My favourite law-breakers, or, as I like to call them, free thinkers, are pirates. Not the modern ones with bazookas and iphones, I mean the old-timey ones who hoist the colours and swab the deck.
“Free thinkers?” I hear you cry, “They were criminals”. While I admit, pirates are best known for plundering, theft, mutiny and murder, I’d urge you to heed the wise words of your grandfather, “they be different times lad”. In the golden age of piracy England was under a system of absolute monarchy, a system where all power was inherited by an unelected ruler, a system where the laws of the nation were made on the arbitrary whims of a tyrannical lunatic. Common folk like you and I would have had no influence on how the country was governed. All the wealth exploited from colonialism was hoarded among the elites (and still is) and all the English land, mindlessly divvied out by the King, was hoarded by nobility (and still is). While the crown plundered the world saying “do as I don’t”, pirates stepped up to say “We’ll be plunderin' on our own terms ye flea-bitten pups, to cock with yer arse-backwards rules”.
In this squalid and lawless hellscape, is it any surprise that the common folk wanted an escape?
All across the English coastline dispirited sailors, tradesmen and labourers boarded black sailed schooners and set off in search of adventure, freedom, and a new law to live by. Pirates are some of history's most intriguing romantics. When they encountered a system that didn't serve their interests, they sought to run away and create their own. They were anything but a lawless bunch, they simply rejected one legal framework in favour of another.
The system I mention is of course the pirate code, which was a comprehensive legal document all crew members had to sign and abide by. It laid out a strict set of do’s and don'ts, the codex might have read something like this:
“Do split the bounty equally among ye crew”
“Don’t play cards unless ye be a landlubber”
“Do drink, but only above deck ye damned scallywags”
“Don’t bring ladies aboard ye reckless, piss-soaked dog or you shall be marooned and shot between your clueless eyes”
I like to imagine this code daggered to the Captain’s door, scrawled in illiterate signatures. Some sailors were so legally shrewd that they would urge a crewmate to point a pistol at their head while they signed the code, so that if captured later they could claim duress. DON’T try this if you’re not a well liked member of the crew.
Perhaps the most poignant example of pirates' disdain for the law and their romantic urge to create a new one is the tale of Libertatia.
In the 1724 book A General History of the most notorious Pyrates, the heroic life of a certain Captain James Misson is recounted. Mission was a lawful, obedient and all round god-fearing sailor. He rode aboard various French warships all throughout the late 17th century accompanied by a liberal minded priest, Caraccioli. While a full time priest, Caraccioli was also a full time hater. Hater of authority, hater of wealth, hater of power, and after many moons of brazen hatred, Caraccioli’s loathing perspective on power became utterly contagious. Captain Mission himself became infected with the hate bug, and his support for the colonial cause began to wane.
If not such an eloquent sod, Caraccioli might have been ignored altogether, but who could ignore such performative disdain, and performed with such vigour! “The magistrates in favour of the rich” Caraccioli sang across the weatherbeaten deck, “are most industrious to screw the lowest class of people, but all their laws would signify nothing if these did not consent to give up the natural right they have of defending themselves”
And just like that, this spunky thespian had converted near half a crew of 200 strong. Captain Mission, being the most impressed of the bunch, took it upon himself to lead the crew of newly christened renegades to a new world.
Arriving at the coast of Madagascar, Mission decided this would be the perfect spot to create his new social utopia, and more profoundly, his new law. He named the settlement, Libertatia.
THE LAW ENCOMPASSES ALL, THERE IS NO NO-MANS LAND, THERE IS NO ESCAPE
Naturally they resumed their usual day to day pirating activities of plundering, drinking and battening down the hatches, however now they were far more socially minded about it. All bounty was shared, all slaves were set free and all were governed by a democratic participatory system of majority rule. “Every man was to enjoy his own opinion, and to pay no respect to that of another ''. In Libertatia, forced conformity was old school baby. Here, laws were made and judged by the people and for the benefit of the people. It all sounds bloody lovely. If you weren’t drinking yourself disabled on a deck chair enjoying the tropical weather, you might be found practising democracy, or just generally enjoying a more direct influence over the legal framework you live by. I’ll drink to that.
[Photo by “Sue Winston“]
Unfortunately, running away from the law to go and create your own just isn’t as easy anymore. This is actually the main theme of Pirates of the Caribbean. “The world used to be a bigger place” announces Captain Barbossa.
FOOTNOTE: I had initially thought this quote was from pirate Keith Richards (who in the film I believe is some sort of maternal figure to Jack Sparrow), however our editor who is has an unusually shrewd eye for incorrect Pirates of the Caribbean quotes saw that it was in fact a quote from Captain Barbossa. I received 10 bum lashings for this error.
This sentiment that there is no escape is considered later by Cutler Beckett who declares, “Jack Sparrow is a dying breed, the world is shrinking...the blank edges of the map filled in.”
As colonial powers expanded and tightened their grip on the world, labourers and sailors of the time would have felt their means of escape and freedom disappearing, and they were right.
These days you can’t just fuck off to nowhere and govern yourself. The law encompasses all, there is no no-mans land, there is no escape. You’re always at the mercy of someone's legal system, whether it's your contract of employment at your workplace, your tenancy agreement at home, or the wider reaching criminal laws of your country.
I see the romantic notion of abandoning the law to create your own as a lost art, with pirates being the last practitioners. Figures like King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the Three Musketeers, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and most recently, pirates, embody this idea. I believe pirates represented the final frontier of legal escape and reform, serving as the last resistance against uncontrollable and all-encompassing law.