Taylor was [eventually] so mellow'd with the Punch, that he consented that the old Pyrate Ship, and so many Bales of Cloth be given to Captain Mackra, and so he fell asleep. And if you think a drink makes a person seem sexy…you are young, dumb, or a good combination of the two.

England told Macrae to leave while Taylor was willing to be so generous, something for which Taylor never really forgave him. When Blackbeard was cornered and he determined that two approaching ships "were resolv’d to fight him, he leap’d upon the Round-House of his Sloop, and took a Glass of Liquor, and drank to the Masters of the two Sloops, and bid Damnation seize him that should give Quarter; but notwithstanding his Insolence, the two Sloops soon boarded him, and kill’d all except Teach, and one more, who have been since executed.

Well the reasons for this consistent state of semi-inebriation could be much more pragmatic than hedonistic; most journeys in the Golden Age of Pirates were very long, and as such the water supplies would go off.

When they realized their mistake, both Low's crew in the Fancy and Charles Harris's crew in the consort ship Ranger fled, with the Greyhound giving chase. A few months later, the Hannibal's sailors brought "unpurg’d black sugar, and raw unwholesome rum they bought there [at São Tomé], of which they drank in punch to great excess" 7. Strong alcohols such as rum and brandy were often used on long voyages to disinfect stagnant water, and to sweeten the flavour. As reported in the newspapers, "‘Tis very remarkable, that after this Sloop [Ranger], which was taken and had cry’d for Quarter, that one of the Pyrates was seen on Deck with a Flask in his Hand, and having drank and utter’d several Imprecations, he shot himself through the Head.

When William Snelgrave's ship was captured and looted and the men set to drinking heavily, he noted that Howell Davis' and Thomas Cocklyn's pirates "made such Waste and Destruction [of his ship and supplies], that I am sure a numerous set of such Villains would in a short time, have ruined a great City. Privateer George Shelvocke said that his crew was stirred into mutiny in July of 1719 by a drink and the fiery rhetoric of his ship's boatswain. Disaronno on the rocks is *not* a cocktail…it is just a way of having it but it really does NOT give it all when it is served just on the rocks.