Pirates were far more diverse than Blackbeard. And they didn’t say ‘arrr’, matey

September 19 marks International Talk Like a Pirate Day, an annual event that sees children and adults the world over play pretend, usually by donning a long coat and leather boots – perhaps a cutlass – and a wig of long, unruly hair spilling out from under a tricorne hat. And saying “arr” a lot, of course.

As a pirate historian, I’m sorry to report this vision is disappointingly limited. While popular culture has settled on a narrow stereotype, the oceans were once crowded with all manner of pirates – from Caribbean raiders, to Chinese fleet commanders and Southeast-Asian Muslim seafarers.

Blackbeard’s legacy

The term “pirates” refers to people who launch attacks from the sea to take what isn’t theirs. So labelling a group as such involves making a moral judgement about their activities, and characterising them as illegitimate.

In the early-modern era, from the 16th to 18th century, who was named a “pirate” came down to who was doing the naming.

Today’s popular depictions of pirates are influenced by real marauders, including Bristol-born Englishman Edward Teach (1680–1718), also known as Blackbeard, who featured in Captain Charles Johnson’s 1724 book A General History of the Pyrates.

Blackbeard and his ilk have played an outsized role in cementing our collective image of pirates, as has Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel Treasure Island.

Blackbeard rose to infamy during the “golden age of piracy”, which roughly spanned the 1650s to 1720. This era saw escalating pirate attacks on ships and settlements on Caribbean islands and the Atlantic coast of the Americas.

Pirates stole human captives, silver, gold, and whatever valuable objects they could grab. Atlantic pirate crews, including Blackbeard’s, were multi-ethnic, bringing together Europeans and people of African descent.

While some enslaved people found freedom on pirate ships, colonial archives tell us pirate gangs also captured slaves and kept them in bondage at sea.

Only some Caribbean pirates would have spoken English, and fewer still with the thick West Country English accent mimicked in pirate-speak today. According to Alexander Exquemelin, a French surgeon who joined a Caribbean crew in the late 1600s, “the greatest part of the pirates are skilful in the Spanish tongue”.

Large-scale pirate attacks were mostly suppressed in the Atlantic in the 1720s, when rival European imperial powers worked together to fight these “common enemies of mankind”. However, in other parts of the globe, including the Pacific, piracy was not so easily defeated.

Pirates from Imperial China

In the 17th century, massive Chinese pirate fleets grew powerful in maritime Asia. The largest of these was controlled by the Zheng family.

By mid-century, the Zheng group, led by Zheng Chenggong, who Europeans called Koxinga, was making more money than the Dutch East India Company. Zheng Chenggong was born in Hirado to a Japanese mother and Chinese merchant/pirate father. He was likely fluent in Japanese and Hokkien.

In 1662, Zheng Chenggong seized Taiwan and expelled the Dutch, celebrating the feat by commissioning the portrait below. The pirate chose to be portrayed as a virtuous emperor, seated on an armchair draped in tiger skin to underscore his strength.

He died before he could fulfil his plans to attack Manila.

By the end of the century, China’s Kangxi emperor, the 3rd emperor of the Qing dynasty, had largely suppressed Chinese piracy.

Unsung Southeast Asian anti-heroes

In the 18th century, “Moro pirates” posed the greatest threat to Spain’s Asian empire. Spaniards used this term to describe Muslim maritime forces from the Southern Philippines and islands across the Sulu Sea.

Moro pirate fleets could incorporate dozens of long boats such as caracoas and prahus, and carry thousands of sailor-warriors armed with kris, a distinctive Filipino asymmetrical dagger or sword, and a small cannon known as lantaka. Most of these pirates would have spoken Austronesian languages, including Tausug and Maranao.

Moro fleets approached enemies while flying brightly coloured silk banners, and banging cymbals and drums to keep rowers in rhythm.

When villagers spotted the pirates approaching, they sought refuge in fortified churches or fled to the hills. The pirates came ashore and laid siege to towns for days, before making off with captives and plunder.

Although they’re barely known outside the Philippines today, Moro pirates resisted Spanish conquest and Christianisation for centuries – a record that earns them a place alongside the Atlantic’s celebrated pirate anti-heroes.

Then came the redcoats

In 1762, a combined British Royal Navy and East India Company naval force attacked Spanish-controlled Manila. It was the height of the Seven Years’ War, a global conflict that embroiled major European powers and their overseas colonies.

The invaders laid siege to the colonial city for three weeks before artillery fire caused a breach in the city walls. They then looted Manila for two days and nights, stripping bare churches and homes, and even opening graves to steal jewellery.

Terrorising locals, the invaders executed three men who tried to protect their property – hanging their rotting corpses on the cathedral’s metal gates.

Spaniards labelled these British enemies “pirates”, too. They followed the established playbook: coming from the sea and taking what wasn’t theirs.

Among them were some 1,000 South Asian soldiers recruited from British colonial outposts in India, as well as Englishmen in red coats. The latter are easily spotted in the below painting, commissioned to celebrate the Spaniards’ eventual victory in the Philippines war.

So the next time Talk Like A Pirate Day rolls around – or Halloween, or Book Week, or any excuse for a costume party – it might be worth ditching the black beard for a faux tiger skin, silk banner, or British-style red coat.

Kristie Patricia Flannery receives funding from the Australian Research Council