Piracy in the Caribbean - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

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The era of piracy

Piracy

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. The term can include acts committed on land, in the air, or in other major bodies of water or on a shore. It does not normally include crimes committed against persons traveling on the same vessel as the perpetrator...

in the Caribbean began in the 16th century and died out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began combating pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful

Golden Age of Piracy

The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation given to one or more outbursts of piracy in maritime history of the early modern period. In its broadest accepted definition, the Golden Age of Piracy spans from the 1650s to the 1730s and covers three separate outbursts of piracy:the buccaneering...

was from the 1690s until the 1720s. Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of relatively lawless British seaports such as Port Royal

Port Royal

Port Royal was a city located at the end of the Palisadoes at the mouth of the Kingston Harbour, in southeastern Jamaica. Founded in 1518, it was the centre of shipping commerce in the Caribbean Sea during the latter half of the 17th century...

in Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

and the French settlement at Tortuga.

The causes of piracy

Piracy in the Caribbean resulted from the groups of Europeans, mostly English, Dutch and French, who were marooned or shipwrecked. They were called buccaneers as well, from the French "boucanier" (to smoke meat) on a "boucan" (wooden frame set over a fire.) By setting up smokey fires and boucans with prepared meat of marooned cattle, these castaways could get a ship to draw near for trading, at which time the buccaneers could seize the ship. The buccaneers were later chased off the island by colonial powers and had to seek a life at sea. There they created lucrative but illegitimate opportunities for common seamen to attack European merchant ships (especially Spanish fleets sailing from the Caribbean to Europe) and seize their valuable cargo, a practice that began in the 16th century. Piracy was sometimes given "legal" status by colonial powers, especially France under King Francis I (r.1515–1547), in the hope of weakening the sea trade of their rivals who established a mare clausum

Mare clausum

Mare clausum is a term used in international law to mention a sea, ocean or other navigable body of water under the jurisdiction of a state that is closed or not accessible to other states. Mare clausum is an exception to mare liberum , meaning a sea that is open to navigation to ships of all...

policy in the Atlantic and Indian oceans. This "legal" form of piracy is known as privateering. From 1520 to 1560, French privateers were alone in their fight against the Crown of Spain and the vast commerce of the Spanish Empire in the New World. They were later joined by English and Dutch privateers. The following quote by a Welsh pirate shows the motivations for piracy in the 18th century Caribbean:

—Pirate Captain Bartholomew Roberts

Bartholomew Roberts

Bartholomew Roberts , born John Roberts, was a Welsh pirate who raided ships off America and West Africa between 1719 and 1722. He was the most successful pirate of the Golden Age of Piracy. He is estimated to have captured over 470 vessels...

The Caribbean had become a center of European trade and colonization after Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

' discovery of the New World for Spain in 1492. In the 1493 Treaty of Tordesillas

Treaty of Tordesillas

The Treaty of Tordesillas , signed at Tordesillas , , divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a meridian 370 leagueswest of the Cape Verde islands...

the non-European world had been divided between the Spanish and the Portuguese along a north-south line 270 leagues west of the Cape Verde. This gave Spain control of the Americas, a position the Spaniards later reinforced with an equally unenforceable papal bull

Papal bull

A Papal bull is a particular type of letters patent or charter issued by a Pope of the Catholic Church. It is named after the bulla that was appended to the end in order to authenticate it....

(The Inter caetera

Inter caetera

Inter caetera was a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on , which granted to Spain all lands to the "west and south" of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands.It remains unclear to the present whether the pope was issuing a...

). On the Spanish Main

Spanish Main

In the days of the Spanish New World Empire, the mainland of the American continent enclosing the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico was referred to as the Spanish Main. It included present-day Florida, the east shore of the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, Mexico, Central America and the north coast of...

, the key early settlements were Cartagena

Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena de Indias , is a large Caribbean beach resort city on the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean Coast Region and capital of Bolívar Department...

in present-day Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, Porto Bello

Portobelo, Panama

Portobelo is a port city in Colón Province, Panama. It is located on the northern part of the Isthmus of Panama and has a deep natural harbor. Today, Portobelo is a sleepy city with a population of fewer than 3,000...

and Panama City

Panama City

Panama is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Panama. It has a population of 880,691, with a total metro population of 1,272,672, and it is located at the Pacific entrance of the Panama Canal, in the province of the same name. The city is the political and administrative center of the...

on the Isthmus of Panama

Isthmus of Panama

The Isthmus of Panama, also historically known as the Isthmus of Darien, is the narrow strip of land that lies between the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean, linking North and South America. It contains the country of Panama and the Panama Canal...

, Santiago

Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city of Cuba and capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in the south-eastern area of the island, some south-east of the Cuban capital of Havana....

on the southeastern coast of Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, and Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo, known officially as Santo Domingo de Guzmán, is the capital and largest city in the Dominican Republic. Its metropolitan population was 2,084,852 in 2003, and estimated at 3,294,385 in 2010. The city is located on the Caribbean Sea, at the mouth of the Ozama River...

on the island of Hispaniola

Hispaniola

Hispaniola is a major island in the Caribbean, containing the two sovereign states of the Dominican Republic and Haiti. The island is located between the islands of Cuba to the west and Puerto Rico to the east, within the hurricane belt...

. In the 16th century, the Spanish were mining staggering amounts of silver bullion from the mines of Zacatecas

Zacatecas

Zacatecas officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Zacatecas is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided in 58 municipalities and its capital city is Zacatecas....

in New Spain

New Spain

New Spain, formally called the Viceroyalty of New Spain , was a viceroyalty of the Spanish colonial empire, comprising primarily territories in what was known then as 'América Septentrional' or North America. Its capital was Mexico City, formerly Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire...

(Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

) and Potosí

Potosí

Potosí is a city and the capital of the department of Potosí in Bolivia. It is one of the highest cities in the world by elevation at a nominal . and it was the location of the Spanish colonial mint, now the National Mint of Bolivia...

in Peru

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

(actually now located in Bolivia

Bolivia

Bolivia officially known as Plurinational State of Bolivia , is a landlocked country in central South America. It is the poorest country in South America...

). The huge Spanish silver shipments from the New World to the Old attracted pirates and French privateer

Privateer

A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...

s like François Leclerc or Jean Fleury, both in the Caribbean and across the Atlantic, all along the route from the Caribbean to Seville

Seville

Seville is the artistic, historic, cultural, and financial capital of southern Spain. It is the capital of the autonomous community of Andalusia and of the province of Seville. It is situated on the plain of the River Guadalquivir, with an average elevation of above sea level...

.

To combat this constant danger, in the 1560s the Spanish adopted a convoy system. A treasure fleet

Spanish treasure fleet

The Spanish treasure fleets was a convoy system adopted by the Spanish Empire from 1566 to 1790...

or flota would sail annually from Seville (and later from Cádiz

Cádiz

Cadiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the homonymous province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....

) in Spain, carrying passengers, troops, and European manufactured goods to the Spanish colonies of the New World. This cargo, though profitable, was really just a form of ballast for the fleet as its true purpose was to transport the year's worth of silver to Europe. The first stage in the journey was the transport of all that silver from the mines in Peru and New Spain in a mule convoy called the Silver Train to a major Spanish port, usually on the Isthmus of Panama or from Veracruz

Veracruz

Veracruz, formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave officially Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave , is one of the 31 states that, along with the Federal District, comprise the 32 federative entities of Mexico. It is divided in 212 municipalities and its capital city is...

in New Spain. The flota would meet up with the Silver Train, offload its cargo of manufactured goods to waiting colonial merchants and then transfer the precious cargo of gold and silver (in bullion or coin form) into its holds. This made the returning Spanish treasure fleet a tempting target, although pirates were more likely to shadow the fleet to attack stragglers than try and seize the well-guarded main vessels. The classic route for the treasure fleet in the Caribbean was through the Lesser Antilles

Lesser Antilles

The Lesser Antilles are a long, partly volcanic island arc in the Western Hemisphere. Most of its islands form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean, with the remainder located in the southern Caribbean just north of South America...

to the ports along the Spanish Main on the coast of Central America

Central America

Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...

and New Spain, then northwards into the Yucatán Channel

Yucatán Channel

The Yucatán Channel is a strait between Mexico and Cuba. It connects the Yucatán Basin of the Caribbean Sea with the Gulf of Mexico. The strait is across between Cape Catoche in Mexico and Cape San Antonio, Cuba and reaches a maximum depth of .-References:...

to catch the westerly winds back to Europe.

The Dutch United Provinces of the Netherlands

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

and England, both defenders of Protestantism

Protestantism

Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...

, were defiantly opposed to Catholic

Roman Catholic Church

The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...

Spain (the greatest power of Christendom

Christendom

Christendom, or the Christian world, has several meanings. In a cultural sense it refers to the worldwide community of Christians, adherents of Christianity...

in the 16th century) by the 1560s, while the French government was seeking to expand its colonial holdings in the New World now that Spain had proven they could be extremely profitable. It was the French who had established the first non-Spanish settlement in the Caribbean when they had founded Fort Caroline

Fort Caroline

Fort Caroline was the first French colony in the present-day United States. Established in what is now Jacksonville, Florida, on June 22, 1564, under the leadership of René Goulaine de Laudonnière, it was intended as a refuge for the Huguenots. It lasted one year before being obliterated by the...

near what is now Jacksonville, Florida

Jacksonville, Florida

Jacksonville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Florida in terms of both population and land area, and the largest city by area in the contiguous United States. It is the county seat of Duval County, with which the city government consolidated in 1968...

in 1564, although the settlement was soon wiped out by a Spanish attack from the larger colony of Saint Augustine

St. Augustine, Florida

St. Augustine is a city in the northeast section of Florida and the county seat of St. Johns County, Florida, United States. Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorer and admiral Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, it is the oldest continuously occupied European-established city and port in the continental United...

