I read about this so went to visit it whilst picking my daughter up. Fascinating story behind it too. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/grave-of-the-godstone-pirate-england

The “pirate boot” as we recognize today did not came about till around the 19th century.

Boots from the late 17th and early 18th centuries were not of the sleek design we see on pirate movies. Instead they were big, clunky, and tough to get adjusted to when not on horseback, because that were their primary purpose of use.

Nobody except cavalry men wore boots and even then once they were off the horse they would switch back to regular shoes.

The only equivalent of boots being worn at sea would be fisherman boots or winter boots, but who would wear stinky fish boots or winter boots in the hot tropical climate of the Caribbean?

It be a fool’s errand to wear these clunkers at sea, and on’t even think of trying to swim in them because you’ll sink faster than you can grasp for air.

Some IRL friends got me into One Piece recently. I'm pretty early on, but I'm really enjoying it so far. To those who aren't familiar, the main character of the show is looking for a legendary treasure called the One Piece, which is said to give whoever finds it the title of King or Queen of the Pirates, a title held by the pirate who hid it before he died. Was "King of the Pirates" ever a title held by a real pirate? If so, who held it or would have come closest to holding it?

Sailing a traditional Bermuda sloop named Shamrock. About 4 tons. No one knows exactly when it was built but sometime in the 1860's.

Thank you to everyone who subscribed last week from our post on the r/pirates feed!

In this week's article, we peek inside my brain as I attempt to figure out what we actually know about Anne Bonny & Mary Read and take a deeper look at new evidence.

A bit about the Pirate Project: I am an independent documentarian, podcaster, and filmmaker. This substack is my way of sharing our journey, entertaining musings, and the direct links to the pirate history primary sources we dig up as my team and I research and build several interconnected media endeavors about the Golden Age of Piracy.

I hope you enjoy the article!

I found an interesting website dedicated to this topic:

https://piratesurgeon.com/physician.html

The author is a pirate re-enactor and friend of maritime historian E.T. Fox. The site appears quite well-researched, divided into different sections on different topics- for example there's an article on Age of Sail resuscitation techniques for drowning victims, the most hilarious of which is probably the treatment of blowing tobacco smoke up the patent's "fundament" (I presume this is where the phrase "blow smoke up my ass" originates from).

What's weirder is there are actually accounts of this working, though apparently they didn't really have a clue what worked and what didn't, so they'd just try every treatment and hope one of them worked.

Also has articles on surgery, disposal of the dead, venereal diseases, and other topics. Basically anything pertaining to being a shipboard surgeon (such as Exquemelin was).

The headstone of Fanny Adam’s in Alton, Hampshire as mentioned in previous pirate headstone post.

I have encountered "silver plate" in multiple books about pirates. For example:

"...netted... fourteen Spanish ships in addition to the usual assortment of trade goods and silver plate..." (Empire of Blue Water)

Does silver plate means here the Spanish word plata, ie. coins or silver in general? Or it literally means silver plates as in cutlery?

I am not a native English speaker and this word always confuses me. Can you explain what it really means?

*Asking this question in this sub because when I tried asking this in r/AskHistorians_ a while back, the question was denied for some reason...

The Jolly Roger flag has always fascinated me. One question about it that I can never seem to find any answers to is when Pirates last used the Jolly Roger flag. My understanding is that the Jolly Roger flags were basically only used in the 1700s-1720s by the Pirates who had formally been British Privateers. Is this true?

Charles Harris

"their black Flag, with the Portraiture of Death having an Hour-Glass in one Hand, and a Dart in the other, at the end of which was the Form of a Heart with three Drops of Blood falling from it"

"between the Hours of Twelve and Two the said 26 pirates were Executed under their own deep Blew Flagg which was hoisted up on their Gallows, and had pourtarid on the middle of it, an Anatomy with an Hourglass in one hand and a dart in the Heart with 3 drops of Blood proceeding from it, in the other"

Source: - ET Fox, Jolly Rogers: The True History of Pirate Flags - Boston News Letter 25/7/1723