How this is researched

Sources, in order of preference

1. Primary documents — admiralty court records, trial transcripts, ships' logs, customs and prize records, surviving correspondence, government commissions and proclamations, and contemporary newspaper accounts.
2. Peer-reviewed scholarship — academic work on the history of piracy, maritime history, and the regional histories within which a pirate's career sits.
3. Reputable secondary sources — long-form histories from established publishers, encyclopedic references, and substantial biographies whose sources can be checked.
4. Contemporary chronicles — near-contemporary published accounts (e.g. Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, 1724) used carefully, with their interpolations and inventions noted where the modern record contradicts them.

What is excluded

• Treasure-hunter literature whose claims cannot be tied to a documented chain of custody.
• Modern fictionalisations and screen adaptations, except as noted under a pirate's "Legacy" section to explain how a legend has been shaped.
• Anonymous web posts and message-board claims without verifiable sourcing.

How entries are structured

Every pirate entry uses the same outline so readers can compare across them:

• Overview — who the person was, in a paragraph.
• Origins — documented birth, background, and entry into piracy or privateering.
• Career — the active period of their work, the waters they sailed, and the politics that constrained it.
• Ships — vessels documented under their command.
• Raids & captures — a chronological table of the documented prizes, with dates, locations, and notes.
• Treasures — documented holdings separated from rumoured or legendary ones.
• Fate — documented end where there is one, contested where there isn't.
• Legacy — how the figure has been remembered or transformed in subsequent culture.
• Associates — cross-linked entries for contemporaries, partners, captains, and rivals.
• Modern research — where applicable, notes on ongoing scholarship or fieldwork.
• Sources — the references behind the entry.

On legend

Pirates accumulate legend faster than most historical figures. The codex keeps a clear line between what was documented at the time, what was reconstructed later from documented sources, and what is part of the cultural afterlife. The line is not always sharp — particularly for figures known largely through Charles Johnson's 1724 General History — but where it can be drawn, it is.

Editorial verification

Each pirate entry is independently fact-checked through an automated audit pipeline. The auditor reads every factual claim in the entry, searches authoritative sources (admiralty trial records, primary documents, peer-reviewed scholarship, recognised secondary works) for corroboration, and classifies each claim as verified (≥2 authoritative sources), partially verified (one authoritative source, or sources broadly corroborate with minor discrepancies), unverifiable (no authoritative source found), contested (authoritative sources disagree), or closed-source (the claim concerns material that is not in the public record).

The trust score at the bottom of each entry is the proportion of factual claims verified through this process: verified ÷ (verified + partially verified + unverifiable + contested). Closed-source claims are excluded from the denominator because they cannot be checked through open sources. Where the audit identifies a clear factual error with authoritative sourcing, the correction is applied to the entry; the audit-history folder records every audit, every applied correction, and every open item that warrants editorial attention.

The methodology is conservative: it will not apply stylistic preferences or transliteration choices as corrections, only factual errors with citable evidence. The trust score is therefore a floor on the entry's reliability, not a ceiling — many "partially verified" and "unverifiable" claims are nonetheless defensible as written.

Revisions

Entries are revised as new sourcing becomes available or errors are flagged. Significant revisions update the entry's updated field and are noted at the bottom of the entry. Audit runs that produce corrections are recorded under _porter/audit-history/pirates/<slug>/.