Hi everyone, and welcome back to 酒馆. Hi, 安澜.

Ah~~

What is the matter, what's going on? Are you stuck? Are you ill?

Avast, ye matey.

Oh~~~~, I know what we're gonna talk about today. Are we gonna talk about pirates?

Ahoy.

Okay. Stop it now.

Ok.

听到安澜刚才说的那些话, 我就知道我们今天要讨论的是 pirates. 海盗

Yes. So today I thought it would be interesting to talk a little bit about pirates, and also we can look at some of the language they are supposed to use.

I like pirate talks. It's just every time I know they're criminals, but it's just adventure stories that's sort of like excitement.

Well, exactly. If you think back to our course, we actually talk about Treasure Island in that. And a lot of the stereotypes around pirates actually come from that book.

对，我们的那个宝藏音频课程，就是【名著扫盲班】里面第一季就讲到了金银岛, Treasure Island, 金银岛其实基本上是属于这个类型海盗文学的这个鼻祖了.

Yes.

So let’s talk about pirate, p-i-r-a-t-e, pirate.

Yes.

Not to be confused with private.

No, pirate.

So what is a pirate? Pirate, 我们叫 “海盗” 就是bandits on the sea.

Yeah. Well, essentially that's what it is. A pirate is someone who robs and steals from ships, particularly merchant ships.

Merchant ships are ships that are selling things.

Yes.

商船。

Now, piracy, we call the crime piracy, has been a crime for centuries, and there's still pirates nowadays.

Hang on a minute. Piracy, 就是海盗的行为, 对吧? But nowadays we say piracy as in盗版。For example, piracy of copyright stuff.

Yeah. So when we talk about privacy, it can be nautical privacy.

Mhm.

Or it can be video piracy.

Nautical means about sailing.

Yeah.

航海的这个词。Nautical, it’s a nautical term.

Yes.

And there's no pirates today, right? Like the pirates pirates, arghh pirates, they are pirates.

They probably not are pirates, but certainly in some parts of... near Africa, also in the ocean, there are still pirates around.

Because a large part of the ocean is still it's difficult to sort of control and govern.

Exactly. But today we're gonna be talking about what is known as the golden age of piracy.

It's just so paradoxical, because piracy is supposed to be a bad thing as a crime, but you call it the golden age of piracy.

Yeah.

就是海盗的黄金年代.

So this is the era of, for example, pirates in the Caribbean.

The whole pirates of the Caribbean /k?r??bi:?n/ or Caribbean /k??r?bi?n/, 加勒比海盗就是那个时候.

Yes. And this is around 1650~1720. Now this was a time of wars between Britain and Spain. So, Britain then controlled a lot of North America. Spain controlled a lot of Central and South America.

If you read your history, if you know your history, then you would know that there were lots of conflicts between the British fleets and the Spanish fleets.

Yeah, and also the French as well, pretty much everyone was fighting in the Caribbean at that time.

And back then Spain, most of its economy relied on gold and silver from South America, and galleons (15-18世纪用做军舰或商船的西班牙大帆船) used to transport all of this precious material from Mexico and South America to Spain.

Galleons is a specific ship.

Yeah. A galleon is a very large sailing ship, and we still talk about galleons and we think about galleons when we think of pirates, these very big ships with lots of sales, lots of cannon.

Almost stereotypical.

Yeah.

When you think of pirate stories, you think about galleons.

Yes.

Mhm.

Now the strange thing is that originally pirates were encouraged to attack Spanish ships.

Encouraged by whom, by you guys?

Yes. Britain was at war with Spain. And back then, the government would actually give a license to what we call privateers. Now a privateer is not part of the navy. They were a private individual, but they had a letter from the British government saying if they wanted to attack a Spanish ship, they were allowed to.

Hang on a minute. So these pirates, ethnic wise like cultural wise, they were British?

Some were, a lot just came from all over the world. Basically, it was a very easy way of making money.

Okay. I’m trying, because my history sucks.

That’s true.

So I’m gonna ask you government do the same, why wouldn't the Spanish just encourage the pirates to rob British ships?

