ABSTRACT
Contemporary narratives rarely focus on pirates relations with women or on their domestic ties but, whether taken for granted or only mentioned in passing, they informed popular opinion and subtly influenced attitudes towards piracy. Pirates are routinely recorded as having wives and children at home, whose well-being was inextricably tied up with their own fortunes. Captain Kidd, married a wealthy woman in New York, and they had at least two daughters. Most pirates were former merchants or naval seamen, and their wives performed much the same functions as seamen's women did: keeping house in their husband's absence, bringing up children, and looking after their husband's interests as best they could. What's interesting is that accounts of pirate marriages and their other liaisons with women throw light on contemporary opinions about gender roles. In England at this time, there seems to have been acute tension over these, and male and female responsibilities were hotly debated.
