There is generally a great deal more in a town than there is in a ship, and the buccaneers proved themselves to be among the most outrageous, exacting, and cruel conquerors ever known in the world.

They were governed by no laws of warfare; whatever they chose to do they did.

They respected nobody, not even themselves, and acted like wild beasts, without the disposition which is generally shown by a wild beast, to lie down and go to sleep when he has had enough.
There were times when it seemed as though it would be safer for a man who had a regard for his life and comfort, to sail upon a pirate ship instead of a Spanish galleon, or to take up his residence in one of the uncivilized communities of Tortuga or Jamaica, instead of settling in a well-ordered Spanish-American town with its mayor, its officials, and its garrison.
It was a very strange nation of marine bandits which had thus sprung into existence on these faraway waters; it was a nation of grown-up men, who existed only for the purpose of carrying off that which other people were taking away; it was a nation of second-hand robbers, who carried their operations to such an extent that they threatened to do away entirely with that series of primary robberies to which Spain had devoted herself.

I do not know that there were any companies formed in those days for the prosecution of buccaneering, but I am quite sure that if there had been, their shares would have gone up to a very high figure..