What are "Buccaneers?"

[DrBear]

From James Lileks' blog today, quoting a book by Stephen Tatty, ?Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan?s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe that Ended the Outlaws? Bloody Reign.?

Things I didn?t know: since they often sailed by educated guesswork, they would ?deduce? their destination, and enter ?de?d? in the log. Which is where we got ?dead reckoning.? Buccaneers? Named after boucan, or a process of preserving meat.

Which, sums up Lileks, means that you could call buccaneers "the Jerky Boys!"

[FiddySicks]

I've known this for some time now. While I'm not completely up on the history of it all, but what I've heard is that back when pirates would pillage and plunder a village/sea port/wherever they pillaged one of the first things they would snag was a cow, kill it, and let the meat dry as they went on taking the rest of the land. Because of that the name became synonymous with pirates.

[hettinger_rl]

There's a long story here how the name came to be.

Buccaneer Defined

[rmered]

So long as it's still mostly thought of as a killing, pillaging and plundering group of people, I think it's OK.

Yes, the nancy-boy idea of smoking some meat is not for your average football fan, but then, does anyone question the 49ers or the Packers?

Seriously, someone who can process your delivery, or dig a hole in the ground must be less threatening than one who might come and kill your cow, smoke the meat and eat it.