Editing Pirate (section)

==Famous Real Life Pirates==
*'''Edward Teach''' - '''THE''' Pirate. Also possible Edward Thatch but better known as '''Blackbeard''', one of the original Golden Age pirates known for his [[Night Lords|intimidation tactics, which including exaggerating and weaponizing his fearsome reputation]]. His ''nom de guerre'' came from the fact that he had black hair with a long thick beard, put gunpowder and fuses in said beard and set it off to give himself a terrifying appearance (it helped that he was over six feet tall when most men of the time were about five and a half).  He also often let his victims live to talk about their encounters with him.  He was also quite smart, as he once raided a town (as in, blockaded the entirety of Charleston and held its sailors hostage) for medicine because [[Nurgle|most of his crew was riddled with diseases]] - [[Slaanesh|sexually transmitted ones]], then when some of the crew he sent to negotiate got drunk he marooned them in disgust.  Another claim to fame was his flagship, a captured frigate he renamed ''Queen Anne's Revenge''; as an actual warship, this gave him another advantage over other pirates, who mostly used captured merchant ships, slave ships or schooners.  He died in battle, [[awesome|fighting despite five gunshot wounds and nearly 20 sword slashes before being attacked from behind and having his throat cut.  And not before severing three of his killer's fingers and breaking his sword]]. 

*'''Henry Avery''' - The most successful (and mysterious) pirate in history. How successful? He was named the king of pirates after looting the Mughal Emperor's treasure fleet, which was worth £52 million today, and seriously pissing off the East India Company. Shortly after, though, he vanished. Neither he nor his treasure was seen again. Some vidya speculate that he went on to found the pirate utopia of [[wikipedia:Libertatia|Libertalia]] in Madagascar.

*'''"Calico" Jack Rackham'''- A fairly unremarkable man by the standards of this list, who didn't do much major raiding and whose greatest act turned out to be the recruitment of Anne Bonny and Mary Read. While in life he may not have been much more than a mugger with a boat that provided a backdrop for the stories of those two women on his crew, he managed to leave his mark on history by flying one of the best Jolly Rogers out there ([[wikipedia:Calico_Jack#Jolly_Roger_Flag|or maybe not,]] but it's still a great flag). 

*'''Anne Bonny and Mary Read''' - Two of the most famous female pirates. Here they get one entry as they have fairly similar life stories and worked together for a time: born in destitution, were disguised as boys early on in their lives, moved to the Caribbean where they took up piracy, and both became the lovers of Calico Jack plus renowned pirates in their own right.  When Anne and Mary first met, both were disguised as men and Anne was attracted to Mary, so Anne confessed she was a woman, leading Mary to do the same [[PROMOTIONS|with rumors that they became lovers anyway with Calico Jack's approval]].  Despite their eventual capture, they only avoided execution because both were pregnant (although [[Grimdark|Mary died of a fever while in prison]] while Anne's fate is unknown except that she wasn't executed, with her either being released after giving birth to her child or also dying in prison), though that didn't stop them from [[awesome|fighting off their captors virtually alone, telling off Calico Jack for being a cowardly drunk]] and even [[Commissar|shooting a few of their crewwmates for being too drunk to fight in the battle that led to their capture]] (don't underestimate pregnant women).

*'''Edward "Davies" Davis''' - An English pirate active in the late 1600's who made a career of raiding Spanish silver shipments.  Noteworthy for his opposition to slavery; Davies and his crew hit a number of slave ships, liberating their prisoners and recruiting some into his crew.  Eventually paid off the British crown for a pardon and retired; part of his haul went into founding the ''College of William & Mary'' in Virginia, the second oldest university in the Americas after Harvard.  Probably discovered Rapa Nui (Easter Island) although the records are disputed since he wasn't the first to actually report it to anyone.

*'''Walter Raleigh''' - One of the first English pirates; a minor lord who decided to try multiclassing as an Adventurer-Politician.  Founded Virginia and a few other less successful colonies, and was obsessed with finding the mythical golden city of El Dorado.  He'd rob Spanish treasure ships as needed to fund his antics, and then brag about it in front of the Spanish ambassador in Elizabeth's royal court.  Even plundered the Queen's bedchamber, marrying one of Elizabeth's ladies in waiting.  Eventually went from looting ships to looting Spanish settlements.  The Spanish responded by telling King James that if he didn't have Raleigh executed, they would treat his attack as a sanctioned act of war.  Raleigh was executed, but comported himself to the point of even chatting with and goading his executioner.

*'''Sir Francis Drake''' - The best illustration that the line between regular merchant, pirate, privateer and genuine military officer could be very tenuous at times. A full account of his long career can be found elsewhere, but let us just say that he started his career as a regular merchant occasionally getting rowdy with the Portuguese and the Spanish, then realized looting them for silver and gold was profitable and he became a full-fledged (and endorsed) raider. He was so good at liberating riches from them that he was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth, then later offered the post of vice-Admiral of the Navy when the Spaniards became fed up with the Anglos raiding them and spectacularly failed at trying to get even. Drake earned his warm reception in England (avoiding Raleigh's fate) by sharing the wealth to a spectacular degree. One time he put into port, the share of plunder he donated to Elizabeth was so vast that it was the '''largest revenue gain on the crown's balance sheet for that year'''. Also something about circumnavigating the Earth (Magellan would've been first had he survived the trip) but who cares, it's not piratey enough.

