5 Pirates Who Deserve More Attention Than Blackbeard
For all of our obsession with pirates, it’s shameful how few real-life pirates we know by name. It’s not even a safe bet that most people can get past Blackbeard without dipping into Pirates of the Caribbean. I don’t understand it! Instead of spending your daily couple hours scrolling social media, you could instead learn about multiple very cool pirates.
Well, today, you’re in luck, because I’m about to set you up with a primer on underrated pirates. Pirates such as…
Madame Cheng
The uncultured, backwards pirate appreciators among you might say something like, “There were lady pirates?” Yes, Adam Carolla, there were. Not only that, but Madame Cheng was possibly the very best of them. At the height of her rule, she had a crew of multiple thousands of pirates, the largest ever assembled.
At first, she was one hooked hand in a pair, along with her husband Cheng I. When he died, she not only continued his pirate work, but took it to new heights, ascending to the point where she was a legitimate military threat to the Chinese government. So much so that they called in backup from the British and Portuguese, just to try to get her to stop kidnapping their officials.
So did she die in a shimmer of blades and salty spray? Nope. She had enough power that she ended up negotiating her own amnesty.
Francois L’ Olonnais
Francois L’Olonnais was a tried-and-true, dyed-in-blue, absolute bastard. This wasn’t a dashing gentleman sliding down sailing ropes with a winning smile, capturing hearts as well as ships. In fact, if he captured your ship, you were about to have the worst (and last) day of your life, because he was infamous for killing every single person on the ships he boarded. You didn’t even get the small mercy of a quick death, since he was known for some highly inhumane methods of dismissing folks from this mortal coil. Decapitation was what you were hoping for, but if you drew the shortest straw of all? He might just cut out your heart and take a literal bite.
Calico Jack
How the hell are more people not talking about a pirate called Calico Jack? That name alone deserves to occupy space in everyone’s brain. It sounds like some sort of magical cat who wears a top hat and flies around in a hot air balloon.
So how’d he get this feline-sounding nickname? Even the reasoning behind it is cool, given that it came from his famously top-notch fashion sense. He wore bright colors in Indian calico cotton, and I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that the picture above is in black and white. How did Calico Jack rise to power? Well, he was quartermaster on a ship captained by a coward named Charles Vane, and when his repeated lily-livered behavior became too much, the crew kicked him out and replaced him, by vote, with Calico Jack. They understood someone who sounds that cool needs to be captain.
As if he wasn’t enough of a main character already, he then fell in love and eloped with a married woman who would become a famous pirate in her own right.
Anne Bonny
That woman was Anne Bonny. She joined Calico Jack, to the protests of some of his crew members. Those were quickly quieted when one man made his displeasure known and immediately earned a request from Anne to settle the matter in combat. She stabbed him in the heart and heaved his corpse off the side of the boat, and everyone was pretty satisfied with her mettle from there on out.
She suffered no fools or cowards, her lover included. When Calico Jack was arrested and sentenced to death, he asked to see Anne one last time. She had some unminced words for him: “If he had fought like a Man, he need not have been hang’d like a dog.”
Damn, lady. The guy’s having a rough week already.
The Barbarossa Brothers
Two brothers who were pirates, with matching red beards? That’s twice as cool as Blackbeard, and yet the Barbarossa Brothers get no love, outside of maybe earning a nod in another character’s name in Pirates of the Caribbean. A character that is cool, but still not as cool as two pirate siblings sailing the sea together in search of treasure.
As their un-Western headwear might suggest, the Barbarossas weren’t Italian, as their name would suggest, but from the Ottoman Empire. Their red beards and infamy earned them a Western nickname, though their birth names were Hayrettin and Oruc Reis. They’re not coasting on the brother gimmick for their fame, either. Conquering other ships is cool, but how about conquering a country’s main seaport, as they did with Algiers in 1516? The bros Barbarossa straight up stole what's now the capital of Algeria.
Where’s their movie?
