Pirates are still a thing, they just don’t look cool anymore.
TBF, I think movies made old pirates look a lot cooler than they really were.
Amen. Ain’t nothin’ cool about scurvy.
TBF, you probably also got scurvy if you were a regular sailor. If anything, pirates had an easier time because they don’t have to go on intercontinental voyages, and caribbean pirates also had a huge leg up over sailors who were active in arctic regions.
Shocker: movies are inaccurate.
If you look at old drawings and depictions, they do look like we know them, but they may have been embellished even then.