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Originally Posted by gp
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Absolutely not! and surprising that many of those Barbary pirates and others were Dutch (Europeans as you noted). Those guys got around.
Piracy was not a new phenomenon, and not isolated to any area, people, culture etc.
For most of our purposes things focus on the popularized versions of pirate which come of course from "Treasure Island" , Pyle and Wyeth illustrations which derived from Washington Irving, Sir Walter Scott, Poe et al.
In references I have found cases where a pirate referred to his cutlass as a 'shell', for the shell guards that were so often seen on European dusagge (also termed 'Sinclair sabers') in 17th c.
There are not 'pattern books' or 'regulation pirate swords', if course, and in the tag line from "Pirates of the Caribbean".....no 'rules', they're more guidelines'.