. Aided by their governments, English, French and Dutch traders and colonists utterly ignored the unenforceable line drawn by the Treaty of Tordesillas to invade Spanish colonial territory even in times of peace between their nations in Europe, which gave rise to the famed 16th century phrase: "No peace beyond the line."

The Spanish, despite being the wealthiest state in Christendom at the time, could not afford a sufficient military presence to control such a vast area of ocean or enforce their exclusionary, mercantilist trading laws. These laws allowed only Spanish merchants to trade with the colonists of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. This legal arrangement allowed for constant smuggling to break the Spanish trading laws and new attempts at Caribbean colonization in peacetime by England, France and the Netherlands. Whenever a war was declared in Europe between the Great Powers the result was always widespread piracy and privateering throughout the Caribbean.

The Anglo-Spanish War

Anglo-Spanish War (1585)

The Anglo–Spanish War was an intermittent conflict between the kingdoms of Spain and England that was never formally declared. The war was punctuated by widely separated battles, and began with England's military expedition in 1585 to the Netherlands under the command of the Earl of Leicester in...

in 1585–1604 was partly due to trade disputes in the New World. A focus on extracting mineral and agricultural wealth from the New World rather than building productive, self-sustaining settlements in its colonies; inflation fueled in part by the massive shipments of silver and gold to Western Europe; endless rounds of expensive wars in Europe; an aristocracy that belittled commercial opportunities as beneath them; and an inefficient system of tolls and tariffs that hampered industry all contributed to Spain's decline from power during the 17th century. However, very profitable trade continued between its colonies and Spain's overseas empire

Spanish Empire

The Spanish Empire comprised territories and colonies administered directly by Spain in Europe, in America, Africa, Asia and Oceania. It originated during the Age of Exploration and was therefore one of the first global empires. At the time of Habsburgs, Spain reached the peak of its world power....

continued to expand until the early 19th century.

Meanwhile, in the Caribbean, the arrival of European diseases with Columbus had reduced the local American Indian populations; the native population of New Spain fell as much as 90% from its original numbers in the 16th century. This loss of native population led Spain to increasingly rely on African slave labor to run Spanish America's colonies, plantations and mines and the trans-Atlantic slave trade

Atlantic slave trade

The Atlantic slave trade, also known as the trans-atlantic slave trade, refers to the trade in slaves that took place across the Atlantic ocean from the sixteenth through to the nineteenth centuries...

offered new sources of profit for English, Dutch and French traders who wanted to violate the Spanish mercantilist laws—and did so, with impunity. But the relative emptiness of the Caribbean also made it an inviting place for England, France and the Netherlands to set up colonies of their own, especially as gold and silver became less important as commodities to be seized and were replaced by tobacco and sugar as cash crops that could make men very rich.

As Spain's military might in Europe weakened, the Spanish trading laws in the New World were violated with greater frequency by the merchants of other nations. The Spanish port on the island of Trinidad

Trinidad

Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands and numerous landforms which make up the island nation of Trinidad and Tobago. It is the southernmost island in the Caribbean and lies just off the northeastern coast of Venezuela. With an area of it is also the fifth largest in...

off the northern coast of South America, permanently settled only in 1592, became a major point of contact between all the nations with a presence in the Caribbean.

Changes in demographics

In the early 17th century, expensive fortifications and the size of the colonial garrisons at the major Spanish ports increased to deal with the enlarged presence of Spain's competitors in the Caribbean, but the treasure fleet's silver shipments and the number of Spanish-owned merchant ships operating in the region declined. Additional problems came from shortage of food supplies because of the lack of people to work farms. The number of European-born Spaniards in the New World or Spaniards of pure blood who had been born in New Spain, known as peninsulares and creoles

Creole peoples

The term Creole and its cognates in other languages — such as crioulo, criollo, créole, kriolu, criol, kreyol, kreol, kriulo, kriol, krio, etc. — have been applied to people in different countries and epochs, with rather different meanings...

, respectively, in the Spanish caste system, totaled no more than 250,000 people in 1600. Few Spanish colonists in the New World served as the productive members of society who grew crops or manufactured goods—they all wanted to pursue lives of aristocratic luxury in their haciendas as the masters of great plantations growing food, tobacco or sugar, with African or Indian slaves to serve them and do all of the real labor. Later settlements in the Caribbean islands by other European powers also relied on the labour of non-European workers, namely African slaves.

At the same time, England and France were powers on the rise in 17th century Europe as they mastered their own internal religious schisms between Catholic and Protestant and the resulting societal peace allowed their economies to rapidly expand. England especially began to turn its people's maritime skills into the basis of commercial prosperity. English and French kings of the early 17th century—James I

James I of England

James VI and I was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the English and Scottish crowns on 24 March 1603...

(r. 1603–1625) and Henry IV

Henry IV of France

Henry IV , Henri-Quatre, was King of France from 1589 to 1610 and King of Navarre from 1572 to 1610. He was the first monarch of the Bourbon branch of the Capetian dynasty in France....

(r. 1598–1610), respectively, each sought more peaceful relations with Habsburg Spain

Habsburg Spain

Habsburg Spain refers to the history of Spain over the 16th and 17th centuries , when Spain was ruled by the major branch of the Habsburg dynasty...

in an attempt to decrease the financial costs of the ongoing wars. Although the onset of peace in 1604 reduced the opportunities for both piracy and privateering against Spain's colonies, neither monarch discouraged his nation from trying to plant new colonies in the New World and break the Spanish monopoly on the Western Hemisphere

Western Hemisphere

The Western Hemisphere or western hemisphere is mainly used as a geographical term for the half of the Earth that lies west of the Prime Meridian and east of the Antimeridian , the other half being called the Eastern Hemisphere.In this sense, the western hemisphere consists of the western portions...

. The reputed riches, pleasant climate and the general emptiness of the Americas all beckoned to those eager to make their fortunes and a large assortment of Frenchmen and Englishmen began new colonial ventures during the early 17th century, both in North America, which lay basically empty of European settlement north of Mexico, and in the Caribbean, where Spain remained the dominant power until late in the century.

As for the Dutch Netherlands, after decades of rebellion against Spain fueled by both Dutch nationalism and their staunch Protestantism, independence had been gained in all but name (and that too would eventually come with the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648). The Netherlands had become Europe's economic powerhouse. With new, innovative ship designs like the fluyt

Fluyt

A fluyt, fluit, or flute is a Dutch type of sailing vessel originally designed as a dedicated cargo vessel. Originating from the Netherlands in the 16th century, the vessel was designed to facilitate transoceanic delivery with the maximum of space and crew efficiency...

(a cargo vessel able to be operated with a small crew and enter relatively inaccessible ports) rolling out of the ship yards in Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

and Rotterdam

Rotterdam

Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...

, new capitalist economic arrangements like the joint-stock company taking root and the military reprieve provided by the Twelve Year Truce with the Spanish (1609–1621), Dutch commercial interests were expanding explosively across the globe, but particularly in the New World and East Asia

East Asia

East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...

. However, in the early 17th century, the most powerful Dutch companies, like the Dutch East India Company

Dutch East India Company

The Dutch East India Company was a chartered company established in 1602, when the States-General of the Netherlands granted it a 21-year monopoly to carry out colonial activities in Asia...

, were most interested in developing operations in the East Indies

East Indies

East Indies is a term used by Europeans from the 16th century onwards to identify what is now known as Indian subcontinent or South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines...

(Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

) and Japan, and left the West Indies to smaller, more independent Dutch operators.

Spanish ports

In the early 17th century, the Spanish colonies of Cartagena

Cartagena, Colombia

Cartagena de Indias , is a large Caribbean beach resort city on the northern coast of Colombia in the Caribbean Coast Region and capital of Bolívar Department...

, Havana

Havana

Havana is the capital city, province, major port, and leading commercial centre of Cuba. The city proper has a population of 2.1 million inhabitants, and it spans a total of — making it the largest city in the Caribbean region, and the most populous...

, Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city of Cuba and capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in the south-eastern area of the island, some south-east of the Cuban capital of Havana....

, San Juan

San Juan, Puerto Rico

San Juan , officially Municipio de la Ciudad Capital San Juan Bautista , is the capital and most populous municipality in Puerto Rico, an unincorporated territory of the United States. As of the 2010 census, it had a population of 395,326 making it the 46th-largest city under the jurisdiction of...

, Panama City

Panama City

, and Santo Domingo

Santo Domingo

were among the most important settlements of the Spanish West Indies

Spanish West Indies

The Spanish West Indies was the contemporary name for the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean...

