I confess. My fascination with words is a relatively recent development, at least when compared to the number of years since my birth. Teachers taught me to use a dictionary. My grandmother gave me one before I left for college. But the only time I usually looked up a word was when I had to or I needed a translation of a French or German word. In fact, I owned only three dictionaries – the English one from my grandmother and two for my foreign language studies (French-English/English-French and German-English/English-German) for the first several decades of my life. I never appreciated or understood the value of a dictionary until I became an author. Nor did I realize the treasure trove of dictionaries that are available to peruse until I started writing novels.

Now, if you check the shelves in my personal library, you will find about two dozen. Among my favorites are titles that deal with specific collections of words:

• Sticklers, Sideburns & Bikinis: The Military Origins of Everyday Words and Phrases by Graeme Donald
• Unfortunate English: The Gloomy Truth Behind the Words You Use by Bill Brohaugh
• A Sea of Words: A Lexicon and Companion to the Complete Seafaring Tales of Patrick O’Brian by Dean King
• Lost Words of Love by Susan Kelz Sperling
• Wicked Words: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs, and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present by Hugh Rawson
• 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence by Captain Grose
• When a Loose Cannon Flogs a Dead Horse There’s the Devil to Pay: Seafaring Words in Everyday Speech by Olivia A. Isil

While some of the words contained in these volumes are no longer used, others that are second nature to us today come from writers. For example, “the creeps” and “flummoxed” are expressions Charles Dickens coined in his novels. More than a century before this novelist’s birth, another Englishman introduced a host of new words into the English language. These include avocado, cashew, chopsticks, tortilla, and Norwester. What makes this particular person different from all the others? He was a pirate, or as he preferred to call himself, a privateer. His name: William Dampier.

The latest addition to my collection, The Penguin Dictionary of Historical Slang by Eric Partridge, includes an unexpected definition for “privateer” in use circa 1890 to 1914: “A woman competing with prostitutes but not depending on prostitution for her whole livelihood”. (726) Dictionaries, however, aren’t the only places where you encounter new words. I come across many while reading the books I review for Pirates and Privateers. What follows are words from those tomes.

Words for pirates and privateers
Burcad badeed, a Somali term, literally means ocean robber. Rather than calling themselves pirates, the Somalis who prey upon ships traveling in waters between the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden consider themselves Badaadinta badah (saviors of the sea). (Bahadur)

A pirateer was someone who possessed a letter of marque as a privateer, but committed acts of piracy. To pirateer meant the men aboard a privateer attacked any ship, not just those of the enemy. The Calendars of State Papers during Charles II’s reign (1660-1685) mention the word. Colonel Thomas Hewetson, who testified on behalf of Captain William Kidd at his trial, also used the word in his testimony.

I know his men would have gone a pirateering, and he refused it, and his men seized his Ship. (British, 2:195)

The phrase sea robbery was first used in1696 during the trial of six men from Henry Every’s Fancy. Two years earlier, Every, first mate aboard the Charles II, and “all the brave fellows joined with” him mutinied. The men elected him captain and rechristened their pirate ship, Fancy. In 1695 they captured two ships headed for India from Mecca. The Fateh Mohomed carried £40,000 in silver, while the Gang-i-Sawai was laden with cargo, which the Great Moghul valued at £600,000. Joseph Dawson, Edward Forsythe, William Bishop, James Lewis, John Sparks, and William Mays were the only pirates from Every’s crew who were captured and stood trial. Their trial for sea robbery created a media frenzy and made Lord Justice Charles Hedges, the judge, an expert in laws pertaining to crimes at sea. (Burgess)

Our concept of piracy differs from those of Asians. Nor did they refer to these men and women as pirates, at least not before the nineteenth century. “Pirate” was a term English translators used. Asian documents referred to them as sea bandits. The Chinese had four words for these scoundrels: haidao, haizei, haifei, and haikou. To the Japanese they were kaizoukou (also spelled kaizoku). Both the Chinese and the Koreans had a derogatory term for the raiders and smugglers who came from Japan. The former referred to the dwarf bandits as wokou, while the latter called them waegu. The wokou consisted of ronin (samurai without masters), Chinese or Korean outlaws, and Asian sailors who pretended to be Japanese pirates. They plundered villages along the Chinese coast and smuggled goods to and from China. During the sixteenth century, many of the wokou (also spelled wakō) were Chinese, rather than Japanese.

