Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years War against the Kingdom of France; the modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century. From the middle decades of the 17th century, through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century, it was the world's most powerful navy until surpassed by the United States Navy during the Second World War; the Royal Navy played a key part in establishing the British Empire as the unmatched world power during the 19th and first part of the 20th centuries. Due to this historical prominence, it is common among non-Britons, to refer to it as "the Royal Navy" without qualification. Following World War I, the Royal Navy was reduced in size, although at the onset of World War II it was still the world's largest.
By the end of the war, the United States Navy had emerged as the world's largest. During the Cold War, the Royal Navy transformed into a anti-submarine force, hunting for Soviet submarines and active in the GIUK gap. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, its focus has returned to expeditionary operations around the world and remains one of the world's foremost blue-water navies. However, 21st century reductions in naval spending have led to a personnel shortage and a reduction in the number of warships; the Royal Navy maintains a fleet of technologically sophisticated ships and submarines including two aircraft carriers, two amphibious transport docks, four ballistic missile submarines, six nuclear fleet submarines, six guided missile destroyers, 13 frigates, 13 mine-countermeasure vessels and 22 patrol vessels. As of November 2018, there are 74 commissioned ships in the Royal Navy, plus 12 ships of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary; the RFA replenishes Royal Navy warships at sea, augments the Royal Navy's amphibious warfare capabilities through its three Bay-class landing ship vessels.
It works as a force multiplier for the Royal Navy doing patrols that frigates used to do. The total displacement of the Royal Navy is 408,750 tonnes; the Royal Navy is part of Her Majesty's Naval Service, which includes the Royal Marines. The professional head of the Naval Service is the First Sea Lord, an admiral and member of the Defence Council of the United Kingdom; the Defence Council delegates management of the Naval Service to the Admiralty Board, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. The Royal Navy operates three bases in the United Kingdom; as the seaborne branch of HM Armed Forces, the RN has various roles. As it stands today, the RN has stated its 6 major roles as detailed below in umbrella terms. Preventing Conflict – On a global and regional level Providing Security At Sea – To ensure the stability of international trade at sea International Partnerships – To help cement the relationship with the United Kingdom's allies Maintaining a Readiness To Fight – To protect the United Kingdom's interests across the globe Protecting the Economy – To safe guard vital trade routes to guarantee the United Kingdom's and its allies' economic prosperity at sea Providing Humanitarian Aid – To deliver a fast and effective response to global catastrophes The strength of the fleet of the Kingdom of England was an important element in the kingdom's power in the 10th century.
At one point Aethelred II had an large fleet built by a national levy of one ship for every 310 hides of land, but it is uncertain whether this was a standard or exceptional model for raising fleets. During the period of Danish rule in the 11th century, the authorities maintained a standing fleet by taxation, this continued for a time under the restored English regime of Edward the Confessor, who commanded fleets in person. English naval power declined as a result of the Norman conquest. Following the Battle of Hastings, the Norman navy that brought over William the Conqueror disappeared from records due to William receiving all of those ships from feudal obligations or because of some sort of leasing agreement which lasted only for the duration of the enterprise. More troubling, is the fact that there is no evidence that William adopted or kept the Anglo-Saxon ship mustering system, known as the scipfryd. Hardly noted after 1066, it appears that the Normans let the scipfryd languish so that by 1086, when the Doomsday Book was completed, it had ceased to exist.
