ARRRRE You Ready For Another List? Me Top 5 Pirates (Real or Imagined) of All Time

Featured on Spongebob Squarepants, the non-animated Patchy helped keep it real for the kids of the new millenium. Patchy was played by the real, live actor Tom Kenny -- who was also did the voice of Spongebob Squarepants and the Jaques Cousteau-ish narrator for the cartoons. Patchy was a pirate or at least a man who dressed like Long John Silver and lived in a suburban neighborhood while he acted as the president of the Spongebob fan club.

Beating out Long John Silver and Patchy, we find a character, a brand of Rum and a real-life privateer. Captain Morgan is all of these things. Based on Welsh privateer Captain Henry Morgan -- who, to the best of the historians knowledge, never struck the proverbial "captain's pose". Both the rum and the historical captain can be traced to a history in the carribean.

In real life, his name was Edward Teach. To those that he terrorized his name was given: Blackbeard. Perhaps the most fearsome of pirates in new world's golden age of piracy, the man actually (supposedly) tied lit cannon fuses into his long dark beard to intimidate anyone he might board and plunder in a battle at sea. His famous, 40-cannon ship Queen Anne's Revenge supposedly ran aground or sank off the coast of North Carolina. To this day, Blackbeard lives in a number of films and folklore, the most recent portrayal of Blackbeard was seen in Pirates of The Carribean: On Stranger Tides -- which showed Blackbeard portrayed by British actor Ian McShane.

So ...you have heard of him though, haven't you? Johnny Depp did his best to make pirates cool again. The character ----which Depp has proclaimed was one of his favorite roles of all time-- helped Disney to revamp their live-action movie franchise. While pirate purists and historians cannot find any record of pirates actually wearing eyeliner, I'm positive there have been worse atrocities commited by pirates. While you may not like him, you have still heard of him.

The hero of the Battle of New Orleans and the father of Contraband Days Pirate Festival in Lake Charles was actually more of a privateer than a pirate. While the War of 1812 was over, (because communication was not what it was back then) British troops were still sailing towards New Orleans with orders to attack. Then-General Andrew Jackson called upon Lafitte's support of fresh flints, dry gunpowder and guns to help defeat the British in New Orleans. Lafitte, possibly, helped Andrew Jackson become an American hero and thusly the seventh President of The United States. After the war, Lafitte and his brother, Pierre, became spies for Spain and were shown the door out of Louisiana and America. Lafitte sailed to Galveston where he founded a colony and lived for a short while before Texas became a "united state" and he had to leave America yet again. Supposedly, Lafitte burned the entire island of Galveston to the ground upon leaving. Remnants or ruins of his home still stand today in Galveston complete with a historical plaque and a treasure of folklore. Rumor has it, Lafitte buried some of his treasure in Lake Charles on the banks of the Contraband Bayou. Lafitte remains one of my personal historical heroes.