Steve Cushion

Letters

Life on the ocean wave

From Socialist Review, No. 178, September 1994.
Copyright © Socialist Review.
Copied with thanks from the Socialist Review Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

I write to take issue with your review of Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Marcus Rediker.

In the early 18th century there were some 5,000 active pirates in the North Atlantic, at the peak of their effectiveness, organised into several federations for mutual support. Bourgeois history has always painted them as utterly cruel and depraved outlaws, but I believe that Marxists should see them as an extreme form of the rebellion of alienated naval labour.

To have up to 5,000 armed proletarians completely free of ruling class control was enough to scare the authorities out of their minds, especially as the pirates could rely on at least the passive sympathy of a large number of those still in the merchant navy. The cruel reputation that the most famous pirates had is based on their treatment of captured merchant captains and their rich passengers.

I am not saying that a pirate ship was a haven of delight, but the arrogance of a captain must have been constrained by the ease of their potential removal if they overstepped the mark. Our rulers call cruel those who treat them as they normally treat us.

Your remark about rum, sodomy and the lash is, I believe, more properly attributed to Winston Churchill. The incidence of cruel and inhuman punishment in the merchant service was just as prevalent as in the royal navy and, as for rum and sodomy, some people find these to be their greatest pleasures.

Steve Cushion
Hackney

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