According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in 1068, Harold Godwinson's sons Godwine and Edmund conducted a ‘raiding-ship army’ which came from Ireland, raiding across the region and to the townships of Bristol and Somerset. In the following year of 1069, they returned with a bigger fleet which they sailed up the River Taw before being beaten back by a local earl near Devon. However, this made explicitly clear that the newly conquered England under Norman rule, in effect, ceded the Irish Sea to the Irish, the Vikings of Dublin, other Norwegians. Besides ceding away the Irish Sea, the Normans ceded the North Sea, a major area where Nordic peoples traveled. In 1069, this lack of naval presence in the North Sea allowed for the invasion an
Helmsman
A helmsman or helm is a person who steers a ship, submarine, other type of maritime vessel, or spacecraft. The rank and seniority of the helmsman may vary: on small vessels such as fishing vessels and yachts, the functions of the helmsman are combined with that of the skipper. In the merchant navy, the person at the helm is an able seaman during ship arrivals and while maneuvering in restricted waters or other conditions requiring precise steering. An ordinary seaman is restricted to steering in open waters. Moreover, military ships may have a quartermaster at the helm. A professional helmsman maintains a steady course, properly executes all rudder orders, communicates to the officer on the bridge using navigational terms relating to ship's heading and steering. A helmsman relies upon visual references, a magnetic and gyrocompass, a rudder angle indicator to steer a steady course; the mate or other officer on the bridge directs the helmsman aboard navy ships. Clear and exact communication between the helmsman and officer on the bridge is essential to safe navigation and ship handling.
Subsequently, a set of standard steering commands, responses by the helmsman, acknowledgment by the conning officer are recognized in the maritime industry. The helmsman repeats any verbal commands to demonstrate that the command is understood; the International Convention on Standards of Training and Watchkeeping for Seafarers requires that a helmsman be able to understand and respond to helm orders in English. The proliferation of autopilot systems and the increased computerization of operations on a ship's bridge lessen the need for helmsmen standing watch in open waters. Helm orders or commands fall into two categories: heading commands. A rudder command dictates changing the angle of the rudder, a single-event action. Whereas steering a heading is a comparatively long event and will require ongoing or continuous rudder adjustments; the following are helm orders used in the United States Navy and United States Coast Guard: Rudder Midships Check your swing Hard rudder Left or right standard rudder Shift your rudder Heading Steady as she goes Steady on a course Steering a ship requires skills gained through training and experience.
An expert helmsman has a keen sense of how a particular ship will respond to the helm or how different sea conditions impact steering. For instance, experience teaches a helmsman the ability to correct the rudder in advance of a ship falling off course; this requires the capacity to anticipate the delay between when the helm is applied and when the ship responds to the rudder. A skilled helmsman will avoid overcompensating for a ship's movement caused by local conditions, such as wind, currents, or rough seas. Computer-based ship simulators provide a training environment for learning skills to steer a ship. Training can be programmed to replicate a variety of ship environmental conditions. Scenarios depicted in 3-D graphics range from making course corrections in open waters to maneuvering in port, rivers, or other shallow waters. Cost compared to a real vessel is low. Mariners learn responses to dangerous situations, such as steering failure, in the safety of a virtual environment. Land-based ship simulators may feature a full-scale replica of a steering stand with a ship's wheel.
Such simulators incorporate magnetic and gyro compasses for steering. Moreover, a rudder angle indicator that responds appropriately to the helm is part of the configuration; however technology allows for a multitude of smaller workstations in a classroom setting. Administrators network student workstations so that the instructor can launch individual scenarios at each station. Computer models are used to simulate conditions such as wind and currents. Moreover, shallow-water effects or other hydrodynamic forces, such as ships passing close to each other, can be depicted. A computer application records training sessions, complete with voice commands issued by the instructor which are received by the students via a headset. On-the-job training at sea is critical to a helmsman developing ability to "sense" or anticipate how a ship will respond in different conditions; the experienced helmsman uses measured responses to sea conditions when encountering heavy weather that may cause a ship to pitch and roll as it pounds its way through oncoming waves.
