There are many characters in our society we are familiar with whether from books and comic books or television and movies. One of the characters we know from a variety of media is Conan the Barbarian but little is known about how he came into being. Conan is a character from the sword and sorcery genre created by a writer from Texas named Robert E. Howard in 1932. Howard’s Conan stories began as a series of articles submitted to the fantasy magazine Weird Tales. Howard’s influences ranged from the Greek writer Plutarch to the mythology works of Thomas Bulfinch. Howard wrote many more Conan stories over the next 4 year completing 21 stories. 
Conan books have been written and published by various different authors over the last 50 years, many of them trying to imitate the style of Robert E. Howard. The original Conan stories written by Howard were allowed to go out of print and were unavailable in their original form. In 2003 the original Howard stories were collected and printed by British Publisher Wandering Star and were republished in the U.S. by Ballantine. These volumes included Howard’s original stories but expanded on them by offering his notes and letters on the setting and for the world of Conan which provided a more complete look at the history of Howard’s ideas and the genesis of the character. Regardless of the history of the character the books, comic books, and the movies of the 80s have kept the Conan character alive and well in the imagination of society since he was first put into print in the 1930s by Robert E. Howard. 
The history of piracy can be traced as far back as the 13th century B.C.E. to sea-faring marauders in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas and extends all the way to current times as pirates still navigate parts of the globe threatening commercial vessels. The Greek historian Plutarch, writing in about 100 A.D., defined pirates as those who attack maritime cities and ships without legal authority.
Contemporary lore and reference to pirates, though, tends to center on piracy in the Caribbean Sea between the mid-16th century through the mid-18th century. This classic period of piracy yielded the famous legends of the English, Dutch, and French pirates and branded names such as Blackbeard and Henry Morgan. Pirates were essentially bands of sea-faring thieves who would attack merchant vessels, and reap whatever riches and resources they could from them. In the case of Caribbean pirates their targets were mostly Spanish ships. Pirates acted for their own interests, and succeeded on the merits of their own organization and strategic ploys. They typically did not act with any authority from sovereign states although during wartime could have been given rights to act on behalf of states in privateering arrangements.
Pirate raids would follow the trade routes from India to America via Africa and those ships navigating through the Caribbean would most often fall prey to pirate attacks. The boom in piracy that began in the 1580s paralleled the tremendous increase in trade and travel that grew out of the expeditions of the Spanish, Portuguese, British, and Dutch explorers and their succeeding colonial endeavors. As trade expanded to include the new colonies, the shipping routes along the Eastern seaboard of America and parts of the Indian Ocean and the west coast of Africa were often targeted by marauding pirates.
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Pirates would set themselves up on base islands in the Caribbean and coordinate their attacks from these strategic points. The pirates practiced a form of democracy on board their ships and elected their captains based on that individual’s successful performance and adeptness in battle. The captain would be partnered in leadership with the quartermaster who was in charge of administration of the ship. Pirates lived an alternative lifestyle to their land-based or legitimate sea-faring rivals, choosing the ocean as their source of income, sustenance, | |||||||||||
| and protection. All foods, commodities, livestock, or riches they acquired from other vessels would be split among the pirates in a comparatively fair and democratic manner. | ||||||||||||
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