Native languages of Southeast Asia, such as Malay and Javanese, have no word for piracy. Rampok means to plunder, but it is a general word for stealing. Sir Richard James Wilkinson, who wrote A Malay-English Dictionary, devised this proverb that uses rompak, an alternate spelling of rampok, that means plundering at sea: ada laut, ada-lah perompak. [English translation: Wherever there are seas there are pirates.]  (Elusive)

Rather than call themselves privateers, the men on Hispaniola preferred flibustiers (French for filibusters). The word derived from a Dutch term that meant “freebooter.” They attacked any enemy of France whether that country was at war with the victim’s country or not. Perhaps the best-known flibustier was Michel de Grammont, who became their leader during the 1670s. Instead of captain for his title, he chose chevalier, the French word for knight.

Many French pirates in the seventeenth century considered themselves privateers (corsairs) or buccaneers (flibustiers). Sometimes they carried legitimate letters of marque, sometimes they did not, but their universal enemy was Spain. If, however, a Frenchman considered every ship fair game and heeded no laws but his own, then he was a forban, a pirate. Governor Jacques Nepveu of Saint-Domingue frequently authorized privateering expeditions against the Spanish even when France wasn’t at war with Spain. In a letter to Louis XIV’s chief minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, in 1681, Nepveu explained his rationale for doing so.

It is certain that if one wishes to prevent these sort of voyages, they [the flibustiers or freebooters] will become forbans, and one could never dispose of them again.(Marley, 1:143)

Dutch privateers were referred to as kapers or commissivaarders. [The French and English usually spelled kapers with a “c”.] The letter of marque, or commission to attack the enemy’s merchants ships, was called either commissie van retorsie or kaperbrief. A 1673 report in The London Gazette said, “These Capers being so numerous, do make Middleburg and Flissingen [sic; Vlissingen or Flushing] so dead, and so unpeopled them of men, that it appears not how our Fleet can be manned.”

Dutch pirates, however, were zeerovers. When captured, the Admiralty courts tried them on charges of berovinge (robbery), roverij (banditry), and/or zeeroverij (sea banditry or piracy). Another term sometimes used for pirate was vrijbuiter (freebooter), but it has a variety of meanings: adventurer, buccaneer, free spirit, libertine, pirate, and pillager. Alexandre Exquemelin wrote of the zeerover Rock de Bresiliaan (Rock Brasiliano):

. . . he made all Jamaica tremble. He had no self-control at all, but behaved as if possessed by a sullen fury. When he was drunk, he would roam the town like a madman. The first person he came across, he would chop off his arm or leg, without anyone daring to intervene, for he was like a maniac. (Lunsford, 62)

Pirates who sailed on the same ship were often referred to as the company. George Lowther included this word in his articles of agreement.

He that shall be found guilty of taking up any unlawful Weapon on board the Privateer, or any Prize, by us taken, so as to strike or abuse one another, in any regard, shall suffer what Punishment the Captain and Majority of the Company shall think fit. (Defoe, 307)

Words connected to pirate life

When pirates captured a vessel, they often needed to replenish their numbers. They might ask for volunteer recruits, but they forced others to join them even though the men didn’t want to. Seamen most likely to be forced were sea artists, those with a particular skill the pirates needed, such as a musician or a carpenter or a navigator. If a pirate was captured and stood trial, he often claimed to have been forced, even when he had not. Proving that the pirates had forced a man to go on the account, however, was difficult. Aaron Smith was captured and forced to join pirate crews three times in his sailing career. Among the witnesses who testified for him at his trial was his fiancée, who shared a letter Smith had written, after which she said: “I expected on the prisoner arriving in England that I should become his wife.” (Captured, 56) The jury found him not guilty. Other pirates who used this defense, however, weren’t as lucky. In 1696 the King’s Counsel addressed the jury at the end of the trial for the men who had sailed with Henry Every – John Sparks, James Lewis, William May, Edward Forseith, and William Bishop.