Subsequently, the helmsman learns to relax and take into account the vessel's natural rhythm in order to avoid oversteering whatever the maritime environment. More accurate steering is attained with less rudder. Applying the minimal rudder required to steer a course reduces drag of the ship, thereby favorably impacting the ship's speed and operating costs. One of the helmsman's most important duties is steering a ship in a harbor or seaport when reduced speeds slow a ship's response to the rudder. For it is during ship departures, when most ship collisions or groundings occur. Clear communication between the officer of the bridge and the helmsman is essential for safe operations; the officer or harbor pilot re
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists over, the manner of England's governance. The first and second wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament; the war ended with the Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651. The overall outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I. In England, the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship was ended, while in Ireland the victors consolidated the established Protestant Ascendancy. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament's consent, although the idea of Parliament as the ruling power of England was only established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688; the term "English Civil War" appears most in the singular form, although historians divide the conflict into two or three separate wars.
These wars were not restricted to England as Wales was a part of the Kingdom of England and was affected accordingly, the conflicts involved wars with, civil wars within, both Scotland and Ireland. The war in all these countries is known as the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. In the early 19th century, Sir Walter Scott referred to it as "the Great Civil War". Unlike other civil wars in England, which focused on who should rule, this war was more concerned with the manner in which the kingdoms of England and Ireland were governed; the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica called the series of conflicts the "Great Rebellion", while some historians – Marxists such as Christopher Hill – have long favoured the term "English Revolution". The two sides had their geographical strongholds, such that minority elements were fled; the strongholds of the royalty included the countryside, the shires, the less economically developed areas of northern and western England. On the other hand, all the cathedral cities sided with Parliament.
All the industrial centers, the ports, the economically advanced regions of southern and eastern England were parliamentary strongholds. Lacey Baldwin Smith says, "the words populous and rebellious seemed to go hand in hand". Many of the officers and veteran soldiers of the English Civil War studied and implemented war strategies, learned and perfected in other wars across Europe, namely by the Spanish and the Dutch during the Dutch war for independence which began in 1568; the main battle tactic came to be known as pike and shot infantry, in which the two sides would line up, facing each other, with infantry brigades of musketeers in the centre, carrying matchlock muskets. The brigades would arrange themselves in lines of musketeers, three deep, where the first row would kneel, the second would crouch, the third would stand, allowing all three to fire a volley simultaneously. At times there would be two groups of three lines allowing one group to reload while the other group arranged themselves and fired.
Mixed in among the musketeers were pikemen carrying pikes that were between 12 feet and 18 feet long, whose primary purpose was to protect the musketeers from cavalry charges. Positioned on each side of the infantry were the cavalry, with a right-wing led by the lieutenant-general, a left-wing by the commissary general; the Royalist cavaliers' skill and speed on horseback led to many early victories. Prince Rupert, the leader of the king's cavalry, learned a tactic while fighting in the Dutch army where the cavalry would charge at full speed into the opponent's infantry firing their pistols just before impact. However, with Oliver Cromwell and the introduction of the more disciplined New Model Army, a group of disciplined pikemen would stand their ground in the face of charging cavalry and could have a devastating effect. While the Parliamentarian cavalry were slower than the cavaliers, they were better disciplined; the Royalists had a tendency to chase down individual targets after the initial charge leaving their forces scattered and tired.
Cromwell's cavalry, on the other hand, was trained to operate as a single unit, which led to many decisive victories. The English Civil War broke out less than forty years after the death of Queen Elizabeth I in 1603. Elizabeth's death had resulted in the succession of her first cousin twice-removed, King James VI of Scotland, to the English throne as James I of England, creating the first personal union of the Scottish and English kingdoms; as King of Scots, James had become accustomed to Scotland's weak parliamentary tradition since assuming control of the Scottish government in 1583, so that upon assuming power south of the border, the new King of England was genuinely affronted by the constraints the English Parliament attempted to place on him in exchange for money. In spite of this, James's personal extravagance meant he was perennially short of money and had to resort to extra-Parliamentary sources of income; this extravagance was tempered by James's peaceful disposition, so that by the su
Army
An army or land force is a fighting force that fights on land. In the broadest sense, it is the land-based military branch, service branch or armed service of a nation or state, it may include aviation assets by possessing an army aviation component. In certain states, the term army refers to the entire armed forces. Within a national military force, the word army may mean a field army. In several countries, the army is called the Land Army to differentiate it from an air force called the Air Army, notably France. In such countries, the word "army" on its own retains its connotation of a land force in common usage; the current largest army in the world, by number of active troops, is the People's Liberation Army Ground Force of China with 1,600,000 active troops and 510,000 reserve personnel followed by the Indian Army with 1,129,000 active troops and 960,000 reserve personnel. By convention, irregular military is understood in contrast to regular armies which grew from personal bodyguards or elite militia.
