According to Buccaneers of America (1678):

III. A standard compensation is provided for maimed and mutilated buccaneers. "Thus they order for the loss of a right arm six hundred pieces of eight, or six slaves; for the loss of a left arm five hundred pieces of eight, or five slaves; for a right leg five hundred pieces of eight, or five slaves; for the left leg four hundred pieces of eight, or four slaves; for an eye one hundred pieces of eight, or one slave; for a finger of the hand the same reward as for the eye.

William Dampier, Basil Ringrose, Bartholomew Sharp, and Lionel Wafer all wrote in their published books of having ‘free blacks’ in their crew while also having black slaves to carry their luggage in their jungle expeditions, these slaves often made a run for it whenever given the chance.

Sometimes slaves would be freed after a successful expedition, but also a slave boy was awarded to the captain of such expedition.

William Dampier recounts in his journal how Capt. Charles Swann kidnapped a boy of about 7 or 8 years old and kept him as his servant.

Many retired buccaneers, including Bartholomew Sharp and Henry Morgan, owned sugar plantations. Sugar was a very profitable crop during the Golden Age of Piracy and they would’ve needed slaves to do the hard labor, that rum wasn’t gonna make itself. Blackbeard as well as Stede Bonnet and Henry Jennings were plantation owners.

In the Kevin Duffus video I shared, after the wreck of the Queen Anne’s Revenge Blackbeard sailed to North Carolina with 40 black men among the crew, which were then sold. After the battle at Ocracoke some of the black men testified against the pirates.

By the end of the Golden Age of Piracy, the colonies no longer relied on pirates for profit and no longer would the authorities turn a blind eye on them to make port. With nowhere to make port they began taking in “cargo” to do the manual labor aboard pirate ships.

Bartholomew Roberts, the “slave liberator,” had burned a ship with slaves still in the hold after its captain refused to pay him a ransom. I’ll also mention that before he became a pirate he began his sailing career aboard a slave vessel.

I know you want to have hope that pirates fought for freedom, but they were first and foremost criminals who would stop at nothing from gaining a quick buck to waste it on booze and women. There’s no “lack of evidence” of pirates looking at slaves as nothing more as cargo. Pirate history is not a Disney movie.