Introduction
Pirates have gone down in infamy for their swashbuckling swagger, piles of treasure, and their ruthless ways. Not much about pirates seen in media and literature is true, however. They were men and women trying to survive on the seas. They were sailors, just not always taking the most lawful route to gain their pay.
Slavery and piracy are two subjects often discussed in recent history, but is there a correlation between the two?
Like any commodity sold at sea, pirates had their hand in it. Records of trials and newspaper articles about pirates capture, death and theft of property mention multiple terms implying the sale or owning of slaves. Captain England, as an example, took a small fleet out in the Indian Ocean “having no more than 300 men in both ships, and 40 of them Negroes…” [1] Other records of slaves aboard ships come from items left behind, one of the most famous examples being the Teye Ba ring, which is included as one of the exhibits, a small gold ring found in the wreckage of the Whydah off the coast of Wellfleet.
Each artifact in this exhibit and digital aid has a story. Click through each one and learn the connections of the darked chained past of slavery to that of the pirate’s black flag.
[1] Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (London, UK: Ch Rivington, 1724), 123.