. Each possessed a large population and a self-sustaining economy, and was well-protected by Spanish defenders. These Spanish settlements were generally unwilling to deal with traders from the other European states because of the strict enforcement of Spain's mercantilist laws pursued by the large Spanish garrisons. In these cities European manufactured goods could command premium prices for sale to the colonists, while the trade goods of the New World—tobacco, chocolate and other raw materials, were shipped back to Europe.

By 1600, Porto Bello had replaced Nombre de Dios (where Sir Francis Drake had first attacked a Spanish settlement) as the Isthmus of Panama's Caribbean port for the Spanish Silver Train and the annual treasure fleet. Veracruz, the only port city open to trans-Atlantic trade in New Spain, continued to serve the vast interior of New Spain as its window on the Caribbean. By the 17th century, the majority of the towns along the Spanish Main and in Central America had become self-sustaining. The smaller towns of the Main grew tobacco and also welcomed foreign smugglers who avoided the Spanish mercantilist laws. The underpopulated inland regions of Hispaniola were another area where tobacco smugglers in particular were welcome to ply their trade.

The Spanish-ruled island of Trinidad

Trinidad

was already a wide-open port open to the ships and seamen of every nation in the region at the start of the 17th century, and was a particular favorite for smugglers who dealt in tobacco and European manufactured goods. Local Caribbean smugglers sold their tobacco or sugar for decent prices and then bought manufactured goods from the trans-Atlantic traders in large quantities to be dispersed among the colonists of the West Indies and the Spanish Main who were eager for a little touch of home. The Spanish governor of Trinidad, who both lacked strong harbor fortifications and possessed only a laughably small garrison of Spanish troops, could do little but take lucrative bribes from English, French and Dutch smugglers and look the other way—or risk being overthrown and replaced by his own people with a more pliable administrator.

Protestant ports

The English had established an early colony on the island of Barbados

Barbados

Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles. It is in length and as much as in width, amounting to . It is situated in the western area of the North Atlantic and 100 kilometres east of the Windward Islands and the Caribbean Sea; therein, it is about east of the islands of Saint...

in the West Indies in 1627, although this small settlement's people faced considerable dangers from the local Carib Indians (known to be cannibals) for some time after its founding. Barbados needed regular imports of food from England or the rest of the Caribbean to survive in its first few years, much like the English colonies on the North American mainland. No large tobacco plantations or even truly organized defenses were established by the English on its Caribbean settlements at first and it would take time for London to realize just how valuable its possessions in the Caribbean could prove to be. Barbados, the first truly successful English colony in the West Indies, grew fast as the 17th century wore on. Increasingly, English ships chose to use it as their home port in the Caribbean. Like Trinidad, merchants in the trans-Atlantic trade who based themselves on Barbados always paid good money for tobacco and sugar. Both of these commodities remained the key cash crops of this period and fueled the growth of the American Southern colonies as well as their counterparts in the Caribbean.

After the destruction of Fort Caroline

Fort Caroline

by the Spanish, the French made no further colonization attempts in the Caribbean for several decades as France was convulsed by its own Catholic-Protestant religious divide during the late 16th century Wars of Religion

French Wars of Religion

The French Wars of Religion is the name given to a period of civil infighting and military operations, primarily fought between French Catholics and Protestants . The conflict involved the factional disputes between the aristocratic houses of France, such as the House of Bourbon and House of Guise...

. However, old French privateering anchorages with small "tent camp" towns could be found during the early 17th century in the Bahamas. These settlements provided little more than a place for ships and their crews to take on some fresh water and food and perhaps have a dalliance with the local camp followers, all of which would have been quite expensive.

In the early 17th century, Dutch merchant ships were commonly seen plying Caribbean waters, but no true Dutch-owned ports (the Dutch called their colonies "factories") yet existed. The Dutch spent most of their time trading in smuggled goods with the smaller Spanish colonies. Trinidad was the unofficial home port for Dutch traders and privateers in the New World early in the 17th century before they established their own colonies in the 1620s and 1630s. As usual, Trinidad's ineffective Spanish governor was helpless to stop the Dutch

Dutch people

The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...

from using his port and instead he usually accepted their lucrative bribes.

European struggle

The first third of the 17th century in the Caribbean was defined by the outbreak of the savage and destructive Thirty Years' War

Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....

in Europe (1618–1648) that represented both the culmination of the Protestant-Catholic conflict of the Reformation and the final showdown between Habsburg Spain and Bourbon France. The war was mostly fought in Germany, where one-third to one-half of the population would eventually be lost to the strains of the conflict, but it had some effect in the New World as well. The Spanish presence in the Caribbean began to decline at a faster rate, becoming more dependent on African slave labor. The Spanish military presence in the New World also declined as Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

shifted more of its resources to the Old World in the Habsburgs' apocalyptic fight with almost every Protestant state in Europe. This need for Spanish resources in Europe accelerated the decay of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. The settlements of the Spanish Main and the Spanish West Indies became financially weaker and were garrisoned with a much smaller number of troops as their home countries were more consumed with happenings back in Europe. The Spanish Empire's economy remained stagnant and the Spanish colonies' plantations, ranches and mines became totally dependent upon slave labor imported from West Africa. With Spain no longer able to maintain its military control effectively over the Caribbean, the other Western European states finally began to move in and set up permanent settlements of their own, ending the Spanish monopoly over the control of the New World.

Even as the Dutch Netherlands were forced to renew their struggle against Spain for independence as part of the Thirty Years' War (the entire rebellion against the Spanish Habsburgs was called the Eighty Years' War in the Low Countries

Low Countries

The Low Countries are the historical lands around the low-lying delta of the Rhine, Scheldt, and Meuse rivers, including the modern countries of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and parts of northern France and western Germany....

), the Dutch Republic

Dutch Republic

The Dutch Republic — officially known as the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands , the Republic of the United Netherlands, or the Republic of the Seven United Provinces — was a republic in Europe existing from 1581 to 1795, preceding the Batavian Republic and ultimately...

had become the world's leader in mercantile shipping and commercial capitalism and Dutch companies finally turned their attention to the West Indies in the 17th century. The renewed war with Spain with the end of the truce offered many opportunities for the successful Dutch joint-stock companies to finance military expeditions against the Spanish Empire. The old English and French privateering anchorages from the 16th century in the Caribbean now swarmed anew with Dutch warships.

In England, a new round of colonial ventures in the New World was fueled by declining economic opportunities at home and growing religious intolerance for more radical Protestants (like the Puritans) who rejected the compromise Protestant theology of the established Church of England

Church of England

The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...

. After the demise of the Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia

Saint Lucia is an island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. Part of the Lesser Antilles, it is located north/northeast of the island of Saint Vincent, northwest of Barbados and south of Martinique. It covers a land area of 620 km2 and has an...

and Grenada

Grenada

Grenada is an island country and Commonwealth Realm consisting of the island of Grenada and six smaller islands at the southern end of the Grenadines in the southeastern Caribbean Sea...

colonies soon after their establishment, and the near-extinction of the English settlement of Jamestown

Jamestown, Virginia

Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia. Established by the Virginia Company of London as "James Fort" on May 14, 1607 , it was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States, following several earlier failed attempts, including the Lost Colony of Roanoke...

in Virginia

Virginia

The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...

, new and stronger colonies were established by the English in the first half of the 17th century, at Plymouth, Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Barbados, the West Indian islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis and Providence Island. These colonies would all persevere to become centers of English civilization in the New World.

For France, now ruled by the Bourbon King Louis XIII (r. 1610–1642) and his able minister Cardinal Richelieu, religious civil war had been reignited between French Catholics and Protestants (called Huguenots). Throughout the 1620s, French Huguenots fled France and founded colonies in the New World much like their English counterparts. Then, in 1636, to decrease the power of the Habsburg dynasty who ruled Spain and the Holy Roman Empire on France's eastern border, France entered the cataclysm in Germany—on the Protestants' side.

Colonial disputes

Many of the cities on the Spanish Main in the first third of the 17th century were self-sustaining but few had yet achieved any prosperity. The more backward settlements in Jamaica and Hispaniola were primarily places for ships to take on food and fresh water. Spanish Trinidad remained a popular smuggling port where European goods were plentiful and fairly cheap, and good prices were paid by its European merchants for tobacco or sugar.

The English colonies on Saint Kitts and Nevis, founded in 1623, would prove to become wealthy sugar-growing settlements in time. Another new English venture on Providence Island

Providencia Island

Isla de Providencia or Old Providence is a mountainous Caribbean island. Though it is closer to Nicaragua, it is part of the Archipelago of San Andres, Providencia and Santa Catalina, a department of Colombia, lying midway between Costa Rica and Jamaica...

off the malaria ridden Mosquito Coast

Mosquito Coast

The Caribbean Mosquito Coast historically consisted of an area along the Atlantic coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras, and part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named after the local Miskito Indians and long dominated by British interests...

of Nicaragua

Nicaragua

Nicaragua is the largest country in the Central American American isthmus, bordered by Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. The country is situated between 11 and 14 degrees north of the Equator in the Northern Hemisphere, which places it entirely within the tropics. The Pacific Ocean...

, deep in the heart of the Spanish Empire, had become the premier base for English privateers and other pirates raiding the Spanish Main.

