From The Times: April 12, 1924
In a book which we review in the current issue of our Literary Supplement notable pirates of the past are honoured with a Who’s Who. In the present age of comparative immunity the public have allowed their moral and romantic views of the Spanish Main to become so far confused that it is hard to know whether such a book should be called a record of crime or a pious monument, nor can we tell whether it is a reason for national pride or foreign disparagement that “a very large number of the pirates seem to have been Welshmen”.
Pirates who were villains once are heroes now. If it were suggested to any boy that Ben Johnson of the Persian Gulf was a vile and savage scoundrel, he would only ask the more eagerly for the story, and if he were then informed that Ben cut off the noses of 700 dancing girls, his first impulse would not be towards tears for the unfortunate ladies. The nursery has a similar prejudice in favour of highwaymen. They had horses with pleasant names, and masks that might have graced a Venetian serenade — these things are remembered, and the rest forgotten.
Pirates are honoured not for their deeds but for their Jolly Rogers, which fly bravely nowadays over a paper hat and a wooden sword, their “planks” and their songs. Are they to be thought of as murderers, thieves, and blasphemers? No. They are heroes one and all, from the lovable Smee even unto Israel Hands. When the rocking-horse is commissioned as a ship, with a tablecloth for its sail and a hearthrug for its ocean, there is always a clamour to play the pirate chief, and disappointment in the heart of the child (generally the smallest) condemned to a respectable captaincy in the Royal Navy.
The pirates of days gone by have been granted absolution, and even those few who still exist are regarded, at least by those who are comfortably remote from their activities, more as relics than as criminals. The late Mrs Lo, a Chinese lady-pirate, who, “after being Admiral of a predatory fleet of sixty junks, won notoriety as a slayer of men and a sacker of cities,” died so recently as October, 1922. Yet we laugh rather than frown at the tale of her misdeeds, for her profession has become, in modern eyes, almost respectable.
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