Historically, there are major four groups that have commonly been described as “adventurers”:
a. Pirates and bandits who realised that the real money lay in getting people to pay them to go pillage someone else;
b. Members of the idle rich who wandered about robbing tombs and subjugating the locals for fun rather than for profit, often distinguishable from the first group only by the presence of a “Sir” before their names;
c. People who just wanted to look at birds, but it sort of got out of hand; and
d. Lesbians.
Now, I’m not saying that this taxonomy would make a reasonable basis for a class system in a tabletop roleplaying game, but I’m not not saying it either.
D&D but your only class choices are Pirate, The Idle Rich, Birdwatcher, and Lesbian.
This is true btw. I did a report about Ann Boney in school and Read actually liked her back so they ran away together and were considered the two most terrifying pirates across the seven seas
Lesbian Pirates
Give us this film
Just fyi – many of the illustrations and statues of them show them with their breasts exposed. This is not because they are sexualising lesbians but because these women often used to open their shirts and expose a breast when they killed a man just so the man’s dying thought would be the realisation that he was killed by a woman.
tits out for murder!!! a true aesthetic!!!
Throwing this out there, relationship labels are a weird place in history and I haven’t been avidly researching pirate history in a hot minute, but they also had a polyamorous relationship with Calico Jack Rackham (who Jack Sparrow was based on), and the three of them spent a number of years cruising around the Caribbean, taking over ships and gaining quite impressive reputations as pirates.
Anne Bonny’s gender would pretty much never be revealed to anyone but Rackham and Read, until their capture when Read and Bonny pleaded they were both pregnant to put off the death penalty. Read didn’t make it out of the prison, dying in childbirth I think, but Bonny did make it out.
“we didn’t know any better,” the crewman says, and swallows, presenting the chest to the captain. “what do we do now?”
“kill it,” the captain says, but the ice is melting in his eyes.
“we can’t,” the first mate says desperately, praying she won’t have to fight her captain on this. “we can’t. we – i won’t. we won’t.”
“i know.”
x
“daddy,” she says, floating in a tub of seawater in the hold, “daddy, la-la, la-la-la.”
her voice rings like bells. her accent is strange; her mouth isn’t made for human words. it mesmerises even the hardiest amongst them and she wasn’t even trying. the crew has taken to diving for shellfish near the shorelines for her; she loves them, splitting the shells apart with strength seen in no human toddler, slurping down the slimy molluscs inside and laughing, all plump brown cheeks and needle-sharp teeth. she sometimes splashes them for fun with her smooth, rubbery brown tail. even when they get soaked they laugh. they love her.
“daddy,” she calls again, and he can hear the worry in her voice. the storm rocking the ship is harsh and uncaring, and if they go down, she would be the only survivor.
“don’t worry,” he says, and goes over, sitting next to the tub. the first mate, leaning against the wall, pretends not to notice as he quietly begins to sing.
x
“father,” she says, one day, as she leans on the edge of the dock and the captain sits next to her, “why am I here?”
“your mother abandoned you,” he says, as he always has. “we found you adrift, and couldn’t bear to leave you there.”
she picks at the salt-soaked boards, uncertain. her hair is pulled back in a fluffy black puff, the white linen holding it slipping almost over one of her dark eyes. one of her first tattoos, a many-limbed kraken, curls over her right shoulder and down her arm, delicate tendrils wrapped around her calloused fingertips. “alright,” she says.
x
“why am I really here?” she asks the first mate, watching the sun set over the water in streaks of liquid metal that pooled in the troughs of the waves and glittered on the seafoam.
“we didn’t know any better,” the first mate says, staring into the water. “we didn’t know- we didn’t know anything. we didn’t understand why she fought so viciously to guard her treasure. we could not know she protected something a thousand times more precious than the purest gold.”
she wants to be furious, but she can’t. she already knew the answer, from reading the guilt in her father’s eyes and the empty space in her own history. and she can’t hate her family.
