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When we think about pirates, we tend to think about treasure. Chests overflowing with gold doubloons, piles of jewels, and a map where X marks the spot — that's the whole point of being a pirate, or at least that's how the movies tell it. And the real pirates of the early 1700s, during the so-called Golden Age of Piracy, gave merchant sailors plenty of reason to be afraid. Pirates prowled the Caribbean and the American coast, and a merchant ship that spotted one on the horizon had every reason to panic. Getting boarded by a pirate crew could cost you your cargo, your ship, or your life.

Or, in one case, your hat.

Sometime around 1717, a pirate crew led by a captain named Benjamin Hornigold captured a small ship off the coast of Honduras. One of the passengers aboard was keeping a journal, which survives today in the collection of the British Library, and he wrote down what happened next. As historian Peter Earle recounts in his book The Pirate Wars, the passenger reported "with some relief" that the pirates "did us no further injury than the taking most of our hats from us." That was it. No gold, no cargo, no hostages — just the hats. The pirates were even happy to explain themselves. They had, per the journal, gotten "drunk the night before, as they told us, and toss'd theirs overboard."

If that still seems weird, well, it apparently wasn’t that unusual. Yes, the stealing of hats and only hats — that part is odd. But the idea that pirates would limit their looting and plundering to something so mundane actually makes a lot of sense, if you think like a pirate. According to Earle, most of the ships pirates captured "were humdrum traders" hauling food, drink, textiles, furniture, and other household goods, and "it was a lucky Atlantic or Caribbean pirate who found more than £1,000 in cash on a captured ship." Pirates were sailors themselves, so they knew what they'd find, and what they mostly took was whatever kept the ship and crew going: "food and drink, clothes, arms and ammunition, cables and sails." And again, that’s pretty sensible. Pirates spent a lot of time at sea — probably more than legitimate seafaring merchants — and supplies run low when you’re away from land. And if you raid a small ship and all you want is some food or, well, hats, it’s probably safer to just take what you need and be on your way.

Hornigold's record fits the pattern. Some time after the hat heist, he captured another sloop near Cuba, held it for two weeks, and then let it go "having taken very little from her," according to a December 1717 sworn statement Earle quotes — "only some rum, a little sugar, powder and shott, cordage and small sayles and four gun carriages with some provisions." And per A General History of the Pyrates, a 1724 book that's one of the main sources on the era, when Hornigold stopped a sloop from Bermuda, his crew "took only some Gallons of Wine, and then let him go."

That's not to say Hornigold was a small-timer. By 1717, as The Vintage News reports, he commanded the Ranger, a 30-gun sloop and the most heavily armed ship in the Bahamas, with roughly 350 men under him. One of his lieutenants was a sailor named Edward Teach. Late that year, the two captured a large French ship, and Hornigold let Teach take command of it. According to World History Encyclopedia, the two sailed as partners, splitting everything they took equally. Teach renamed his new ship the Queen Anne's Revenge, and adopted a new name, one you’ve probably heard of: Blackbeard.

Hornigold's restraint eventually caught up with him. As the Queen Anne's Revenge Project — the North Carolina project that's excavating Blackbeard's shipwreck — explains, Hornigold claimed he only attacked French and Spanish ships, and his crew grew frustrated watching British merchant ships sail by. So they voted him out as captain. In 1718, he accepted the King's pardon, and the new governor of the Bahamas, Woodes Rogers, put him to work hunting down his old colleagues. But that new career didn't last long. In 1719, Rogers sent Hornigold on a trading voyage toward Mexico, and, per the General History, he "was cast away upon Rocks, a great Way from Land, and perished, but five of his Men got into a Canoe and were saved." History doesn't record what happened to his hat.

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Today’s Bonus fact: Wearing the wrong hat at the wrong time can get you in a lot of trouble. In 1925, Turkey outlawed the fez (you know, this thing). The new republic's founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, saw the fez as a relic of the Ottoman past. The Hat Law, passed that November, required public officials to wear European-style brimmed hats instead of fezzes or turbans. Atatürk's reasoning, per the Fashion Institute of Technology's Fashion History Timeline, was that "the dress of civilized people is good enough for us." The law resulted in protests, which in turn resulted in 13 death sentences, as Wikipedia summarizes. And it’s technically still on the books, but thankfully, unenforced.

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