Regular in this case refers to standardized doctrines, organizations, etc. Regular military can refer to full-time status, versus reserve or part-time personnel. Other distinctions may separate statutory forces, from de facto "non-statutory" forces such as some guerrilla and revolutionary armies. Armies may be expeditionary or fencible India's armies were among the first in the world; the first recorded battle, the Battle of the Ten Kings, happened when an Hindu Aryan king named Sudas defeated an alliance of ten kings and their supportive chieftains. During the Iron Age, the Maurya and Nanda Empires had the largest armies in the world, the peak being over 600,000 Infantry, 30,000 Cavalry, 8,000 War-Chariots and 9,000 War Elephants not including tributary state allies. In the Gupta age, large armies of longbowmen were recruited to fight off invading horse archer armies. Elephants and cavalry were other featured troops. In Rajput times, the main piece of equipment was iron or chain-mail armour, a round shield, either a curved blade or a straight-sword, a chakra disc and a katar dagger.
The states of China raised armies for at least 1000 years before the Autumn Annals. By the Warring States period, the crossbow had been perfected enough to become a military secret, with bronze bolts which could pierce any armor, thus any political power of a state rested on their organization. China underwent political consolidation of the states of Han, Chu, Zhao and Qi, until by 221 BCE, Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of the Qin dynasty, attained absolute power; this first emperor of China could command the creation of a Terracotta Army to guard his tomb in the city of Xi'an, as well as a realignment of the Great Wall of China to strengthen his empire against insurrection and incursion. Sun Tzu's The Art of War remains one of China's Seven Military Classics though it is two thousand years old. Since no political figure could exist without an army, measures were taken to ensure only the most capable leaders could control the armies. Civil bureaucracies arose to control the productive power of the states, their military power.
The Spartan Army was one of the earliest known professional armies. Boys were sent to a barracks at the age of eight to train for becoming a soldier. At the age of thirty they were allowed to marry and have a family. After that, men devoted their lives to war until their retirement at the age of 60. Unlike other civilizations, whose armies had to disband during the planting and harvest seasons, the Spartan serfs or helots, did the manual labor; this allowed the Spartans to field a full-time army with a campaign season. The Spartan Army was composed of hoplites, equipped with arms and armor nearly identical to each other; each hoplite bore a scarlet uniform. The main pieces of this armor were a spear and a helmet; the Roman Army had its origins in the citizen army of the Republic, staffed by citizens serving mandatory duty for Rome. Reforms turned the army into a professional organization, still filled by citizens, but these citizens served continuously for 25 years before being discharged; the Romans were noted for making use of auxiliary troops, non-Romans who served with the legions and filled roles that the traditional Roman military could not fill such as light skirmish troops and heavy cavalry.
After their service in the army they were made citizens of Rome and their children were citizens also. They were given land and money to settle in Rome. In the Late Roman Empire, these auxiliary troops, along with foreign mercenaries, became the core of the Roman Army. In the earliest Middle Ages it was the obligation of every aristocrat to respond to the call to battle with his own equipment and infantry; this decentralized system was necessary due to the social order of the time, but could lead to motley forces with variable training and abilities. The more resources the noble had access to, the better his troops would be; the words "knight" and "noble" were used interchangeably as there was not a distinction between them. While the nobility did fight upon horseback, they were supported by lower class citizens –
British Army
The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of British Armed Forces. As of 2018, the British Army comprises just over 81,500 trained regular personnel and just over 27,000 trained reserve personnel; the modern British Army traces back to 1707, with an antecedent in the English Army, created during the Restoration in 1660. The term British Army was adopted in 1707 after the Acts of Union between Scotland. Although all members of the British Army are expected to swear allegiance to Elizabeth II as their commander-in-chief, the Bill of Rights of 1689 requires parliamentary consent for the Crown to maintain a peacetime standing army. Therefore, Parliament approves the army by passing an Armed Forces Act at least once every five years; the army is commanded by the Chief of the General Staff. The British Army has seen action in major wars between the world's great powers, including the Seven Years' War, the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War and the First and Second World Wars.
