The Stamford Mercury comes from the town of the same name, in Lincolnshire. The foundation of the newspaper is subject to doubts, although it claims that happened in 1695, the oldest edition available nowadays comes from the year 1714. It is one of the oldest British newspaper and it is still published today.
How the pirates are seen
In the case of The Gazette, the answer is quite logical. …show more content…
The original story seems to have been changed a little. It tells the story of a little boy who was able to escape the surrendered boat because all the Pirates were drunk. He used a raft in order to alert the people ashore. Most of the articles found in The London Gazette have more to do with propaganda than information, especially when the King speaks.
In other newspapers we can read the stories of pirates but not seen as a threat but as living persons. We are able to read a lot of short stories, mostly told by captains of the Royal Navy. They describe their meetings with pirates, how they were attacked. Since the person talking was on the ship when the attack occurred, the way it is described is really relevant. The adjectives used to describe the attackers aren’t really nice. We also learn that pirates didn’t live hidden from the eyes of the people. The captains and even the people knew how the Pirate law worked. Some pirate captains were even quite notorious at their time, more interesting, those aren’t the same which are remembered …show more content…
In some cases, the faith of a pirate is told in only one line. That is a case in an issue of the Caledonian Mercury : « On Wednesday last John Clark and Roger Hughes who were condemned for Piracy, were executed at Leith ». There is no way to give this information in a simpler way and that can be explained by the aim of this newspaper. When reading their local publication, people only want to inform. However, in other cases, what was a quite simple story, similar to the one mentioned above, can take a much bigger paragraph. We see such kind of examples in an issue of the Newcastle Courant. The aim of this regional newspaper is basically the same as the previously mentioned publication one, so why using more space with a detailed description of the crimes et trials and even a biography ? The answer is hidden in the dates of publication. The short one was published in 1720. The Golden age was on the decline but stories of pirates being sentenced and killed were still common. The other article was published fifteen years later. At that time, most of the pirates were gone and such information was quite original. That is why a story was given more importance than