- YouTube
I hope you've all enjoyed the Closed Beta! With it unfortunately over I thought I could try and fill the Pirate shaped gap in your hearts with some more information on Pirate history :)
Now while most people see Pirates as being lawless, care-free, plundering heroes they actually did follow some strict rules and guidelines..think of it more as an organised lawlessness set out in a set of rules and guidelines really…that’s what the Pirates life was like. Joking aside though whenever a group of sailors would turn Pirate they would all sit down as a collective, or alternatively their appointed leadership would sit down as a collective and write up what they would call the Articles of Agreement, also known as the Pirates Code, also known as the Jamaica Discipline, also known as the Custom of the Coast, also known as….it was known as quite a lot of things.
This code primarily provided the crew with information on ship discipline, distribution of plunder, compensation for injured Pirates, and yes, you heard that correctly, Pirates had a healthcare plan.
If you wanted to join a crew you would have to sign, or make your mark if you couldn’t write, on the articles entering into a contract with the ships crew and Captain that you agreed to abide by that code. You were then required to swear an oath of allegiance or honour to the crew, some swore this oath on a Bible, one crew who didn’t have a Bible on board reportedly swore their oaths on an axe….go figure. After swearing your oath and making your mark you would then be part of the crew and have earned yourself the right to vote on officers and more importantly receive your share of the plunder.
It’s kind of odd when you think about it that the Pirates were basically rebelling against their respective government and it’s laws only to go and more or less create their own miniature government with their own laws on their ships. But what did these Pirate codes say? Well a handful have survived the ages, most of them contain similar rules here and there but here are just some of the rules you may have to live by if you want to lead a life of Piracy and perhaps these will give you some ideas on how you might want to run your own ship in Sea of Thieves:
Captain Bartholomew Roberts’ articles stated that you couldn’t gamble for money whilst on his ship, not only that but they had a strict light’s out policy so that the Pirates could get their beauty sleep, if you didn’t blow out your candles by 8PM you were to take your drinking and shenanigans to the cold of the open deck.
One common rule was that no boys or women were allowed to be part of the crew, if Roberts found you trying to smuggle a woman into the crew it was actually punishable by death.
If you had a problem with a fellow member of crew you had to settle it on land, first to draw blood would win. And funnily enough if you were a musician on Roberts’ crew you were allowed to have Sundays off, other than that under no circumstances were you allowed to take any breaks…music is very important on the high seas.
For Captain John Philips they had a slightly different policy to in-fighting, if you strike another member of crew you’d have to suffer what they called Moses’ Law which was 39 lashes to the back. Equally if you were to smoke in the hold without a cap for your pipe or carry a candle without a lanthorn you would equally get a lashing, most likely this is because they didn’t want to risk a naked flame catching the gunpowder in the hold on fire.
Captain Edward Low and George Lowther stated in their articles that whoever spotted the sail of a ship they could plunder, shall have the best Pistol or Small Arm aboard her. So it definitely paid to be observant on the high seas.
But those are just some of the rules that you may have had to abide by in the Golden Age of Piracy, what kind of rules will you be implementing on your ship in Sea of Thieves? Let me know down in the comments but until next time, have a great week and I’ll speak to you all soon!