* '''William Adams''' - Served under Drake for long enough to get the title. More famous for going to [[Japan]] and becoming one of the few foreign-born [[Samurai]]. How's that for [[Multiclassing]]?

* '''Miguel Enriquez''' - Miguel Enríquez was a privateer from San Juan, Puerto Rico who operated during the early 18th century. A mulato born out of wedlock, Enríquez was a shoemaker by occupation before becoming a pirate. After working for the governor as a salesman he was recruited to defend the colonies of Spain, and commanded a fleet that intercepted foreign merchant ships and vessels dedicated to contraband. He was considered a pirate by Spain's enemies and became one of the richest men in the Spanish Caribbean. High points in his military career include his fleets defense of the antilles in the war of spanish succession and the expulsion of british occupation in the island of vieques. Under the order of King Philip V he was awarded the gold medal of the royal effigy and a royal auxiliary identification document allowing him to request aid from the council of indies. The fact he was commercially successful despite being lowborn irked local nobility. 

* '''Amaro Pargo''' - His full real name is much longer, Amaro Rodríguez-Felipe y Tejera Machado but people called him Pargo as a nickname, so it stuck. He was born in Tenerife, an island province of Spain that is part of the Canary Islands. Before becoming a pirate, he joined the Spanish rush to the Americas and helped develop trade networks between Spanish colonies and Europe through his employment in the Company of Honduras. His career as a pirate began with the capture of the English vessel Saint Joseph. He was accused of piracy by the lawyer Agustin Francisco Ceferino the defendant of captain Alexander Webster, but the Spanish court declared it a legitimate act of defense against a hostile country, so he got off the hook. He would later associate with many corsairs from the Canary Islands, with whom he collaborated directly. By 1740 he, along with the corsair Nicolás María Bignoni would send letters insisting that other captains  such as Bartolomé Sánchez Carta attack English vessels. His areas of operation shifted across the entire Caribbean, going wherever the company needed him and raiding disruptive vessels, but he worked mostly between the cities of Havana and Caracas when in America and his home in Tenerife. After retirement, he would become known to the people of the Canary Islands as a devout Catholic and a philanthropist for his donations to both religious and municipal organizations.

*'''Roberto Cofresí''' - He was born into a Spanish noble family, but political and economic difficulties forced them into exile to Puerto Rico he became a pirate in the end of the 18th century meaning he became massively infamous due to the emergence of international trade treaties. He was hunted down by a coalition of American & Spanish police.

* '''Kanhoji Angre''' - An Indian privateer who spent 30 years forcing England and Portugal to pay him taxes.  Probably the closest thing the world has seen to a pirate admiral, and considered today the ancestor of the Indian Navy.  At the height of his career he had Dutch sailors coming to him for work hunting European merchants.

*'''Abduwali Muse''' - A well-known modern pirate and the only one on this list who's actually still alive. Isn't as charming and heroic as previous but he's the youngest pirate on the list and got media coverage of his actions.  Abduwali led small gang of teenage pirates from Somalia (he was 16-19 at the time and the oldest among them) hijacking the ship Maersk Alabama, an unarmed container ship, from the Port of Salalah in Oman with orders to sail through the Guardafui Channel to Mombasa, Kenya.  Like almost every Somali pirate, he didn't have a good childhood due to living in extreme poverty, with food and work being scarce and poor quality; he turned to piracy to pay off a local warlord.  When navy ships got involved, the gang took the captain hostage and fled onto a lifeboat, resulting in Phillips' rescue and the deaths of every pirate save Abduwali himself, who got a 33+ year prison sentence in the US (still a serious upgrade in life standards compared to the hellhole of his home country, he even got a GED).  Despite having no achievements that compare with historical pirates, his story did help create the film "Captain Phillips" - named for the Captain of the ship Muse tried to take - and a meme. (Look at him. He's the captain now.)

*'''Ching Shih/Cheng I Sao''' - Chinese Pirate Queen who not only led one of the biggest pirate fleets but also managed to successfully retire. She got her fleet through marrying a pirate, who gave her half his fleet. And when he died she got all of it by way of political maneuvering with her husband's family. The Chinese government tried to take her down, but she was so good that she stole their ships until they were forced to use fishing boats. She even created a set of pirating laws, including one that made rape of female captives punishable by beheading. She eventually beat the empire so hard that the Chinese Government had to sue for peace. She negotiated for amnesty for herself and any of her pirates that wanted to quit the life, so she retired from piracy to set up a gambling den and brothel.

