If Real Life Pirates Had One Piece Bounties

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I take some time to look at the history of the world’s most infamous pirates during the Golden Age of Piracy and contrast their lives and feats with pirates in One Piece to try to accurately ascribe a bounty to them based of their accomplishments.

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46 thoughts on “If Real Life Pirates Had One Piece Bounties”

  6. I understand that this video is mostly for the purposes of entertainment but the fictional stories surrounding pirates are so prominent that it takes away from their real stories as well as the severity of their crimes.

    Overall most of the info on Morgan was accurate. I can assume that this is because he is not covered in the notoriously unreliable general history of the pyrates and so facts on his life are much more clear. The only minor thing is an accusation of torturing prisoners. This, along with many other claims about Morgan's life, stems from the buccaneers of America. The author, Alexander Exquemelin seemingly held a grudge against Morgan, and so wrote in some tales of his misdeeds. Morgan later sued the publishers of the book for defamation, and won.

    I have no idea where the concept of Bellamy being the richest pirate of all time came from. The only prize of any wealth he captured was the Whydah (holding no slaves at the time as they had already been sold, instead holding ivory, sugar and silver etc.), which was lost, alongside Bellamy, before any of the loot could be sold or split into shares. In reality, Bellamy can credit most of his recognition from colonial media going wild over his every move, people loved a dashing, young rogue in the 18th century. The capture of the Whydah, while impressive, was a double edged sword as Bellamy, having no experience in commanding a full rigged ship, led her into a storm, perishing in the process. While his exploits are certainly interesting, they are barely a ripple in the water compared to Morgan. Also, the Robin Hood thing came from his company; his men likened life under him as living like the merry men of Sherwood forest in Robin Hood, and the one shot thing was standard pirate tactics; fire a warning shot, hoist black colours and the target surrenders.

    Blackbeard was never a first mate to Benjamin Hornigold. The two met only a handful of times and would team up to raid small ports and attack Spanish prizes. Blackbeard is more affiliated with Stede Bonnet, who was allied with him, and whom Blackbeard assumed command of Bonnet's sloop, Revenge. Like many pirates of the 1715-1730 era, Blackbeard, Bonnet, maybe Bellmay, Edward England and ESPECIALLY Charles Vane had Jacobite sympathies; they wanted to reinstate the old house of Stewart to the English and Scottish thrones, and opposed the Act of Union 1707. This was mainly because the old Monarchs had been more supportive of privateering compared to the new King George I, who believed in an expansion of trade through peaceful commerce, rather than conquering the Spanish, French and Dutch etc.

    Black Caesar was not a pirate. There was nobody in the period with that nickname. The story comes from an obscure slave found aboard Blackbeard's sloop Adventure, after his assassination, which was very illegal btw. Caesar was a slave belonging to Blackbeard's friend Tobias Knight (Thache had been a plantation owner before turning to privateering during Queen Anne's War, and yes, that's where it comes from). Knight had sent Caesar to deliver a message to Blackbeard but was caught in the midst of the assassination. Upon the trials of the crew, Caesar was identified and acquitted, not being a member of the crew. This can be seen in the trial documents, where a certain Caesar is shown as acquitted. If you want a much better story of a real black pirate, look up Diego the Mullato.

    Henry Every is easily the most successful pirate mentioned in this video, but much of the information is false. Everything up to the capture of the Gunsway (I am not about to attempt to spell its Indian name) is correct. Every did not go on to rule a pirate kingdom anywhere, as he actually took his money and fled, most likely to Scotland. It is true that after the extremely tragic and brutal taking of the Mughal pilgrim ships, whereby Every's crew tortured and raped almost all aboard to get them to confess the location of more treasure, over a period of three days, the Fancy (Every's ship) did arrive in Nassau. Here Every bribed the governor with gold, and the Fancy itself, for supplies. Some of the crew stayed in the colonies while others joined Every back to England. Only five were hanged and Every was declared an enemy of all mankind by Parliament, with a bounty of £800 placed on his head (just short of $100,000 today). His actions can be only described as despicable but there is no doubt to his success, and he was easily the most famous pirate during his time. As you said, his story (along with all of these other pirates) is too long to do justice here.

