The Pirates Table: Code of Conduct

Originally known as Chasse-Partie, Charter Party, Custom of the Coast or Jamaica Discipline, the pirate Articles of Agreement (code of conduct) varied under different ship captains. In general, the articles were meant to govern the behavior of pirates, including the division of treasure, injury compensation and forms of reprimand and discipline. The first articles were said to be written by Portuguese pirate, Bartolomeu Portugues, in the 17th-century.


Most pirate articles did not survive history, mainly because they were destroyed by pirates themselves upon imminent capture or surrender. However, two books shed light on specific articles as they were written: The Buccaneers of America by Alexandre Exquemelin (1678) and A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates by Charles Johnson (1724).


Examples of articles enforced by Captain Henry Morgan survive from the 17th-century:

  • ARTICLE I: Every man has a vote in affairs of moment; has equal title to the fresh provisions or strong liquors, at any time seized, and may use them at pleasure, unless a scarcity makes necessary, for the good of all, to vote a retrenchment.

  • ARTICLE II: Every man to be called fairly in turn, by list, on board of prizes because, they were on these occasions allowed a shift of clothes: but if they defrauded the company to the value of a dollar in plate, jewels, or money, marooning was their punishment. If the robbery was only betwixt one another, they contented themselves with slitting the ears and nose of him that was guilty, and set him on shore, not in an uninhabited place, but somewhere, where he was sure to encounter hardships.

  • ARTICLE III: No person to game at cards or dice for money.

  • ARTICLE IV: The lights and candles to be put out at eight o'clock at night: if any of the crew, after that hour still remained inclined for drinking, they were to do it on the open deck.

  • ARTICLE V: To keep their peace, pistols and cutlass clean and fit for service.

  • ARTICLE VI: No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man is found seducing any of the latter sex, and carries her to sea, disguised, he is to suffer death.

  • ARTICLE VII: To desert ship or quarters in battle is punishable by death or marooning.

  • ARTICLE VIII: No striking one another on board, but every man's quarrels to be ended on shore, at sword and pistol.

  • ARTICLE IX: No man to talk of breaking up their way of living, till each has shared £1,000. If in order to this, should any man lose a limb or become a cripple in their service, he is to have 800 dollars out of the public stock, and for lesser hurts, proportionately.

  • ARTICLE X: The captain and quartermaster to receive two shares of prize: the master, boatswain and gunner, one share and a half and other officer’s one and a quarter.

  • ARTICLE XI: The musicians to have rest on the Sabbath Day, only by night, but the other six days and nights, not without special favor.

*Articles text from "A General History of the Robberies & Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates" by Captain Charles Johnson (published 1724, Charles Rivington).


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