Things I didn't know about pirates

There are at least three things I didn’t know about pirates:

One: The Jolly Roger was a symbol of not so much a threat to others (“you are going to die”), but more of sheer defiance (“we know we are going to die”). Pirates knew that they had signed their own death warrants once on land, and to go rogue was to embrace this fate on their way to hell. Crews making out such a flag on the horizon would have found this even more terrifying.

Two: Despite the image and myth they (very intentionally) created during their own time, and which persists to this day, pirate captains were actually not the terrifying authoritarian despots we believe them to be, but sort of temporary firsts among equals, as they only had authority during chase or battle and the rest of the time all issues aboard a ship were decided very much democratically, and captains could be removed by majority vote at any time.

Three (and this is so random): Peter the Great of Russia contemplated using alliance with the pirates (via…