| Golden Age of Piracy | |
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| 1650s–1730s | |
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TheGolden Age of Piracy was the period between the 1650s and the 1730s, when maritimepiracy was a significant factor in the histories of the NorthAtlantic andIndian Oceans.
Histories of piracy often subdivide the Golden Age of Piracy into three periods:
Narrower definitions of the Golden Age sometimes exclude the first or second periods, but most include at least some portion of the third. The modern conception of pirates as depicted in popular culture is derived largely, although not always accurately, from the Golden Age of Piracy.
Factors contributing to piracy during the Golden Age included the rise in quantities of valuable cargoes being shipped to Europe over vast ocean areas, reduced European navies in certain regions, the training and experience that many sailors had gained in European navies (particularly the BritishRoyal Navy), and corrupt and ineffective government in European overseas colonies.Colonial powers at the time constantly fought with pirates and engaged in several notable battles and other related events.
The oldest known literary mention of a "Golden Age" of piracy is from 1894, when the Englishjournalist George Powell wrote about "What appears to have been the golden age of piracy up to the last decade of the 17th century."[1] Powell uses the phrase while reviewingCharles Leslie'sA New and Exact History of Jamaica, then over 150 years old. Powell uses the phrase only once.
In 1897, a more systematic use of the phrase "Golden Age of Piracy" was introduced by historianJohn Fiske, who wrote, "At no other time in the world's history has the business of piracy thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth. Its golden age may be said to have extended from about 1650 to about 1720."[2] Fiske included the activities of theBarbary corsairs and East Asian pirates in this "Golden Age," noting that "as these Mussulman pirates and those of Eastern Asia were as busily at work in the seventeenth century as at any other time, their case does not impair my statement that the age of the buccaneers was the Golden Age of piracy."[3]
Pirate historians of the first half of the 20th century occasionally adopted Fiske's term "Golden Age," without necessarily following his beginning and ending dates for it.[4] The most expansive definition of an age of piracy was that of Patrick Pringle, who wrote in 1951 that "the most flourishing era in the history of piracy ... began in the reign ofQueen Elizabeth I and ended in the second decade of the eighteenth century."[5] This idea starkly contradicted Fiske, who had hotly denied that such Elizabethan figures asDrake were pirates.[6]
Of recent definitions, that given by Pringle appears to have the widest range, an exception to an overall trend among historians from 1909 until the 1990s, toward narrowing the Golden Age.[7] As early as 1924, Philip Gosse described piracy as being at its height "from 1680 until 1730." In his highly popular 1978 bookThe Pirates for TimeLife'sThe Seafarers series, Douglas Botting defined the Golden Age as lasting "barely 30 years, starting at the close of the 17th Century and ending in the first quarter of the 18th."[8] Botting's definition was closely followed by Frank Sherry in 1986.[9] In a 1989 academic article, ProfessorMarcus Rediker defined the Golden Age as lasting only from 1716 to 1726.[10]Angus Konstam in 1998, reckoned the era as lasting from 1700 until 1730.[11]
Perhaps the ultimate step in restricting the Golden Age was in Konstam's 2005The History of Pirates, in which he retreated from his own earlier definition, called a 1690–1730 definition of the Golden Age "generous," and concluded that "The worst of these pirate excesses was limited to an eight-year period, from 1714 until 1722, so the true Golden Age cannot even be called a 'golden decade.'"[12]
David Cordingly, in his influential 1994 workUnder the Black Flag, defined the "great age of piracy" as lasting from the 1650s to around 1725, very close to Fiske's definition of the Golden Age.[13]
Rediker, in 2004, described the most complex definition of the Golden Age to date. He proposes a "golden age of piracy, which spanned the period from roughly 1650 to 1730," which he subdivides into three distinct "generations": the buccaneers of 1650–1680, the Indian Ocean pirates of the 1690s, and the pirates of the years 1716–1726.[14]
Piracy arose out of, and mirrored on a smaller scale, conflicts over trade and colonization among the rival European powers of the time, including the empires of Britain, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal, and France. Most pirates in this era were of English, Welsh, Dutch, Irish, and French origin. Many pirates came from poorer urban areas in search of a way to make money and of reprieve.London in particular was known for high unemployment, crowding, and poverty which drove people to piracy. Piracy also offered power and quick riches.[citation needed]
Historians such as John Fiske mark the beginning of the Golden Age of Piracy at around 1650, when the end of theWars of Religion allowed European countries to resume the development of their colonial empires. This involved considerable seaborne trade and a general economic improvement: there was money to be made – or stolen – and much of it traveled by ship.