“it’s alright,” she says. “i do have a family, anyways. i don’t think i would have liked my other life near as much.”
x
her kraken grows, spreading its tendrils over her torso and arms. she grows too, too large to come on board the ship without being hauled up in a boat from the water. she sings when the storms come and swims before the ship to guide it to safety. she fights off more than one beast of the seas, and gathers a set of scars across her back that she bears with pride. “i don’t mind,” she says, when the captain fusses over her, “now i match all of you.”
the first time their ship is threatened, really threatened, is by another fleet. a friend turned enemy of the first mate. “we shouldn’t fight him,” she says, peering through the spyglass.
“why not?” the mermaid asks.
“he’ll win,” the first mate says.
the mermaid tips her head sideways. Her eyes, dark as the deep waters, gleam in the noon light. “are you sure?” she asks.
x
the enemy fleet surrenders after the flagship is sunk in the night, the anchor ripped off the ship and the planks torn off the hull. the surviving crew, wild-eyed and delirious, whimper and say a sea serpent came from the water and attacked them, say it was longer than the boat and crushed it in its coils. the first mate hears this and has to hide her laughter. the captain apologizes to his daughter for doubting her.
“don’t worry,” she says, with a bright laugh, “it was fun.”
x
the second time, they are pushed by a storm into a royal fleet. they can’t possibly fight them, and they don’t have the time to escape.
“let me up,” the mermaid urges, surfacing starboard and shouting to the crew. “bring me up, quickly, quickly.”
they lower the boat and she piles her sinous form into it, and uses her claws to help the crew pull her up. once on the deck she flops out of the boat and makes her way over to the bow. the crew tries to help but she’s so heavy they can barely lift parts of her.
she crawls up out in front of the rail and wraps her long webbed tail around the prow. the figurehead has served them well so far but they need more right now. she wraps herself around the figurehead and raises her body up into the wind takes a breath of the stinging salt air and sings.
the storm carries her voice on its front to the royal navy. they are enchanted, so stunned by her song that they drop the rigging ropes and let the tillers drift. the pirates sail through the center of the fleet, trailing the storm behind them, and by the time the fleet has managed to regain its senses they are buried in wind and rain and the pirates are gone.
x
she declines guns. instead she carries a harpoon and its launcher, and uses them to board enemy ships, hauling her massive form out of the water to coil on the deck and dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency. her family is feared across all the sea.
x
“you know we are dying,” the captain says, looking down at her.
she floats next to the ship, so massive she could hold it in her arms. her eyes are wise.
“i know,” she says, “i can feel it coming.”
the first mate stands next to the captain. she never had a lover or a child, and neither did he, but to the mermaid they are her parents. she will always love her daughter. the tattoos are graven in dark swirls across the mermaid’s deep brown skin and the flesh of her tail, even spiraling onto the spiked webbing on her spine and face. her hair is still tied back, this time with a sail that could not be patched one last time.
“we love you,” the first mate says simply, looking down. her own tightly coiled black hair falls in to her face; she shakes the locs out of the way and smiles through her tears. the captain pretends he isnt crying either.
“i love you too,” the mermaid says, and reached up to pull the ship down just a bit, just to hold them one last time.
“guard the ship,” the captain says. “you always have but you know they’re lost without you.”
“without you,” the mermaid corrects, with a shrug that makes waves. “what will we do?”
“i don’t know,” the captain says. “but you’ll help them, won’t you?”
“of course i will,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “i will always protect my family.”
x
the captain and the first mate are gone. the ship has a new captain, young and fearless – of the things she can afford to disregard. she fears and loves the ocean, as all captains do. she does not fear the royal fleet. and she does not fear the mermaid.
“you know, i heard stories about you when i was a little girl,” she says, trailing her fingers in the water next to the dock.
the mermaid stares at her with one eye the size of a dinner table. “is that so?” she hums, smirking with teeth sharper than the swords of the entire navy.
“they said you could sink an entire fleet and that you had skin tougher than dragon scales,” the new captain says, grinning right back at the monster who could eat her without a moment’s hesitation. “i always thought they were telling tall tales.”
