Dragonriders? Jedi knights? Vampire slayers??
Of course they sang the song. And word is that they all wanted the redhead.
A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates was published in 1724 and is probably the most influential book, aside from Treasure Island and Peter Pan, on our modern perception of what a pirate is like. The author even describes a pirate in Captain England’s story as “a fellow with a terrible pair of whiskers, and a wooden leg, being stuck round with pistols” so they even had pirates with peg legs. At one time it was thought that William Dafoe wrote this under the pseudonym Captain Charles Johnson but most authorities don’t believe Dafoe had a thing to do with it. You can purchase this book at most major bookstores and it is a fun read.
Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates by David Cordingly is an excellent introduction to pirates of the 17th and 18th century the so called “Golden Age” of piracy.
Marc
So, who wants to tell the OP the truth about cowboys?
Umm, don’t you mean Daniel Defoe, instead of Willem Dafoe, the modern actor?
I edited your thread title, iluvurmom, because we’d like for titles to be more descriptive. I’m also moving this thread to GQ.
We also have another current thread about [thread=375075]just how evil historical pirates were[/thread].
Fortunately, the Somalian pirate menace may soon die down, because now that the Islamic militias from the south have taken over the capital (Mogadishu), they may soon
impose Sharia law on the entire country!
Umm…yay?
Or, will they just take the operations over, as other Muslims have?
There are plenty of Islamic Extremists involved in the piarcy near Indonesia & the Philippines.
[sub]Gosh, I hate the word “Philippines”. Got to look it up every time![/sub] :smack:
Philip pines for his lost love in Manila. 
And then you go and slip up on “piracy”.
The existence of a Major League baseball team in Pittsburgh, however, has been determined to be a myth.
The peg legs were common among sailors because, of course, cannonballs tend to follow the deck once they hit, which means that you tend to get your legs knocked off. Splinter wounds would account for the frequent eye patches, although some people think it’s due to navigating by the sun and having to squint into the unfiltered noon day sun every day. (Then again, it could just be their first day with the hook.)
But how common would a peg leg be compared to a crutch, or simply starving on the streets once you could no longer climb rigging/be so useful in battle/whatever?
[homer simpson]
Heh-heh! Miller, pirates are only make-believe, like elves and leprechauns and eskimoes! 
[/hs]
Um, would you believe that many theorized that Willem Dafoe invented a time machine some time within the next decade or two, went back in time, and proceeded to write various books? I didn’t think you would. <sigh> Oops. Funny mistake though.
Marc
Although I have been known to say some dumb shit in my day, im not going to say I didn’t know there were ever ANY pirates. I thought Black beard was folklore, and I just ddin’t realize how wide spread the pirate problem has been. I guess I have a few things to learn…hence why I’m interested in the show. I’ll come back to you all drunk with the knowledge of piracy after seeing this i’m sure.
Much of our current “pirate lore” can be traced directly back to the novel Treasure Island. It codified a lot of the cliches of the genre: eye patches, parrots, buried treasure, etc. Pirates aren’t made-up the way elves and fairies are, but a lot of how we imagine pirates to be comes directly from the Stevenson book.
In the novel Long John Silver has an eye-patch and a crutch (not a peg-leg). But he’s the ship’s cook. It’s made very clear that he’s not fit enough to work as a deck hand anymore. Later pirate stories have missed that distinction.
(And as I recall Silver lost his leg and eye to the same cannonball that blinded Blind Pew. Pew doesn’t go to sea at all anymore and *has * been reduced to begging in the streets.)
The peg-leg, I suspect is a borrowing from Moby Dick. But Ahab is the *captain * of the Pequod. He can also still do his job with only one leg. As can Captain Hook from Peter Pan.
Well, yeah. But the pirate thing doesn’t involve any supernatural stuff.
Jeez, dude, the National Geographic Channel just did a whole miniseries on Blackbeard a few weeks ago. It claimed to be highly accurate. And indeed, BB often talked how he would be remembered in the ‘pages of history’.
My question is, how many “Beards” were there? I can see a “Redbeard”, but was there actually a “Bluebeard”?