On the shared Anglo-French island of Saint Christophe (called "Saint Kitts" by the English) the French had the upper hand. The French settlers on Saint Christophe were mostly Catholics, while the unsanctioned but growing French colonial presence in northwest Hispaniola (the future nation of Haiti

Haiti

Haiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Caribbean country. It occupies the western, smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Ayiti was the indigenous Taíno or Amerindian name for the island...

) was largely made up of French Protestants who had settled there without Spain's permission to escape Catholic persecution back home. France cared little what happened to the troublesome Huguenots, but the colonization of western Hispaniola allowed the French to both rid themselves of their religious minority and strike a blow against Spain—an excellent bargain, from the French Crown's point of view. The ambitious Huguenots had also claimed the island of Tortuga off the northwest coast of Hispaniola and had established the settlement of Petit-Goâve on the island itself. Tortuga in particular was to become a pirate and privateer haven and was beloved of smugglers of all nationalities—after all, even the creation of the settlement had been illegal.

Dutch colonies in the Caribbean remained rare until the second third of the 17th century. Along with the traditional privateering anchorages in the Bahamas and Florida, the Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx...

settled a "factory" (commercial town) at New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that served as the capital of New Netherland. It later became New York City....

on the North American mainland in 1626 and at Curaçao

Curaçao

Curaçao is an island in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the Venezuelan coast. The Country of Curaçao , which includes the main island plus the small, uninhabited island of Klein Curaçao , is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands...

in 1634, an island positioned right in the center of the Caribbean off the northern coast of Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

that was perfectly positioned to become a major maritime crossroads.

The seventeenth century crisis and colonial repercussions

The mid-17th century in the Caribbean was again shaped by events in far-off Europe. For the Dutch Netherlands, France, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire

Holy Roman Empire

The Holy Roman Empire was a realm that existed from 962 to 1806 in Central Europe.It was ruled by the Holy Roman Emperor. Its character changed during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period, when the power of the emperor gradually weakened in favour of the princes...

, the Thirty Years War being fought in Germany, the last great religious war in Europe, had degenerated into an outbreak of famine

Famine

A famine is a widespread scarcity of food, caused by several factors including crop failure, overpopulation, or government policies. This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality. Every continent in the world has...

, plague and starvation that managed to kill off one-third to one-half of the population of Germany. England, having avoided any entanglement in the European mainland's wars, had fallen victim to its own ruinous civil war that resulted in the short but brutal Puritan military dictatorship (1649–1660) of the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell

Oliver Cromwell was an English military and political leader who overthrew the English monarchy and temporarily turned England into a republican Commonwealth, and served as Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland....

and his Roundhead armies. Of all the European Great Powers, Spain was in the worst shape economically and militarily as the Thirty Years' War concluded in 1648. Economic conditions had become so poor for the Spanish by the middle of the 17th century that a major rebellion began against the bankrupt and ineffective Habsburg government of King Philip IV

Philip IV of Spain

Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...

(r. 1625–1665) that was eventually put down only with bloody reprisals by the Spanish Crown. This did not make poor Philip IV more popular.

But disasters in the Old World bred opportunities in the New World. The Spanish Empire

Spanish Empire

's colonies were badly neglected from the middle of the 17th century because of Spain's many woes. Freebooters and privateers, experienced after decades of European warfare, pillaged and plundered the almost defenseless Spanish settlements with ease and with little interference from the European governments back home who were too worried about their own problems at home to turn much attention to their New World colonies. The non-Spanish colonies were growing and expanding across the Caribbean, fueled by a great increase in immigration as people fled from the chaos and lack of economic opportunity in Europe. While most of these new immigrants settled into the West Indies' expanding plantation economy, others took to the life of the buccaneer. Meanwhile, the Dutch, at last independent of Spain when the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia ended their own Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) with the Habsburgs, made a fortune carrying the European trade goods needed by these new colonies. Peaceful trading was not as profitable as privateering, but it was a safer business.

By the later half of the 17th century, Barbados

Barbados

had become the unofficial capital of the English West Indies before this position was claimed by Jamaica

Jamaica

later in the century. Barbados was a merchant's dream port in this period. European goods were freely available, the island's sugar crop sold for premium prices, and the island's English governor rarely sought to enforce any type of mercantilist regulations. The English colonies at Saint Kitts and Nevis were economically strong and now well-populated as the demand for sugar in Europe increasingly drove their plantation-based economies. The English had also expanded their dominion in the Caribbean and settled several new islands, including Bermuda in 1612, Antigua and Montserrat in 1632, and Eleuthera in the Bahamas in 1648, though these settlements began like all the others as relatively tiny communities that were not economically self-sufficient.

The French also founded major new colonies on the sugar-growing islands of Guadeloupe in 1634 and Martinique in 1635 in the Lesser Antilles. However, the heart of French activity in the Caribbean in the 17th century remained Tortuga, the fortified island haven off the coast of Hispaniola for privateers, buccaneers and outright pirates. The main French colony on the rest Hispaniola remained the settlement of Petit-Goâve, which was the French toehold that would develop into Haiti. French privateers still used the tent city anchorages in the Florida Keys to plunder the Spaniards' shipping in the Florida Channel, as well as to raid the shipping that plied the sealanes off the northern coast of Cuba

Cuba

.

For the Dutch in the 17th-century Caribbean, the island of Curaçao

Curaçao

was the equivalent of England's port at Barbados. This large, rich, well-defended free port, open to the ships of all the European states, offered good prices for sugar that was re-exported to Europe and also sold large quantities of manufactured goods in return to the colonists of every nation in the New World. A second Dutch-controlled free port had also developed on the island of Sint Eustatius which was settled in 1636.The constant back-and-forth warfare between the Dutch and the English for possession of it in the 1660s later damaged the island's economy and desirability as a port. The Dutch also had set up a settlement on the island of Saint Martin

Saint Martin

Saint Martin is an island in the northeast Caribbean, approximately east of Puerto Rico. The 87 km2 island is divided roughly 60/40 between France and the Kingdom of the Netherlands ; however, the Dutch side has the larger population. It is one of the smallest sea islands divided between...

which became another haven for Dutch sugar planters and their African slave labor. In 1648, the Dutch agreed to divide the prosperous island in half with the French.

The Golden Age of Piracy, 1650–1730

The late 17th and early 18th centuries are often considered the "Golden Age of Piracy" in the Caribbean. The military power of the Spanish Empire in the New World started to decline when King Philip IV of Spain

Philip IV of Spain

Philip IV was King of Spain between 1621 and 1665, sovereign of the Spanish Netherlands, and King of Portugal until 1640...

was succeeded by King Charles II

Charles II of Spain

Charles II was the last Habsburg King of Spain and the ruler of large parts of Italy, the Spanish territories in the Southern Low Countries, and Spain's overseas Empire, stretching from the Americas to the Spanish East Indies...

(r. 1665–1700), who in 1665 became the last Habsburg

Habsburg

The House of Habsburg , also found as Hapsburg, and also known as House of Austria is one of the most important royal houses of Europe and is best known for being an origin of all of the formally elected Holy Roman Emperors between 1438 and 1740, as well as rulers of the Austrian Empire and...

king of Spain at the age of four. While Spanish America in the late 17th century had little military protection as Spain entered a phase of decline as a Great Power, it also suffered less from the Spanish Crown's mercantilist policies with its economy. This lack of interference, combined with a surge in output from the silver mines due to increased availability of slave labor (the demand for sugar increased the number of slaves brought to the Caribbean) began a resurgence in the fortunes of Spanish America.

England, France and the Dutch Netherlands had all become New World

New World

The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

colonial powerhouses in their own right by 1660. Worried by the Dutch Republic

Dutch Republic

's intense commercial success since the signing of the Treaty of Westphalia, England launched a trade war with the Dutch. The English Parliament passed the first of its own mercantilist Navigation Acts

Navigation Acts

The English Navigation Acts were a series of laws that restricted the use of foreign shipping for trade between England and its colonies, a process which had started in 1651. Their goal was to force colonial development into lines favorable to England, and stop direct colonial trade with the...

(1651) and the Staple Act (1663) that required that English colonial goods be carried only in English ships and legislated limits on trade between the English colonies and foreigners. These laws were aimed at ruining the Dutch merchants whose livelihoods depended on free trade. This trade war would lead to three outright Anglo-Dutch Wars

Anglo-Dutch Wars

The Anglo–Dutch Wars were a series of wars fought between the English and the Dutch in the 17th and 18th centuries for control over the seas and trade routes. The first war took place during the English Interregnum, and was fought between the Commonwealth of England and the Dutch Republic...

over the course of the next twenty-five years. Meanwhile, King Louis XIV of France (r. 1642–1715) had finally assumed his majority with the death of his regent mother Queen Anne of Austria's chief minister, Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661. The "Sun King's" aggressive foreign policy was aimed at expanding France's eastern border with the Holy Roman Empire

Holy Roman Empire

and led to constant warfare against shifting alliances that included England, the Dutch Republic, the various German states and Spain. In short, Europe was consumed in the final decades of the 17th century by nearly constant dynastic intrigue and warfare—an opportune time for pirates and privateer

Privateer

s to engage in their bloody trade.