Now they have only this to say for themselves, that they were forced to do what they did. But it has been proved to you that they were not forced . . . And it is not proved on their side, that any one of the prisoners did seem to dissent from their going away. It is proved that they all made use of this ship to very bad purposes; that they took and plundered several ships, and shared the booty.  (Fox, 124-125)

When John Phillips and his fellow pirates captured the vessel on which Henry Gyles sailed, they forced him to join their crew because he was a navigator. Later, when the pirates were captured, Gyles testified that William White threatened “to cut him in sunder if he didn’t make haste to go on board the pirate with his Books and Instruments.” (Dow, 320)

A shiver is a wooden splinter that became a projectile after round shot shattered a mast, spar, or deck of a wooden ship. Most shivers exceeded six inches in length, making them lethal. The nautical phrase shiver me timbers might refer to the wood of a ship suddenly splintering and being propelled in all directions. Or shiver might refer to the shaking of a ship’s timbers when she struck a rock or shoal. Over time, shiver me timbers has also come to mean someone taken by surprise, either through word or deed, or the ruination of a person’s life. It’s possible that mariners never used the word, since the only men who seemed to employ the phrase appear in sea stories.

Charte-partie was a French maritime term, meaning split charter, that translated into English as charter party. It referred to an agreement between at least two merchants who hired the same vessel to carry their cargo. In clear terms it identified how much cargo space each merchant was entitled to. Since many flibustiers were familiar with this term from their days as merchant sailors, they adopted the covenant for themselves. They drew up a new charte-partie before each voyage, spelling out how much each pirate received when booty was divided. It also provided extra compensation to a wounded pirate and each officer and sea artist of the crew. The charte-partie was the precursor of what became known as articles of agreement or the pirates’ code of conduct. When Jean Charpin (also known as Jean Fantin) and his men sailed from Île à Vache in 1688, their charte-partie contained twelve stipulations, including this one.

Item. Tout homme estropié au service du bâtiment, aura 600 pièces de 8 ou 6 nègres a choix, s'il s'en prend. (Marley, 2:547)
         [Translation: Item. Every man crippled in the service of a ship, will have his choice of 600 pieces of eight or six negroes, if any are taken.]

So the Treasure Was Divided by Howard Pyle

The buccaneers also based their pirate articles on another code of laws known as Jamaica discipline, which specified how many shares the pirates and their officers received.

The Sabbath was a day of rest in New England, and pious people, even fishermen, practiced Sunday Keeping. These mariners might fish for several days during the week, then they set sail for a quiet shelter to anchor and worship on Sunday. On this day, sailors only did routine work aboard their vessels. One Friday in June 1772, thirteen fishing boats out of Marblehead anchored at Port Roseway for Sunday Keeping. Ned Low, a particularly nasty pirate, and his men were also cruising these waters aboard their brigantine, Rebecca. When they sighted the New Englanders, they swooped in and pillaged all thirteen vessels and their crews.

Frenchmen who came to the Caribbean as indentured servants were known as engagés. In exchange for passage to the New World, they agreed to serve their masters for three or four years, as opposed to the seven years common among the English. Some masters were exceedingly cruel and more than a few became buccaneers. Alexandre Exquemelin arrived on Tortuga in 1666 as an engagé, and his first master was “the wickedest rogue in the whole island”, but the following year, he was sold to a surgeon, who taught him that trade. (Marley, 1:136) In 1668 he gained his freedom for 150 pieces of eight. He then joined the buccaneers and later, after he retired and returned to Europe, wrote The Buccaneers of America.

The yearly convoys of galleons and other ships that sailed between Spain and her colonies in the New World were known as flota. Since these convoys sailed to and from different colonial ports, the Spanish designated those bound for Vera Cruz as flota, while the ships destined for Cartagena and Panama were called galeones. These convoys brought supplies and passengers from Spain, then returned home laden with silver, gold, and other riches, which made them favorite targets of the buccaneers.

Among the buccaneers’ arsenal of weapons, granadoes or grenades were a particular favorite. These round, cast-iron projectiles were “three to five inches in diameter . . . sometimes with a dimple on the bottom” to prevent rolling and had “[a] wooden cylinder filled with a slower-burning powder for a fuse stuck up above the body of the grenade, with a leather cover over the fuse.” (Little, 72) When thrown over a wall or onto a ship’s deck, grenades caused confusion and panic. At dawn on 18 May 1683, Laurens de Graaf and the Sieur de Grammont attacked Vera Cruz. The pirates lobbed grenades into the bastion, and the garrison quickly surrendered. The explosions were heard as far away as San Juan de Ulúa Island.

Aside from silver and gold, pirates also preyed on ships laden with plants and timbers bound from the New World to Europe. Two examples of these items were indigo plants and logwood, both of which yielded blue and red dyes highly sought after by merchants, who often paid large sums to acquire the plants and timber. Maurice Williams arrived in Port Royal in November 1664 with a Spanish prize laden “with logwood, indigo, and silver.” (Marley, 1:188) In 1679 John Coxon and his men captured five hundred chests of indigo from a Spanish merchant ship. They left an equal number of chests that hadn’t yet been loaded on the shore in the Bay of Honduras.

