Pirates Were Surprisingly Ahead of Their Time - And Honestly, We’re Here For It

When we called ourselves Pirate’s Grog, it wasn’t because we had a particular desire to wear eye patches and start saying “ARRR” in meetings.

Although, after a few rums, who knows.

What we’ve always loved about pirates is what they stood for: adventure, independence, doing things differently and generally refusing to follow the path everyone else had decided was the “right” one.

And the more you look into real pirate history, the more interesting it gets.

Because it turns out pirate crews were doing some surprisingly modern things hundreds of years before the rest of us caught up.

Democracy? Yep.

Female leaders? Absolutely.

Profit sharing? Obviously.

Compensation if you got injured at work? Weirdly, yes.

Basically, pirates had some workplace policies that wouldn’t look completely out of place in 2026.

And we LOVE that.

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1. THEY VOTED FOR THEIR CAPTAINS

Forget the idea of one terrifying captain ruling the ship while everyone else quietly does what they’re told. 

On many pirate ships, the crew elected their captain.

And if they thought he was doing a rubbish job?

They could replace him.

Which is quite something considering plenty of businesses still haven’t mastered listening to their staff 300 years later.

Leadership had to be earned.

At Pirate’s Grog, we’ve always believed the best ideas can come from anywhere. We’re a small independent business, so there isn’t much room for layers of hierarchy, endless meetings or someone saying, “That’s not really my department.”

Everyone gets stuck in.

Very pirate.

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2. THEY HAD THEIR OWN VERSION OF SICK PAY

This one genuinely surprised us.

Some pirate crews had agreed compensation for anyone seriously injured while working aboard the ship.

Lose a limb during battle? There could be a set payment from the crew’s shared funds.

Admittedly our HR policy doesn’t specifically cover cannon-related injuries.

Yet.

But the principle was pretty forward-thinking:

If someone gets hurt taking risks for the crew, the crew looks after them.

We can get behind that.

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3. THEY SHARED THE MONEY

Pirates weren’t particularly interested in building a corporate pyramid where one bloke at the top took everything.

Treasure was generally divided into agreed shares amongst the crew.

Yes, captains often received a little more, but everyone had a stake in the result.

Which makes sense.

If everybody benefits when things go well, everybody actually cares about making them go well.

It’s something we’ve always loved about independent business too. Pirate’s Grog has never been one person’s story.

It’s the people who make the rum, pack the orders, pour the drinks, run the events, make the content, sell the bottles and everyone who’s supported us along the way.

It takes a crew.

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4. WOMEN COULD BE ABSOLUTE BOSSES

Pirate history is full of women who very clearly weren’t interested in being told what they were supposed to do.

Anne Bonny and Mary Read became two of the most famous pirates of the Golden Age.

Grace O’Malley commanded ships, controlled territory and negotiated directly with Queen Elizabeth I.

And then there was Ching Shih, who went on to command one of the largest pirate fleets in history.

Which feels particularly fitting to us.

Pirate’s Grog has always had women right at the heart of the business, and the idea that leadership, adventure and risk-taking should somehow be male territory feels completely outdated.

Pirate women had already got that memo centuries ago.

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5. PIRATE CREWS COULD BE INCREDIBLY DIVERSE

Pirate ships brought together people from different countries, backgrounds and walks of life.

English, Irish, French, Dutch, African, Caribbean and plenty more could find themselves aboard the same ship.

For many sailors, once you were part of the crew, what mattered most was whether you could do your job and whether the people around you could rely on you.

Which feels pretty relevant now.

One of the things we’ve always loved about the idea of a pirate crew is that it’s a collection of different characters thrown together by a shared adventure.

There isn’t really a “type” of person who belongs.

If you’re in, you’re in.

Welcome aboard.

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6. THEY WROTE THEIR OWN RULES

This might be the most Pirate’s Grog one of all.

Pirates had their own written rules, often called the Articles and covering everything from sharing treasure to behaviour aboard the ship.

They weren’t interested in blindly following somebody else’s system.

So they made their own.

And that’s probably the part of pirate culture we identify with most.

We’ve never been particularly good at doing things just because “that’s how drinks brands do it”.

We’ve launched flavours people told us were too different.

We turned our Tottenham warehouse into an underground nightclub.

We built an independent rum company without a giant drinks corporation behind us.

We’ve taken rum somewhere a bit younger, louder, more colourful and less serious.

And every time someone has suggested we should make Pirate’s Grog a little safer, a little more traditional or a little more like everyone else...

We’ve generally gone the other way.

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SO WHAT DOES BEING A MODERN-DAY PIRATE ACTUALLY MEAN?

Thankfully, it no longer involves stealing ships.

For us, being a modern-day pirate is more about attitude.

Question things.

Take the adventure.

Back yourself.

Look after your crew.

Welcome interesting people aboard.

Don’t be afraid to do something differently just because nobody else is doing it.

And definitely don’t spend your entire life following somebody else’s map.

That’s what Pirate’s Grog has always been about.

We discovered our first rum while travelling in the Caribbean, came home with an idea and somehow turned it into an independent rum brand, a whole crew of amazing people and a slightly ridiculous underground rum-fuelled world in Tottenham.

We definitely didn’t have a map for any of it.

And maybe that’s the point.

Make your own rules. Find your crew. Enjoy the adventure.

And ideally, take some decent rum with you.