The same-sex couples were established by now, so they shared everything. But he treated them little better than cattle – selling the ‘girls’ off to the highest bidder at auctions.Īnd it didn’t wash with the gay pirates. Le Vasseur believed the women would be a civilising influence. French governor Jean Le Vasseur apparently arranged for up to 1,650 female prostitutes and petty criminals to be shipped from Paris to the island.īrutal sexism was at play. Tortuga was obviously deeply homosocial and probably openly homosexual. There were far too many men on this island and too few women. The buccaneers did cause them one problem though. This is when a government grants people the right to attack merchant ships from another country. In fact, there is a long history of privateers. So they either turned a blind eye to anti-Spanish piracy or even encouraged it. The French, English and Dutch governments all wanted to break the Spanish monopoly of trade with the New World. Tortuga was split between French and English colonies. So piracy became their main source of income. This was more defensible but had even fewer natural resources. And this just made them more dependent on piracy.Įventually, the Spanish persecution forced the buccaneers to move to the smaller island of Tortuga, off the north coast of Hispaniola. But the Spanish tried to wipe out not only the buccaneers but the animals they hunted. They may have turned to piracy to subsidise this meagre income. So runaway slaves, mutinous soldiers and sailors, almost anyone who had a reason to hide, could find safe haven there. It was born on the island of Hispaniola (which is nowadays Haiti and the Dominican Republic) in the Caribbean.īy 1605, Spain had abandoned its colonies in the impoverished north of the island. This period was the inspiration for the Disney Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise. Most of our modern pirate myths stem from the Golden Age of Piracy, from the 1650s to the 1730s. At such times one might see them thumping their chests, as if they wanted to arouse some remorse in their hearts, something they had become scarcely capable of.’ The birth of the gay buccaneers
One contemporary French historian wrote: ‘They never engaged in combat without embracing each other as a sign of reconciliation. Some engaged in salt-water baptisms, gave themselves new names or toasted each other with seawater to mark their new life together.Īnd they embraced the all male world they joined. Pirates consciously separated themselves from the rest of society. Pirates often recruited their crews from the merchant and military ships they attacked, where sailors would already be having sex with each other.Īnd piracy offered a release from sexual restrictions alongside society’s other rules. Britain’s Royal Navy punished ‘sodomy’ or ‘buggery’ with lashes and even hanging.
It may even have been useful to them, reducing tensions and resentment and increasing the bond between men.īut technically it was illegal in many navies.
Same-sex action and the sea have long gone together.Ĭaptains on navy and merchant ships must have accepted, if not engaged in, gay sex. ‘They never engaged in combat without embracing each other’
So to celebrate Talk Like A Pirate Day (19 September) here’s our queer history of piracy. Piracy was a world apart, and one where homosexual couples may have been the norm, not the exception. The lesbian and gay pirates of the 17th century lived a strangely egalitarian life, with health insurance and even same-sex civil partnerships.