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On Watering, Briefly
A ship thousands of miles from home with no drinking water had two options: find an island or die of thirst. Here’s how they got the water aboard — and what was probably in it.
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Pirates and Yoda: An Unlikely Connection It Is
Yoda and pirates speak the same way. This is either a remarkable coincidence, proof of extraterrestrial influence in the Caribbean, or Lawrence Kasdan being very clever.
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Gentlemen of Fortune
The Disneyland song makes it sound appealing. It wasn’t. Once you turned pirate there was no going back — not to the sea, not to land, not to anything resembling a normal life.
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Of Black Beards and Cats
Pirates feared hanging more than death — not for the obvious reasons, but for what it meant for their souls. Blackbeard’s end was worse than he could have imagined.
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A Fortune Be Danglin’
Pirates wore earrings to show shipwreck survival, advertise wealth, or fund their burial. One of these theories holds up better than the others. Bob’s earrings tell the tale.
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Blackbeard’s Three Mysteries
Blackbeard was the most famous pirate in history and almost nothing about him is actually known. Here are three mysteries that historians still can’t solve.
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A Fanciful, Cranky Queen
She’s all skeletons and gunports and romance. She’s also top-heavy, diesel-powered, and would tip over in a stiff breeze. A cranky Queen, that one.
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Pity the Poor Marin Francais
The explosion of L’Orient at the Battle of the Nile killed a thousand men in an instant. Here’s who they were — and why they had no choice about being there.