pirate gold
Sep. 23rd, 2012 10:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliIt's amazing how firmly the notion of buried pirate treasure lasted. There's one case of a pirate burying treasure from the Golden Age of Piracy. . . .
Sure, it's enough to make you Very Wealthy Indeed, and since you need have no scruples about the pirates' having rights to it, but that's not the only thing that could do that. In reality, of course, the pirates spent it as fast as they could get their hands on it, on food, sails, rope, weaponry, etc. when they needed to, and booze and ladies of the evening what exceeded their needs -- planning for "a short life and a merry one" does not induce men to save for old age. You could probably do something with an unscrupulous and miserly merchant who traded with them. . . .
But they did not hoard gold like a dragon. And a dragon would never go pirating and leave its hoard all unguarded. The character motivations are too antithetical.
Probably just an excuse to have piratical themes without coming to grip with what monsters pirates were (and are) -- hostis humani generis indeed.
Sure, it's enough to make you Very Wealthy Indeed, and since you need have no scruples about the pirates' having rights to it, but that's not the only thing that could do that. In reality, of course, the pirates spent it as fast as they could get their hands on it, on food, sails, rope, weaponry, etc. when they needed to, and booze and ladies of the evening what exceeded their needs -- planning for "a short life and a merry one" does not induce men to save for old age. You could probably do something with an unscrupulous and miserly merchant who traded with them. . . .
But they did not hoard gold like a dragon. And a dragon would never go pirating and leave its hoard all unguarded. The character motivations are too antithetical.
Probably just an excuse to have piratical themes without coming to grip with what monsters pirates were (and are) -- hostis humani generis indeed.
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Date: 2012-09-24 07:54 am (UTC)Yes, but any number of obscenely wealthy Spanish treasure galleons lie at the bottom of the ocean from the Caribees to the Canary Islands, and one such would make you wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice.
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Date: 2012-09-24 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-24 10:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-09-24 12:28 pm (UTC)so why not? what so attracts about the Golden Age pirates?
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Date: 2012-09-25 12:42 pm (UTC)Cultural tradition, I think - Howard Pyle, you know. Treasure Island. It becomes self-sustaining. Plus, culture again: The Vikings were very bad news for a way long time, and nobody could wax too romantic about savages who were so good at their job that they distorted the development of Western Civilization. It's like glorifying the Black Death or the mass murders of Stalin's Russia. No no.
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Date: 2012-09-26 01:02 am (UTC)to be sure, the Golden Age of Piracy meant the privateers, whose acts were fuzzy about the edges, blurring the heroic aspects, but they would bring their gold home for the usual procedure.