In the Caribbean, this political environment led colonial governors to face new threats from every direction. The Dutch sugar island of Sint Eustatius changed ownership ten times between 1664 and 1674 as the English and Dutch dueled for supremacy. Consumed with the various wars in Europe, the mother countries provided few further military reinforcements to their colonies, so the colonial governors of the Caribbean increasingly made use of buccaneer

Buccaneer

The buccaneers were privateers who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the late 17th century.The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate...

s as mercenaries and privateers to guard their colonies or carry the fight to their mother country's current enemy. Surprisingly (or not), these undisciplined and greedy dogs of war often proved difficult for their sponsors to control.

By the late 17th century, the great Spanish towns of the Caribbean had begun to prosper and Spain also began to make a slow, fitful recovery, but remained poorly defended militarily because of Spain's problems and so were sometimes easy prey for pirates and privateers. The English presence continued to expand in the Caribbean as England itself was rising toward great power status in Europe. Captured from Spain in 1655, the island of Jamaica

Jamaica

had been taken over by England and its chief settlement of Port Royal

Port Royal

had become a new English buccaneer haven in the midst of the Spanish Empire. Jamaica was slowly transformed, along with Saint Kitts

Saint Kitts

Saint Kitts Saint Kitts Saint Kitts (also known more formally as Saint Christopher Island (Saint-Christophe in French) is an island in the West Indies. The west side of the island borders the Caribbean Sea, and the eastern coast faces the Atlantic Ocean...

, into the heart of the English presence in the Caribbean. At the same time the French Lesser Antilles

Lesser Antilles

colonies of Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe

Guadeloupe is an archipelago located in the Leeward Islands, in the Lesser Antilles, with a land area of 1,628 square kilometres and a population of 400,000. It is the first overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. As with the other overseas departments, Guadeloupe...

and Martinique

Martinique

Martinique is an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea, with a land area of . Like Guadeloupe, it is an overseas region of France, consisting of a single overseas department. To the northwest lies Dominica, to the south St Lucia, and to the southeast Barbados...

remained the main centers of French power in the Caribbean, as well as among the richest French possessions because of their increasingly profitable sugar plantations. The French also maintained privateering strongholds around western Hispaniola

Hispaniola

, at their traditional pirate port of Tortuga, and their Hispaniolan capital of Petit-Goâve. The French further expanded their settlements on the western half of Hispaniola and founded Léogâne

Léogane

Léogâne is a seaside town in Ouest Department, Haïti. It is located in the eponymous arrondissement, the Léogâne Arrondissement. The port town is located about West of the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince. The town was at the epicenter of the 12 January 2010 earthquake, and was catastrophically...

and Port-de-Paix

Port-de-Paix

Port-de-Paix is a city and the capital of the département of Nord-Ouest in Haïti on the Atlantic coast. It has a population of 250,000 ....

, even as sugar plantations became the primary industry for the French colonies of the Caribbean.

At the start of the 18th century, Europe remained riven by warfare and constant diplomatic intrigue. France was still the dominant power but now had to contend with a new rival, England (Great Britain

Kingdom of Great Britain

The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...

after 1707) which emerged as a great power at sea and land during the War of the Spanish Succession

War of the Spanish Succession

The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, including a divided Spain, over the possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. As France and Spain were among the most powerful states of Europe, such a unification would have...

. But the depredations of the pirates and buccaneers in the Americas in the latter half of the 17th century and of similar mercenaries in Germany during the Thirty Years War had taught the rulers and military leaders of Europe that those who fought for profit rather than for King and Country could often ruin the local economy of the region they plundered, in this case the entire Caribbean. At the same time, the constant warfare had led the Great Powers to develop larger standing armies and bigger navies to meet the demands of global colonial warfare. By 1700 the European states had enough troops and ships at their disposal to begin better protecting the important colonies in the West Indies and in the Americas without relying on the aid of privateers. This spelled the doom of privateering and the easy (and nicely legal) life it provided for the buccaneer. Though Spain remained a weak power for the rest of the colonial period, pirates in large numbers generally disappeared after 1730, chased from the seas by a new English Royal Navy squadron based at Port Royal

Port Royal

, Jamaica and a smaller group of Spanish privateers sailing from the Spanish Main known as the Costa Garda (Coast Guard in English). With regular military forces now on-station in the West Indies, letters of marque

Letter of marque

In the days of fighting sail, a Letter of Marque and Reprisal was a government licence authorizing a person to attack and capture enemy vessels, and bring them before admiralty courts for condemnation and sale...

were harder and harder to obtain.

Economically, the late 17th century and the early 18th century was a time of growing wealth and trade for all the nations who controlled territory in the Caribbean. Although some piracy would always remain until the mid-18th century, the path to wealth in the Caribbean in the future lay through peaceful trade, the growing of tobacco, rice and sugar and smuggling to avoid the British Navigation Acts and Spanish mercantilist laws. By the 18th century the Bahamas had become the new colonial frontier for the British. The port of Nassau became one of the last pirate havens. A small British colony had even sprung up in former Spanish territory at Belize

Belize

Belize is a constitutional monarchy and the northernmost country in Central America. Belize has a diverse society, comprising many cultures and languages. Even though Kriol and Spanish are spoken among the population, Belize is the only country in Central America where English is the official...

in Honduras

Honduras

Honduras is a republic in Central America. It was previously known as Spanish Honduras to differentiate it from British Honduras, which became the modern-day state of Belize...

that had been founded by an English pirate in 1638. The French's colonial empire in the Caribbean had not grown substantially by the start of the 18th century. The sugar islands of Guadaloupe and Martinique remained the twin economic capitals of the French Lesser Antilles, and were now equal in population and prosperity to the largest of the English's Caribbean colonies. Tortuga had begun to decline in importance, but France's Hispaniolan settlements were becoming major importers of African slaves as French sugar plantations spread across the western coast of that island, forming the nucleus of the modern nation of Haiti

Haiti

The end of an era

The decline of piracy in the Caribbean paralleled the decline of the use of mercenaries

Mercenary

A mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...

and the rise of national armies in Europe. Following the end of the Thirty Years' War

Thirty Years' War

The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....

the direct power of the state in Europe expanded. Armies were systematized and brought under direct state control; the Western European states' navies were expanded and their mission was expanded to cover combating piracy. The elimination of piracy from European waters expanded to the Caribbean in the 18th century, West Africa and North America by the 1710s and by the 1720s even the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

was a difficult location for pirates to operate.

After 1720, piracy in the classic sense became extremely rare in the Caribbean as European military and naval forces, especially those of the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, became too widespread and active for any pirate to pursue an effective career for long. Pirates who were caught were usually hanged as soon as the British returned to port. Piracy saw a brief resurgence between the end of the War of the Spanish Succession

War of the Spanish Succession

in 1713 and around 1720, as many unemployed seafarers took to piracy as a way to make ends meet when a surplus of sailors after the war led to a decline in wages and working conditions. At the same time, one of the terms of the Treaty of Utrecht

Treaty of Utrecht

The Treaty of Utrecht, which established the Peace of Utrecht, comprises a series of individual peace treaties, rather than a single document, signed by the belligerents in the War of Spanish Succession, in the Dutch city of Utrecht in March and April 1713...

that ended the war gave to Great Britain's Royal African Company

Royal African Company

The Royal African Company was a slaving company set up by the Stuart family and London merchants once the former retook the English throne in the English Restoration of 1660...

and other British slavers a thirty-year asiento, or contract, to furnish African slaves to the Spanish colonies, providing British merchants and smugglers potential inroads into the traditionally closed Spanish markets in America and leading to an economic revival for the whole region. This revived Caribbean trade provided rich new pickings for a wave of piracy. Also contributing to the increase of Caribbean piracy at this time was Spain's breakup of the English logwood settlement at Campeche

Campeche

Campeche is one of the 31 states which, with the Federal District, comprise the 32 Federal Entities of Mexico. Located in Southeast Mexico, it is bordered by the states of Yucatán to the north east, Quintana Roo to the east, and Tabasco to the south west...

and the attractions of a freshly sunken silver fleet off the southern Bahamas in 1715.

This early 18th century resurgence of piracy lasted only until the Royal Navy and the Spanish Guardacostas presence in the Caribbean were enlarged to deal with the threat. Also crucial to the end of this era of piracy was the loss of the pirates' last Caribbean safe haven at Nassau

Nassau, Bahamas

Nassau is the capital, largest city, and commercial centre of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The city has a population of 248,948 , 70 percent of the entire population of The Bahamas...

. It is in this period that the popular Pirates of the Caribbean film series produced by the Walt Disney Company is loosely set.

The famous pirates of the early 18th century were a completely illegal remnant of a golden buccaneering age, and their choices were limited to quick retirement or eventual capture. Contrast this with the earlier example of Henry Morgan

Henry Morgan

Admiral Sir Henry Morgan was an Admiral of the Royal Navy, a privateer, and a pirate who made a name for himself during activities in the Caribbean, primarily raiding Spanish settlements...

, who for his privateering efforts was knighted by the English Crown and appointed the governor of Jamaica

Jamaica

.

