The History of the
Pirate's Cove Web Site

A personal crusade to pollute the Internet
with at least marginally useful Information

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In 1996 I created this website Pirate's Cove because there was very little on the internet about pirate history that was even remotely reputable or accurate. To be fair, there were some sites that had excellent content, but the majority of the sites were of the super cheesy "Arr me matey - welcome to me cyber ship!" nature.  Although these types of sites are fun, they are not much help when you're trying to do research. Now, to be totally honest, back in 1996, I knew nothing at all about digital images or web design, so my own site was pretty crappy too - but I was determined to learn. I met some people, read some books, plagiarized HTML code from all over the web, and slowly, with a lot of help and patience Pirates Cove began to improve.   THE EVOLUTION OF PIRATE'S COVE 1996 Originally, Pirate's Cove 1.0 was a one sheet with eight links on it; two of them never actually worked like they were supposed to. 1997 Pirate's Cove 2.0 had five pages, but only two of them were any good. The only positive thing about it was the Black & White Picture of Me doing my 'Rob Neptune" pose (the one over the map on the Main page) I had scanned from a photo shoot I did back when I was working at Medieval Times. 1999 Then, after a major overhaul, Pirate's Cove 3.0 began to kick some ass of it's own. It even won an Award or two. 2000 In Pirate's Cove 4.0, I put a lot of effort into updated virtually everything. I guess I'm starting to feel a little Web-Site Pride setting in. 2005 To celebrate nearly a decade of web presence I have gone back and retooled everything from the base boards up. 2006 Finally acquirred a URL (Web Address) I liked for the site, www.ThePirateKing.com, and moved the entire Pirate's Cove site to it's new home. My site traffic has increased dramatically since those early days, exceeding 5 million visitors around Christmas, 2005! Now I get about 30-50 emails every week from site visitors, and have had to exclusively dedicate my old email address to only receiving site related email. As for the future, I don't know - I never expected the site to last the first ten years. I'd like to keep the site free, ad clean, and ever expanding but who know what the future will hold on this. If someone is actually reading this, email me and let me know what you'd like to see posted here. I'd like to hear what my visitors and the John Q. Pirates out there think.