Did pirates bury their treasure?

 

One of the most common things associated with pirates is the belief that they frequently buried their treasure, but in reality the amount of buried pirate treasure that’s actually been found has been very small indeed, so why do people think this was normal for them?

 

The biggest reason would be the portrayal of pirates in movies, with a good example being that many people also think that pirates said “yarrrrr” all the time. The first record of pirates saying “yarrr” actually appeared in a book, and then later on in many movies until it became closely associated with pirates.

 

But in reality most pirates were just normal people who were a bit on the rough side, to think they all came from the same place with the same accent and had some kind of speech impediment simply isn’t true. The same goes with the idea of buried treasure, with movies and books trying to intrigue the viewer into thinking there’s a huge amount of treasure hidden on a beach somewhere.

 

There has been a huge amount of treasure found buried over the years, but most of it was originally put there either by accident, such as dropping it, or trying to hide it from some kind of hostile force. Pirates had the ability to move around the whole world and the crews were normally made up of regular, unknown people so it seems unlikely they would need to bury their treasure as they had more places than most people to spend it.

 

However, pirate William Kidd is believed to have buried at least some of his treasure, as he told numerous people that he did so.

 

There are two main arguments to suggest that pirates buried at least some of their treasure, and that’s the ransom argument and the over-wealth argument.

 

Since they dont have access to a bank to store their stolen wealth, and any lands they owned would probably be seized upon capture, the only option a pirate had to pay for their own ransom would be with buried treasure. If a pirate was captured anything on-board the ship would be taken, and any official wealth such as land or property would be seized, so it was literally his only option.

 

The over-wealth argument is when a pirate steals a huge amount of treasure and simply doesn’t have anywhere safe to put it, such as the supposed treasure of Lima which was said to be taken by pirates and buried on coco island. If an unknown, privately owned ship turned up in some random port with several tons of freshly printed gold bars, it raises questions to say the least.

 

In these situations it would make sense to bury it somewhere and come back for it in smaller amounts, or at least return at a later date with the ability to perhaps smelt some of it into fresh bars.

 

An argument for the lack of pirate treasure found could also be for two reasons, with the main one simply being that no ones found it yet, and the other is treasure that has been found in the past that could have been pirate treasure may have been passed off as something else.