ISTM that a lot of the cargo to be taken from victim ships was very large, bulky and unwieldy. When pirates boarded the ship, how did they actually move that stuff? 1,000 heavy barrels of rum or giant bales of cotton is highly inconvenient to move from ship to ship with no cranes or ship winching gear. Was there a bridge? It’s vastly different than rolling barrels from land to the waiting ship in harbor.
And then how did the pirates actually sell that stuff? Seems like you would have to behave almost like an actual merchant corporation to sell some of these wares at big warehouse scale.
I thought they typically flew a black flag to show that they would give quarter, and a red flag to show they’d give no quarter? Presumably, quarter = they would let them live.
If I remember the Emilio Salgari novels I read in my youth correctly pirates would take the whole ship, not the cargo, take it to tortuga/port royal and sell everything there to fences that were naturally attracted to such places
Send a prize crew to the captured ship.
But take my input with a grain of salt, these are romantic avenger pirates from 19th century novels, real pirates may have acted differently.
Because that’s bad for business. Both because people who expect to all be killed fight back harder, and because it means less ships will show up to be robbed. A living crew that’s allowed to sail away on their ship can potentially be robbed again the next time they show up. Also, massacres tend to convince ships in general to avoid that route.
Not to say that some pirates weren’t too bloodthirsty to care of course, but the rationally self interested ones preferred intimidation over bloodshed, just like sensible organized crime does in the modern era.
Okay. Fly the hypothetical “we’ll give quarter” flag, get 'em to surrender, sail their ship to some pirate port with a split crew, and let 'em go. The idea that they’d be yarding cargo over a gangplank is silly.
In some cases, they might not have even prioritized the cargo. Ransoming a traveling aristocrat would have been worth a fair bit of coin.
Many pirates had worked on merchant vessels. One reason someone might become a pirate is because merchant ships were notorious for being under-staffed and under-provisioned to save space for cargo and money on wages and supplies. But it meant pirates had a lot of experience in slinging cargo around. Much would depend on particular circumstances.
And they’d probably offer to let some of the captured crew join them as pirates. Working conditions on some ships were pretty awful. As well, some ships were probably carrying slaves, most of whom would be inclined to join the pirates if it was offered.
Most pirate crews were composed of either mutineers or those captured by other pirates and forced to join them or be killed (the latter case was certainly the most common defence plea in pirate trials). Those taken included ship’s boys who were serving as apprentices or as general dogsbodies performing cleaning and serving duties. Recruits might also come from mariners tired of the hard work and discipline expected on merchant and naval ships - not to mention the poor pay - or those who could take no more of the harsh conditions endured by such occupations as Newfoundland fishermen.
Ships’ crews in general often consisted of the dregs of society who couldn’t find any other sort of work. Go out on a drunken bender, wake up the next morning on a new ship without being sure how you got there.
It’s not that being unemployed made them the dregs, it’s that being the dregs of society made them otherwise unemployable aside from the very low standards of ship crews.
Right, the kind of person who, as soon as they do get their pay, go and drink it all. There are other ways of being unemployable, but that’s definitely one of them.
There were pirates, privateers, and navy ships. Privateers and navy ships were authorized to capture enemy shipping, pirates operated without authorization. Privateers and navy ships would force the victim to surrender, secure the prisoners, then put a prize crew aboard to take the ship to a friendly port where they had agents who would handle liquidating the ship and its cargo. The proceeds would be split amongst the crew and the admiral overseeing the mission using a defined formula for captain on down to the ship’s boys. Privateers be given the proceeds to distribute according to their own internal agreements. Pirates would do the same, but with less savory characters in more questionable ports.
In the case of very valuable cargo such (including the proverbial “treasure” items like coinage, bullion, and gems) might be taken aboard the attacking ship for safekeeping. Ships of that time had means to move heavy items on and off the ship using primitive cranes (the aforementioned davits) and manpower. Fairly straightforward to improvise a using the yards if necesssry. Remember that they needed to be able to load very heavy items (guns, spars, water kegs) onto and off of the ship as well as move them around while on the ship. Anchors need to be weighed, masts and yards set up and taken down while at sea. Gold in a neat little chest would be no problem at all.