The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down
Authors: Colin Woodard
Republic
of
Pirates
Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down
HARCOURT, INC.
Orlando Austin New York San Diego Toronto London
Copyright © 2007 by Colin Woodard
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Woodard, Colin, 1968–
The republic of pirates: being the true and surprising story of the Caribbean
pirates and the man who brought them down/Colin Woodard.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Buccaneers—History—18th century. 2. Pirates—Caribbean Area—
History—18th century. I. Title.
F2161.W56 2007
910.4'5—dc22 2006037389
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978-0-15-101302-9
Text set in Adobe Jenson
Designed by April Ward
Printed in the United States of America
First edition
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ContentsFor Sarah
My wife and true love
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THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRACY
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THE LEGEND (1696)
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GOING TO SEA (1697–1702)
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WAR (1702–1712)
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PEACE (1713–1715)
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PIRATES GATHER (January–June 1716)
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BRETHREN OF THE COAST (June 1716–March 1717)
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BELLAMY (March–May 1717)
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BLACKBEARD (May–December 1717)
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BEGGING PARDON (December 1717–July 1718)
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BRINKSMANSHIP (July–September 1718)
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HUNTED (September 1718–March 1720)
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PIRACY'S END (1720–1732)
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pirates are romantic villains: fearsome men willing to forge a life beyond the reach of law and government, liberated from their jobs and the constraints of society to pursue wealth, merriment, and adventure. Three centuries have passed since they disappeared from the seas, but the Golden Age pirates remain folk heroes and their fans are legion. They have been the models for some of fiction's greatest characters—Captain Hook and Long John Silver, Captain Blood and Jack Sparrow—conjuring images of sword fights, plank walking, treasure maps, and chests of gold and jewels.
Engaging as their legends are—particularly as enhanced by Robert Louis Stevenson and Walt Disney—the true story of the pirates of the Caribbean is even more captivating: a long-lost tale of tyranny and resistance, a maritime revolt that shook the very foundations of the newly formed British Empire, bringing transatlantic commerce to a standstill and fueling the democratic sentiments that would later drive the American revolution. At its center was a pirate republic, a zone of freedom in the midst of an authoritarian age.
The Golden Age of Piracy lasted only ten years, from 1715 to 1725, and was conducted by a clique of twenty to thirty pirate commodores and a few thousand crewmen. Virtually all of the commodores knew one another, having served side by side aboard merchant or pirate vessels or crossed paths in their shared base, the failed British colony of the Bahamas. While most pirates were English or Irish, there were large numbers of Scots, French, and Africans as well as a smattering of other nationalities: Dutch, Danes, Swedes, and Native Americans. Despite differences in nation, race, religion, and even language, they forged a common culture. When meeting at sea, pirate vessels frequently joined forces and came to one another's aid, even when one crew was largely French and the other dominated by their traditional enemies, the English. 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.