If you were a merchant ship that was attacked by pirates, did they typically take 100% of your cargo?
I could imagine a situation where a pirate would want to incentivize merchant ships not fighting back, so they would say something like “If you don’t fight back we’ll only take half of your cargo, but if you decide to fight we’re killing everyone.”
Did this sort of thing actually happen? Or did pirates typically take everything they could from whatever ship they were plundering?
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