Test Your Swashbuckling Skills With This Pirates Quiz

A pirate historian once described Black Sam Bellamy (1689-1717) with the phrase “Fight smart, harm few, score big.” Bellamy captured 54 ships over the course of one year, hauling in an amount worth $120 million in today’s dollars, without having any record of killing a captive; in fact, he’d often return ships if they weren’t useful to him.

Ching Shih was captured by pirates at the age of 26, and agreed to marry their leader only on the condition that she be treated as an equal business partner. When her husband died three years later, she maintained control of her pirate empire. By 1890, Ching had control of over 1,800 boats and 80,000 crewmen. After a pitiful failed military attempt to stop her, China eventually had to offer Ching amnesty and allow her to keep her ill-gotten gains to persuade her to retire.

In Robert Louis Stevenson’s swashbuckling adventure “Treasure Island” (1882), the heroes have trouble finding a crew to operate their vessel while they search for buried gold. Fortunately, a pub cook overhears their troubles, volunteers to sign up, and vouches for many other crewmates. Unfortunately, that cook is the infamous “gentleman of fortune” Long John Silver, and the crew are his mutinous pirate allies.

The term “buccaneer” comes from the French word “boucan,” which refers to a grill for smoking dried meat (handy for long voyages). These pirates, known as “privateers” at the time, usually targeted Spanish settlements in the Caribbean and South America in the 17th century. Though their activities were often illegal, they did maintain a code of conduct that held them in higher regard than savage pirates.

Barbary pirates, also known as corsairs, operated along the northern coast of Africa, often harassing European merchants. Perhaps the best known of these pirates was Barbarossa (Italian for “Red Beard”). Barbarossa used his swashbuckling experience to help North African kingdoms repel the invasions of the early 16th century. Eventually, Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent named him grand admiral of the Ottoman Empire, and admiral in chief of the Ottoman navy.

As Spain colonized the Americas during the 16th and 17th centuries, the Spanish turned the gold they plundered into coins. Doubloons became especially important, as they could be spent on or traded for commodities such as silk and spices. This made the Spanish galleon ships hauling these coins around the Caribbean incredibly juicy targets for enterprising pirates. Each doubloon was roughly seven grams of solid gold, which pirates were happy to spend.

Sadly, pirates weren’t much for writing down the nuanced origins for their slang, so there are many competing ideas for how Davy Jones and his locker came to mean the bottom of the sea, the final resting place for many drowned sailors. One theory speculates it comes from a British pub owner named Davy Jones, who allegedly threw drunk patrons into ale lockers and then dumped them onto passing ships.

Although he is one of history's most infamous buccaneers, Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was a pirate for less than two years in the early 18the century. When boarding enemy vessels, he reportedly made a striking impression on foes by tying lit fuses to his hair and beard, making him appear more frightful than a “fury from Hell.”

Kidnapped and thought killed by the Dread Pirate Roberts, Westley, the hero of both the 1973 book and 1987 film adaptation “The Princess Bride,” reunites with his true love Buttercup under the guise of being that same pirate. Westley reveals that the “Dread Pirate Roberts” that kidnapped him wasn’t the original either; instead, it is a title handed down from person to person, using the reputation that surrounds the name to inspire fear.

Scholars are split on the origin of the term “Jolly Roger.” Some believe it originates from the French term “joli rouge” (pretty red), as some early pirate flags were red instead of black. Others think it stems from “Old Roger,” an 18th-century nickname for the devil. Different pirates would use slightly different symbols on their Jolly Rogers, such as a clenched fist or an hourglass, to further inspire feelings of dread.