Britain's victories in these decisive wars allowed it to influence world events and establish itself as one of the world's leading military and economic powers. Since the end of the Cold War, the British Army has been deployed to a number of conflict zones as part of an expeditionary force, a coalition force or part of a United Nations peacekeeping operation; until the English Civil War, England never had a standing army with professional officers and careerist corporals and sergeants. It relied on militia organized by local officials, or private forces mobilized by the nobility, or on hired mercenaries from Europe. From the Middle Ages until the English Civil War, when a foreign expeditionary force was needed, such as the one that Henry V of England took to France and that fought at the Battle of Agincourt, the army, a professional one, was raised for the duration of the expedition. During the English Civil War, the members of the Long Parliament realised that the use of county militia organised into regional associations commanded by local members of parliament, while more than able to hold their own in the regions which Parliamentarians controlled, were unlikely to win the war.
So Parliament initiated two actions. The Self-denying Ordinance, with the notable exception of Oliver Cromwell, forbade members of parliament from serving as officers in the Parliamentary armies; this created a distinction between the civilians in Parliament, who tended to be Presbyterian and conciliatory to the Royalists in nature, a corps of professional officers, who tended to Independent politics, to whom they reported. The second action was legislation for the creation of a Parliamentary-funded army, commanded by Lord General Thomas Fairfax, which became known as the New Model Army. While this proved to be a war winning formula, the New Model Army, being organized and politically active, went on to dominate the politics of the Interregnum and by 1660 was disliked; the New Model Army was paid off and disbanded at the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. For many decades the excesses of the New Model Army under the Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell was a horror story and the Whig element recoiled from allowing a standing army.
The militia acts of 1661 and 1662 prevented local authorities from calling up militia and oppressing their own local opponents. Calling up the militia was possible only if the king and local elites agreed to do so. Charles II and his Cavalier supporters favoured a new army under royal control; the first English Army regiments, including elements of the disbanded New Model Army, were formed between November 1660 and January 1661 and became a standing military force for Britain. The Royal Scots and Irish Armies were financed by the parliaments of Ireland. Parliamentary control was established by the Bill of Rights 1689 and Claim of Right Act 1689, although the monarch continued to influence aspects of army administration until at least the end of the nineteenth century. After the Restoration Charles II pulled together four regiments of infantry and cavalry, calling them his guards, at a cost of £122,000 from his general budget; this became the foundation of the permanent English Army. By 1685 it had grown to 7,500 soldiers in marching regiments, 1,400 men permanently stationed in garrisons.
A rebellion in 1685 allowed James II to raise the forces to 20,000 men. There were 37,000 in 1678. After William and Mary's accession to the throne England involved itself in the War of the Grand Alliance to prevent a French invasion restoring James II. In 1689, William III expanded the army to 74,000, to 94,000 in 1694. Parliament was nervous, reduced the cadre to 7000 in 1697. Scotland and Ireland had theoretically separate military establishments, but they were unofficially merged with the English force. By the time of the 1707 Acts of Union, many regiments of the English and Scottish armies were combined under one operational command and stationed in the Netherlands for the War of the Spanish Succession. Although all the regiments were now part of the new British military establishment, they remained under the old operational-command structure and retained much of the institutional ethos and traditions of the standing armies created shortly after the restoration of the monarchy 47 years earlier.
