The Golden Age of Piracy & What It Teaches Us About The Universal Law of Fairness

Thomas Walker, most owned paradise. Governor of his own little slice of Heaven, a cozy fishing village on a sandy Bahaman island named Nassau. In a fair world, it might have been Thomas's too. Another British Governor founded Nassau 50 years earlier, in 1666 and then left for America without appointing anyone to take it over. The Spanish also occupied it briefly in 1703 before leaving it. Then the French, and once in 1684, the Spanish burned it to the ground to keep it from being used by British privateers. That was a trend for Nassau: to be occupied, used, and abandoned.

But Nassau recovered. It always recovered. The Spanish fleet was finally gone after the war of succession bankrupted them and with nobody appointed Governor at the new Nassau, that left Thomas Walker, the last loyal British officer in paradise and the de facto governor of Nassau. Thomas Walker almost had it all until the pirates showed up. History generally agrees that Thomas Walker saw the writing on the wall. He knew he was about to lose his paradise to the thousands of out-of-work privateers arriving from England. An invasion force of jobless sailors who have been released from the King's service without pension or compensation. An army sailed into Nassau looking for easy work or for plunder.

Thomas Walker warned them, both the Americans and the British, that the private army was forming right here in paradise. Walker even published articles in the early American newspapers about out-of-work privateers starting troubles in the Bahamas, but he made one massive blunder. When Walker wrote about the plunderers of scavengers stealing, he accidentally included how much silver they were bringing in. Thomas Walker, the last man standing in Nassau, accidentally put out an advertisement for unemployed sailors. Come to the Bahamas, where pirate enterprises paid fairer wages than the British crown. When Thomas Walker lost his paradise, he had no one to blame but himself and his beloved King for refusing to pay privateer pensions.

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Stories about pirates like Blackbeard and Bonnie, Charles Vane and Benjamin Hornigold tend to overhype three big parts of piracy. Rivers of plunder, tons of fighting and loads of sex. We don't want to splash too much cold water on these fables, but we're going to review a few practical aspects of why the Golden Age of piracy began. First of all, how short it lasted, which is less than 40 years and why the pirate era began in the first place, which really comes down to its unfair labor. To help us navigate this history of piracy in the Bahamas and the injustice that spawned it, we have three myths about fairness:

Myth One: Standards of fairness are a modern concept, like beauty standards for fine dining. It's not like human beings are hardwired for fairness, right?

Joe: So before we really dive into this, do you want to tell everybody about the documentary?

Todd: Well, this is a Netflix special, and I thought I knew something about pirates. But I couldn't stop watching this. It is a drama-documentary, but I think it's heavy on the documentary part and pretty factual. What did you think of it?

Joe: It blew my mind. I thought I knew piracy, but I had many major misconceptions. I didn't know that so many were dealing with the Carolinas. So, here's a question I had for you - did you realize how short the golden age of piracy was?

Todd: I thought the pirates were around forever. But the golden days, like you said, were only 40 years. So all this fiction and fantasy came out of a very small timeline. 

Joe: Obviously, piracy existed before. A pirate is like a robber who would come out and steal your stuff…but on water. That's always existed since boats have been around. But when we say pirate in this article, we actually mean out-of-work privateers and the golden age of piracy; that era of piracy was so short.

Todd: So the big thing is, what is a privateer? A privateer was a private sailor that was used for many years to protect the British ships, and the British docks because they didn't have enough warships to be stationed and protect them from all their goods coming in. They were not just bandits. They were accomplished sailors of all different skills and were protectors of the bay for the English. With a hostile time, England had no other alternative but to depend on these privateers to protect them, other people, and protect all their funds. The English kind of said, hey, go ahead and disturb the Spanish's shipping activity and harass them. You are legally licensed to steal from them. If you get caught by the Spanish, they could kill you, but you're doing it legally for your own country.

Joe: That is so weird.

Todd: Then the pirate yearning was actually just abandoned by the crown. There was no longer that need. This led to 50,000 out-of-work sailors who got no payoff or lump sum for their service, and these people saw themselves as loyal British soldiers…so absolutely not fair.