In the early 19th century, piracy along the East and Gulf Coasts of North America as well as in the Caribbean increased again. Jean Lafitte

Jean Lafitte

Jean Lafitte was a pirate and privateer in the Gulf of Mexico in the early 19th century. He and his elder brother, Pierre, spelled their last name Laffite, but English-language documents of the time used "Lafitte", and this is the commonly seen spelling in the United States, including for places...

was probably the greatest pirate/privateer of the time, operating in the Caribbean and in American waters from his havens in Texas and Louisiana during the 1810s. But the records of the US Navy indicate that hundreds of pirate attacks occurred in American and Caribbean waters between the years of 1820 and 1835. The Latin American Wars of Independence led to widespread use of privateers both by Spain and by the revolutionary governments of Mexico, Colombia, and other new Latin American countries. These privateers were rarely scrupulous about adhering to the terms of their letters of marque even during the Wars of Independence, and continued to plague the Caribbean as outright pirates long after the wars ended.

About the time of the Mexican-American War in 1846, the United States Navy had grown strong and numerous enough to eliminate the pirate threat in the West Indies. By the 1830s, ships had begun to convert to steam propulsion, so the Golden Age of Sail and the classical idea of pirates in the Caribbean ended. Privateering, similar to piracy, continued as an asset in war for a few more decades and proved to be of some importance during the naval campaigns of the American Civil War.

Privateering would remain a tool of European states, and even of the newborn United States, until the mid-19th century's Declaration of Paris

Declaration of Paris

The Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law of 16 April 1856 was issued to abolish privateering. It regulated the relationship between neutral and belligerent and shipping on the high seas introducing new prize rules.- Major points :...

. But letters of marque were given out much more sparingly by governments and were terminated as soon as conflicts ended. The idea of "no peace beyond the Line" was a relic that had no meaning by the more settled late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Jean Fleury

Born in Vatteville and financed by shipowner Jean Ango

Jean Ango

Jean Ango was a French ship-owner who provided ships to Francis I for exploration of the globe. A native of Dieppe, Ango took over his father's import-export business, and ventured into the spice trade with Africa and India...

, French privateer Jean Fleury was Spain's nemesis. In 1522, he captured seven Spanish vessels. One year later most of Montezuma's Aztec treasure fell into his hands after he captured two of the three galleons in which Cortez shipped the fabled booty back to Spain. He was captured in 1527 and executed by order of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor

Charles V was ruler of the Holy Roman Empire from 1519 and, as Charles I, of the Spanish Empire from 1516 until his voluntary retirement and abdication in favor of his younger brother Ferdinand I and his son Philip II in 1556.As...

François Le Clerc

François Le Clerc also nicknamed "Jambe de bois" ("Pie de Palo", "wooden leg") was a formidable privateer, ennobled by Henri II in 1551. In 1552, Le Clerc ransacked Porto Santo. One year later, he mustered one thousand men and caused havoc in the Caribbean with his lieutenants Jacques de Sores

Jacques de Sores

Jacques de Sores was a French pirate who attacked and burnt Havana, Cuba in 1555.Other than his attack on Havana, little is known of de Sores. He was nicknamed "The Exterminating Angel"...

and Robert Blondel. They pillaged and burned down the seaport of Santo Domingo, and ransacked Las Palmas in the Canary Islands on his way back to France. He led another expedition in 1554 and plundered Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba

Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city of Cuba and capital city of Santiago de Cuba Province in the south-eastern area of the island, some south-east of the Cuban capital of Havana....

Blackbeard

He was born about 1680 in England as Edward Thatch, Teach, or Drummond, and operated off the east coast of North America in the period of 1714–1718. Noted as much for his outlandish appearance as for his piratical success, in combat Blackbeard placed burning slow-match (a type of slow-burning fuse used to set off cannon) under his hat; with his face wreathed in fire and smoke, his victims claimed he resembled a fiendish apparition from Hell

Hell

In many religious traditions, a hell is a place of suffering and punishment in the afterlife. Religions with a linear divine history often depict hells as endless. Religions with a cyclic history often depict a hell as an intermediary period between incarnations...

. Blackbeard's ship was the two hundred ton, forty-gun frigate he named the Queen Anne's Revenge

Queen Anne's Revenge

Queen Anne's Revenge was the name of English pirate Blackbeard's flagship, used by him for less than a year, but an effective tool in his prize taking....

.

Blackbeard met his end at the hands of a British fleet specifically sent out to capture him. After an extremely bloody boarding action, the British commanding officer of the fleet, Lieutenant Robert Maynard

Robert Maynard

Captain Robert Maynard RN was a lieutenant and later captain in the Royal Navy, First Lieutenant of HMS Pearl, most famous for defeating the infamous English pirate Blackbeard in battle.- Naval commands and battles :...

, killed him with the help of his crew. According to legend, Blackbeard suffered a total of five bullet wounds and twenty slashes with a cutlass before he finally died off the coast of Ocracoke, North Carolina

Ocracoke, North Carolina

Ocracoke is a census-designated place and unincorporated town located at the southern end of Ocracoke Island, located entirely within Hyde County, North Carolina. The population was 769 as of the 2000 census...

Henry Morgan

Admiral Sir Henry Morgan was an Admiral of the Royal Navy, a privateer, and a pirate who made a name for himself during activities in the Caribbean, primarily raiding Spanish settlements...

, a Welshman, was one of the most destructive pirate captains of the 17th century. Although Morgan always considered himself a privateer rather than a pirate, several of his attacks had no real legal justification and are considered piracy. A bold, ruthless and daring man, Morgan fought England's enemies for thirty years, and became a very wealthy man in the course of his adventures. Morgan's most famous exploit came in late 1670 when he led 1700 buccaneers up the pestilential Chagres River

Chagres River

The Chagres River is a river in central Panama. The central part of the river is dammed by the Gatun Dam and forms Gatun Lake, an artificial lake that constitutes part of the Panama Canal. Upstream lies the Madden Dam, creating the Alajuala Lake that is also part of the Canal water system...

and then through the Central American jungle to attack and capture the "impregnable" city of Panama

Panama City

. Morgan's men burnt the city to the ground, and the inhabitants were either killed or forced to flee. Although the burning of Panama City did not mean any great financial gain for Morgan, it was a deep blow to Spanish power and pride in the Caribbean and Morgan became the hero of the hour in England. At the height of his career, Morgan had been made a titled nobleman by the English Crown and lived on an enormous sugar plantation in Jamaica

Jamaica

. Morgan died in his bed, rich and respected—something rarely achieved by pirates in his day or any other.

Bartholomew Roberts

Less famous than Blackbeard, Bartholomew Roberts

Bartholomew Roberts

was far more successful, sinking, or capturing and pillaging some 459 ships. He started his freebooting career in the Gulf of Guinea

Gulf of Guinea

The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean between Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian is in the gulf....

in February 1719 when Howell Davis

Howell Davis

Captain Howell Davis was a Welsh pirate. His piratical career lasted just 11 months, from July 11, 1718 to June 19, 1719, when he was ambushed and killed. His ships were the Cadogan, Buck, Saint James, and Rover...

' pirates captured his ship and he proceeded to join them. Rising to captain, he quickly came to the Caribbean and plagued the area until 1722. He commanded a number of large, powerfully armed ships, all of which he named Fortune, Good Fortune, or Royal Fortune. Efforts by the governors of Barbados

Barbados

and Martinique

Martinique

to capture him only provoked his anger; when he found the governor of Martinique aboard a newly captured vessel, Roberts hanged the man from a yardarm. Roberts returned to Africa in February 1722, where he met his death in a naval battle, whereby his crew was captured.

Stede Bonnet

Probably the least qualified pirate captain ever to sail the Caribbean, Bonnet

Stede Bonnet

Stede Bonnet was an early 18th-century Barbadian pirate, sometimes called "the gentleman pirate" because he was a moderately wealthy landowner before turning to a life of crime. Bonnet was born into a wealthy English family on the island of Barbados, and inherited the family estate after his...

was a sugar planter who knew nothing about sailing. He started his piracies in 1717 by buying an armed sloop on Barbados

Barbados

and recruiting a pirate crew for wages, possibly to escape from his wife. He lost his command to Blackbeard and sailed with him for some time as a guest or prisoner. Although Bonnet briefly regained his captaincy, he was captured and hanged before he could return to the West Indies.

Charles Vane

Charles Vane, like many early 18th century pirates, operated out of Nassau

Nassau, Bahamas

Nassau is the capital, largest city, and commercial centre of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The city has a population of 248,948 , 70 percent of the entire population of The Bahamas...

in the Bahamas. He was the only pirate captain to resist Woodes Rogers

Woodes Rogers

Woodes Rogers was an English sea captain, privateer, and, later, the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas. He is known as the captain of the vessel that rescued the marooned Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.Rogers came from an...

when Rogers asserted his governorship over Nassau in 1718, attacking Rogers' squadron with a fire ship and shooting his way out of the harbor rather than accept the new governor's royal pardon. Vane's quartermaster was Calico Jack Rackham, who deposed Vane from the captaincy. Vane started a new pirate crew, but he was captured and hanged in Jamaica in 1720.

Edward Low

Edward - or Ned - Low was notorious as one of the most brutal and vicious pirates. Originally from London, he started as a lieutenant to George Lowther

George Lowther (pirate)

George Lowther was an 18th century English pirate who, although little is known of his life, was active in the Caribbean and Atlantic...

, before striking out on his own. His career as a pirate lasted just three years, during which he captured over 100 ships, and he and his crew murdered, tortured and maimed hundreds of people. After his own crew mutinied in 1724 when Low murdered a sleeping subordinate, he was rescued by a French vessel who hanged him on Martinique

Martinique

island.