Rather than obtain letters of marque, a privateer might secure a Let-Pass. Whereas the former license permitted him to capture enemy ships and confiscate their cargoes, the let-pass merely named the person who carried it and asked that he and his vessel be permitted to sail to their destination. Edward Mansfield, who raided Spanish towns in the 1660s, sometimes sailed with a let-pass. John Coxon and Bartholomew Sharpe were among some privateers who claimed their attack on Portobelo in March 1680 was legal because they sailed under French letters of marque and Jamaican let-passes.

When a pirate obtained clipped coins or those of poor quality, he might call such coins light money because their value was less than the face amount.

English privateers and pirates often called the treasure they seized purchase because they sailed under the proviso of “no purchase, no pay.” If they failed to capture a ship, they didn’t receive any shares. Tenths, on the other hand, referred to the English king’s share of any privateer’s prizes, once an Admiralty court judged them to be legal seizures. When Charles II appointed his younger brother as Lord High Admiral, James was entitled to receive a fifteenth share of such prizes. Jamaican Governor Sir Thomas Modyford wrote in 1665:

The Spanish prizes have been inventoried and sold, but the privateers plunder them and hide the goods in holes and creeks, so that the present orders little avail the Spaniard, but much prejudice His Majesty and His Royal Highness in the tenths and fifteenths of prizes. (Marley, 1:379)

When pirates wanted to know the identity of another ship, they sometimes asked, “From whence came you?” Sometimes the unknown ship answered by identifying its port or country of origin, but when Lieutenant Maynard attacked Blackbeard, he didn’t respond to the pirate’s hail: “Damn you for Villains, who are you? And, from whence came you?” (Choundras, 17)

Words connected to places
The pirate round refers to voyages taken to and from Madagascar, a pirate haven, and the Indian Ocean from North American ports such as Philadelphia, Newport (Rhode Island), New York, and Boston beginning around 1690. Laden with cargo, ships left these cities and headed to New Providence in the Bahamas before steering east around the Cape of Good Hope. The cargo from the colonies was for the pirates based in Madagascar (known as Red Sea Men), who then traded their stolen booty for these goods. These colonial vessels then transported the loot back to the colonies for sale. Adam Baldridge, a former pirate, traded with the Red Sea Men on Île Sainte Marie for six years. One of his suppliers was Frederick Philipse, an enterprising merchant in New York. That colony’s governor, Benjamin Fletcher, backed several such ventures and numbered Thomas Tew, a Red Sea Man, among his friends.

(Left: Thomas Tew, Right: Madagascar)

 
Île à Vache was the French name of an island off Española in the West Indies and a favorite pirate rendezvous. (The English tended to call it either Cow Island or Isle of Ash.) In December 1716, Jamaican Governor Peter Heywood mentioned this island in a letter to the Council of Trade and Plantations in London:

There is of these, pirates of all nations: those to windward are generally Spaniards, and some few French, but most mulattos, quarteroons and Negroes, they lie from the leeward part of the island of St. John de Porto Rico down along the south side, Hispaniola; then on the other side, Hispaniola, from Cape Nicolas down the northwest and west of Hispaniola, and upon the south side to the Isle of Ash. (Marley, 2:484)

Privateers Abraham and Willem Albertszoon Baluveldt hunted the Caribbean in search of enemy ships in the first half of the seventeenth century. During one voyage, they came across a protected harbor where they could safely anchor. Abraham once wrote that it was “a good harbor, a mile-and-a-half in breadth at its mouth . . .  two miles up the main and [I] found the country overgrown with silk grass, and a river eight or ten feet deep, and 30 feet broad.” (Marley, 1:2) Located at the mouth of what Spaniards called Río Escondido (Hidden River), Abraham’s Cay (also called Cayo de Abraham) soon became a favorite anchorage for pirates. (Today, this spot in Nicaragua is called Bluefields.) There were four reasons that pirates liked this harbor:

• the trees and plants were so thick that vessels at sea couldn’t see it;
• they could easily mount a defense if attacked;
• merchant and naval ships didn’t frequent the area; and
• indigenous tribes there hated Spaniards, so the Spanish gave it a wide berth.

