There is nothing romantic about modern piracy, and as in earlier times, it is not uncommon for the captain and crew to be seriously wounded or killed if they fail to cooperate. Since piracy is simply armed robbery on the high seas, and has been accompanied by a catalog of cruelties and atrocities, it is surprising that it should have acquired a comparatively glamorous image. Part of the explanation may be found in the exotic locations where many of the pirates operated. The cruising grounds of the most notorious seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pirates were the tropical waters of the Caribbean, the west coast of Africa, and the Indian Ocean. Coral islands, lagoons, and sandy beaches fringed with coconut palms have an extraordinary attraction for those brought up in colder northern latitudes, and this is why even a small-time pirate like Calico Jack, who attacked fishing boats in the seas around Jamaica, has more appeal than a bank robber or a thief who specializes in raids on main-street banks or stores. There is also the romance of the sea. The mythical voyages of Odysseus, the travels of Columbus, Magellan, and Captain Cook, and the sea stories of Conrad and Melville have fascinated generations of land-based readers. The pirates who roamed the seas in search of plunder share in this fascination.
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The films of the thirties and forties took the pirate stories of fact and fiction and added glamour. The swashbuckling heroes played by Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., and Errol Flynn were handsome and chivalrous but bore little resemblance to the pirates of the Caribbean on whom they were based.
The fact is that we want to believe in the world of the pirates as it has been portrayed in the adventure stories, the plays, and the films over the years. We want the myths, the treasure maps, the buried treasure, the walking the plank, the resolute pirate captains with their cutlasses and earrings, and the seamen with their wooden legs and parrots. We prefer to forget the barbaric tortures and the hangings, and the desperate plight of men shipwrecked on hostile coasts. For most of us the pirates will always be romantic outlaws living far from civilization on some distant sunny shore.
