The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down (48 page)

Before leaving for New Providence, Rogers sat for what may have been his only portrait. The painter, William Hogarth, placed Rogers in a romanticized version of Nassau. Rogers, in white wig and an elegant full-length jacket, is seated in a comfortable armchair, his face turned in profile, concealing the disfigurement left by a Spanish musket ball. At his back is the bastion of Fort Nassau, on which an ornamental plaque can be seen which bears his personal motto:
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, "While I breathe, I hope." Rogers, then fifty, has a globe to his left (symbolizing his circumnavigation) and a pair of dividers in his right hand, with which he is about to take the measurements of the "Island of Providence" from a map held in his son's hand. William Whetstone Rogers, who would accompany his father to Nassau, is standing wearing the wig and elegant clothing of a gentleman. Daughter Sarah Rogers sits to the left, awaiting a servant with a plate of fruit. In the harbor behind them, a large warship lets off a multigun salute.

When Rogers and his son arrived in Nassau on August 25, 1729, Nassau wasn't quite as pleasant as Hogarth had imagined. The island had just been stricken by a hurricane, and many of its residents lay in their battered homes, weakened by contagious fever. The economy and fortifications remained a shambles, and the outgoing governor's wife had upset many of Nassau's inhabitants by trying to use her position to intimidate justices, monopolize shopkeeping, and hire away other people's servants before their terms of indenture had expired. There had been a few improvements in the eight years that Rogers had been away: a new church in the town center, a stone gatehouse at the entrance to the fort, and Government House, a two-story Georgian residence where Rogers would spend the final years of his life.

His final term was easier than the first, but less than relaxing. He wound up locked in a bitter dispute with the representatives to the colony's new governing assembly over the imposition of local taxes. Rogers wished to raise money to repair the fort; the assemblymen did not. Frustrated with their intransigence, Rogers took the extreme step of dissolving the assembly, upsetting local planters. By early 1731, the fight had worn Rogers out. He became ill and, as before, went to Charleston to recover his health. In the meantime, his son, the governing council's clerk, did his best to build the family a proper slave plantation, making several trips to West Africa to purchase the requisite labor force. (He would die from fever in the port of Whydah during such a trip in 1735, while he was serving as one of the Royal Africa Company's three chief merchants.)

Governor Rogers returned to New Providence in May of 1731, but he was never able to truly recover his health. He passed away on July 15, 1732, and was buried in Nassau. His grave has since been lost, but his name adorns the main street on the city's waterfront, and he is honored in the official motto of the Bahamas:
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, "Pirates Expelled, Commerce Restored."

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is a history and, as such, has benefited from the work of generations of historians, archivists, genealogists, scribes, and scribblers. Our understanding of the Golden Age of Piracy would be impoverished had John Campbell not founded the
Boston News-Letter
in 1704 and decided to regularly cover the pirates' activities in the years following the War of Spanish Succession. Some of these dispatches made their way to London, where they joined the accounts of governors and other colonial officials in the files of the Council of Trade and Plantations and of the secretary of state for America and the West Indies. The captains of Royal Navy warships also collected intelligence on the pirates, and their letters and logbooks were eventually delivered to the Admiralty. When colonial authorities succeeded in capturing pirates, copies of the resulting trials were usually sent home to London. There, much of this mountain of information was made available to the anonymous author of
A General History of the Pyrates,
whose account still dominates discourse on the Bahamian pirates, nearly three centuries after its publication.

The
General History
remains an impressive work of scholarship, skillfully integrating documentary records with material clearly gathered from interviews with Woodes Rogers and other principals. It is, however, riddled with errors, exaggerations, and misunderstandings, most of which were not detected until the twentieth century, when historians finally got around to reviewing the original records for themselves. British scholars Sir John William Fortescue (1859–1938) and Cecil Headlam (1872–1934) spent years assembling the relevant volumes of the
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series,
which contain excerpts and summaries of many of the most important documents in the British archives; in effect, they created a treasure map that has helped countless researchers locate and recover parts of America's past, long buried in a million sheets of quill-and-ink handwriting. I am indebted to them and to the work of historians who followed their leads, including Robert E. Lee's
Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times
(1974), Robert Ritchie's
Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates
(1986), and Bryan Little's
Crusoe's Captain,
published in 1960 and still the finest biography of Woodes Rogers.

I have also benefited from the advice, generosity, and encouragement of several of the world's leading pirate scholars. Marcus Rediker of the University of Pittsburgh helped me locate many hard-to-find sources and shared of his firsthand experience in conducting research at the new National Archives complex near London's Kew Gardens; his
Villains of All Nations
and
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea
built the foundations for the study of pirates from their own perspective, rather than from that of their adversaries. Kenneth J. Kinkor of the Expedition Whydah Museum in Provincetown, Massachusetts, knows more about Samuel Bellamy than the pirate's own parents did, and he kindly shared a great number of document transcriptions, saving me weeks of work and a good deal of gasoline. Joel Baer of Macalester College in St. Paul, the leading authority on Henry Avery, graciously entertained my queries and supplied me with missing pages from some of the hard-to-find pirate trials; researchers will welcome his forthcoming
British Piracy in the Golden Age.
My deepest thanks to all three of you: Immersing oneself in the past can be isolating, but you helped make it a congenial experience.