In 1666 two men – Juan de la Cruz and Jean Villebon – told Spanish authorities that twenty-five to thirty French pirates, under the leadership of the sadistic pirate known as l’Olonnais, anchored at Cayo de Abraham to prepare for an invasion of Nicaragua. (Marley, 1:2)

Words connected with the defense against pirates
Infamous pirates who were caught, tried, and convicted often had their corpses put on display as a warning to seamen and travelers about the consequences of going on the account. Once a pirate was hanged, his body was tarred and then encased in a cage of iron bars fitted to his body called a gibbet. This was then erected where it could be seen. Pirates exhibited in this fashion remained there until their bodies completely decomposed, a process that took years. One pirate to suffer this punishment was William Kidd.

Since the buccaneers raided colonial cities and towns belonging to Spain, Spanish authorities devised a method, known as santo y seña, to allow sentries to quickly discover whether approaching strangers were friends or foes. When challenged, the respondent had to give the correct password, but since ships might be at sea when a password was changed, the Spanish opted for a simple scheme that permitted sea captains to always know the right word to gain entrance to a harbor. Since Spain considered the English and Dutch pirates to be heretics, how could they be familiar with the names of the patron saints of various cities? The sentry would call out the name of a saint, such as Santa Rosa or San Francisco Javier, and the person seeking admittance had to respond with the city associated with that saint. For the two saints previously mentioned, the respondent answered either Lima or Navarra, respectively. (Marley, 2:764)

Flogging, especially with the cat ’o nine tails, was reserved for special punishments among the pirates. This was because they frequently had endured the cat as seamen. When pirates did call for this severe form of punishment, they sometimes sentenced the guilty man to Moses’ Law. In Deuteronomy 25:3, forty lashes was deemed the most strikes a man might endure. More than that was deemed a vile punishment. To make certain pirates never overstepped this law that Moses delivered to his followers, a pirate was given thirty-nine lashes, as required in the articles of agreement under which John Phillips and his crew sailed.

Article 5. That Man that shall strike another whilst these Articles are in force, shall receive Moses’s Law (that is, 40 Stripes lacking one) on the bare Back. (Defoe, 342)

The Dutch called their cat laars, and the one used in Cornelis Evertsen’s squadron in 1673 was described as being “a one-yard length of unraveled four-inch rope, tipped with felt.” (Marley, 1:197)

The worst punishment a company might inflict on a pirate was to maroon him on a remote island. He was usually provided with the clothes he wore, a bottle of water, and a loaded pistol. The last was in case the pirate wanted to end his life sooner, rather than waiting until he died of thirst and hunger or drowned when high tide covered the island. A man who suffered this punishment was called Governor of an Island. What infractions might incur such dire consequences? Breaking a crucial rule in the articles of agreement, constantly causing trouble, stealing plunder before it was divided amongst the crew, desertion, or failing to pull his weight.

Words pertaining to food and drink
A favorite drink among seamen of the West Indies was a type of punch that the English called flip.  The primary ingredients in flip were “hot small beer and brandy, sweetened and spiced upon occasion.” While coasting off the western tip of Jamaica in November 1720, Calico Jack Rackham spotted a piragua (canoe). He invited the nine turtle hunters on board to “drink a bowl of punch; swearing they were all friends and would do no harm. Hereupon they agreed to his request, and went aboard him, though it proved fatal to every one of them, they being nine in all. For they were no sooner got aboard, and had laid down their muskets and cutlasses in order to take up their pipes, and make themselves merry with their new acquaintance over a can of flip . . . .” than a pirate-hunting sloop appeared. Jonathan Barnet, a Jamaican privateer, captured everyone aboard, including the nine turtle hunters. (Marley, 2:599) The court took no pity on these men and sentenced them all to hang by the neck until they were dead. Later, however, three of the turtle hunters were pardoned because the court had no witnesses who could testify to which of the nine men actually rowed the others to Rackham’s vessel.

Another beverage some pirates enjoyed was known as black strap. Rum was mixed with chowder beer, water, and molasses, before the mixture was allowed to ferment. When ready, more molasses was added to the intoxicating brew before it was ready to serve. (To make chowder beer, the pitch or gum of a black spruce tree was boiled.)

