A family member has been doing some genealogical research lately. Apparently we have lots of worthy ancestors, including many clerics (some of whom felt strongly enough about theological issues to risk death for these) and more lawyers than any one family should probably possess. But the discovery that has me most intrigued is that of a pirate in our family line, back in the seventeenth century.
I’d been vaguely aware that pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy were more democratic than was the norm at that time, but I hadn’t realised the full extent of it. They elected their captains (and also voted them out again) and, once elected, the captain didn’t have the same god-like status that captains in the Royal Navy possessed. It’s thought that up to a third of pirates were former slaves, some of whom had been freed by pirate crews that encountered slave ships. And, of course, there were female pirates.
While in no way a utopia – some crews were brutal and fully deserved their criminal status – the world of piracy was more nuanced than I had realised. To some extent, their historical reputation for savagery is due to propaganda by the British Government, which was determined to wipe them out due to their interference with trade. Because, of course, everything comes down to money.
I’m now trying to convince myself that I don’t want to write m/m romance set in the world of historical piracy…
MM romance novels 