A WORD WITH ...
Those endearing buccaneers

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By Jan Keessen | Sunday, August 13, 2006 12:24 AM CDT | () comments

When we can manage it, we like to get others to do our dirty work for us, whether it’s cleaning the house, changing the oil, or bedeviling an enemy.

And so it was, during the 16th century, that rival seafaring nations such as England, France, Spain and the Netherlands encouraged buccaneers to raid the ships of their competitors. And since these buccaneers were so often unofficially applauded, even today we tend to romanticize them as those swashbuckling pirate heroes who robbed and killed people in such endearing ways.

Even the origin of the word sounds adventuresome, coming from the French boucanier meaning, “one who hunts wild oxen,” and from boucan for “barbecue.”

Originally, buccaneers were French hunters in St. Domingo who dried and smoked meat on a boucan, but by 1661 they had become bandits who were raiding Spanish ships, stealing goods, and holding sailors hostage along the Caribbean and South American coasts.

By now there are plenty of conflicting stories about them. To some minds buccaneers were the Robin Hoods of the sea, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

Others saw them as victims of imperialism and tyrannical captains, victims who rebelled and joined pirate gangs where, like democrats, everyone had a vote and the spoils were divided equitably. But others saw buccaneers as brutal and sadistic, and there are a number of compelling accounts that tell us how they raped women, butchered men, and tortured people in ways that would make you question how any honorable government could ever sanction such behavior, even unofficially.

Nevertheless, buccaneering had its rewards. Sir Francis Drake became England’s buccaneering hero, a pioneering navigator who circled the globe but in the mean time was encouraged by the British government to raid Spanish settlements and ships, and terrorize whoever got in his way.

In a similar manner, Henry Morgan became another well-known buccaneer who was alternately celebrated and censored by the British, depending on whether or not they were warring with the Spanish.

During that era many buccaneers published their own self-aggrandized accounts of their adventures, and those accounts furnished backgrounds for classic adventure novels like Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Treasure Island. With that in mind, do you suppose they were, in reality, pirated versions?

Sources: Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars, Dunne/ St. Martin’s, 2005; Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987; O.E.D.; Britannica.

Jan Keessen, Aledo, Ill., is an associate professor of English at Augustana College, Rock Island. She can be contacted at enkeessen@augustana.edu.