Via: Jérôme Jambu/Wiki CommonsĪmerican colonists would use the Spanish dollar alongside British currency, as it was against the law for them to create their own money and coins from England were not plentiful. These were made in Mexico city for a few decades and are rarer than other versions. Pillar dollar pieces of eight recovered from the Jeanne Elisabeth shipwreck. In some territories a supplemental stamp was added to mark them as the local currency (unbeknownst to the Spanish). Because the purity was so consistent and because so many of them were minted, they became a common currency in Australia for a time and were quite popular in the American Colonies as well. Many countries -even those not under Spanish control- used the Spanish dollar at various times. And yet the coin was used all over the globe because it was minted to a more pure silver than other coins. Much of the silver for pieces of eight came from Silver Mountain in Bolivia. While pirates valued a free life and sometimes included women and minorities in positions of power that were unheard of in other parts of society, their booty of gold and silver was primarily mined in Central and South America by indigenous people who were worked to the death by the Spanish in some cases. From 1497 to 1864 this silver coin was in use as the Spanish dollar (AKA the real de ocho). Pieces of eight may sound like a made up thing, but the coins are made of silver and were an official currency for the country of Spain and all her associated colonies and territories for centuries. The roughly shapes of many of these coins earned them the name of “cobs” (meaning lumps) by the English. You might not know what this valuable currency is so here’s the fascinating history of pieces of eight. But, one historical detail that is true to life is that they stole gold and pieces of eight. Now hundreds of years later there are still some aspects of their lives that are mere speculation. In books and movies there are many aspects of pirate life that are dramatized and even during the Golden Age of Piracy in the 1700s the legends about pirates were already full of inaccuracies.
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