Wooden Legs and Buccaneers

Pirates have been well heard of throughout history and for many years. However, the line to which separates fact and fiction has been a bit blurred thanks to many children's stories created over the years. Under The Black Flag and Buccaneers and Pirates are two books written about pirates. While Under The Black Flag gives you very historical facts, Buccaneers and Pirates tells more of a story. However, both cross over a lot of similarities. In the first chapter or two in both stories, the writers comment on pirates being thought of as Robin Hood's or characters as such, when the facts show pirates were not. As said in Under The Black Flag, "Pirates were not maritime versions of Robin Hood and his Merry Men." While Buccaneers and Pirates mainly paints a story of how we all envision pirates to be, Under the Black Flag clearly contradicts our images. Frank Stockton, author of Buccaneers and Pirates, states "Such as my notion of pirate's life. I would kill nobody; the very sight of my black flag would be sufficient to put an end to all though of resistance...." David Cordingly, author of Under the Black Flag, states very clearly that "Piracy, like rape, depended on the use of force or the threat of force..." Those are just a couple specific contradictions listed just in the first couple chapters in each book. One is more so our visions of what we have grown up to see pirates as, while the other is simply all the facts as to what it truly meant to be a pirate.

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.