one reason the Golden Age of Piracy remains the stuff oflegend is that pirates of that age were so skilled at manipulatinglegends; they deployed wonder-stories—whether of terrifyingviolence or inspiring ideals—as something very much like weaponsof war, even if the war in question was the desperate and ultimatelydoomed struggle of a motley band of outlaws against the entireemerging structure of world authority at the time.

One might call pirate legends, then, the most importantform of poetic expression produced by that emerging North Atlanticproletariat whose exploitation laid the ground for the industrialrevolution.