Anne Bonny and Mary Read

Anne Bonny and Mary Read were undoubtedly the most famous pirates never to hold the position of captain; both spent their brief sea-roving careers under the command of Calico Jack Rackham. They are noted chiefly for their gender, highly unusual for pirates, which helped to sensationalize their 1720 trial in Jamaica. They gained further notoriety for their ruthlessness—they are known to have spoken in favor of murdering witnesses in the crew's counsels—and for having resisted far more fiercely than their male crewmates when Rackham's ship was taken. The capstone to their legend is that they alone of all Rackham's crew escaped execution, as both were newly pregnant at their trial and their sentences were commuted to avoid harm to their unborn children.

Privateers

In the Caribbean the use of privateer

Privateer

s was especially popular. The cost of maintaining a fleet to defend the colonies was beyond national governments of the 16th and 17th centuries. Private vessels would be commissioned into a 'navy' with a letter of marque

Letter of marque

, paid with a substantial share of whatever they could capture from enemy ships and settlements, the rest going to the crown. These ships would operate independently or as a fleet and if successful the rewards could be great—when Jean Fleury and his men captured Cortes' vessels in 1523, they found the incredible aztec treasure that they were allowed to keep. Later, when Francis Drake

Francis Drake

Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the...

captured the Spanish Silver Train at Nombre de Dios (Panama's Caribbean port at the time) in 1573 his crews were rich for life. This was repeated by Piet Hein

Piet Pieterszoon Hein

Pieter Pietersen Heyn was a Dutch naval officer and folk hero during the Eighty Years' War between the United Provinces and Spain.-Early life:...

in 1628, who made a profit of 12 million guilders for the Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company

Dutch West India Company was a chartered company of Dutch merchants. Among its founding fathers was Willem Usselincx...

. This substantial profit made privateering something of a regular line of business; wealthy businessmen or nobles would be quite willing to finance this legitimized piracy in return for a share. The sale of captured goods was a boost to colonial economies as well.

Buccaneers

Specific to the Caribbean were pirates termed buccaneer

Buccaneer

The buccaneers were privateers who attacked Spanish shipping in the Caribbean Sea during the late 17th century.The term buccaneer is now used generally as a synonym for pirate...

s. Roughly speaking they arrived in the 1630s and remained until the effective end of piracy in the 1730s. The original buccaneers were escapees from the colonies; forced to survive with little support, they had to be skilled at boat construction, sailing, and hunting. The word "buccaneer" is actually from the French boucaner, meaning "to smoke meat", from the hunters of wild oxen curing meat over an open fire. They transferred the skills which kept them alive into piracy. They operated with the partial support of the non-Spanish colonies and until the 18th century their activities were legal, or partially legal and there were irregular amnesties from all nations.

Traditionally buccaneers had a number of peculiarities. Their crews operated as a democracy

Democracy

Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...

: the captain was elected by the crew and they could vote to replace him. The captain had to be a leader and a fighter—in combat he was expected to be fighting with his men, not directing operations from a distance.

Spoils were evenly divided into shares; when the officers had a greater number of shares, it was because they took greater risks or had special skills. Often the crews would sail without wages—"on account"—and the spoils would be built up over a course of months before being divided. There was a strong esprit de corps among pirates. This allowed them to win sea battles: they typically outmanned trade vessels by a large ratio. There was also for some time a social insurance system, guaranteeing money or gold for battle wounds at a worked-out scale.

The romantic notion of pirates burying treasure and wearing gaudy clothes had some basis in fact. Most pirate wealth was accumulated by selling of chandlery items; ropes, sails, block and tackle, stripped from captured ships.

One undemocratic aspect of the buccaneers was that sometimes they would force specialists like carpenters or surgeons to sail with them for some time, though they were released when no longer needed (if they had not volunteered to join by that time). Note also that a typical poor man had few other promising career choices at the time apart from joining the pirates. According to reputation, the pirates' egalitarianism led them to liberate slaves when taking over slave ship

Slave ship

Slave ships were large cargo ships specially converted for the purpose of transporting slaves, especially newly purchased African slaves to Americas....

s. However there are several accounts of pirates selling slaves captured on slave ships, sometimes after they had helped man the pirates' own vessels.

In combat they were considered ferocious and were reputed to be experts with flintlock

Flintlock

Flintlock is the general term for any firearm based on the flintlock mechanism. The term may also apply to the mechanism itself. Introduced at the beginning of the 17th century, the flintlock rapidly replaced earlier firearm-ignition technologies, such as the doglock, matchlock and wheellock...

weapons (invented in 1615), but these were so unreliable that they were not in widespread military use before the 1670s.

Roberto Cofresí—a 19th century pirate

Roberto Cofresí

Roberto Cofresí , better known as "El Pirata Cofresí", was the most renowned pirate in Puerto Rico. He became interested in sailing at a young age. By the time he reached adulthood there were some political and economic difficulties in Puerto Rico, which at the time was a colony of Spain...

, better known as "El Pirata Cofresí", became interested in sailing at a young age. By the time he reached adulthood there were some political and economic difficulties in Puerto Rico, which at the time was a colony of Spain. Influenced by this situation he decided to become a pirate in 1818. Cofresí commanded several assaults against cargo vessels focusing on those that were responsible for exporting gold. During this time he focused his attention on boats from the United States and the local Spanish government ignored several of these actions. On March 2, 1825, Cofresí engaged the USS Grampus

Action of 2 March 1825

The Capture of the El Mosquito refers to the defeat of Roberto Cofresí and his pirate ship off the port town of Boca Del Infierno, Puerto Rico by American and Spanish forces in March of 1825...

and a flotilla of ships led by Capt. John D. Sloat

John D. Sloat

John Drake Sloat was a commodore in the United States Navy who, in 1846, claimed California for the United States.-Life:...

in battle. He eventually abandoned his ship and tried to escape by land before being captured. After being imprisoned he was sent to San Juan, Puerto Rico

San Juan, Puerto Rico

, where a brief military trial found him guilty and on March 29, 1825, he and other members of his crew were executed by a firing squad. After his death his life was used as inspiration for several stories and myths, which served as the basis for books and other media.

Boysie Singh—a 20th century pirate

John Boysie Singh, usually known as "the Rajah", "Boysie" or "Boysie Singh", was born on 5 April 1908 in Woodbrook, Port of Spain, Trinidad, and finally hanged in Port of Spain in 1957 for the murder of his niece, Hattie Werk.

He had a long and successful career as a gangster and gambler before turning to piracy and murder. For almost ten years, from 1947 until 1956 he and his gang terrorized the waters between Trinidad and Venezuela. They were responsible for the deaths of approximately 400 people. They would promise to ferry people from Trinidad to Venezuela but enroute he would rob his victims at gunpoint, kill them and dump them into the sea.

Boysie was well-known to people in Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago

Trinidad and Tobago officially the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is an archipelagic state in the southern Caribbean, lying just off the coast of northeastern Venezuela and south of Grenada in the Lesser Antilles...

. He had successfully beaten a charge of breaking and entering which nearly resulted in his deportation before he was finally executed after losing his third case - for the murder of his niece. He was held in awe and dread by most of the population and was frequently seen strolling grandly about Port of Spain

Port of Spain

Port of Spain, also written as Port-of-Spain, is the capital of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago and the country's third-largest municipality, after San Fernando and Chaguanas. The city has a municipal population of 49,031 , a metropolitan population of 128,026 and a transient daily population...

in the early 1950s wearing bright, stylish clothes. Mothers and nannies would warn their charges: "Behave yourself, man, or Boysie goyn getchu, oui!"

Films

Many silent films of pirates, especially starring Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro....

, such as The Black Pirate
The Black Pirate
The Black Pirate is a 1926 silent adventure film shot entirely in two-strip Technicolor about an adventurer and a "company" of pirates. It stars Douglas Fairbanks, Donald Crisp, Sam De Grasse, and Billie Dove.-Plot:...
Captain Blood (1935)
Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...
Return to Treasure Island
Return to Treasure Island (1954 film)
- Cast :*Tab Hunter as Clive Stone*Dawn Addams as Jamesina "Jamie" Hawkins*Porter Hall as Maximillian "Maxie" Harris*James Seay as Felix Newman*Harry Lauter as Parker*William Cottrell as Cookie*Lane Chandler as Capt. Cardigan*Henry Rowland as Williams...
Swashbuckler
Swashbuckler
Swashbuckler or swasher is a term that emerged in the 16th century and has been used for rough, noisy and boastful swordsmen ever since. A possible explanation for this term is that it derives from a fighting style using a side-sword with a buckler in the off-hand, which was applied with much...

(1976)
Cutthroat Island
Cutthroat Island
Cutthroat Island is a 1995 action adventure film directed by Renny Harlin. The film stars Geena Davis, Matthew Modine, and Frank Langella. The film received mixed reviews from critics and was a major box office bomb: listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the biggest box office flop of...
Pirates of the Caribbean films
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
  Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
  Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl is a 2003 adventure fantasy film based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney theme parks. It was directed by Gore Verbinski and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer...
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
  Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
  Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a 2006 adventure fantasy film and the second film of the Pirates of the Caribbean series, following Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl . It was directed by Gore Verbinski, written by Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, and produced by...
- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
- Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
  Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
  Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is a 2011 adventure fantasy film and the fourth installment in the Pirates of the Caribbean series...
Pirates: The Blood Brothers (Caraibi)
Muppet Treasure Island
Muppet Treasure Island
Muppet Treasure Island is a 1996 American musical film based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. It is the fifth feature film to star The Muppets and was directed by Jim Henson's son Brian Henson....
Nate and Hayes
Nate and Hayes
Nate and Hayes, also known as Savage Islands , is a 1983 swashbuckling adventure film set in the South Pacific in the late 19th century...

