Talking about one of the many things that lead me to believe morality is sometimes relative, is the phenomenon of the British pirate. Remember I just said sometimes. A pirate was someone who robbed ships, often with violence. But what they were doing was really no different than what the privateer was already doing under English maritime law. A privateer was a private individual or vessel who engaged in robbing enemy ships, and served under a commission of war. If the ship was an enemy of the UK, everything was legit. And many of these people were heroes. Even when the crossed the line into illegal piracy. They were kind of the Robin Hoods of the day, helping the poor and robbing the greedy, who already had too much. Even the very conservative Puritan clergyman and author in colonial America Cotton Mather lamented after the 1704 execution of the English pirate John Quelch: "Yea, since the privateering stroke so easily degenerates into the piratical and the privateering trade is usually carried on with so un-Christian a temper and proves an inlet unto so much debauchery and iniquity and confusion, I believe I shall have good men concur with me in wishing that privateering may no more be practised except there may appear more hopeful circumstances to encourage it." John Quelch had a lucrative but brief career for about one year. His chief claim to historical significance is that he was the first person to be tried for piracy outside England under Admiralty Law, and thus without a jury.
English pirates are very different these days. They retain both their eyes, arms and legs and get proper jobs in the film studios. Then they pirate the films, selling them as videos before the even open in the cinemas.
