In centuries past, pirates were a menace and a terror for seamen and coastal communities; but today, they are portrayed in sympathetic and even comedic ways.
How did the pirate image go from that of a literal terrorist to a kids cartoon?
The first book which popularized pirates was
A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious pirates (1724)
In which biografies of well known pirates were written down. Most of the established names in pirate fiction were included in this book.
The second and most important step was the children’s adventure book ‘Treasure Island’ (1882) . This hugely popular succes introduced prime pirate attributed as a parrot, one-legged pirates, tropical islands and the treasure map marked with a X .
A third book was the children’s book Peter Pan (1911) which expanded on many of the pirate themes of those earlier works.