The order of seniority of the most-senior British Army line regiments is based on that of the English army
French Army
The French Army the Ground Army to distinguish it from the French Air Force, Armée de l'Air or Air Army, is the land-based and largest component of the French Armed Forces. It is responsible to the Government of France, along with the other four components of the Armed Forces; the current Chief of Staff of the French Army is General Jean-Pierre Bosser, a direct subordinate of the Chief of the Defence Staff. General Bosser is responsible, in part, to the Ministry of the Armed Forces for organization, use of forces, as well as planning and programming and Army future acquisitions. For active service, Army units are placed under the authority of the Chief of the Defence Staff, responsible to the President of France for planning for, use, of forces. All soldiers are considered professionals following the suspension of conscription, voted in parliament in 1997 and made effective in 2001; as of 2017, the French Army employed 117,000 personnel. In addition, the reserve element of the French Army consisted of 15,453 personnel of the Operational Reserve.
In 1999, the Army issued the Code of the French Soldier, which includes the injunctions: The first permanent army, paid with regular wages, instead of feudal levies, was established under Charles VII in the 1420–30s. The Kings of France needed reliable troops after the Hundred Years' War; these units of troops were raised by issuing ordonnances to govern their length of service and payment. These Compagnies d'ordonnance formed the core of the Gendarme Cavalry into the sixteenth century. Stationed throughout France and summoned into larger armies as needed. There was provision made for "Francs-archers" units of bowmen and foot soldiers raised from the non-noble classes but these units were disbanded once war ended; the bulk of the infantry for warfare was still provided by urban or provincial militias, raised from an area or city to fight locally and named for their recruiting grounds. These units became more permanent, in 1480s Swiss instructors were recruited and some of the'Bandes' were combined to form temporary'Legions' of up to 9000 men.
These men would receive training. Henry II further regularised the French army by forming standing Infantry regiments to replace the Militia structure; the first of these—the Régiments de Picardie, Piémont and Champagne—were called Les Vieux Corps. It was normal policy to disband regiments after a war was over as a cost saving measure with the Vieux Corps and the King's own Household Troops the Maison du Roi being the only survivors. Regiments could be raised directly by the King and so called after the region in which they were raised, or by the nobility and so called after the noble or his appointed colonel; when Louis XIII came to the throne he disbanded most of the regiments in existence leaving only the Vieux and a handful of others which became known as the Petite Vieux and gained the privilege of not being disbanded after a war. In 1684 there was a major reorganisation of the French infantry and again in 1701 to fit in with Louis XIV's plans and the War of the Spanish Succession; this reshuffle created many of the modern regiments of the French Army and standardised their equipment and tactics.
The army of the Sun King tended to wear grey-white coats with coloured linings. There were exceptions and the foreign troops, recruited from outside France, wore red or blue while the French Guards wore blue. In addition to these regiments of the line the Maison du Roi provided several elite units, the Swiss Guards, French Guards and the Regiments of Musketeers being the most famous; the white/grey coated French Infantry of the line Les Blancs with their Charleville muskets were a feared foe on the battlefields of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, fighting in the Nine Years' War, the Wars of Spanish and Austrian Succession, the Seven Years' War and the American Revolution. The revolution split the army with the main mass losing most of its officers to aristocratic flight or guillotine and becoming demoralised and ineffective; the French Guard joined the revolt and the Swiss Guards were massacred during the storming of the Tuileries palace. The remnants of the royal army were joined to the revolutionary militias known as sans-culottes, the "National Guard" a more middle class militia and police force, to form the French Revolutionary Army.
