Pirate Chess

The Pirate Age (1600s) was a time of immense noise and chaos, particularly in Guyana, the prosperous empire in the Caribbean. Their capital 'city of gold' — El Dorado — attracted the boldest and most reckless seafarers. Sir Walter Raleigh, the English pirate, poet, and ambitious explorer, famously wrote of this obsession: "In the streets of El Dorado the precious metal lay like wood marked out to burn. The Inga, or Emperor, lived in a gold palace, furnished with gold chests bound with gold ropes, and gold wardrobes stuffed with gold statues." We imagined the Guyanese evil spirit and deity, Yauhahu, standing amidst the gold-crazed crowds — not to fight for the treasure himself, but to ensure the foreign invaders lost it. You've likely heard the name Yauhahu, though probably in a slightly different context. The deity's name, Yauhahu, eventually, and quite logically, became a frequent word used for swearing or expressing frustration among the seafaring community. The explorer and author Robert Louis Stevenson — famous for Treasure Island — is credited with popularizing the deity's name, transforming the word for cursing into the iconic pirate shanty refrain: In the title image of this website, Yauhahu plays a high-stakes game sitting across the chessboard from the notorious pirate Jacquotte Delahaye, who earned the street name 'Back-From-The-Dead-Red' among her fellow buccaneers. Is the gold of El Dorado their wager? Perhaps. But who is Jacquotte Delahaye — is a legend for another day, requiring its own telling.

Yes, it is highly probable that pirates played chess. While definitive historical documentation is scarce, the overwhelming circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that pirates of the Pirate Age engaged in games of strategy like chess. They used to refer to board games generally as 'tables,' a wider term for all board games played for gambling and entertainment to combat the intense boredom of long voyages at sea. Chess is obviously a harder one compared to, say, dice. However, by the time of the Caribbean Pirates, roughly the mid 17th to early 18th century, the modern chess had been established in Europe for a couple of centuries. It was played by the gentry (and there was a surprisingly high number of rich and noble men among the pirate community), also by a rising middle class, and was known across many parts of the globe where sailors and merchants traveled. Another reason to support the idea is cultural, and it's gambling. Considering the mindset of treasure hunters, they loved gambling. In the 17th century, chess was often associated with gambling — often for serious sums of money, which gave it a somewhat shady character in some quarters. Unlike the modern world's position of chess as a purely skill-based and prestigious game, the game's 'gambling nature' in the Pirate Age made it a perfect fit for their typical culture, which was heavily focused on risk and immediate gain. After all, Chess as a wargame requires strategic thinking and calculation—qualities that a pirate captain and their crew certainly valued in their line of work! There may not be a document saying, "Blackbeard played a game of chess against Bartholomew Roberts on August 14, 1718." However, given that chess was a common European game, that pirates were often rebellious sailors looking for all forms of recreation, and that the game fit their risk-taking culture, it's safe to say that pirates played chess, alongside cards and dice. Many skippers and yacht owners of the modern day carry chess sets on their boats.