Pirates: 5 Things You Didn't Know

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3 - Pirates had workman’s comp

When pirates sang “It’s a pirate’s life for me,” they meant it. There aren’t many trades that accept “ drinking ," “pillaging” and “wearing an eye patch” as job skills. They took care of their own by writing into the ship’s constitution that crewmen would be compensated for being maimed or losing a limb. They even priced it out in detail:

Loss of a right arm: 600 pieces

Left arm: 500

Right leg: 500

Left leg: 400

Eye: 100

Finger: 100

Some ships even paid for peg-legs broken during battle. Good wooden legs were hard to come by.



4 - Pirates drank rum to prevent scurvy

5 - Yearly losses to pirates are estimated at $16 billion

Grog is a well-known mariner’s beverage made from a blend of sugar-water, lime juice and rum . The Vitamin C in limes helped pirates prevent scurvy, a disease that causes teeth to fall out — and pirates needed their teeth to bite enemies. So long before Mexicans were mixing lime juice in margaritas, pirates were squeezing them into their cocktails. Even the Navy gave out grog to their sailors as daily rum rations. Pirates just drank it whenever they wanted.Of all the things you didn't know about pirates, this may be the most surprising: It's a booming business . After years of decline, pirate attacks rose by 10% in 2007, and in 2008 they rose again with 111 incidents and 42 seized vessels. Roughly 10 times as many attacks happened in the first two months of 2009 compared with the same period the previous year. These days pirates operate by speedboat and zodiac, rather than by wooden ship.