BUT WE ROMANTICIZE OUR OWN TERRORISTS (via Jim Yates):

The Real Jack Sparrow: He would have eaten Johnny Depp for breakfast (CHRISTOPHER HUDSON, 26th May 2007, Daily Mail)

His name was Bartholomew Roberts. The most successful raider in the history of piracy, he took prisoner an astounding 470 vessels, and so renowned was his ferocity that many of those ships were surrendered to him without a fight.

Black Bart was the nickname he was given - and not only because of his black locks and dark eyes. When this swashbuckling Welsh buccaneer had to fight for his prizes, he was merciless.

In 1720, the crew of a 42-gun Dutch vessel anchored off Dominica in the Caribbean dared to resist. In the close-quarters cannonade which followed, several of his crew were cut down. Even more were slaughtered in the hand-to-hand fighting as Black Bart’s pirates swarmed over the vessel.

Roberts ordered an exemplary revenge. Those Dutchmen who had not been killed in the fighting were hung from the yardarm, or stripped of their shirts and lashed at the masthead until they lost consciousness in the blistering sun, then mutilated.

The Dutch captain’s ears were cut off and presented to him as a reminder to listen harder when Roberts told him what to do. The torture and butchery did not end until the last Dutchman had been dragged out and carved up in similar fashion.

Roberts renamed the ship the Royal Fortune, and sailed it with his great black flag at the helm, which showed Black Bart standing, with cutlass uplifted, on two skulls, representing his dominance over the islands of Barbados and Martinique.

He was one of the many sailors who took to freebooting after his own ship had been captured by pirates.

Born in Wales, 325 years ago this month, he went to sea in 1695 at the age of 13.