The Hollywood pirate is a lawless anarchist, but the historical record shows something closer to obsessive bureaucrats. Trapped on a wooden ship with hundreds of armed men, pirate crews wrote articles of agreement, formal constitutions adapted from medieval merchant risk-sharing contracts, and swore oaths on axes, crossed pistols, skulls or loaded cannons. This episode digs into what those codes actually said.

It covers the dual executive of an elected captain with authority only in battle and an elected quartermaster who ran daily life, the flat no-prey-no-pay share system in Bartholomew Roberts’ articles where the captain earned just twice a deckhand’s share, and the injury compensation fund that paid 800 pieces of eight for a lost limb. It also examines lights-out at 8 p.m., pipe caps and lanterns to prevent fire, musicians’ Sabbath rest, pistol and cutlass duels on the beach to settle disputes, marooning, Moses’s Law, and John Gow’s panicked handwritten articles from a grounded ship in 1729.

• Why captured tradesmen staged fake kidnappings before signing the code
• How the crew could vote out a corrupt captain or quartermaster
• The grim reality that some codes paid compensation in enslaved people
• Why boys received half shares and what their battlefield role was
• What historians mean by hydrarchy from below