“and now?”
“they were right,” the new captain says. “how did they ever befriend you?”
the mermaid smiles, fully this time, her dark eyes gleaming under the white linen sail. “they didn’t know any better.”
YES, so i recently wrote a paper about jewish pirates and merchants for a thesis and used a shit ton of archive information and secondary sources (which are detailed below).
As we know, Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. Some remained behind, known as conversos, who managed to hide their Judaism and remain behind. Others went into Calvinist Holland, but a majority of them went to Brazil, which was Portuguese-owned. The Jews there were known as marranos (pigs), but they were the first group to begin harvesting and collecting sugar by themselves. The marranos grew to have nearly 200 sugar plantations that they worked themselves— they traded with the Dutch, primarily. Sugar was hella expensive and Spain was hella jealous.Once the Iberian peninsula split (~1640s), Spain came in and took the land for themselves, either massacring or otherwise coercing the Jews to give up their Jewishness. They were kind of out of options, because Holland was engaged in war with Portugal and England was still not super friendly to the Jews, so they moved to the Caribbean.
Jews had been on Jamaica since about 1510, though they called themselves Portugals. They managed to get together a plea for England to get into Jamaica before Spain took it over, so Cromwell sent the English.
During the time in-between, Jews (Moses Cohen being the most famous Jewish pirate) roamed the seas with other “Brethren of the Coast”s. Because the Iberian diaspora had sent them all across the Old and New World, they had vast intelligence networks. Jewish merchants in Jamaica knew when ships in Spain were leaving, what they were carrying, and where they were going. Jewish pirates took revenge on the Spanish and, unlike the English, release the slaves from their bonds and either kept them on or took them to Haiti.
Jews are the best don’t let anyone fucking tell you otherwise.
Regarding the Jewry, Hereby Expelled from Spain, 1492. trans. Aaron Marx, coll. Jacob Rader, The Jew in the Medieval World (Cincinatti: Hebrew Union College Text), 1999.
Amsterdam Jewry’s Successful Intercession for their Immigrants and Businessmen, January 1625, trans. Jacob Marcus, coll. The Jew in the Medieval World.
Blacker, Irwin. Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1596-1600. Vol 3.
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1661-1668. (National Archives, Kew, Surrey, England), 7/24/1667.
Taylor, John. Taylor’s History of his Life and Travels in America and other parts, with An Account with the most remarkable Transactions which Annuaille happened in his daies (1688), trans. John Robertson.
Ockley, Simon. The History of the Present Jews throughout the World, 1791, coll. Jacob Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World.
Secondary Sources
Davis, David. Inhuman Bondage (Oxford University Press: New York), 2006.
Finkelstein, Norman. The Other 1492: Jewish Settlement in the New World, (iUniverse: Nebraska), 2000.
Glitz, David. The Religion of the Crypto-Jews, (UONMP: Albuquerque), 2002.
Holzgerg, Carol. Minorities and Power in a Black Society: The Jewish Community of Jamaica, (Lanham: North-South Publishing), 1987.
Kritzler, Edward. Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean, (Anchor Books: New York), 2008.
Selzer, Michael. Kike! A Documentary History of Anti-Semitism in America (Oxford University Press: New York), 1972.
Taylor, S.A.G. The Western Design: An Account of Cromwell’s Expedition to the Caribbean (Kingston: Institute of Jamaica and Jamaican Historical Society), 1969.
Tolkowsky, Samuel. They Took to the Sea, (London: Thomas Yoseloff), 1964.
Zahedieh, Nuala. The Merchants of Port Royal, Jamaica, and the Spanish Contraband Trade 1655-1692 (Leicester: Leicester University Press), 1978.
You know what’s really hard to find in good quality?
Pirate romance.
So, here is my list of pirate romance and love stories that actually do justice to pirates, ladies, and don’t involve any (God bless it) cringe-y Treasure Island “pirate speak.”
Frenchman’s Creek – Daphne DuMaurier
Jaded by the numbing politeness of Restoration London, Lady Dona St. Columb revolts against high society. She rides into the countryside, guided only by her restlessness and her longing to escape.
