The Pirate Code: Rules Among English Buccaneers

The Myth and the Reality

Popular imagination paints pirates as lawless cut-throats, answerable to no one but their own greed. The truth is stranger and more interesting. Among English buccaneers in the Caribbean during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, many crews operated under written constitutions known as articles of agreement. These were not vague customs but specific, signed contracts that governed plunder, punishment, and compensation. Far from being anarchic, outlaw ships were often surprisingly democratic — a fact that scandalised naval officers and colonial governors alike.

The so-called pirate code was a practical response to a practical problem: how to keep a group of armed men, far from any law, from turning on each other. The answer was a set of rules that every man had a hand in making and every man was bound to follow.

Drawing Up the Articles

Before a voyage began, a crew would gather to draw up their articles. Each man had a vote, and each man signed or made his mark. The captain was elected, not appointed, and could be removed by majority vote. So could the quartermaster, the officer responsible for discipline and the division of plunder. Bartholomew Roberts, the most successful pirate of the Golden Age, commanded a ship called the Royal Fortune under articles that survive in print. They are worth quoting for their specificity.

Roberts’ articles stated that every man had a vote in affairs of moment and equal title to fresh provisions or strong liquors seized at any time. They also laid down rules on behaviour: no gaming at cards or dice for money; lights and candles to be put out at eight o’clock at night; no women allowed aboard; and any man who defrauded the company was to be marooned. Striking another man aboard ship was punished by flogging. These were not suggestions. They were enforceable law.

Shares of the Plunder

Plunder was not divided equally, but it was divided according to a fixed scale that everyone understood in advance. The captain typically received two shares, the master one and a half, the boatswain and gunner one and a quarter, and ordinary seamen one share. This was a clear hierarchy, but a transparent one — unlike the Royal Navy, where prize money was often delayed, disputed, or swallowed by officers.

More striking still was the system of compensation for injuries. Roberts’ articles promised 600 pieces of eight for the loss of a right arm, 500 for a left arm, 500 for a right leg, 400 for a left leg, and 100 for an eye or a finger. These sums were paid from the common fund before any other division. In effect, the crew had invented a crude form of insurance. A man who lost a limb in a boarding action knew exactly what he was owed, and the quartermaster ensured he received it.

• Captain: two shares
• Master: one and a half shares
• Boatswain and gunner: one and a quarter shares
• Ordinary seaman: one share
• Loss of right arm: 600 pieces of eight
• Loss of left arm: 500 pieces of eight
• Loss of right leg: 500 pieces of eight
• Loss of eye or finger: 100 pieces of eight

Punishment and Discipline

Discipline aboard a pirate ship was harsh but predictable. Minor offences such as drunkenness or neglect of duty might earn a flogging — “kissing the gunner’s daughter”, in sailors’ slang, meant being bent over a cannon and lashed. More serious crimes, such as stealing from the common store or bringing a woman aboard without permission, were punished by marooning. The offender was put ashore on a deserted island with a bottle of water, a pistol, and a single shot. Walking the plank, so beloved of novelists, was rare; marooning was the real terror.

Articles often specified that no man was to strike another while aboard. Quarrels were to be settled ashore, with swords or pistols, under the supervision of the quartermaster. This kept violence from spilling into the daily running of the ship. The rules were not about morality. They were about survival and efficiency.

Democratic Practices at Sea

The captain’s authority was limited to battle and navigation. Outside those spheres, the quartermaster ran the ship and the crew voted on major decisions: where to sail, whether to attack a particular prize, and how to divide spoils. If a captain proved cowardly or tyrannical, the crew could depose him. Captain Charles Vane was voted out of command in 1718 for refusing to attack a French man-of-war; his crew elected Calico Jack Rackham in his place. Such turnovers were not mutinies in the traditional sense — they were constitutional procedures.

This level of democracy was remarkable for its time. The Royal Navy offered no votes, brutal discipline, and poor pay. Merchant ships were little better. A pirate crew, for all its violence, offered a man a share, a voice, and a contract. That is why so many sailors deserted to piracy — not because they were born criminals, but because the articles gave them something the legitimate world denied them.

The Legacy of the Code

Pirate articles were not born of political philosophy. They were practical instruments, written by men who needed order without a state. Yet they reveal that democratic practices can flourish in the most unlikely places. The code bound crews together, limited the power of captains, and provided for the injured and the dead. It was flawed — it excluded women, and it did nothing for the enslaved people whom many pirates trafficked — but it was real.

When you read the articles of Bartholomew Roberts or the fragments that survive from other ships, you are reading the voice of ordinary sailors. They wanted fairness, transparency, and a share of what they risked their lives to take. The pirate code was not a myth. It was a contract, signed in ink and blood, and it governed the outlaw seas with a rigour that many legitimate institutions might have envied.