'It's a pirates life for me'

The Snake looks at the historic role models for Paul Cayard's crew of The Black Pearl

As the start of the Volvo Ocean Race 2005-06 approaches, we are witnessing increasing evidence that the Disney marketing machine is gathering momentum. Cayard & Co are greeted with canon fire, fireworks, chanting wanabee pirates and the "It's good to be a pirate!" catchphrase with increasing regularity as a product blitzkreig builds ahead of the 2006 release of Pirates of The Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It is all relatively harmless although predictably misleading. Is it really that good to be a pirate? Is it really - in the words of Gilbert and Sullivan from their operetta, The Pirates of Penzance, "a glorious thing to be a pirate king"?

Historical records suggest that the reverse was true as - with one, notable, slippery, Welsh exception - all pirates met with unpleasant and painful deaths. In the 17th and 18th centuries, piracy was a thriving, global business: Barbary Corsaires and Sallee Rovers terrorised the North African coast, Madagscar-based villains practiced the 'Red Sea Trade' in the Indian Ocean and assorted maritime scumbags sailed 'On the Account' off the coasts of East Africa, Brazil and the eastern American seaboard. It is - thanks to Hollywood - the Caribbean variety, however, that exert the strongest appeal. A brief study of some of the more notable Carribbean pirates will illustrate the sort of ideals to which Captain Paul Cayard and the crew of the VO70, Black Pearl, must aspire:

Captain Ned Teach (a.k.a. Black-beard) was possibly the hairiest pirate to command a ship. Entirely covered in a thick carpet of coarse fur, Black-beard resembled an angry rat peering through a lavatory brush, but chose to compensate for his appearance with fine clothes and accessories. As the undisputed pirate King of Bling, Teach would tie brightly coloured ribbons into his monstrous beard and favoured fine silk or velvet clothes with chunky gold bracelets and jewellery as battle dress. In a fight, he proved to be entirely indistructable, or 'pistol-proof', and would tuck slow-burning fuses under the brim of his hat to futher enhance his terrible demeanour when boarding an enemy ship. Indeed, his reputation was such that the sight of his vessel, Queen Anne's Revenge, would prompt most captains to strike their colours and surrender before any attack took place. Eventually, Teach became such a menace to Caribbean shipping that British forces were sent to track him down and destroy his operation. In the final battle of Black-beard's career it took 25 rounds of pistol shot to fell the monster before his head was cut-off and attached to the bowsprit of the victorious ship.

The rewards of piracy could be high - initially. Captain John Avery (a.k.a. Long Ben) relocated to the Caribbean after a successful season of piracy off the East Coast of Africa. The size of Avery's haul was such that his warehouse on the island of St. Thomas was still selling this plundered treasure of fine goods 20 years after his arrival. Avery may have been a giant among pirates at sea, but he was no match for landlubbing merchants and the rascal died penniless on his return to England.

Destitution was not an issue for the cruel and cunning Welsh pirate, Henry Morgan, and the Spanish population of the Caribbean grew to fear and dread Morgan with his ruthless methods and insatiable hunger for gold and coin. The pirate's finest hour was an attack on the well defended town of Porto Bello in the Isthmus of Panama. Having succeeded in blowing up and killing the entire Spanish garrison in their fortress outside the town, Morgan was unable to scale the tall walls of Porto Bello. In a moment of inspiration, Morgan's men rounded up a group of nuns and monks from a nearby monastery and forced them to carry their seige ladders to the base of the city walls. However, Morgan had underestimated the town's governor and the wailing prisoners were cut to shreds by musket fire from the battlements. Once within the walls, the buccaneers reduced Porto Bello to rubble in an orgy of rapine and plunder. The Welsh wizard then turned his attention to Maracaibo on the coast of Venezuela, subjecting the inhabitants to three months of pirate occupation and torture before moving onto Panama and a further three weeks of debauchery. During a brief spell of peace between Britain and Spain, Morgan was arrested and returned to England to face trial for piracy and certain execution for his crimes......when war with Spain recommenced. The rogue was swiftly knighted and returned to the Caribbean as Sir Henry Morgan, the new governor of Jamaica. Although Morgan was undoubtably the most fortunate of pirates, to have a cheap and oily rum named after you is an eternal punishment.

It should not be imagined that Britain alone produced these salt water savages and France provided a number of fearsome pirates. Pierre Le Grand from Dieppe may not have been the most prolific pirate, but his methods were effective. Le Grand would cruise the Caribbean in small longboats crewed by around 28 men: hardly a vessel that posed any serious threat to large, heavily armed merchant shipping. The Frenchman, however, employed an interesting technique to ensure that his men would board a potential victim: if his crew showed a reluctance to scramble up the hull of a ship, Le Grand would take an axe to the longboat and scuttle her. A more traditional approach was practiced by the French pirate, Francis L'Ollonais (a.k.a. Jacques Jean David Nau), who amassed a fleet of eight ships and 680 men for a series of devastating raids along the coast of Venezuela. L'Ollonais had a promising career in piracy, but plans were cut short when a tribe of Indians tore him limb from limb during an expedition to the Darien Peninsular.

