Okay, so I'm writing a short story and it won't be entirely true, but my main question is at the time did the pirates around the 17th century mainly come from the same areas or could they have been more spread out? How did crew's usually run, and do we know their nationalities? Also how did women play into pirate society. I read a post about how women would dress as men, and when they would kill they would expose a breast for the man dying to see they were killed by a woman. Were women accepted into pirate society or not? If anyone has any more details, or maybe some good links I could go to read more about it that would be wonderful! Thank you.
Hi there - we're happy to approve your question related to your creative project, and we are happy for people to answer. However, we should warn you that many flairs have become reluctant to answer questions for aspiring novelists and the like, based on past experience: some people working on creative projects have a tendency to try to pump historians for trivia while ignoring the bigger points they were making, while others have a tendency to argue with historians when the historical reality does not line up with what's needed for a particular scene or characterization. Please respect the answers of people who have generously given you their time, even if it's not always what you want to hear.
Additionally, as amazing as our flair panel is, we should also point out that /r/AskHistorians is not a professional historical consultation service. If you're asking a question here because you need vital research for a future commercial product such as a historical novel, you may be better off engaging a historical consultant at a fair hourly rate to answer these questions for you. We don't know what the going rate for consultancy work would be in your locality, but it may be worth looking into that if you have in-depth or highly plot-reliant questions for this project. Some /r/AskHistorians flairs could be receptive to working as a consultant in this way. However, if you wish for a flair here to do this work for you, you will need to organize this with them yourselves.
For more general advice about doing research to inform a creative project, please check out our Monday Methods post on the subject.