The

practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea has existed for nearly as long as transportation

itself thousands of years ago in the late Bronze Age.

A mysterious band of people known only as the sea people attacked and raided ships and

ports throughout the Mediterranean.

They ended up changing the course of humanity for better or worse, and were among the most

high profile examples of piracy in their day and age.

They were followed more than 2,000 years later by the Vikings, a culture built almost entirely

around the concept of piracy, whose violent nature ended up reshaping the entirety of Europe.

In addition to these two, there remain hundreds of examples of pirates throughout human history,

but when most of us think of pirates, our mind jumps to what is commonly known as the

Golden Age of Piracy.

This was the time period between roughly 1650 and 1730, in which pirates began to harass

navies and traders making the long perilous journey between the old world and the new,

as European interests began spreading outward to the east and towards the Americas.

These vast distances being traversed by ships provided pirates with the opportunity to strike,

and the conflicts that had been stewing among these European nations for decades, if not centuries.

Paired with the lax control they held over the burgeoning colonies thousands of miles away,

provided pirates with the perfect market to sell their wares.

Many well-known pirates would surface during this Golden Age of Piracy, many whose notoriety

lives on to this day.

This includes Henry Morgan, immortalized as Captain Morgan, Calico Jack Rackham and his partner

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