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This article investigates the relationships of pirates with slaves and free black mariners in the early eighteenth century. Contrary to recent claims, marauders did not treat slaves any differently than colonial society did. In general, pirates used men of African descent for various subordinate tasks on their vessels. Some black men were even mistreated or killed. Pirates were by no means multiracial pioneers, and the proportion of black men among their crews was not higher than that in merchant shipping.
In 1984 divers discovered some remains of the Whydah, a pirate vessel that had sunk in a storm off Cape Cod in April 1717. This find coincided with the early stages of a surge of publications on early modern piracy that has not yet reached its end. Even though most pirate histories are biographical accounts, social, economic and gender historians have also focused on these highly romanticized outlaws. In the last few years the racial composition of pirate gangs has become a matter of interest. The subject first drew attention when efforts to establish a museum for the Whydah, which had originally been a slave vessel, met with stiff resistance from African- American lobby groups arguing that a museum of the slave trade should be a priority. In the course of this controversy associates of the Whydah-project asserted that as many as 25 to 30 per cent of pirates were of African descent.1 Since then this figure has remained virtually unchallenged in scholarly publications.
Furthermore, there has been some investigation into the role of black men on pirate vessels. Research suggests that pirates liberated slaves and accepted them as free shareholding members of their crews. Black crewmen allegedly comprised the most courageous and fearsome component of the pirate vanguard because they had the most to lose by being returned to slavery. Among pirate bands former slaves were supposed to have found freedom and equality that was denied them elsewhere, particularly in the New World plantations. According to one author, pirate ships "might be considered multiracial maroon communities, in which rebels used the high seas as others used the mountains and the jungles".2 Needless to mention, the emphasis is on might be, since the evidence to support this claim is ambiguous.
Historians of...