A Pirate's Life For Me
 Pirates and piracy have existed for as long as humans have used boats for trade and travel, the earliest known recorded instances dating from the 13th century BCE, with accounts of mysterious "Sea Peoples" threatening vessels in the greater Mediterranean. Knowing neither the bounds of geography, creed nor culture, piracy has been prominent in every part of the world at some point in history and continues to vex seafarers today in hotspots like the coast of Somalia, the Strait of Malacca and Singapore. But who are pirates? Grab some vittles and read on...
While most popular conceptions of pirates can be traced to fiction of the late 19th century such as Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, the reality was and is quite different. Firstly, the Jolly-Roger waving, peg-legged, hard-drinking, patch-eyed, hook-handed, parrot-petting pirates of literature and film are mostly based on English and American privateers of the 17th and 18th centuries and even these narrow depictions are highly embellished; the figures romanticized or vilified. While privateers were mercenary pirates hired by sovereign governments to attack and plunder vessels belonging to enemy governments, pirates were generally much more anarchistic.
Though their practices have varied throughout history, many pirate crews elected their captains and quartermasters, who in turn appointed members of the crew to official positions, checking each others' authority. In this way, pirates were wide-spread practitioners of a kind of democracy often more progressive than the governments of those they attacked and there are even fantastic stories of utopias of settled pirates, such as the famous Libertatia of northern Madagascar.
The wealth obtained by pirates was typically meted out between crew members equally, though higher portions were awarded for serving officers and men injured in battle. While gold and jewels were the regular spoils of war, pirates had little use for either and instead prized most highly practical items such as food, clothing, and medicine above all. Still, even rank and file pirate crew members could expect to make as much as a year's wages sailing in a national navy in a single raid, though they often wouldn't be afforded an opportunity to cash in on their spoils until reaching a friendly port.
 Today, piracy still thrives in the waters of struggling and developing nations, with worldwide trade losses to piracy amounting to as much as $16 billion annually. Though efforts have been made to contain piracy, it remains as difficult a problem as ever to combat, since pirate ships often can't be distinguished between fishing trawlers and other small private vessels.
Sweet, salty, sour: Pirates lives are all these things. Enjoy the lighter side of this ancient endeavor with the landlubbers at Candy.com!
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