Pieces of eight: why are pirates big business?

For the last century, pirates have been big business. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island – which got the industry going with its timber-shivering antagonist Long John Silver – has been made into more than 30 films. Thirty million people are glued to the Xbox game Sea of Thieves. And, alas, Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow is still capering around in the public imagination.

Being a real pirate of the Caribbean was less lucrative. For one thing, as we learn in this lively exhibition at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall, there was never much treasure going. These salty scavengers, the inevitable offshoot of a growing mercantile culture, had to make do with whatever came their way, and it was more likely to be grain than gold. But the exhibition isn’t just an epic debunk. Rather, it explores the relationship between the scant facts and the abundant fictions, focusing on the “golden age” of piracy at the turn of the 18th century and the folklore that arose from it.

Set in a dark, high-ceilinged room tricked out with wooden beams and canvas, the show is divided into two sections. The first looks at pirates in popular culture. In the early 19th century, writers didn’t have a lot of time for them (though Lord Byron was, naturally, intrigued).

But then Treasure Island came along, all black spots, parrots and pieces of eight. The book’s fecund legacy is illustrated through a mixture of videos, sound installations, artworks and artefacts, taking in the Old Etonian Captain Hook, the high-camp Pirates of Penzance and the doughy, bungling Captain Pugwash. Andrew Motion opines on Stevenson (not in person); Depp’s Sparrow outfit stands next to a Vivienne Westwood design. It’s great fun, if a bit overcrowded.

The second section is more austere. It deals with the hard truths, of which there are few. The bridging point is a manuscript of Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Pyrates (1724), one of Stevenson’s sources – a combination of interviews and reports, though with plenty of creative embellishment.

We learn a little about the pirate’s life (tough but less miserable than the Navy) and are given biographies of the big names – Edward Teach (aka Blackbeard), Henry Every, Anne Bonny (“disappeared, date of death unknown” is a typical detail). There’s a selection of cutlasses, blunderbusses and Jolly Rogers: pirates understood the importance of optics, preferring to terrify their victims into submission instead of fighting them. There’s also a brief, inconclusive foray into the history of piracy in Cornwall (it seems to have been more common in Devon).

A certain amount of imagination is required here – but this, perhaps, is the point. If Mafia-related entertainment has been in steady decline since The Sopranos ended, that’s arguably because we now know too much about the unglamorous intricacies of the Cosa Nostra.

Golden-age pirates remain a thrilling mystery, capable of inspiring Hollywood blockbusters and David Graeber books alike. As this show skilfully demonstrates, we project on to them, seeing desperados, libertines, even proto-communists. And for the less swashbuckling among us, there’s always Pugwash.

From Friday until December 2024. Tickets: 01326 313388; nmmc.co.uk