But when chance leads her to meet a French pirate, hidden within Cornwall’s shadowy forests, Dona discovers that her passions and thirst for adventure have never been more aroused. Together, they embark upon a quest rife with danger and glory, one which bestows upon Dona the ultimate choice: sacrifice her lover to certain death or risk her own life to save him.
DuMaurier is often credited with the early stirrings of the modern day romance novel, but Frenchman’s Creek is without a doubt a love story, not a romance novel. If you’re looking for a HEA, this is not going to be your cup of tea.
Her prose is moody and ethereal – a perfect match to the windswept isolated countryside setting. It’s a story about an unhappy woman’s personal and sexual awakening in the arms of the ultimate gentleman pirate. Almost everything happens off-page, but DuMaurier does manage to make the removal of a single earring painfully erotic.
Dona is complicated and often unlikable in her decisions, but she never backs down from who she is and when it matters, she makes the right choices. Jean Aubrey is fun, interesting, and thoughtful without needing to be in the finest clothes or the smartest man in the room. He has a tic for drawing birds, which softens him from being a scary pirate without turning him into a teddy bear.
Siren – Cheryl Sawyer
Jean Laffite is a pirate with a brutal reputation.
A black-eyed sea gypsy, he is legendary for his plundering of ships and seduction of women.
Léonore Roncival, a pirate’s daughter, is mistress of the Caribbean island of San Stefan. Léonore, too, inspires whispered innuendo. Her island is rumoured to be awash in treasure. Her beauty is said to lure men to the peaks of ecstasy–and to their doom. Even the ruthless Jean Laffite can’t ignore her call …
Determined to eliminate this rival on the high seas, Laffite comes to raid her home. There he faces a battle of wits that he never foresaw, and risks his heart.
As the aftershocks of Napoleonic war reach America, the passionate conflict between Jean and Léonore drives them between two nations, into the Battle of New Orleans …
I loved this. Sawyer is thorough in her historical details and seamlessly weaves the absolutely true story of American pirate Lafitte with the fictional Roncival and her story. They are both pirates, though Roncival commands an island instead of a ship, and they have independent stories. Siren is a solid study in two independent people choosing to support each other, which is so satisfying.
Sawyer doesn’t hold back on one of the ugliest parts of piracy: the role of pirates in the slave trade. Lafitte is no hero, but he does evolve and grow with the narrative.
Siren had twists and turns that I did not see coming, and kept me turning the pages.
The Blue Diamond – P.S. Bartlett
Ivory Shepard didn’t want to be a pirate when she grew up but she didn’t plan on being orphaned and alone at thirteen with her three cousins either.
After a Spanish raid in Charles Towne left them with nothing, Ivory held her cousins together, trained them to fight for their lives and led them to a life of quiet refuge on the banks of the Ashley River. Out of reach of the hands of unscrupulous men, they found life on the farm a tolerable substitute for the traditional alternatives life would force onto them—until the night the pirates showed up.
Setting foot on that first pirate ship was nothing compared to the life of freedom and adventure awaiting them, once Ivory and the girls were through playing nice. Only one man believes he can stop her and he won’t need a ship full of guns to do it.
Not a perfect novel, but a fun story that features a quad of badass ladies leading the way. There is a strong balance of action (that good high seas pirate stuff I love), female friendships, and romance without ever veering too long in any one area. I like action *with* romance, and this book delivered.
Maddox is sort of the stereotypical romance novel pirate – something of an overdressed fop, which is a trend that I understand but don’t really care for. BUT the relationship between Ivory and Maddox is entertaining. It waivers on clunky at times, but when it’s natural, it’s so natural it almost gives me flutters.
