Piracy Folklore
F2. Maritime Culture, Heritage, Archaeology, Art and MuseumsDefinition
Black-flag legends including Blackbeard and Anne Bonny.
The body of legend, song, and popular imagery built around the “golden age of piracy,” roughly 1650 to 1730, and its real figures. Edward Teach (Blackbeard) was killed off Ocracoke, North Carolina, on 22 November 1718; Anne Bonny and Mary Read were tried in Jamaica in 1720 and “pleaded their bellies” to escape hanging. Much of the lore traces to Captain Charles Johnson’s “A General History of the Pyrates” (1724) and was reshaped by Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island” (1883), which invented the buried-treasure map and much modern pirate iconography.
Source: Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates (1724); Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883)