A public reference
Pirates, plainly catalogued.
The Pirate Codex documents the careers, ships, raids, and contested treasures of pirates across every century and ocean — from the buccaneers of the Spanish Main to the corsairs of the South China Sea. Each entry is sourced; speculation is labelled.
Featured entry
An entry under continuing first-hand research.
An encyclopedic reference on the world’s pirates
Most public material on pirates is romance: a Caribbean cliché of black sails, eye-patches, and buried gold. The historical record is more interesting and considerably stranger. Pirates were privateers operating under government license, smugglers running networks of legitimate merchants, fleet commanders larger than national navies, and, occasionally, the kind of cinematic figures the legend remembers.
The Pirate Codex documents pirates as people who lived in identifiable places at identifiable times. Each entry uses the same outline so readers can compare across them: an overview, the documented origins, the career and notable raids, the ships, the treasures (with documented and rumoured holdings clearly separated), the fate, the associates, the sources, and where applicable a note on modern research and ongoing fieldwork.
Selected entries
21 entries in the codex to date. A selection appears below; the full index lives at /pirates.
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Pierre Lafitte
Elder brother and business partner of Jean Lafitte; the New Orleans–side operator of the Barataria and Galveston privateering enterprise, responsible for moving prize cargoes into the city's wholesale market and managing relations with Louisiana authorities.
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Zheng Yi Sao
Cantonese pirate confederation leader who commanded the largest pirate fleet in history — by contemporary Qing estimates, between 50,000 and 70,000 sailors across some 1,800 vessels — at her peak in 1808–1810, before negotiating a general amnesty with the Qing dynasty.
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Cheung Po Tsai
Cantonese pirate; adopted son and later second husband of Zheng Yi Sao; operational commander of the Red Flag Fleet, the largest squadron in the confederation, 1807–1810. After the amnesty he served as a Qing imperial naval officer.
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Sir Henry Morgan
Welsh privateer in English service who led the buccaneer assaults on Portobelo (1668), Maracaibo (1669), and Panama City (1671); subsequently knighted and appointed Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica.
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Henry Every
English pirate whose September 1695 capture of the Mughal treasure ship Ganj-i-Sawai in the Indian Ocean produced what was at the time the richest single prize in pirate history; touched off a global manhunt and the first international piracy bounty; vanished into obscurity in 1696.
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William Kidd
Scottish-born New York privateer commissioned in 1695 to suppress piracy in the Indian Ocean; arrested on charges of having turned pirate himself; tried and hanged at London in 1701; the most documented commission-gone-wrong case of the Golden Age, and the principal source of the buried-treasure motif in subsequent pirate literature.
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Browse by era
Browse by region
- Caribbean 15
- North American Atlantic Coast 7
- Bahamas 4
- Indian Ocean 3
- Gulf of Mexico 2
- Louisiana 2
- Pearl River Delta 2
- South China Sea 2
- Spanish Main 2
- Texas Coast 2
- West African Coast 2
- Baltic Sea 1
- Brazilian Coast 1
- Irish Coast 1
- Konkan Coast 1
- Mediterranean 1
- North African Coast 1
- North Atlantic 1
- North Sea 1
- Pacific 1
What this is
An encyclopedic reference on pirates throughout history — written for general readers who want what the documented record actually says, not the legend.
What this isn’t
Not a treasure-hunting site. Not fan fiction. Rumoured holdings are flagged as such; speculation is labelled; claims that can’t be sourced are excluded.
