Index
Themes
The institutions and ideas that run through the story: the written articles, the elected officers, the votes, the pardons, and the age itself. Each theme page states what the depositions prove and what only Johnson says.
- Theme Pirate Articles Pirate articles were the sworn, written constitution of a single ship's company, fixing shares, discipline and injury compensation and subscribed by every member. The verbatim article sets survive only in Johnson; the institution of signing and swearing them is confirmed by sworn depositions.
- Theme Quartermasters and Divided Authority The pirate quartermaster was an elected officer holding the civil and economic authority of the company and standing as the crew's counterweight to the captain. The office is attested well beyond Johnson, in trial depositions and Snelgrave's firsthand narrative.
- Theme Crew Voting and Councils Golden Age pirate companies elected and deposed their captains and settled major questions by a vote or council of the whole company. The election speeches and the mock 'House of Lords' are Johnson's; the institution is carried by depositions from four courts across four years.
- Theme Pirate Pardons The Crown's proclamations of 1717 and 1718, issued under the prerogative and not by Act of Parliament, offering surrendering pirates a pardon for their lives. The two proclamation texts are Confirmed verbatim; the surrender numbers behind them are graded lower.
- Theme The End of the Golden Age The suppression of large-scale Atlantic piracy in roughly 1716 to 1726 by a coordinated state programme of law, navy, pardon and exemplary justice, and the modern 'Golden Age' construct itself. The label is a late-Victorian coinage; the events are real.