Criminals and Outlaws

No, these are not movie characters. These are actual people who lived outside the law. Meet pirates, barbarians, and mafia hitmen. Well...you don't really have to meet them. Giving them a rating will suffice.

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364 days ago

A welshman who possessed a great skill in navigation he did not, initially, want to be a pirate but having been conscripted into being part of a pirate crew, and having been elected to be their captain after the original captain was killed, he set about making the best he could of the job.

His first action as a Pirate Captain was to ransack Principe and slaughter a large portion of the local population in revenge for the killing of the captain he replaced. There after he embarked on what would become the single most successful Pirate career in the Golden Age of Piracy and become the closest challenger to Henry Morgan for the title of the most successful Pirate in western history.

In the course of slightly under four years Roberts raiding shipping an ports across the Atlantic sea-board of North America, single-handedly brought all shipping in the Carribean to almost a standstill and caused considerable chaos off the coast of Africa. It is estimated that he captured as many as 470 vessels.

It is an indication of just how successful he was, and how much of a threat he posed, that the man who commanded the ship that was responsible for capturing the Royal Fortune and killing Roberts was the only man in history ever to reciev a Knighthood for action against a single pirate.

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369 days ago

Henry Morgan, though technically a privateer rather than a pirate, was the Pirate King. He became an Admiral, was knighted and commanded a fleet of bucaneers throughout the Spanish Main. The only Pirate, in western culture at least, who can mount any reasonable challenge to his success is Black Bart Roberts.

Morgan's speciality was attacks on locations rather than attacks at sea. He sacked Puerto Principe, he became the first man to successfully capture the port of Porto Bello - which the Spanish thought impregnible at the time - he raided Maracaibo and sacked Gibraltar and destroyed two Spanish ships on the way out while taking the third for himself, then finally was his great raid on Panama where he defeated the forces there in open battle and failing to find the wealth he wanted he burned the settlement to the ground.

By the time of his retirement, Morgan was the most feared bucaneer in the Spanish Main and he had become an English celebrity, being one of the few success stories in Englands recent war's with Spain.

He was a great charismatic leader, capable of drawing men to him and keeping the many different pirates, privateers and bucaneers in the Spanish Main united, but he was a self-serving man who was fully prepared to abandon his allies to keep most of the wealth of his exploits for himself and a few loyal men - indeed it was this trait that led a former friend to write a libelous and largely fictional account of Morgan's exploits in an attempt to destroy Morgan's reputation.

He also didn't have the best of luck with flagships. He lost three. The Oxford was destroyed when some fool set fire to the magazine after getting drunk during a party, the Satisfaction hit a rock off the caribbean coast of Panama and the Jamaca Merchant hit a reef off the coast of the Isle a vache

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627 days ago

It was Wournos,with an "r". She has the dubious distinction to be Americas first convicted female serial killer.She was arrested in the Last Resort Bar, a tiny Florida watering hole,on Jan 7,1991 and executed on Oct.9,2002.

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627 days ago

This was the equivalent,at that time,of the OJ Simpson trial. She ALMOST got away with it,too.It was quite a scandal.

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627 days ago

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769 days ago

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770 days ago

When John Dillinger was incarcerated, he was a star player on the prison baseball team.

Then he came to the realization that the real problem with America was the economy, and he stopped worrying about a stupid game and tried to solve the big picture.






This review dedicated to RTWL.

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Votes on this review: 5 Helpful / 7 Funny / 1 Agree / 2 Disagree

770 days ago

I'd say yeah, you have some serious problems if a dog is telling you to do it. You probably have even more problems if you're claiming that a Hall and Oates song (" Rich Girl") is another inspiration. At least Manson had good taste in musical inspiration.

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770 days ago

Well, he was right about one thing. " Helter Skelter" is one hell of a song.

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770 days ago

Like a lot of the gangsters of the era the true story doesn't resemble the myth and the heroics that have generally grown around these figures. They were just run-of-the-mill hoods with guns who stole from people and in the course of their careers shot and killed a few.

Still, I can't get the image of Warren Oates out of my head when I hear the name Dillinger.

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Votes on this review: 4 Helpful / 0 Funny / 1 Agree / 1 Disagree

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