Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain's North American colonies. Little is known about his early life, but he may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne's War before he settled on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined around 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop that he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet, but Hornigold retired from piracy toward the end of 1717, taking two vessels with him.
Jean Lafitte was a French pirate and privateer who operated in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century. He and his older brother Pierre spelled their last name Laffite, but English language documents of the time used "Lafitte". This has become the common spelling in the United States, including places named after him.
The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1500s and phased out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began hunting and prosecuting pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful was from the 1660s to the 1730s. Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of pirate seaports such as Port Royal in Jamaica, Tortuga in Haiti, and Nassau in the Bahamas. Piracy in the Caribbean was part of a larger historical phenomenon of piracy, as it existed close to major trade and exploration routes in almost all the five oceans.
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, telling a story of "buccaneers and buried gold". It is considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action.
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a 2003 American fantasy swashbuckler film directed by Gore Verbinski. Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film is based on Walt Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disney theme parks and is the first film in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series. The film stars Johnny Depp, Geoffrey Rush, Orlando Bloom, and Keira Knightley. The story follows pirate Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) and blacksmith Will Turner (Bloom) as they rescue the kidnapped Elizabeth Swann (Knightley) from the crew of the Black Pearl, captained by Hector Barbossa (Rush). Barbossa's crew attempts to retrieve the final pieces of a hoard of Aztec gold to break the curse laid on them when they stole it.
Libertatia was a purported pirate colony founded in the late 17th century in Madagascar under the leadership of Captain James Misson. The main source for Libertatia is Volume 2 of A General History of the Pyrates, a 1724 book which describes Captain Misson and Libertatia. Little to no corroborating evidence for Libertatia beyond this account has been found, however. Whether Libertatia was real but somehow "lost" to history, a pirate legend that the author recorded based on interviews with sailors, or a concocted work of utopian fiction by the author from the start is contested.
Swiss Family Robinson is a 1960 American adventure film starring John Mills, Dorothy McGuire, James MacArthur, Janet Munro, Tommy Kirk, and Kevin Corcoran in a tale of a shipwrecked family building an island home. It was the second feature film based on the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss, a previous adaptation having been released by RKO Pictures in 1940. Directed by Ken Annakin and shot in Tobago and Pinewood Studios outside London, it was the first widescreen Walt Disney Pictures film shot with Panavision lenses; when shooting in widescreen, Disney had almost always used a matted wide screen or filmed in CinemaScope.
Summer of Sam is a 1999 American crime thriller film about the 1977 David Berkowitz serial murders and their effect on a group of fictional residents of an Italian-American neighborhood in The Bronx in the late 1970s. It focuses on two young men from the neighborhood: Vinny, whose marriage is faltering due to his cheating, and Ritchie, Vinny's childhood friend who has embraced punk fashion and music.
Woodes Rogers was an English sea captain, privateer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of the Bahamas from 1718 to 1721 and again from 1728 to 1732. He is remembered as the captain of the vessel that rescued marooned Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe. Rogers came from an experienced seafaring family, grew up in Poole and Bristol, and served a marine apprenticeship to a Bristol sea captain. His father held shares in many ships, but he died when Rogers was in his mid-twenties, leaving Rogers in control of the family shipping business.
Stede Bonnet was a Barbadian-born pirate and military officer, known as the Gentleman Pirate because he was a moderately wealthy landowner before turning to a life of crime. Bonnet was born into a wealthy English family on the island of Barbados, and inherited the family estate after his father's death in 1694. Despite his lack of sailing experience, Bonnet decided he should turn to piracy in the spring of 1717. He bought a sailing vessel, the Revenge, and travelled with his paid crew along the Eastern Seaboard of what is now the United States, capturing other vessels and burning other Barbadian ships.
Peter Bradford Benchley was an American author, screenwriter, and environmental activist. He is known for his bestselling novel Jaws and co-wrote its movie adaptation with Carl Gottlieb. Several more of his works were also adapted for both cinema and television, including The Deep, The Island, Beast, and White Shark.
The Island is a 1980 American action adventure-thriller film directed by Michael Ritchie and starring Michael Caine and David Warner. The film was based on a 1979 novel of the same name by Peter Benchley who also wrote the screenplay. It is about a savage group of pirates, made up of outcasts, thieves, and murderers, who are hidden from the outside world by an uncharted Caribbean island, and who have raided boats to sustain themselves since the 17th century.
On Stranger Tides is a 1987 historical fantasy supernatural novel by American writer Tim Powers. It was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and placed second in the annual Locus poll for best fantasy novel.
Blackbeard: Terror at Sea, a television special by the BBC, starring James Purefoy as Blackbeard. It aired in the United States on March 12, 2006 on National Geographic and was released on DVD in the Netherlands in July 2006, by Just Entertainment.
In English-speaking popular culture, the modern pirate stereotype owes its attributes mostly to the imagined tradition of the 18th-century Caribbean pirate sailing off the Spanish Main and to such celebrated 20th-century depictions as Captain Hook and his crew in the theatrical and film versions of J. M. Barrie's children's book Peter Pan, Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in the 1950 film adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel Treasure Island, and various adaptations of the Middle Eastern pirate, Sinbad the Sailor. In these and countless other books, films, and legends, pirates are portrayed as "swashbucklers" and "plunderers". They are shown on ships, often wearing eyepatches or peg legs, having a parrot perched on their shoulder, speaking in a West Country accent, and saying phrases like "Arr, matey" and "Avast, me hearty". Pirates have retained their image through pirate-themed tourist attractions, film, toys, books and plays.
True Caribbean Pirates is a documentary which aired on The History Channel in 2006.
Pirate Latitudes is an action adventure novel by Michael Crichton, the sixteenth novel to be published under his own name and first to be published after his death, concerning 17th-century piracy in the Caribbean. HarperCollins published the book posthumously on November 26, 2009. The story stars the fictional privateer Captain Charles Hunter who, hired by Jamaica's governor Sir James Almont, plots to raid a Spanish galleon for its treasure.
Neverland is a fantasy television miniseries that aired on the Syfy network on December 4 and 5, 2011, and Sky Movies on December 9 and 16 December on Zee Cinema (India), written and directed by Nick Willing. It is a prequel to the story of Peter Pan.
King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is a 2017 epic fantasy action-adventure film directed by Guy Ritchie who co-wrote the film with Joby Harold and Lionel Wigram from a story by Harold and David Dobkin, inspired by Arthurian legends. The film stars Charlie Hunnam as the title character and Jude Law as the tyrannical king Vortigern who is attempting to kill him, with Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Aidan Gillen, and Eric Bana in supporting roles.
