More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
October 22, 2020 - January 23, 2021
The Golden Age of Piracy lasted only ten years, from 1715 to 1725,
They ran their ships democratically, electing and deposing their captains by popular vote, sharing plunder equally, and making important decisions in an open council—all in sharp contrast to the dictatorial regimes in place aboard other ships. At a time when ordinary sailors received no social protections of any kind, the Bahamian pirates provided disability benefits for their crews.
They are distinct from privateers, individuals who in wartime plunder enemy shipping under license from their government.
Sir Francis Drake and Sir Henry Morgan for pirates, but they were, in fact, privateers,
Unlike their pirate predecessors, they were engaged in more than simple crime and undertook nothing less than a social and political revolt. They were sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves rebelling against their oppressors: captains, ship owners, and the autocrats of the great slave plantations of America and the West Indies.
Dissatisfaction was so great aboard merchant vessels that typically when the pirates captured one, a portion of its crew enthusiastically joined their ranks.
as word spread of the pirates attacking slave ships and initiating many aboard to participate as equal members of their crews.
This zone of freedom threatened the slave plantation colonies surrounding the Bahamas. In 1718, the acting governor of Bermuda reported that the “negro men [have] grown so impudent
By 1717, the pirates had become so powerful they were able to threaten not only ships, but entire colonies.
They occupied British outposts in the Leeward Islands, threatened to invade Bermuda, and repeatedly blockaded South Carolina. In the process, some accumulated staggering fortunes, with which they bought the loyalty of merchants, plantation owners, even the colonial governors themselves.
Where did they come from, what drove them to do what they did, how did they dispose of their plunder, and had any of them gotten away with it?
most of which are traceable to A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, a 1724 book whose author* wrote under the alias Captain Charles Johnson.
What follows is based on material found in the archives of Britain and the Americas. No dialogue has been made up, and descriptions of everything from cities and events to clothing, vessels, and the weather are based on primary documents.
This brings us to our fourth and final subject, Woodes Rogers, the man the Crown sent to confront the pirates and pacify the Bahamas. More than anyone else, Rogers put an end to the Golden Age of Piracy.
All over England, fields and pastures once used in common by local villagers were seized by feudal lords, enclosed with walls, fences, and hedgerows, and incorporated
This “enclosure movement” turned feudal lords into landed aristocrats and turned millions of self-sufficient farmers into landless paupers.
and sold hundreds of five- to eight-year-olds into seven years of slavery for twenty or thirty shillings (£1 to £1.5) apiece.
cleaning coal dust without masks or protective clothing. These “climbing boys” soon succumbed to lung ailments and blindness or simply fell to their deaths.
Led by a naval officer, press gangs stalked the streets, rounding up any seamen they came across with the aid of clubs.
By 1700, Edward Thatch, the man who would become Blackbeard,
Thomas Thatch, moved to Bristol in 1712 and leased a house a mere block from the city docks.
Royal Navy rations gave each man a half pint of rum and a gallon of beer every day, meaning the crew was drunk most of the time.
One ship, the Katharine, left Londonderry for Boston in 1729 with 123 crew and passengers, but limped ashore six months later in western Ireland with only fourteen left alive.
When food ran low on slave ships, the captain would throw human cargo overboard. The captain ruled with absolute authority, and many of them exercised it with
Mortality rates among the crews of vessels employed in the African slave trade were comparable to those of the slaves themselves. It was not unusual for 40 percent of the crew to perish during a single voyage, most from tropical diseases against which they had no resistance. About half the sailors pressed into the Royal Navy died at sea.
guess everybody's life suckedd. race played no part
Men whose ships were wrecked or who were pressed into the navy at sea rarely received any of the wages they were owed, spelling disaster for the families they left behind.
Very nearly slaves themselves
the mariner William Dampier, a former buccaneer who had circumnavigated the world.
Dampier had spent months holed up with Avery and his men in the harbor of La Coruña in 1694.
In the spring of 1702, England went to war, siding with the Dutch, Austrians, and Prussians against France and Spain. By doing so, they were setting the stage for the greatest outbreak of piracy the Atlantic would ever know.
Africans manning their fields, pastures, and sugar works. To maintain order, the English passed draconian slave laws under which masters could discipline their black captives in pretty much any way they wished, though murdering one without cause carried a fine of £25. Slaves could be punished by castration, having their limbs cut off, or being burned alive, punishments that were meted out without a court trial.
Even so, dozens of blacks did escape each year. They established rogue settlements in the mountains, where they grew crops, raised families, practiced their religions, and trained bands of swift and effective jungle warriors to raid the plantations, free slaves, and kill Englishmen. In their capital, Nanny Town, the runaways were said to be led by an ancient and powerful witch, Granny Nanny, who protected her warriors with magical spells.
Alexander Selkirk, the castaway whose story would inspire Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, was about to be rescued.
the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713,
Dozens of logwood cutters arrived every week from Campeche, attracted by inflated tales of Spanish treasure, turning to piracy upon their arrival. Others came from New England, South Carolina, and Jamaica: unemployed seamen, indentured servants, criminals on the run, even a few escaped slaves from Cuba, Hispaniola, and beyond.
Others—prostitutes, smugglers, and arms dealers—were pouring
New Providence had turned into an outlaw state.
They had no intention of replicating that system, but rather turning it on its head. They took to electing their captains and, if dissatisfied with their selections, could vote to impeach them as well.
pirates gave their captains absolute authority while in combat, but most other decisions were made democratically in a general council of the crew, including where to go, what to attack, which prisoners to retain or set free, and how to punish transgressions within their companies.
The crew kept their authority further in check by electing another official, the quartermaster, who ensured that food, plunder, and assignments were doled out equitably.
Bellamy and Williams, after the pirate articles were read, joined the crew of the Benjamin.
despite his youth, Hornigold appointed Bellamy as the captain of the newly captured Marianne,
Richard Noland.
“If any man wanted Money, he might have it.” Withdrawals he marked in an account book, deducting them from the client’s share of the plunder, as if he were running a sort of pirate credit union.
Prince surrendered, having fired but two shots. The pirates poured onto the Whydah, whooping and hollering in triumph. “Black Sam” Bellamy had acquired a ship worthy of Henry Avery. The poor boy from the West Country was now a pirate king himself.
Hornigold called a council and suggested that they keep the sloop and place her in command of one of their most respected and reliable members: Edward Thatch.
It was around this time that Thatch began calling himself Blackbeard. In his years of piracy, he had let his beard grow wild, making a fearsome appearance. “This beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant length,” an early eighteenth-century historian wrote. “As to breadth, it came up to his eyes” and “like a frightful meteor, covered his whole face, and frightened America more than any Comet that has appeared in a long time.”
Woodes Rogers was obsessed with pirates. Since returning from Madagascar in the summer of 1715 he had thought of little else.
Rogers spent much of 1717 building political support for the venture. He called in every favor he could think of, exploiting his business network in Bristol, his personal relationships in London, and his late father-in-law’s contacts within the Admiralty.
name The Copartners for Carrying on a Trade & Settling the Bahama Islands,
“Woodes Rogers,” petitioners informed the government, “is a person of integrity and capacity, well affected to his Majesty’s government* . . . a person in every way qualified for such an undertaking.”
