Punishment and Torture

Unlike most people, I have very unusual opinion about the various forms of punishment and torture utilized by pirates. I believe that the heinous forms of punishment were certainly gruesome but necessary and important to solidify a pirates reputation and intimidation factor. A pirate's effectiveness is certainly in correlation with how feared and how widespread his or her reputation is and what better way to establish oneself as a force not to be reckoned with than cutting off an unruly crew member's nose or fingers. While I agree that many of their actual methods were excessively torturous I believe that in general these severe punishments served a greater purpose than to just please a sadistic captain. I believe that these methods instilled fear and a sort of twisted respect of the captain not only for his or her enemies but also within their personal crew themselves. This fear and respect would in turn lead to a tighter run ship because the crew would be exponentially more meticulous as to not mess up to not be on the wrong end of one of those notorious punishments such as marooning or keelhauling.