The same can be said for others who helped me along the way. Gail Swanson of Sebring, Florida, took the time to copy and send a package of translations of documents, from the Archive of the West Indies in Seville, relating to the Spanish treasure fleet of 1715. Also in Florida, Mike Daniel took the time to help clarify French accounts of Blackbeard's capture of
La Concorde.
Rodney Broome of Seattle shared valuable suggestions on what and whom to see in his native Bristol. Shep and Tara Smith of Norfolk, Virginia, put a roof over my head while I went to and from my sojourns in the Carolinas, while Abel Bates and my in-laws, Larry and Andrea Sawyer, arranged the same for me on outer Cape Cod. Daniel Howden introduced me to his neighborhood in London's East End, a welcome respite from days spent reading fading ink on old parchment.

I am especially grateful to the staff of the Portland Public Library, whose interlibrary loan office kept me supplied with hard-to-find volumes throughout this project, and to the people of Maine, whose tax dollars support Maine Info Net, our extraordinary statewide lending system; knowledge is power. Also in Maine, I am grateful to the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library at Bowdoin College for repeatedly loaning their bound volumes of the
Calendar of State Papers
and for access to microfilms of early English newspapers; to the Ladd Library at Bates College, for making available films of early American newspapers; and to the Maine Historical Society Research Library in Portland, the Maine State Library in Augusta, and the Fogler Library at the University of Maine in Orono. I also benefited from resources at the Dimond Library of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, and the Widener Library at Harvard University, where the few surviving copies of the
Jamaica Courant
reside on an all-too-short roll of film. In North Carolina, thanks to the staff of the Bath Museum and to David Moore and his colleagues at the North Carolina Maritime Museum in Beaufort; I hope that wreck proves to be the
Queen Anne's Revenge.
In England, my thanks to the remarkably efficient staff of the National Archives in Kew, especially Geoff Baxter for having a great stack of captains' logs waiting for me on my first day—your document retrieval system is the standard by which all others should be measured. Thanks also to the staff of the Bristol Records Office for indulging my searches for Teaches, Thatches, and Rogers on a gray December afternoon.

My friend and colleague Samuel Loewenberg in Berlin tirelessly reviewed various versions of the manuscript and provided valuable suggestions and feedback—thanks, Sam, I really needed that extra pair of eyes. Thanks also to Brent Askari of Portland for helping to smooth the edges of those rough early drafts. Any errors that remain are, of course, my own.

This book would not be possible were it not for the advice and acumen of Jill Grinberg, the finest agent in New York City; the enthusiasm and support of Timothy Bent, my original editor at Harcourt, now at Oxford University Press; and Andrea Schulz, whose skill, care, and attentiveness ensured a smooth editorial transition. I'm also grateful for the work of David Hough at Harcourt, copy editor Margaret Jones, and Jojo Gragasin, of LoganFrancis Design, who created the maps and illustrations that appear within.

Last and certainly not least, thanks to my parents for their love and support, and to my wife, Sarah Skillin Woodard, who read the manuscript countless times and helped shape it into the book you now hold in your hands; thank you, my dearest, for your patience, support, and suggestions throughout this process, and for saying "I do" along the way.

New Year's Day, 2007
Portland, Maine

ABBREVIATIONS

ADM1/1471–2649: Admiralty Records, Letters from Captains, National Archives, Kew, UK.

ADM33/298: Navy Board Pay Office, Ship's Pay Books, National Archives, Kew, UK

ADM33/311: Navy Board Pay Office, Ship's Pay Books, National Archives, Kew, UK

ADM51/606: Admiralty Records, Captain's Logs,
Milford,
16 Jan 1718 to 31 Dec 1719, National Archives, Kew, UK.

ADM51/672: Admiralty Records, Captain's Logs,
Pearl,
26 July 1715 to 8 Dec 1719, National Archives, Kew, UK.

ADM51/690: Admiralty Records, Captain's Logs,
Phoenix,
8 Oct 1715 to 6 Oct 1721, National Archives, Kew, UK.

ADM51/801: Admiralty Records, Captain's Logs,
Rose,
18 Jan 1718 to 9 May 1721, National Archives, Kew, UK.

ADM51/865: Admiralty Records, Captain's Logs,
Scarborough,
11 Oct 1715 to 5 Sept 1718, National Archives, Kew, UK.

ADM51/877: Admiralty Records, Captain's Logs,
Seaford,
19 Sept 1716 to 22 Sept 1720, National Archives, Kew, UK.

ADM51/892: Admiralty Records, Captain's Logs,
Shark,
18 Jan 1718 to 23 Aug 1722, National Archives, Kew, UK.

ADM51/4250: Admiralty Records, Captain's Logs,
Lyme,
23 Feb 1717 to 14 Aug 1719, National Archives, Kew, UK.

C104/160: Chancery Records, Creagh v. Rogers, Accounts of the Duke & Dutchess, 1708–1711, National Archives, Kew, UK.

CO5/508: Colonial Office Records: South Carolina Shipping Returns, 1717–1719, National Archives, Kew, UK.

CO5/1265: Colonial Office Records: Documents relating to Woodes Rogers's appointment, National Archives, Kew, UK.

CO5/1442: Colonial Office Records: Virginia Shipping Returns, 1715–1727, National Archives, Kew, UK.

CO23/1: Colonial Office Records: Bahamas Correspondence, 1717–1725, National Archives, Kew, UK.

CO23/12: Colonial Office Records: Bahamas, Misc. Records, 1696–1731, National Archives, Kew, UK.

CO23/13: Colonial Office Records: Bahamas, Letters from Governors, 1718–1727, National Archives, Kew, UK.

CO37/10: Colonial Office Records: Bermuda Correspondence, 1716–1723, National Archives, Kew, UK.