“Merrily to Hell Together”: Threats of Self-Destruction among Golden Age Pirates

The threat of death hung over every aspect of pirate life during the Golden Age of piracy. They threatened governors and governments who dared to capture, prosecute, and hang their fellow buccaneers. They threatened their victims for running away, for fighting back, or for hiding their money. They even threatened death on each other should any of them suggest leaving off their chosen course or for betraying their company. Even the iconic skull and crossbones “Jolly Roger” pirate flag was a visible, physical symbol of a threat of death: for victims it was a reminder that surrender may mean mercy, but resistance would be fatal; and for the Pirates themselves, a grim reminder that capture or failure could mean their end. Many pirate crews in the Golden Age took this menace of death to the extreme by threatening to blow up their ship to avoid the noose, promising to take prisoners and pirates, captives and captors, and gold and galleon to the bottom of the ocean, going “merrily to Hell together”. Yet despite their boasts and despite embracing the symbols of death, when the time came to make good on their oaths, few of these crews took that final explosive step and fewer still succeeded. This paper examines twenty incidents from the Golden Age of piracy in which pirates or their victims threatened or attempted to blow up their ships and themselves to avoid capture. Witness statements, period newspaper accounts, and trial testimony reveal that the threat was frequent but the attempt was not. In the end it was often prevented by the pirates themselves after a change of heart, despite promising one another that they would “live & dye together”.