By Tom Sebring for Numismaster

Some of the most popular topics for books and movies are those romantic scoundrels known as pirates. Ravaging the seas, looting helpless merchant ships, they spread fear throughout the Caribbean and the Atlantic Coast. While pirates operated earlier in the New World, the most intensive period of piracy was roughly 1690-1725, known as “The Golden Age Of Piracy.”

A list of notorious pirates would be very long, but some of the best known are Bartholomew Roberts, John Avery, Edward England, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), William Kidd and Henry Morgan.

This article reviews the pirate culture, the economics of piracy, and describes a few of the best known buccaneers and their depredations. Also analyzed in detail are the kind of coins the marauding pirates would have encountered and the recent excavation of two pirate ships.