Originally posted by willofthewisp
According to Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly, a piece of 8 was called a Real and people broke it, so maybe a 9 piece of 8 is a Real broken into 9 pieces. Do you think that could be it?
Yes I think that could be it. That's what I was saying in a earlier post. I'm pretty sure it could be it. The Nine Pieces of Eight. It makes perfect sense.
Thank you Willoft for that info, it really helped a lot.
No, I have the actual book.
"The most famous of the coins were pieces of eight, or 'pesos.' They were shipped back to Spain in huge quantities to finanace the growing empire...they were roughly the size of the fifty-cent piece currently used in Britain [1996], and were sometimes so roughly fashioned they were almost square rather than round. All types had the Spanish coat of arms on one side and a design representing the pillars of Hercules on the other.....the proper name for these coins was 'eight reales.' All the silver coins struck by the mints in Spain were called reales. The piece of eight and the doubloon, which was the gold eight-escuedo coin, which was the highest-value Spanish coin in circulation, became particularly associated with Spanish treasure and pirates."
Meh, someone asked for it, though and I tried to keep it short. There's so much info in Under the Black Flag. If anyone is interested in real pirates and just how much care the writers put into truly capturing the time period and atmosphere, read this book. Even though they're not in it, there are traces of Jack, Liz, Will, and Norrie in it.
Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly. It's all black with a skull and bones on the cover. So interesting and written before POTC came out so it talks about a lot of other fictional pirates, but it's so interesting and it says so much about Port Royal and all things that are in POTC. Judging by this book, aside from the cursed Aztec gold thing and squid people, POTC is very historically accurate.