“The scarcity of data is due in part to the familiar problems of gathering information on homosexuality, but it is also a result of the difficulty plaguing research endeavors on Caribbean piracy. Not only was the corpse of the last potential interviewee dipped in tar and chained to a gibbet between flood marks at Wapping Stairs when George II was King of England, but the usual literary remnants particular to subjects of historical investigation were never extant for the cadre of illiterate and inarticulate sea rovers.”