Glad to read another post in this series. I find pirate lore fascinating, so this is very interesting for sure.
It's always interesting to think about how long things took to happen during this time period. In your post, you mention how they would sail from Madagascar to the Caribbean, and when you actually think about what was involved, you realize these guys spent months at sea.
I would also hate to have been someone in charge of shipping things during this time period. You send a ship to resupply a colony, and then a few weeks or months later, you find out it never made it to its destination. Largely due to pirates like you're highlighting, but still, it's interesting to think about.
Thanks again for sharing.
There were a lot of hardships on the sea and at the time often 40% of the crew died on the single cruise. Diseases, storms and malnutrition were the main problems for both pirate and legal ships.
Actually the Pirates rarely sunk and burned the ships. Most of them let the crews of the captured ships continue their journey with most of their supplies. That let the stories circulate that it paid of more to surrender to the pirates than to oppose them. Hornigold, Bellamy and Blackbeard were particularly known famous for such behavior.
Thanks for the insightful comment! :D