TW: implied rape in flashbacks
Cinnamon and Gunpowder – Eli Brown
The year is 1819, and the renowned chef Owen Wedgwood has been kidnapped by the ruthless pirate Mad Hannah Mabbot. He will be spared, she tells him, as long as he puts exquisite food in front of her every Sunday without fail. To appease the red-haired captain, Wedgwood gets cracking with the meager supplies on board. His first triumph at sea is actual bread, made from a sourdough starter that he leavens in a tin under his shirt throughout a roaring battle, as men are cutlassed all around him. Soon he’s making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider. But Mabbot—who exerts a curious draw on the chef—is under siege. Hunted by a deadly privateer and plagued by a saboteur hidden on her ship, she pushes her crew past exhaustion in her search for the notorious Brass Fox. As Wedgwood begins to sense a method to Mabbot’s madness, he must rely on the bizarre crewmembers he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the deaf cabin boy who becomes the son Wedgwood never had.
I got this on a recommendation and what a recommendation. Like Frenchman’s Creek, Cinnamon and Gunpowder is not a romance novel. It is however a beautiful love story that left me ugly crying.
One of the best parts of a good pirate novel is the squad of diverse malcontents and misfits that is the crew, and boy oh boy does this novel deliver. I fell in love with each member of Mabbot’s crew and they’ve all left an impression on me.
Written in the first person as a journal, the style was a bit hard for me to dig into, but the writing is so strong it didn’t take long for me to become fully invested. If you like food and sailing, this novel will hit all your happy places. The story is exciting and emotionally compelling from start to finish, complete with well developed, messy, sympathetic characters.
For the record: middle aged-to-older eccentric lady pirate captain? Who is also allowed to be in a romantic relationship? Sign me the frak up.
The Rebel Pirate – Donna Thorland
1775, Boston Harbor. James Sparhawk, Master and Commander in the British Navy, knows trouble when he sees it. The ship he’s boarded is carrying ammunition and gold…into a country on the knife’s edge of war. Sparhawk’s duty is clear: confiscate the cargo, impound the vessel and seize the crew. But when one of the ship’s boys turns out to be a lovely girl, with a loaded pistol and dead-shot aim, Sparhawk finds himself held hostage aboard a Rebel privateer.
Sarah Ward never set out to break the law. Before Boston became a powder keg, she was poised to escape the stigma of being a notorious pirate’s daughter by wedding Micah Wild, one of Salem’s most successful merchants. Then a Patriot mob destroyed her fortune and Wild played her false by marrying her best friend and smuggling a chest of Rebel gold aboard her family’s ship.
Now branded a pirate herself, Sarah will do what she must to secure her family’s safety and her own future. Even if that means taking part in the cat and mouse game unfolding in Boston Harbor, the desperate naval fight between British and Rebel forces for the materiel of war—and pitting herself against James Sparhawk, the one man she cannot resist.
Pirates and spies and family drama, oh my. This is a fun read that featured action on ship and on land during the American Revolution.
Thorland put in work researching the time and setting (on and off land) and it shows. The subplots and supporting characters are well developed and interesting without overpowering the plot. Thorland does an excellent job fleshing these stories out and using them to further the primary story rather than distract from it. It even features a secondary LGBTQ character with a complete storyline, which is an important part of history – ESPECIALLY naval history – that is often overlooked, ignored, or glossed over.
Fic recs:
I would be remiss to not include these two stories, especially since the first one is also the read that got me scrambling to find more pirate-themed romance once I knew what I was missing.
These are both Black Sails fanfiction and both about the ship that was never to sail, Billy Bones/Abigail Ashe. You don’t have to be a fan of the show however to appreciate the high quality romance on display here. These stories are so well-written, they honestly put 90% of the pirate romance genre to shame. I consider them better than most of the published novels on this list.
I would, however, seriously recommend googling Tom Hopper as Billy Bones in Black Sails. This is not the weird smelly old guy you’re picturing if you’ve only seen Treasure Island.
As I said above, pirate romance has a tendency to write heroes who are overdressed and effeminate. While I understand that that’s appealing to a large portion of readers, it isn’t *to me*. I live for the rough, overdue for a bath and a shave, dressed for function and calloused to match heroes. The Black Sails corner of fanfiction is rife with that.
