Pirate trials the world over tell us what kind of things happened at Port Royal. Outlaws were enouraged to confess before dying and to cleanse teir souls of their many, variegated crimes.

Some were broken by their impending doom, cried out for mercy, found Christ, or at least mumbled an apology and blamed their wrongdoings on drink. Asked what had drawn him into the life one pirate recalled "I may begin with gaming! No, whoring that led to gaming..."

Others reacted differently. "Yes I do heartily repent," one told the judge. "I repent that I had not done more Mischief, and that we did not cut the Throats of them that took us, and I am extremely sorry that you ain't all hanged as well as we".

These kind of mocking confessions run through the transcripts of pirate trials, and many a judge was incensed to see the condemned corsairs cracking jokes, laughing at the crowd, and generally living as they were about to die.

..privateer and pirate ships were often specially modified by the raiders to suit their purposes. In the weeks before the mission, Roderick, who had joined up with Morgan, worked with the other privateers to get the ships ready;

...the first order of business was to rip out the wooden bulkheads in the holds, which were used in merchant ships to keep barrels and trunks from sliding. Cabins - first class and steerage - were gutted for reasons both practical (to accomodate the large number of men these ships often carried) and philosophical (pirates were democrats and degreed that no man should have better quarters than the next).

Carpenters would reinforce the deck to support extra cannon and cut slots in hold for guns or mount them fore and aft as "chasers", cannon that could be fired upon anyone trying to pursue or escape them.

Aboveboard the forecastle and any superstructures behind the mainmast were removed, as were the cabins in the stern, creating a clear deck ideal for boarding vessels or for stashing excess numbers of privateers, captives or booty.

Finally, the rig of the converted vessel could be altered by stepping the mainmast aft, for increased power in the wind. Pirates adored speed; an extra knot could mean the difference between riches and hanging.

Like grease monkeys cackling as they dropped a supercharged V8 in their father's vintage Olds, Roderick and the other Brethren took a stock mercantile vessel and made it into a thing built to fly.

Onto their customized ships, the privateers loaded boucan (dried beef), water, hard tack, and their most valuable possessions, prized above women and even Spanish gold; their muskets. The long broad-butted muskets and the pirates' skill with them were so essential to their success that one must pause to linger over these unique Seventeenth Century creations....

They bought them from French and Dutch traders who plied the waters off the New World, and getting a good musket and a pair of working pistols would have been one of the first priorities for a buccaneer.

They paid small fortunes to obtain them, using any seed money they'd brought with them from the Old World,from their wages as indentured servants, or from selling boucan or animal skins; there were a dozen ways to get the necessary cash.

They cleaned the guns obsessively and would slit the throats of anyone who dared touch them.

The pirate musket was an objet d'art, often originating in the shops of the great French gunsmiths: Brachere of Dieppe and Galin of Nientes... the privateers and pirates carried one-of-a-kind matchlocks and... wheelocks.

Gunsmiths also strove for lightness; due to their innovative design, French-produced wheelocks were lighter than their competitors on the Continent, a wonderful attribute when you're carrying a weapon on twenty-mile marches through Central American jungles.

Ironically the buccaneers, who many regarded as civilization killers, carried into battle an instrument that was at the forefront of Renaissance artistry.

Roderick had made his way back to Port Royal, working the logwood boats and taking a privateer mission whenever one came around. He was yellow-eyed, his blood coursing with malaria, and his body had been racked by years of alchohol intake that would have killed most civilians. He lived with a whore, and took part of her earnings when things were tight...

Now forty seven he'd survived two recent bouts of malaria... The teeth were rotting in his head, he was lean, he had new scars on his face (some martial, some nightlife-related), and, to judge by his general appearance, it didn't seem he'd outlive his leader by many months...

He departed the next day and was sighted in Nassua two years later. In 1695 he was lost at sea while chasing a French trader with a crew of Dutch and English pirates off Hispaniola. He left nothing to anyone.

As the political tides shifted, Morgan later turned from piracy to life on a sugar cane plantation, turning upon his former comrades, hanging many for the British government.

Ironically the buccaneers, who many regarded as civilization killers, carried into battle an instrument that was at the forefront of Renaissance artistry.