*'''Cheung Po Tsai''' - Cheng I Sao's step-son and second husband, succeeding his stepfather's role and expanded the fleet. As with Cheng I Sao was granted amnesty and became a navy colonel. Often depicted in dramas and movies.

*'''Wang Zhi / Wu Feng''' - a famous Wokou pirate who plagued the coast of Ming Dynasty China. He was originally a salt merchant before becoming head of a pirate syndicate that stretched from the East to South China Sea after deciding the Ming can fuck off with their prohibition on private maritime trade. He got acquainted with Dutch merchants after they seized Malacca and is credited to spreading European firearms across East Asia (most famously to daimyo Tanegashima Tokitaka). Seeing how Japan was undergoing the strife of the Warring States Era, he made a hefty profit selling saltpeter to them from China and Siam at a premium. Eventually he got fed up with the corrupt Ming administration’s bureaucracy and their lack of recognition of him before he took over some islands off the coast of southern Japan, rained riches on the locals to win them over, and then raided the coasts off China and Korea to make them take him seriously so they can make him an admiral or professional naval merchant. Unfortunately, his sympathizers in the local Ming administration got caught up in corruption scandals and politics before he got captured and beheaded while trying to negotiate. Post mortem, China and Korea blame him as a symbol of the ills from the Wokou piracy era; his interactions with Japan making him even more of an opportunistic target. He’s more fondly remembered in Japan as the source of the firearm technology imported from the Portuguese and identified in their documents as a Confucian scholar.

[[File:Serapis_Flag.png|250px|thumb|right|Totally legit, no pirates here.]]

*'''John Paul Jones''' - An angry Scotsman who sided with the colonists in the American Revolution so he could go on a big piracy spree up and down the English coast.  At one point he showed up in the Netherlands and the Dutch were like "you need a flag or we have to arrest you as a pirate" ''(also the ship was very obviously not his)''.  But they didn't like the English either so they looked the other way while Jones found someone to quickly sew a new flag ''([[Counts as|suspiciously like a Dutch flag cut up and sewn back together]])'' and he was free to go. He kicked so much ass and was so popular that one of the places that he raided actually gave him an official pardon in 1999.

*'''Gertrude Walton''' - A real life ghost pirate! The RIAA claimed that she uploaded pirated copies of over 700 songs despite her ''being dead''. Immortalized in a Weird Al song.

*'''Stede Bonnet''' - The "Gentleman Pirate," Steve was a former plantation owner from Barbados who got fed up with always being in debt and his nagging wife, so he decided to become a pirate. Bonnet is supposedly one of the pirates who originated "Walking the Plank." [[Noobs|Despite his gross inexperience]], he was able to attract a crew by promising a guaranteed wage as opposed to a share of plunder. Things went relatively well until he got bamboozled by Blackbeard (yes THAT Blackbeard) into giving up command of his ship and effectively became a hostage. He was later bamboozled again by Blackbeard and swore revenge, in which he surprisingly became a more competent pirate. But he was captured before he had the chance. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrGf4nJWVOU Dramatic Reenactment now included!]

*'''Felix von Luckner''' - Nicknamed "The Sea Devil", he is the best example of a Lawful pirate (okay, privateer) in RPG terms. Commissioned as an officer in the k.u.k. Kriegsmarine during WWI, he was given command of a three-master (at a time where most boats had switched to steam) with orders to do some commerce raiding and make himself a pain in the hindquarters of the Allies. And he did so. Beautifully. In less than one year, Luckner captured and sank no less than fifteen ships through guile and superior seamanship. And the best part? he did so barely ever firing a shot. Over his entire career, he and his crew killed only a single enemy soldier (a poor soul unlucky enough to be right next to a steam line that ruptured when Luckner ordered the enemy's radio shot). For the rest, he made sure everyone was safe and sound before sending his prizes to the bottom. And when he just became overburdened with prisoners, he ordered the latest his prizes to throw the cargo overboard and bring all his prisoners to a neutral country, and then they'd all be free. A pirate and and gentleman indeed, and a bizarre counterpoint to the way in which submarine warfare, the more modern way to attack shipping, was conducted in the 20th century.

*'''Klaus/Johann Stoertebeker''': One of the rare examples of pirates that predate the colonial era considerably and whose story survived the times. A German pirate captain hailing from Wismar, about whom barely anything is known other than that he entered public consciousness in the Hanseatic Cities Scandinavia and Northern Germany around the 1390s, when his gang was driven out of Gotland in the Baltic Sea and soon became a feared legend for Hanseatic seafarers that sailed the routes between Hamburg and Riga. According to legend, he was captured in 1401 by a Hamburgian fleet when a traitor aboard his flag ship disabled the rudder by pouring molten lead into its chains. When the Hamburgians dismantled his ship, they found that the three masts had been cast from Gold, Copper and Silver respectively and they used the metal to form the tip of the St Catherines Church in Hamburg from it. Stoertebeker himself was sentenced to death along with his crew of 77 men and his skull remains on display in Hamburg to this very day.