Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period

by John Franklin Jameson

Public Record Office of Great Britain, C.O. 124:1, p. 118. This document and the next take us back to an almost-forgotten colonial experiment of the English Puritans, contemporary with their undertakings in New England but far removed from them in locality. Old Providence Island--to be distinguished from New Providence (Nassau) in the Bahamas--is an isolated little island in the western Caribbean lying off the coast of Nicaragua. It now belongs to Colombia, and is often called Santa Catalina. In 1630 a company of English investors, desiring to found a Puritan colony, and also to oppose Spain in the Caribbean, obtained from Charles I. a patent for a large area including Providence and other islands. John Pym was their leading member. The history of their colony is interestingly recounted in Professor A.P. Newton's _The Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans_ (New Haven, 1914). The colony became merely a base for privateering against the Spaniards, who conquered and suppressed it in 1641. Thomas Gage, who passed by the island in a Spanish ship in 1637, says, "The greatest feare that I perceived possessed the Spaniards in this Voyage, was about the Island of Providence, called by them Sta. Catarina or St. Catharine, from whence they feared lest some English Ships should come out against them with great strength. They cursed the English in it, and called the Island the den of theeves and Pirates." _The English American, or A New Survey of the West-India's_ (London, 1648), p. 199. For the whole matter of West Indian buccaneering, see Miss Violet Barbour's article, "Privateers and Pirates of the West Indies", in the _American Historical Review_

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645 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1923

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[Royce Ratterman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for personal research - found this book's contents helpful and inspiring.
A good book for the researcher and enthusiast.