the social order of their time. The myths exist, in part, because the truth is more challenging than a man in a tricorn hat shouting about treasure.

Here are five things you almost certainly believe about pirates that the historical record does not support.

Myth 1: Pirates Were Brutal Tyrants Who Terrorized Their Crews

The image of the pirate captain as absolute tyrant — whipping his men, keelhauling dissenters, ruling by pure violence — comes almost entirely from the Royal Navy and merchant shipping of the same era, not from pirate vessels. The brutal captains existed, and they wore the king's commission.

Pirate ships operated under written articles — essentially constitutional documents — that spelled out the rights and obligations of every crew member before the voyage began. These articles were not imposed from above; they were negotiated and agreed to collectively before the ship left port. They covered the distribution of plunder (typically far more equal than anything found on a legitimate vessel), compensation for injury in battle (specific sums for lost limbs, lost eyes), the resolution of disputes among crew, rules about gambling and women aboard, lights-out policies to prevent fire, and the procedures by which a captain could be deposed.

That last provision is the one that most directly contradicts the tyrant myth: on a pirate ship, the captain served at the crew's pleasure. He could be removed by a vote. Blackbeard's mentor Benjamin Hornigold was voted out by his crew and cast off in a small boat. Charles Vane lost his captaincy to Calico Jack Rackham in a vote over whether to attack a French warship. The captain of a pirate vessel had near-absolute authority in battle and almost no unilateral authority outside it. The quartermaster — elected separately — controlled food, discipline, and plunder allocation, and could countermand the captain on matters of day-to-day governance. This was not the tyranny of the high seas. It was, in its rough way, representative government.

Myth 2: Pirates Buried Their Treasure

No credible historical evidence exists for pirates systematically burying treasure. None. The practice is pure fiction, originating in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) and enthusiastically elaborated by every pirate story written since.

The reality of pirate plunder was far more mundane and also far more telling about who pirates actually were. Most pirate prizes consisted not of chests of gold doubloons but of working cargo: cloth, provisions, ship's stores, navigational instruments, medicines, alcohol, and the ship itself. Gold and silver did change hands, but the treasure of the Golden Age was commercial inventory. Pirates were not extracting wealth from some mystical source; they were raiding the supply chains of Atlantic commerce.

And they spent what they took. Pirates were not saving for retirement. The culture of the pirate republic in Nassau — and of pirate ports from Tortuga to Madagascar — was built around spending plunder as fast as it came in, on food, drink, gambling, clothing, and weapons. A pirate who buried his share was a pirate being very unusual. What you find in the actual trial records and contemporary accounts is not buried hoards but bankrupt estates, tavern debts, and the sad inventories of men who died with nothing.

The one partial exception is William Kidd, the privateer-turned-pirate whose cache of buried silver on Gardiner's Island in New York was actually recovered — and used as evidence against him at trial. Kidd's buried treasure was not a romantic act of concealment. It was a man desperately trying to hide the evidence of his crimes while negotiating a deal that would never come.

Myth 3: All Pirate Ships Flew the Same Skull-and-Crossbones Flag

The Jolly Roger — the black flag with a white skull above two crossed bones — is the universal symbol of piracy. It is on every pirate costume, every nautical warning label, every children's toy. It is one of the most globally recognized symbols in human history.

It also did not exist as a standard design during the Golden Age of Piracy. Pirates flew individual flags, specific to their captain and their vessel, and no two were the same.

Blackbeard's flag showed a horned skeleton holding an hourglass in one hand and a spear in the other, with a bleeding heart — a design that appears nowhere else. Bartholomew Roberts flew at least three known flag designs during his career, one of them showing himself and Death holding an hourglass together, another depicting him standing triumphant on two skulls labeled ABH and AMH — A Barbadian's Head and A Martinican's Head — referencing the governors who had declared war on his operations. Calico Jack Rackham flew a skull above two crossed swords. Emanuel Wynn, in what is possibly the earliest documented pirate flag of the era, flew a skull, crossed bones, and an hourglass.

The diversity of these designs was itself communicative. A flag was a statement of identity, of intent, of the specific crew behind it. The pirate who flew a recognizable flag was advertising himself — building a brand of terror that would cause merchants to surrender without a fight. The uniformity that popular culture has imposed on these flags erases the individual identities of the captains who designed them. At Mutineer Bay, we take the actual flags seriously, because the actual flags tell you who these people actually were.

Myth 4: Walking the Plank Was a Common Punishment

Walking the plank — the practice of forcing a captive to walk blindfolded off a plank extended over the ship's side, falling into the water to drown or be eaten by sharks — is one of the most persistent images in pirate mythology. It appears in countless films, novels, cartoons, and children's books. It is the defining image of pirate cruelty.

Historians of the Golden Age of Piracy have found essentially no credible primary source evidence for it. In the trial records, the naval dispatches, the newspaper accounts, the letters, and the eyewitness testimonies that document hundreds of specific acts of piracy across the Golden Age, walking the plank does not appear as an actual practice.

Pirates did commit violence against captives — this is not disputed. Torture was occasionally used to compel information about where valuables were hidden. Crews who resisted were sometimes treated harshly. But the theatrical set-piece of the plank appears to derive primarily from fiction, with the earliest clearly documented references appearing in nineteenth-century literature long after the era it supposedly describes had ended. The violence of the Golden Age was real but mundane — knives, pistols, beatings, and occasionally worse. The plank is a story that culture told itself, not something the historical record confirms.

Myth 5: Pirates Were the Outcasts of Their Society — Isolated and Alone

The image of the pirate as a man cut off from civilization — sailing beyond the edge of the known world, burning his bridges behind him — is romantically appealing but historically false. Pirates maintained extensive networks of contact with the legitimate world, and those networks were what made piracy economically viable.

Nassau in the Bahamas, the pirate republic at its peak between roughly 1715 and 1718, was not an isolated outpost. It was a functioning commercial hub. Pirates sold their plunder to merchants who asked few questions. They bought provisions, weapons, and ships from suppliers who were happy to trade. They sent and received letters through informal postal networks that operated via merchant vessels making regular runs between the Caribbean and the American colonies. There was even, as historian Colin Woodard documents, something resembling a commuter service — ships that transported retired pirates from Nassau to ports in the American colonies where they could begin new, ostensibly respectable lives. The boundary between the pirate world and the legitimate world was porous, negotiated, and commercially convenient for people on both sides of it.

Pirates also had powerful protectors on shore. Governors in North Carolina, colonial merchants in New York and Rhode Island, port officials throughout the Caribbean — all did business with pirates and took cuts of their plunder. Blackbeard's arrangement with North Carolina Governor Charles Eden was not unusual. The pirate economy was integrated with the legitimate Atlantic economy in ways that authorities in London found infuriating and suppressed only with great difficulty. The lone outlaw sailing beyond civilization is a myth. The pirate was embedded in civilization, exploiting its contradictions, and civilization — at least the parts of it that stood to profit — was largely fine with that arrangement.