Good luck bringing back a treasure to the rightful owner, when the rightful owner has been killed along with his family. Also, usually the thieves would not write “stolen from person X in Y” on their gold bars.
And let’s not forget that a non-negligible part of the pirates were in fact former slaves that either fled on their own or have been freed directly by other pirates. So they basically fought their previous “owners”.
Good luck bringing back a treasure to the rightful owner, when the rightful owner has been killed along with his family. Also, usually the thieves would not write “stolen from person X in Y” on their gold bars.
And let’s not forget that a non-negligible part of the pirates were in fact former slaves that either fled on their own or have been freed directly by other pirates. So they basically fought their previous “owners”.