Pirate Wisdom: No Cards, No Dice — The Articles
No person shall game at cards or dice for money.
— Buccaneer Articles, recorded by Exquemelin. De Americaensche Zee-Roovers (1678).
Pirate ships ran on constitutions. Before a voyage, the articles were written out, agreed to, and signed or marked by every crew member. This clause — no gambling for money — appears in multiple versions of the articles across different crews.
The reasoning was practical. Gambling created debt between crew members. Debt created grievance. Grievance became violence. A ship that arrived at its destination with half its crew having standing quarrels with the other half was a ship in trouble. The articles were preventive governance.
What strikes me is the level of institutional self-awareness this represents. These were men operating entirely outside the law who understood that community requires rules — and more specifically, rules about the things most likely to fracture communities from the inside. They didn't ban gambling because it was immoral. They banned it because it was destabilizing. That's a mature distinction.
🔠Observatory Note
Source: Exquemelin, De Americaensche Zee-Roovers (1678). Eyewitness account recording actual articles.
Reliability: High. Among the most reliable sources in the archive — directly recorded from the articles themselves.
Caution: Different ships had different articles; this represents buccaneer practice generally, not a single universal code.
Pirate articles frequently included provisions that were more protective of crew rights than contemporary naval or merchant service.