From 1792, the French Revolutionary Army fought against various combinations of European powers reliant on large numbers and basic tactics, it was defeated bloodily but survived and drove its opponents first from French soil and overran several countries creating client states. Under Napoleon I, the French Army conquered most of Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. Professionalising again from the Revolutionary forces and using columns of attack with heavy artillery support and swarms of pursuit cavalry the French army under Napoleon and his marshals was able to outmanoeuvre and destroy the allied armies until 1812. Napoleon introduced the concept of all arms Corps, each one a traditional army'in miniature', permitting the field force to be split across several lines of march and rejoin or to operate independently; the Grande Armée operated by seeking a decisive battle with each enemy army and destroying them in detail before occupying territory and forcing a peace. In 1812 Napoleon marched on Moscow seeking to remove Russian influence from eastern Europe and secure the frontiers of his empire and client states.
The campaign went well but the vast distances of the R
Pirate code
A pirate code, pirate articles or articles of agreement were a code of conduct for governing pirates. A group of sailors, on turning pirate, would draw up their own code or articles, which provided rules for discipline, division of stolen goods, compensation for injured pirates. Buccaneers, like other ships of the time, operated under ship's articles that, among other things, governed conduct of the crew; these "articles of agreement" became authority independent of any nation, were variously called the Chasse-Partie, Charter Party, Custom of the Coast, or Jamaica Discipline. In retrospect, these became known as the Pirate's Code. Pirate articles varied from one captain to another, sometimes from one voyage to another, but they were alike in including provisions for discipline, specifications for each crewmate's share of treasure, compensation for the injured; each crew member was asked to sign or make his mark on the articles swear an oath of allegiance or honour. The oath was sometimes taken on a Bible.
Legend suggests that other pirates swore on crossed pistols, swords, or on a human skull, or astride a cannon. This act formally inducted the signer into the pirate crew entitling him to vote for officers and on other "affairs of moment", to bear arms, to his share of the plunder; the articles having been signed, they were posted in a prominent place the door to the captain's cabin. After a piratical cruise began, new recruits from captured ships would sometimes sign the articles, in some cases voluntarily, in other cases under threat of torture or death. Valuable sea artisans, such as carpenters and navigators, were likely to be forced to sign articles under duress, would be released regardless of their decision to sign or not. In some cases willing recruits would ask the pirates to pretend to force them to sign, so that they could plead they were forced should they be captured by the law. Men who had not signed the articles had a much better chance of acquittal at trial if captured by the law.
Pirate articles are related to, were derived from, ship's articles of the time those of privateers, which provided for discipline and regulated distribution of booty. Merchant articles and privateering articles can be traced back to Europe in the Middle Ages when there was a system of "joint hands" agreements between merchants and seamen to share profits. Nine complete or nearly complete sets of piratical articles have survived, chiefly from Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, first published in 1724, from records kept by Admiralty Court proceedings at the trials of pirates. A partial code from Henry Morgan is preserved in Alexandre Exquemelin's 1678 book The Buccaneers of America. Many other pirates are known to have had articles. Few pirate articles have survived. I; every man has a vote in affairs of moment. II; every man to be called in turn, by list, on board of prizes because, they were on these occasions allowed a shift of clothes: but if they defrauded the company to the value of a dollar in plate, jewels, or money, marooning was their punishment.
If the robbery was only betwixt one another, they contented themselves with slitting the ears and nose of him, guilty, set him on shore, not in an uninhabited place, but somewhere, where he was sure to encounter hardships. III. No person to game at cards or dice for money. IV; the lights and candles to be put out at eight o'clock at night: if any of the crew, after that hour still remained inclined for drinking, they were to do it on the open deck. V. To keep their piece and cutlass clean and fit for service. VI. No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man were to be found seducing any of the latter sex, carried her to sea, disguised, he was to suffer death. To desert the ship or their quarters in battle, was punished with death or marooning. VIII. No striking one another on board, but every man's quarrels to be ended on shore, at sword and pistol. IX. No man to talk of breaking up their way of living. If in order to this, any man should lose a limb, or become a cripple in their service, he was to have eight hundred dollars, out of the public stock, for lesser hurts, proportionately.
X. The Captain and Quartermaster to receive two shares of a prize: the ma
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