, also known as Savage Islands

Books

A General History of the Pyrates
A General History of the Pyrates
A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates is a 1724 book published in Britain, containing biographies of contemporary pirates. Influential in shaping popular conceptions of pirates, it is the prime source for the biographies of many well known pirates...

by Charles Johnson, the prime source for the biographies of many well known pirates, giving an almost mythical status to the more colorful characters, such as the infamous English pirates Blackbeard
Blackbeard
Edward Teach , better known as Blackbeard, was a notorious English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of the American colonies....

and Calico Jack
Calico Jack
John Rackham , commonly known as Calico Jack, was an English pirate captain operating in the Bahamas during the early 18th century...

, and influenced pirate literature that followed.
Treasure Island
Treasure Island
Treasure Island is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "pirates and buried gold". First published as a book on May 23, 1883, it was originally serialized in the children's magazine Young Folks between 1881–82 under the title Treasure Island; or, the...

by Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, essayist and travel writer. His best-known books include Treasure Island, Kidnapped, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

—a novel with a huge influence on pirates in the public imagination, particularly in the character of the quintessential pirate, Long John Silver
Long John Silver
Long John Silver is a fictional character and the primary antagonist of the novel Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. Silver is also known by the nicknames "Barbecue" and the "Sea-Cook".- Profile :...
Captain Blood
Captain Blood (novel)
Captain Blood: His Odyssey is an adventure novel by Rafael Sabatini, originally published in 1922.- Synopsis :The protagonist is the sharp-witted Dr...

by Rafael Sabatini
Rafael Sabatini
Rafael Sabatini was an Italian/British writer of novels of romance and adventure.-Life:Rafael Sabatini was born in Iesi, Italy, to an English mother and Italian father...

, a novel chronicling the adventures of Peter Blood, M.D., wrongly convicted of aiding Monmouth's Rebellion and turned pirate during the reign of James II
James II of England
James II & VII was King of England and King of Ireland as James II and King of Scotland as James VII, from 6 February 1685. He was the last Catholic monarch to reign over the Kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland...

.
The Black Corsair
The Black Corsair
The Black Corsair is an 1898 adventure novel written by Italian novelist Emilio Salgari. Set in the Caribbean during the golden age of piracy, the novel narrates the exploits of Emilio Roccanera, Lord of Ventimiglia and his attempts to avenge his brothers, slain by the Duke Van Guld, now Governor...

(Il Corsaro Nero, 1898) by Emilio Salgari
Emilio Salgari
Emilio Salgari was an Italian writer of action adventure swashbucklers and a pioneer of science fiction.For over a century, his novels were mandatory reading for generations of youth eager for exotic adventures. In Italy, his extensive body of work was more widely read than that of Dante. Today...

and its 4 sequels.
"Pirates!" by Celia Rees
Celia Rees
Celia Rees is an English author of children's literature, including some horror and fantasy books.She was born in 1949in Solihull, West Midlands but now lives in Leamington Spa with her husband and teenage daughter. Rees attended University of Warwick and earned a degree in History of Politics...

a novel about young Nancy and her half sister Minerva who find themselves hunted by the authorities and are rescued by pirates.
The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride
The Princess Bride is a 1973 fantasy novel written by William Goldman. It was originally published in the United States by Harcourt Brace, while in the UK it is/was published by Bloomsbury Publishing....

by William Goldman
William Goldman
William Goldman is an American novelist, playwright, and Academy Award-winning screenwriter.-Early life and education:...
On Stranger Tides
On Stranger Tides
On Stranger Tides is a 1987 historical fantasy novel written by Tim Powers. It was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and placed second in the annual Locus poll for best fantasy novel....

by Tim Powers
Tim Powers
Timothy Thomas "Tim" Powers is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare...

- pirates, voodoo, zombies, and the Fountain of Youth.
Empire of Blue Water by Stephan Talty - The story of Captain Morgan and the real pirates of the Caribbean.
Pirate Latitudes
Pirate Latitudes
Pirate Latitudes is an action adventure novel written by Michael Crichton. The book was published posthumously by HarperCollins on November 24, 2009. It is an adventure story concerning piracy in Jamaica in the 17th century....

- a posthumous novel by Michael Crichton
In the Time Machine series, the fourth book, Sail with Pirates, had the protagonist searching for a treasure ship that sank in the Caribbean and having to defeat the pirates of the region.
"To Catch A Pirate" by Jade Parker
The Pyrates
The Pyrates
The Pyrates is a comedic novel by George MacDonald Fraser, published in 1983. Written in arch, ironic style and containing a great deal of deliberate anachronism, it traces the adventures of a classic hero , multiple damsels in distress, and the six captains who lead the infamous Coast Brotherhood...

by George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser
George MacDonald Fraser, OBE was an English-born author of Scottish descent, who wrote both historical novels and non-fiction books, as well as several screenplays.-Early life and military career:...

—a comedic novel tracing the adventures of Captain Benjamin Avery (RN) multiple damsels in distress, and the six captains who lead the infamous Coast Brotherhood (Calico Jack Rackham, Black Bilbo, Firebeard, Happy Dan Pew, Akbar the Terrible and Sheba the She-Wolf).

Computer games

Monkey Island
Monkey Island series
Monkey Island is the collective name given to a series of five graphical adventure games produced and published by LucasArts, originally known as LucasFilm Games through the development of the first game in the series; the games have produced a significiant cult following. The fifth installment of...
Sid Meier's Pirates!
Sid Meier's Pirates!
Sid Meier's Pirates! is a video game created by Sid Meier and published and developed by MicroProse in 1987. It was the first game to include the name "Sid Meier" in its title as an effort by MicroProse to attract fans of Meier's earlier games, most of which were flight simulators...

and Sid Meier's Pirates!
Pirates! Gold
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Three Rings Design. The player takes the role of a pirate, adventuring on the high seas and pillaging money from roaming enemy ships . The mechanics of Puzzle Pirates are driven by puzzles...
Tradewinds
Tradewinds (game)
Tradewinds is a video game by Sandlot Games, in which the player is a merchant, buying and trading goods and sailing to various cities to trade goods as well as combating encountered pirates...
Port Royale: Gold, Power and Pirates
Port Royale: Gold, Power and Pirates
Port Royale is a business simulation game set in the Caribbean and partly the Atlantic during the 16th and 17th centuries. Created by Ascaron Entertainment in 2003, it combines business–economic simulation with real-time battles and towns that can be visited for trade and other purposes. The sequel...
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove
Tropico 2: Pirate Cove is the 2003 sequel to the computer game Tropico. Tropico 2 was developed by Frog City Software and published by Gathering of Developers for Windows and Mac OS X PCs.- Gameplay :...
Sea Dogs
Tortuga: Pirates of the New World
Tortuga: Pirates of the New World
Tortuga: Pirates of the New World is an action game created by Ascaron Entertainment UK Ltd, released in 2003.-Gameplay:...
Port Royale 2
Port Royale 2
Port Royale 2 is the sequel to the business simulation game Port Royale: Gold, Power and Pirates. It is set in the Caribbean during the 16th and 17th centuries. Created by Ascaron Entertainment in 2004, it combines a business simulator with real-time battles and towns that can be owned, built,...
Pirates of the Burning Sea
Pirates of the Burning Sea
Pirates of the Burning Sea is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Flying Lab Software...
Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean (video game)
Pirates of the Caribbean is a 2003 computer game for Windows and Xbox, developed by Akella and published by Bethesda Softworks. The Xbox version was the first U.S. console game developed in Russia...
RuneScape
RuneScape
RuneScape is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game released in January 2001 by Andrew and Paul Gower, and developed and published by Jagex Games Studio. It is a graphical browser game implemented on the client-side in Java, and incorporates 3D rendering...

Other

The theme park attraction: Pirates of the Caribbean
Pirates of the Caribbean (theme park ride)
Pirates of the Caribbean is a log flume type of dark ride at the Disneyland, Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland Paris theme parks....

.

External links

2004 vs. 2007 global piracy summary, The Economist, published 23 Apr 2008, accessed 2008-04-28.
The Golden Age of Piracy, and its origins in class struggle - on peopleshistory.co.uk
Pirates of the Caribbean, In Fact and Fiction- from BlindKat Publishers

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

The causes of piracy

Changes in demographics

Spanish ports

Protestant ports

European struggle

Colonial disputes

The seventeenth century crisis and colonial repercussions

The Golden Age of Piracy, 1650–1730

The end of an era

Jean Fleury

François Le Clerc

Blackbeard

Henry Morgan

Bartholomew Roberts

Stede Bonnet

Charles Vane

Edward Low

Anne Bonny and Mary Read

Privateers

Buccaneers

Roberto Cofresí—a 19th century pirate

Boysie Singh—a 20th century pirate

Films

Books

Computer games

Other

See also

External links