When it comes to pirates, the same mythical images usually appear in the minds of most people: a one-legged or one-eyed thug with a gold earring in his ear and a parrot on his shoulder, a black flag with a skull and crossbones, furious boarding battles... These exotic ideas about gentlemen of fortune arose relatively recently - more than a hundred years ago - and since then have been intensively replicated in modern adventure literature and cinema. Undoubtedly, the best book about pirates was the novel “Treasure Island” by the Scot Robert Louis Stevenson, and the most iconic film was “Pirates of the Caribbean”. But how similar are pirates, created by the rich imagination of literary and artistic figures, to real sea robbers? What were they really like? The inquisitive reader will find answers to these and many other questions related to the history of piracy on the pages of this book. The author offers the reader biographies of the most famous sea robbers - pirates, corsairs, filibusters and raiders.