Pirate cooks sometimes served a stew-like concoction, which the French called salmigondis and the English called salmagundi or Solomon Grundy. According to some tales, Bartholomew Roberts ate salmigondis for breakfast the day he died. This dish was often served after pirates seized a vessel laden with food or when ashore, perhaps to careen their ship. The cook used any available meats, such as “turtle . . . fish, pork, chicken, corned beef, ham, duck, and pigeon.” After roasting the meat, he cut it into chunks that he marinated in a mixture of wine and spices. When ready, he tossed the meat into a blend of “cabbage, anchovies, pickled herring, mangoes, hard-boiled eggs, palm hearts, onions, olives, grapes, and any other pickled vegetables that were available.” He seasoned this creation “with garlic, salt, pepper, and mustard seed and doused with oil and vinegar” before he called the men to dine. (Botting, 45)

When pirates came ashore, they usually headed for the local taverns to quench their thirsts. Captain Thomas Walduck wrote to his nephew that “Upon all new settlements the Spaniards make, the first thing they do is build a church, the first thing ye Dutch do upon a new colony is to build them a fort, but the first thing ye English do, be it in the most remote part of ye world, or amongst the most barbarous Indians, is to set up a tavern or drinking house.” (Sismondo, 4) In 1661 more than forty tavern licenses were granted in Port Royal. Such establishments had a variety of names, including Black Dog, Cat and Fiddle, Cheshire Cheese, Green Dragon, Sign of the Mermaid, Sugar Loaf, Three Crowns, and Three Mariners.

A popular alcoholic beverage in the 1600s was rum, which the Dutch called kilduijvel (Kill-Devil). On 18 May 1673, Captain Passchier seized an English vessel that, much to his delight, was laden with “kilduijvel and molasses.” (Marley, 1:195)

English bread was a treat for pirates and seamen, since their usual fare was hardtack. The former was bread that had been allowed to rise before baking, whereas the latter was unleavened. Fresh or English bread required a lot of work and, once baked, it quickly spoiled. Normally, pirates and privateers enjoyed English bread if flour was among the booty taken from a captured ship.

July 3. The Prize Flower we took in Bags being much damag’d by the Rats, I order’d the Coopers to put it up in 36 Casks: The little English bread we have le[f]t is eaten as hollow as a Honeycomb, and so full of Worms, that it’s hardly fit for Use. (Rogers, 120)

These are but a sampling of the words pirates used. They also shared the vocabulary of all seamen, although to landlubbers such talk sounded like a foreign language. If you’d like to read more about pirate words and lore or nautical language, I recommend the resources below that I consulted in writing this article. You may also enjoy previous articles about the language of pirates: Pirate Lingo, When Is a Pirate not a Pirate?, and Galleys to Junks.

Resources

Bahadur, Jay. The Pirates of Somalia. Pantheon Books, 2011.
British Piracy in the Golden Age: History and Interpretation, 1660-1730 edited by Joel H. Baer. Pickering & Chato, 2007.
Botting, Douglas. The Pirates. Time-Life Books, 1978.
Burgess, Jr., Douglas R. The Pirates’ Pact. McGraw Hill, 2009.

Captured by Pirates: 22 Firsthand Accounts of Murder and Mayhem on the High Seas edited by John Richard Stephens. Fern Canyon Press, 1996.
Choundras, George. The Pirate Primer. Writer’s Digest, 2007.

Defoe, Daniel. A General History of the Pyrates edited by Manuel Schonhorn. Dover, 1999.
Dow, George Francis, and John Henry Edmonds. The Pirates of the New England Coast 1640-1730. Dover, 1996.

Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers edited by Robert J. Antony. Hong Kong University Press, 2010.

Fox, E.T. King of the Pirates. The History Press, 2008.

King, Dean. A Sea of Words. Henry Holt, 2000.
Konstam, Angus. Piracy. Osprey, 2008.

Lane, Rebecca. “Where the dickens did that word come from?” OxfordWords 13 February 2012.
Little, Benerson. The Sea Rover’s Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730. Potomac Books, 2005.
Lunsford, Virginia W. Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Marley, David F. Pirates of the Americas. ABC-CLIO, 2010.

Piracy, Maritime Terrorism and Securing the Malacca Straits edited by Graham Gerard Ong-Webb. IIAS and ISEAS, 2006.

Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations. Beacon Press, 2004.
Rogers, Woodes. A Cruising Voyage Round the World. The Narrative Press, 2004.

Selinger, Gail. The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Pirates. Alpha, 2006.
Sismondo, Christine. America Walks into a Bar: A Spirited History of Taverns and Saloons, Speakeasies and Grog Shops. Oxford, 2011.

Tsai, Shih-Shan Henry.  Maritime Taiwan. M. E. Sharpe, 2009.