“My point being, unless my crew decides that they don’t want to give me up for dead, and if what you say is true and no one will come looking for you, then we are very much stranded on this island.”
Abigail Ashe awakens to find herself shipwrecked on an island. However, she is not alone.
Shipwrecked! is easily one of my favorite tropes, and the author gets all the details you’ve ever wanted about surviving that scenario without crossing into a grim survivalist story. The relationship develops naturally and is so pure™ it could scrub a deck. It’s watching two people I really, really like get something they both deserve, and it’s infinitely satisfying.
Pretty independent lady who sacrificed her standing in society to do the right thing shipwrecked alongside her long-ago crush, a handsome, honorable, pirate with a code of morals that puts Arthurian knights to shame (let’s pretend that fourth season didn’t happen, k)? Just kill me. Bury me in the sand.
This is, tragically, on hiatus, however she did put the writing on pause at a natural break in the story. There’s no happy ending (yet!) but the leave off feels natural and their time on the island is resolved.
I’d never demand an update, but I am patiently holding out hope that one day she’ll pick this up again. It’s seriously one of my favorites and I find myself re-opening this story and re-reading it when I really, really want a good happy pirate love story.
When word reaches Nassau that Captain Derrick of the Nemo has kidnapped Abigail Ashe, daughter of the Lord Governor of the Carolinas, and intends to sell her to the pirate crew offering the highest bid, Captain Flint and his crew take matters into their own hands and mount a rescue.
Though she is no longer a prisoner, Abigail’s journey is far from over.
This story is a break from Black Sails, and dear God it’s a good break. Prim and well-bread Abigail Ashe ends up a prisoner on a pirate ship, then rescued by the only pirates scarier than her current captors. In order to protect themselves, they take her back to Nassau until they can arrange to return her to her father. Living with these men her father called monsters first on their ship – where she learns the ins and outs of sailing! – then in their homes forever alters Abigail’s view of the world. She cannot return to her old life knowing that everything her father has fought for is wrong. Her inevitable return is made all the more complicated by her growing feelings for a certain tall boatswain assigned to watch after her on the ship and on land.
This writing team knows their stuff about sailing. All the details are there without it being an overwhelming infodump. It’s all worked seamlessly into the story. They have stayed simultaneously true to the show and true to the mores of the time period, which has lent itself to being the ultimate slow burn. It’s so well written and the Romeo and Juliet angst of a pirate falling in love with a territorial governor’s daughter is poignant. There is no need to reach for reasons to keep these characters apart, so the conflict never feels forced or contrived.
The conclusion is still to come in the third part, Setting the Stormsails, and I cannot wait to read it.
So, did I forget anything? Leave off a novel or story you think is a classic? Reblog and let me know! I live for good recommendations!
Very honoured that we’ve made this list! And also crying over the price of ebooks because I want to read a couple of these now but I just… can’t afford. I really want authors to be paid fairly but I also don’t want to spend €12-13 on a digital file I guess that’s why I mostly read fanfic…
When I was a very small child, my mom used to bury coins in my sandbox, leave huge boot prints in the sand, and tell me pirates had come in the night and buried treasure. I would be out there happily for hours, with my little sieve, and my mom got a quiet morning to herself for the price of a handful of pennies.
I was always kind of skeptical about Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, because visiting every kid in the world did not seem reasonable. But the pirates only visited me, so they were probably real.
So that’s the story of how I ended up being an archaeologist. How about you?
about aged 5&7, my sister and i received a book about garden fairies and proceeded to spend the entire summer season writing little notes to the fairies and then tromping out into the garden to hide them in the garden.
after we’d gone to bed, my mom would tromp outside to figure out where her two daughters has hidden those letters (and, let me tell you, we were creative, because what if someone other than the fairies found them????). then, on fancy, very tiny stationary would pen marvellous responses about what the fairies had been up to, and would go back outside to switch out our letter for her own.
all said, we probably wrote over 20 letters, and mom answered every single one.
I guess that’s why I mostly read fanfic… 
Steel Phoenix Studios 