Joe: The loyalty is what shocks me. They're literally plundering other ships and being bandits, and they all consider themselves loyal men of the crown. It's bonkers to me; what do you expect if you fire all of an army at once? What are they going to do? They still had all of their means to be pirates too. Do you think if the king of England had given them a pension and had compensated them in some way, do you think that would have made a difference?

Todd: I think about 90% of them would have. I think there were still some that were not looking to retire with a pension, but I think the vast majority would have sought other means to make a living after being let go from the crown obligations.

Does not having a sense of fairness make you insane? In politics, nobody is willing to work with each other at all to pass a bill. It doesn't seem like we have a natural sense of fairness. I used to think that pirates were all about selfishness and taking what's yours and that they were cruel to everybody else. But really, it was the other way around; Britain was being incredibly unfair by not paying them a pension and not giving them away out of that lifestyle when it was time to leave being a privateer. Pirates were extraordinarily fair toward each other. By the way, each ship was a company. They set their own standards, they had a corporate methodology, and everything was split in an extremely exacting way.

Whereas the king of England was unfair to send them out and unleash these privateers on the Spanish. I believe it was equally unfair when he said none would get compensated. None of you are getting pensions, you are private contractors, and I don't have to give you any benefits whatsoever. You're all fired. In my mind, there cannot be a sense of fairness baked into us; it must be something we teach each other. Do you think children have an innate sense of fairness? When you watch the kids play, they're constantly stealing from each other. So, do you think it's like part of our DNA to be fair with each other, or do we learn it from rejection as we get older? Well, perhaps a little of both.

Kiley Hamlin from Yale kind of uncovered the sense of fairness in babies. I figured theory of mind does not kick in until you're at least two years old or something, but it's way younger. She took six months old’s and put them into a room, and she would show them a short little play. Imagine a puppet show; It is a cardboard hill with a steep slope, and there's a red square trying to climb and struggling. Then it gets almost to the top and then another shape, a green triangle comes up from the top of the hill and knocks it back down. It is an unfair action. They have a shape that came along afterward, something different and it would help the red square up. And the fascinating and kind of shocking thing for me was these babies, almost 100% of the time, would try to grab or pay attention to the helper shape. They wanted that helper shape like it was their new best friend. Humans, from the get-go, want something that will be fair. They anticipate and want something that will show fairness and quality, which has been replicated in many studies. Babies are hardwired to recognize who is being the most fair in a group, and they're hardwired to want that thing.

There is a video I want to watch with you. The monkeys have rocks in their cages and the job is to hand over the rocks. They are perfectly willing to do this. One of them gets cucumber for a rock, and the other one gets something much better – a grape. They are side by side in these cages, so they can see each other through the glass, and they can see the inequality between them for doing the exact same job. The one who got the cucumber throws it back at the scientist. He would rather eat nothing because he wants fairness. We're not just wired for fairness as humans; mammals are wired for fairness.

Myth Two: Which emotion causes us to act fair? Are we bigger tippers when we're happy, or do we give bigger holiday bonuses when we're flesh?

How fair were pirates? A captain and a new 15-year-old on deck shared all of the treasure. When recruiting people, they say the pay and living conditions on these ships are horrible, but they know they treat their crew fairly. It wasn't uncommon for these pirate ships to have bands that came and traveled with them, and theater actors would come and put on shows for the men. So, not only did a captain and a quartermaster recruit the best people, but they also had to have the best entertainment on their ship to maintain good employees. Let's take Blackbeard; he had a good run of robbing very lightly guarded slave ships. When they captured a slave ship coming over from Africa, he would ask the enslaved people if they wanted to continue to be slaves or be free men/pirates with him. He also said that their life is not a lot better than being a slave, but at least you're free. At least you have a chance to fight. I can't think of anything more fair than that.

Blackbeard was also inconsistent about it. He would free enslaved people one day, and then the next week, he'd sell them to the Carolinas; it was really just depending on his mood and how much money his crew would make. But the big thing was when they were recruiting people, that their base pay was less than minimum wage, but when we hit a big one, you're going to make just as much as the captain and the quartermaster. The insane unfairness of business now is you get hired, and they will ask you what you think you're worth. There is no wage transparency. They'll make you make the opening bid, so they don't have to tell you what other people make. So many people are using that bottom line unfairness to the employer or the employee that it is shaping the country. It's crazy that pirates are fairer and more open about pay. There was no secrecy in wages.