That's because we weren't really…

Carry anything valuable.

Carry anything that valuable.

Okay.

Originally, the idea was that we wanted to get the gold and silver, gold and silver mines were controlled by Spain.

Okay. Okay. But even the pirates robbed the Spanish ships, they are not going to hand in the profits to the British government to the Kingdom. No?

The government will get a certain percentage, the privateers will get a certain percentage as well. So essentially it was legal piracy.

Wow~ So basically it was government backed piracy.

Exactly.

Oh, I see.

Now, what happened was eventually Britain and Spain ended the war and we were at peace. But there were still a lot of sailors who, one, had a lot of experience of piracy; two, not much money, and three, they had ships and weapons. So they thought hang on...

Just keep pirating.

Let's just carry on doing this.

The lifestyle, this became a lifestyle choice.

Well. In most cases there was no other choice. You know, we glamorize piracy, but I would say similar to piracy now, people don't really have much of a choice, I think. If they got no money, they got no food, the easiest way to get money and food would be to stealing.

It's actually quite sad. It's like, you know, nowadays sometimes you see little boys obviously reading adventure books, and dress up like pirates, and think it's so cool to be the pirates, have the eye patch and everything.

But nobody with any means in life would choose the life of a pirate.

Not many. Not many.

It is hard life always at sea, always trying to struggle to just stay alive.

Exactly. I think it's important to look at what it was like to be a pirate. Nowadays, we think of pirates as ruthless and evil, but as we discussed, most were forced to be pirates.

Had no other choice in life.

And there's a common stereotype of pirates forcing their victims to walk the plank.

对，Walk the plank, plank就是单独伸出来的一块板，一块木板. 大家可能在那种海盗片里面都看过, 他们让他们的 victim或者是他们自己中间的那种traitor

Yeah.

他最后，就要逼这个人，走上那个单个的板, 然后让他就说，你要是不往前走, 我们就弄死你, 但是你往前走，就是跳到海里去，是吧? 这叫 you’re made to walk the plank.

Yeah. If we look at all of the films around pirates and we read the stories is always the pilots attacking other ships. But, probably in reality, it was more pirates just wanted the ships to surrender and give up whatever they were carrying.

So you mean they were not like psychopath, that just thirsty for blood?

No. Some of them I’m sure probably were, but most were just people who wanted to make the money.

So pirates, according to the stories, would hoist the jolly roger.

Why did they call it jolly roger?

That I have no idea.

就jolly roger就是海盗的那个骷髅旗，对吧? It's black. It's got the skull and crossbones.

Yeah. So the whole idea was that pirates would hoist that flag and many ships would just surrender to avoid being attacked.

You know, what I’ve always wondered, who came up with the idea, and how did all these pirates just suddenly sort of drawing in with that fashion just adopt that fashion? It's like everyone's make the same flag as almost that they have talked to one another.

They actually did. Pirate ships were almost like mini republics.

Did they have pirate conventions?

There were islands around the Caribbean where pirates would just hide. These were kind of areas where there was no government, and pirates would just gather together in these islands.

You would think like the 武侠片，Chinese 武侠 stories they would have their own schools of piracy. They would have like different groups, and they would fight one another instead of getting united.

Well. The thing is that they would unite, because they were trading with each other as well, think of piracy and pirate ships as like mini republics. Captains were elected, they chose their own captain, and there were actually lots of strict rules around share in the loot.

The loot就是他们抢劫到的东西，财富. Loot is a word you often see in games now.

Yeah, so to loot something means to steal.

To steal, to rob. Mhm.

And, most of the time, they were stealing gold and silver, but in particular coins and these coins were known as pieces of eight.

Pieces of eight. What does that mean?

Pieces of eight were silver coins that were made in Mexico, and they were traded, and they were actually traded around the world as well. Sometimes archaeologists find pieces of eight in China.

Ok. 就好像叫西班牙银币, 就是Spanish dollar, basically back then, but nowadays can you still see them as some sort of antique?

You can still buy them, because there were so many that were made. Some were melted down, because they were normally just pure silver, but sometimes they do find them and you can buy pieces of eight.

I see.