Force
Golden Age Pirates
The buccaneers and freebooters of the Age of Sail, armed with cutlass, boarding axe, and flintlock pistols.
The Golden Age of Piracy — roughly 1650 to 1730 — was the Atlantic world's crime wave: buccaneers of Hispaniola and Port Royal, privateers unemployed by peace treaties, and finally the outlaw crews of the 1710s who took ships of every flag from Newfoundland to the Guinea coast. Nassau in the Bahamas was their republic in all but name until 1718.
Pirate fighting was boarding work, and the arsenal matched: cutlass for the press of a crowded deck, boarding axe for rigging and skulls, pikes, grenadoes, and braces of flintlock pistols slung in silk — Blackbeard wore six. Ships were chosen for speed and shallow draft; the terror was tactical, colors and reputations cultivated so prizes would strike without a fight, which most did. Crews ran by written articles — elected captains, voted destinations, compensation for wounds — a rough democracy that scandalized the navies hunting them.
The hunt won: mass hangings, pardons, and patrols ended the age by the early 1730s, with Bartholomew Roberts' death in 1722 the effective full stop. Captain Johnson's 1724 'General History' then made the legend permanent, and through it every treasure map, black flag, and film pirate since traces to a decade of Atlantic outlaws who mostly died young.