When are you fair? How much does emotion play into this since we are hardwired to want fairness starting as babies? Have you ever been fired from a job, and somebody calmly took you aside and explained why you got laid off? If so, they usually paint the picture and deliver it in digestible chunks so you wouldn't feel like you were being treated unfairly. However, others don’t explain, which can lead to resentment and retaliation. If somebody quietly dumps you, it's way more painful than if they actually explain.

Harvard Business Review did a comparison model; they call it process fairness. It's basically about being fair on a huge corporate level. With this comparison study, they looked at companies where the senior Jurors never explained why layoffs were happening, and they compared them to companies where they got people to come in, and they explained everything, and they told them here's why it's happening. The amount of people that went back and tried to sue ex-companies, or at least those that held grudges against their companies when they were let go without an explanation, was shockingly high. I think only 1% of ex-employees who felt they were treated with a high degree of process fairness filed a wrongful termination.

Myth Three: What's so great about fairness anyway? Lots of millionaire CEOs don't seem to give a damn about fairness, and they're doing fantastic.

I think that a huge part of it is fairness, being transparent and explaining yourself once in a while. That is going to be the biggest takeaway. In Malcolm Gladwell's book Blink, he talked about process fairness via doctors. If a doctor explains things in a fair-sounding way to their patients and makes a lot of eye contact, they are sued less for wrongful practice than doctors who didn't seem to be paying attention. So, fairness is not just about getting your slice of the pie; It's letting someone know that they're being heard, that you have empathy, and that they're part of the decision-making.

Todd: I have the ultimate one for pirates. When they would capture an enemy, I always thought they were cruel to them - start cutting limbs off, throwing them overseas, raping, pillaging, etc.

Joe: The terms rape and pillage are exactly what comes to mind. I figured that whenever they captured enemies, especially a Captain. In movies, they always torture them almost without exception.

Todd: Well, that's a good point because this is what they would do. Once the boat was surrounded or in a vulnerable state, they would ask the captain what he wanted to do. He has two options: he can fight and protect all his cargo, or he can just hand it over. And when you hand it over, it's just a business decision - not a single person gets hurt. But the pirates found that the cruel captains would always be greedy and want their men to fight and protect his wealth. So, this is how fair the pirates were. They would turn to the men who are under a legitimate captain's control, and they'd say, is this guy a jerk or not? And if he was and if he was a jerk, they would kill the captain and free all the men. So, that's when your life is actually in the hands of your employees…isn't that scary?

Joe: That is wild. And an important part to that, a lot of times, that stuff was insured. Many of these ships were insured for losses if piracy or storms happened. So the captain was just an asshole middle manager like, no, we're keeping the cargo because I get a higher bonus when we get home.

Todd: Pride or ego, but can you believe insurance that way back? You have to fill out some forms with like an inkwell. Things have not changed that much. They may not have an app on their phone, but they still had insurance.

Joe: Imagine even filling out the boxes on insurance claims with a quill.

Todd: Think about this, if you're a pirate and go on three raids and nobody dies, you start to feel untouchable. I guess that's not as exciting for movies either; going up there and saying, hey, give me your stuff, and they hand it over.

Joe: I worked in a FedEx warehouse loading boxes when I was young. If somebody showed up and held a gun to me and was like, give me all of the boxes in the back of that truck and then my boss was like, no, you fight him…that's basically what this is. Like, no, it's just cargo.

Final Thoughts

The golden age of piracy didn't begin abruptly when someone waved a magic wand, and a legion of sailors became extra greedy. It started because thousands of men have been trained and deployed to do a job. And when the Empire signed their checks and took away the right to work without giving them an alternative, they put their skills to a new purpose.

From wages to plunder, from risking death by Spanish gun to risking death by British Gallows, legit or legal, it was all the same. Except as a free pirate enterprise, the money and healthcare were better than what society offered. Nothing's changed in our sense of fairness since the pirate area. In fact, our human sense of fairness has been hardwired into us for centuries, going back to early man. We've always known you can't trust a tribal leader who doesn't share the meat. The same can be said for businesses, bosses, and even spouses. If someone doesn't have a sense of fairness, we can't trust them at the most primitive level.