Piratesdaily explores the people, vessels, ports, and stories behind maritime history. We look beyond familiar legends to explain what is known, what remains uncertain, and how historians interpret the surviving evidence.
Our articles make seafaring history approachable without treating violence or hardship as adventure alone. From shipboard routines to famous trials, Piratesdaily offers curious readers a thoughtful route through the past.
How We Approach the Past
Piracy is one of those subjects where the stories travel faster than the facts. Many of the images people carry in their heads, such as buried treasure maps, captives forced to walk the plank or a parrot on every shoulder, owe more to nineteenth-century novels, stage plays and later films than to the records of the time. Our aim is to separate those later layers from what the surviving documents actually tell us, and to be honest about the gaps between them.
Much of what is known about individual pirates comes from a small set of source types: court records and trial transcripts, depositions from captured sailors and merchants, colonial correspondence, ships' logs, newspaper reports and accounts published soon after the events. Each has its own biases. A confession given before a hanging, a governor writing to justify his actions, or a popular history written to sell copies will all shape the story in different ways. When we write about a figure like Blackbeard or about Anne Bonny and Mary Read, we try to show where a detail comes from and how far it can be trusted.
What you will find here
- Context first: piracy grew out of particular wars, trade networks and labour conditions at sea, so we explain the wider setting, as in our look at what historians mean by the Golden Age of Piracy.
- Clear uncertainty: where accounts conflict or evidence is thin, we say so rather than choosing the most dramatic version.
- Ordinary lives: sailors, enslaved people, merchants, colonial officials and coastal communities were all part of this history, not just famous captains.
- Respect for the human cost: raids, captivity and executions affected real people, and we write about them with that in mind.
Piratesdaily is an independent site written for curious readers, students and anyone who enjoys maritime history. We are not affiliated with any museum, archive or heritage body. If you spot an error or have a question about a topic, you are welcome to get in touch through our contact page, and we will gladly look again at the evidence.