Piracy was not an exclusively male profession and Irish-born, Anne Bonny, provided a female role model for aspiring Amazons. Bonny married an established pirate, Captain John Rackham (a.k.a. Calico Jack), and the happy couple fought shoulder to shoulder in a number of bloody campaigns. This perfect union came under threat when Rackham was informed that his beloved wife was having a steamy affair with a member of the crew. Flying into a rage, Rackham grabbed a cutlass and cornered the offending sailor preparing to cut him in two. Bloodshed was avoided when the man tore off his clothes to reveal - "stap me vitals!" - that he was infact a woman. Mary Read - a former infantry soldier in the European wars - escaped death as the situation clearly appealed to Rackham and the trio swiftly joined forces. Eyewitnesses at the trial after the group were captured in Jamaica, told that Reid and Bonny fought with a skill and ruthlessness that shamed their fellow, male pirates. While Rackham was executed, the women were spared: Read later died in prison and Bonny mysteriously disappeared. When Rackham "Danced the Hempen Jig" at the end of a rope, his delightful wife commented: "If he had fought like a man, he need not have been hanged like a dog." It is possible that her jailers will have been relieved to get rid of this terrifying woman.

When in battle, a pirate captain had total power over his crew, but this command was relaxed during periods of inactivity. Pirate ships were relatively democratic: a feature that could transfer to a VO70. For example, any crewmember could enter the captain's cabin and help themselves to the tyrant's food, wine or wenches. Neither were the ships totally lawless and many sensible rules could prove useful during the Volvo Ocean Race: pirates were warned that "to desert the ship or skulk from battle [is] to be punished by death or marooning". Fighting between crewmembers was discouraged: "No fighting onboard. All quarrels to be fought out onshore" and to "smoak [sic] tobacco in the hold without a cap on his pipe" was punishable by 39 lashes.

To encourage bravery, injury sustained by crew was generously compensated and the loss of a limb during an engagement would merit the payment of 800 pieces of eight (today, 10 pieces of eight would buy a small, used car). This relatively benign self-government, however, was not extended to prisoners and anyone falling into the hands of a pirate crew were invariably doomed. The tradition of forcing prisoners to walk the plank has been practiced since Roman times, but many pirates displayed great imagination in the torture techniques applied to their victims. Captain Ned Low, a pirate from London, devised a number of excrutiating torture methods and the sight of his black flag with a red, skeleton motif would terrify potential prey.

One of Low's specialities was known as 'Sweating': this would involve placing the intended victim inside a small ring of candles set around the base of the mizzen mast. The prisoner would then recieve jabs from knives, marlin-spikes or sharpened prosthetic limbs until he bled to death or the pirates became distracted by a better form of cruelty and entertainment. Another delight for Low and his crew was to attach a rope to the victim, then haul him to the masthead before releasing the rope and dunking him in the sea: this would be repeated until the source of their amusement drowned. Low excelled himself after capturing a ship off Grand Cayman and taking a particular dislike to the vessel's cook. Causing hilarity by suggesting that the unfortunate man was covered in grease and fat from work in the galley and would probably burn well, Low tied him to the mast of the ship's tender, set the man alight and cast him adrift. It is a possibility that Low's crew grew tired of their captain's energetic pranks and their evil commander was executed by the French on Martinique after a mutiny onboard.

Whatever regime Captain Cayard engages onboard The Black Pearl, it is unlikely that he will attain the notoriety of British pirate, Captain Pugwash of the Black Pig or that his exploits will be preserved in cartoon format. Pugwash, with his bloodcurdling cries of "plundering porpoises" and "jumping jellyfish" endured constant battles with the sinister pirate, Cut-Throat Jake of the Flying Dustbin: events that are immortalized in a BBC series from the 1960s. Modern VO70 sailors can learn much from the amiable, bumbling mariner: not least the power of rumour and it is probably and appropriate time to dispel a longstanding myth surrounding the crew of the Black Pig. For many years, urban legend maintained that the crew serving under Pugwash had risque and rude names - a claim that forced the British newspaper, The Guardian, to publish an apology to the series creator, John Ryan, in 1991. Master Bates (snigger), Seaman Staines (chortle) and Roger the Cabin Boy (guffaw) were not onboard the pirate ship, but Master Mate, Tom the Cabin Boy and crewmen, Barnabas and Willy did cruise the high seas with Pugwash. Sadly.