It is no surprise that Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, but pirated is a whole different perspective. In Buccaneers and Pirates, Frank Stockton spoke about how Christopher was actually the first to practice piracy in American waters. We all know Christopher sailed and supposedly discovered all this new land, but what the history books failed to mention was the amount he robbed and murdered to get the land and treasures he had acquired on his journey. He "enslaved and exterminated" all of the natives in the lands he journeyed through. The story Frank painted of Christopher's journey matches actual pirate attacks documented in Under The Black Flag. Miss Lucretia Parker was one of the victims of a pirate attack told in Under The Black Flag, who luckily lived to tell the tail. She saw people upon the ship she was on get brutally murdered while she was going to be kept for the Captain. Christopher was no better. He went on four different voyages, all of which travelled across the Atlantic Ocean to different Islands that became the New World. As his second voyage came about, he ended up in Jamaica and Hispaniola which, according to David Cordingly, became bases for piracy. His discoveries throughout his voyages led to the lands and waters being major places pirated roamed to. He started his voyages with the right intentions. Find new land and explore what is out there. However, the treasures that the discovery of the New World led to the corruption of him and other noteable explorers like Francis Drake. Christopher Columbus might have sailed the ocean and became a noted explorer in our history books, but now you can note that he was a pirate too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyages_of_Christopher_Columbus#/media/File:Viajes_de_colon_en.svg
Cordingly, David. Under The Black Flag. New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2006. Print.
Stockton, Frank R. Buccaneers and Pirates. New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 2007. Print.
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