In this short excerpt from our video: Mughals, Merchants, Marauders and Henry Every's Pirate Heist of the Century, we take a short look at what it meant to be a pirate during the 17th Century. On every metric, sailors had the odds stacked against them, with death an ever present reality. And die they did, by the thousands every year - and that’s not even counting having your head blown off by a cannon ball. There was plenty of that too, to be sure. Records indicate that mortality rates on long haul voyages could be as high as 80 percent on average during the 1600’s. The lucky ones only had to contend with malnutrition as well chronic pustulant venereal diseases, which by some accounts was over 25% of the crew, and which, in the days before antibiotics, was often fatal. Indeed, medical treatments were often more toxic than the diseases they purported to cure, but a ship was also a great place to do science, and doctors came up with any number of creative and bizarre therapies that takes a special kind of idiot to dream up. And speaking of doctors, many of them were little more than glorified butchers - if that. It says a lot when the ship’s surgeon was typically just a trained up barber. Steven Johnson, in excellent book “enemy of all mankind”, describes a ship at sea during this time as literally a floating aquatic coffin, with living conditions and a mortality rate demonstrably worse than any other group you could think of. So the burning question really is - why on earth would anyone be mad enough to voluntarily become a sailor? Well, part of the reason was the pay was often comparatively quite good. An experienced sailor could negotiate a wage equivalent to a skilled craftsman, without the expense of a workshop, raw materials or guild fees. And despite the lack of quality, food and booze were guaranteed for the entirety of the voyage, which was another significant expense avoided. But perhaps the largest lure, was the prospect of sharing in the bounty of a bonus payout, should enemy ships be captured and plundered. A ship’s captain might be issued with a warrant or letter of Marque, that authorised them to act in most respects as a navy warship, though without the rigorous discipline and chain of command that naval officers were subject to. The benefit to the crown was that by issuing letters of marque, up front military expenditure was minimal, both in wages and provisions, as well as in the provision of ships. You can watch the full length video here: • Henry Every's Pirate H...
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