By: Adi Balaji

As debate escalated in Blackbeard’s Pirate Council, an interesting initiative was brought to light by Pirate Phineas Bunce: The Memento Mori Pirate Reserves. These reserves would act as a bank for all pirates of the Caribbean and North Atlantic to protect their booty from seizure by the British Royal Navy. The giant controversy that arose from this initiative is the surrender of freedom that comes with being a pirate to a centralized bank that would contain their precious loot, overseen by pirates itself. A very contentious question arose: are pirates willing to surrender their loot to a bank if it means secrecy can be maintained and the ways of pirates can be preserved?

Bunce’s directive details a very intricate system of money management that involves fellow pirates surrendering two-thirds of their wealth and agreeing to maintain an oath of secrecy of their pirate life, lest 25% of their wealth be used to place a bounty upon their own head for betrayal and disloyalty. Bunce mentions that the incentive for pirates to safeguard their wealth in this banking system would be the lower chance of being outed: if all pirates are sure to use the bank for their booty, Bunce’s safety clause will ensure that the participating pirates “keep their mouths shut” about pirate life and will curb whistleblowers.

An anti-Centralist bloc that formed strongly disagreed with Bunce’s ideas for a central pirate bank. They believed that pirate groups should remain independent without any large pirate bodies. as that would take away the “freedoms that piratism provides'.” “We don’t want to become a big pirate nation, we just want a ‘loose pirate confederation’ that can lightly oversee pirate duty,” says Mary Read, a pirate who is famous for excelling as a female pirate in this male-dominated field. Josiah Burgess, the captain of the Flying Gang’ states, “for pirates, centralism is bad when it comes to things like money,” something that pirates value very much due to their dynamic and sea-farer lifestyle. Charles Vane was perhaps the most opposed to Phineas Bunce’s plan for the centralized banking system, stating that “piracy is a direct tangent to the traditional growth of society, and it would be counterintuitive for us to go the way of the traditional society.”

To handle the backlash, Bunce, of course, had to make many compromises to his directive including changing the initiative from a large centralized public pirate bank to a decentralized bank with optional participation located in a highly confidential location known only by fellow pirates. Rather than using the reserve for storage of wealth, it will be used to track transactions between pirates to verify identity, prevent fraud, and protect money from seizure by the British Royal Navy.

These changes were in the council’s benefit as they allowed the committee to pass the directive of The Memento Mori Pirate Reserves by a very narrow majority. The situation moderately divided the committee and resulted in a slight, but evident animosity between the supporters of centralism in piracy and opposers. It is unsure what part this divide may or may not play while dealing with the hostile situation with the British Royal Navy. The situation rapidly develops as we cover the story of Blackbeard’s pirate council.