    Jennings was not really a member of the Flying Gang on Providence. He was commissioned by Governor Hamilton of Jamaica to 'protect' the wrecked Spanish treasure fleet in 1715. He interpreted this by 'protecting' the loot from the salvagers that Spain had sent to recover the treasure, basically stealing the lot. He never really cared about Nassau and only saw it as a place to drink and party with his new found money. He also outnumbered the pirates, already in providence by 200 to 100, meaning that there was not much Hornigold could really do to stop him. It is believed that Charles Vane was one of his company, but there is little evidence of John Rackham being there.

    Having already stated the inaccuracy and unreliability of General History of the Pyrates, with regards to Bonny and Read, I will just say this: Without that piece of, mostly, historical fiction, we would know next to nothing about them. There are virtually no period sources, outside of the trial documents, that verify any of the claims about their lives, made by General History. They were found aboard John Rackham's sloop and took less than 10 fishing boats, placing them, alongside Rackham, as some of the most unremarkable pirates ever. The only reason they gained any notoriety is due to their gender. People in the 18th century also enjoyed stories of female rogues eg. Moll Flanders. Because of this, the unknown author of General History put their names on the front cover, and made up a backstory for them, so that his book would sell better, in, possibly, the first recorded use of pirates as clickbait.

    I am glad that people are engaging with pirate history, I just wish that people would focus more on the deep complexities of reality, and not false myth, made up by writers looking to sell more books.

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  10. One thing I should mention, Avery did his career as a slaver very briefly and actually is noted as having personally hated the trade, not having the brutality for it. Though in his career as a pirate he did take slaves as cargo. The man was practical, most of all, but still evil. And ahem, maybe read some detailed happenings of what his crew did on the Ganj-I-Sawai (Gunsway)

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  12. No qualms about the bounties. However, Calico Jack is pronounced Cal-ih-ko not Calee-ko. Calico is a type of cotton fabric that was in high demand at the time, and calico fabric is still available today and is used to make clothing and quilts. He probably wore lots of calico and that became his nick name.

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  15. I kind of had to accept recently that for a while at least making one piece videos is some thing I’m going to have to live with because one piece is just so popular right now. On the other hand, I am an anime YouTube channel.

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  25. This is such a awesome concept and well the next video can be "who would be real life Marine Admirals and Vice Admirals " ,because it did had pirate hunters in this time and some famous navy commanders.

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  26. tiny little tidbit about blackbeard: yes, a good chunk of his crew were slaves. but that's effectively it. he raided slave ships and captured slaves for himself. he even sold a good chunk of them for his first attempt at retirement

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  28. I'm only about half way video into the video and was going to go subscribe but I was shocked because I thought for sure you were a 10k-100k channel because of the quality. Keep up the great work man.

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  29. and remember guys these where only Mediterranean pirate he didn't do either of the most successful pirates.
    in the sea people who to this day we have no idea who they were just that they ended the bronze age throu unending raiding
    and the pirate queen zheng zi yao a taiwanese prostitute turned pirate who completely controlled the taiwan strip (prity much all of south china and its southern rivers) with the biggest pirate armada in history, never lost a fight and was so feared by both china and the rest of the world they struck a deal with her to just stop attacking them.

    these guys are around luffy bounty end of story. so 5-7 billion. they ruined country's

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  33. Do you have any plans on making a Fictional version of this? That is to say, using fictional pirates, like the ones from Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Hook from Peter Pan, Long John Silver from Treasure Island, etc.

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  41. Ben hornigold was actually killed by British naval forces and was stuffed into the giblet cage after execution. All of his students saw the execution hidden in the crowd and escaped to sea although Anne Bonney and Mary read returned to the Caribbean pretending to be bar maids to gain information about the fate of Calico Jack who was caught months ago.

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  46. Ngl I've been working on a comic/webtoon for the last 4 years now and there is a pirate arc that I wanna make it just as perfect as possible. This video (+ the pinned comment that is basically a whole book on it's own) will help me A LOT unique concept for a video and very informative and funny! can't wait to see what u got next!!🫡🫡💜

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