French buccaneers had established themselves on northernHispaniola as early as 1625,[15] but lived at first mostly as hunters of pigs and cattle rather than robbers; their transition to full-time piracy was gradual and motivated in part by Spanish efforts to wipe out both the buccaneers and the prey animals on which they depended. The buccaneers' migration from Hispaniola's mainland to the more defensible offshore island ofTortuga limited their resources and accelerated their piratical raids. According toAlexandre Exquemelin, a buccaneer and historian from this period, the Tortuga buccaneerPierre Le Grand pioneered the settlers' attacks ongalleons making the return voyage to Spain. The French buccaneerFrançois l'Olonnais (Jean-David Nau) was known for his extreme infamous cruelty towards Spanish prisoners on the island ofMartinica served as a home port for French buccaneers like him, allowing the French to operate in the Caribbean against Spanish ships.
The growth of buccaneering on Tortuga was augmented by the English capture ofJamaica from Spain in 1655. The early English governors of Jamaica freely grantedletters of marque to Tortuga buccaneers and to their own countrymen, while the growth ofPort Royal provided these raiders with a far more profitable and enjoyable place to sell their booty. In the 1660s, the new French governor of Tortuga,Bertrand d'Ogeron, similarly provided privateering commissions both to his own colonists and to English cutthroats fromPort Royal. These conditions brought Caribbean buccaneering to its zenith, culminating inHenry Morgan's Panama expedition in 1670 which saw Panama City plundered, sacked, and burned the following year.
The devastations brought by buccaneers finally drove the Spanish crown to authorizeprivateering, which they had traditionally allowed only in very limited ways, in order to hunt down piracy and contraband. The led to the emergence of theguarda costa, who would become especially relevant the following century.[16][17]
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A number of factors caused English pirates, some of whom had been introduced to piracy during the buccaneering period, to look beyond the Caribbean for treasure as the 1690s began. TheGlorious Revolution had restored the traditional enmity between Britain and France, thus ending the profitable collaboration between English Jamaica and French Tortuga. The devastation of Port Royal by anearthquake in 1692 further reduced the Caribbean's attractions by destroying the pirates' chief market for fenced plunder.[18] Caribbean colonial governors began to discard the traditional policy of "no peace beyond the Line,"[19] under which it was understood that war would continue (and thusletters of marque would be granted) in the Caribbean regardless of peace treaties signed in Europe; henceforth, commissions would be granted only in wartime, and their limitations would be strictly enforced. Furthermore, much of theSpanish Main had simply been exhausted;Maracaibo alone had been sacked thrice between 1667 and 1678,[20] whileRío de la Hacha had been raided five times andTolú eight.[21]
At the same time, England's less-favored colonies, includingBermuda,New York, andRhode Island, had become cash-starved by theNavigation Acts. Merchants and governors eager for coin were willing to overlook and even underwrite pirate voyages; one colonial official defended a pirate because he thought it "very harsh to hang people that brings in gold to these provinces."[22] Although some of these pirates operating out of New England and theMiddle Colonies targeted Spain's more remote Pacific coast colonies well into the 1690s and beyond, the Indian Ocean was a richer and more tempting target. India's economic output dwarfed Europe's during this time, especially in high-value luxury goods such assilk andcalico, which made ideal pirate booty;[23] at the same time, no powerful navies plied the Indian Ocean, leaving both local shipping and the various East India companies' vessels vulnerable to attack. This set the stage for the famous piracies ofThomas Tew,Henry Every,Robert Culliford, and (although his guilt remains controversial)William Kidd.
In 1713 and 1714, a series of peace treaties ended theWar of the Spanish Succession. As a result, thousands of seamen, including Europeanprivateers who had operated in the West Indies, were relieved of military duty, at a time when cross-Atlantic colonial shipping trade was beginning to boom. In addition, European sailors who had been pushed by unemployment to work onboardmerchantmen (includingslave ships) were often enthusiastic to abandon that profession and turn to pirating, giving pirate captains a steady pool of recruits on various coasts across the Atlantic Ocean
In 1715, pirates launched a major raid on Spanish divers trying to recover gold from the sunken treasure galleonUrca de Lima near Florida. The nucleus of the pirate force was a group of English ex-privateers, all of whom were soon to be enshrined in infamy:Henry Jennings,Charles Vane,Samuel Bellamy ofWhydah Gally fame,Benjamin Hornigold, andEdward England. The attack was successful, but contrary to their expectations, the governor of Jamaica refused to allow Jennings and his cohorts to spend their loot on his island. With Kingston and the declining Port Royal closed to them, Hornigold, Jennings, and their comrades based themselves atNassau, on the island ofNew Providence in the Bahamas. Nassau was home for these pirates and their many recruits until the arrival of GovernorWoodes Rogers in 1718, which signalled the end of theRepublic of Pirates. Rogers and other British governors had the authority to pardon pirates under the King'sAct of Grace: while Hornigold accepted this pardon to become a privateer, others such as Blackbeard returned to piracy following their pardon.[24]
Transatlantic shipping traffic between Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe began to soar in the 18th century, a model known as thetriangular trade, and became a rich target for piracy. Trade ships sailed from Europe to the African coast, trading manufactured goods and weapons for slaves. The traders then sailed to the Caribbean to sell the slaves, and return to Europe with goods such as sugar, tobacco, and cocoa. In another triangular trade route, ships carried raw materials, preserved cod, and rum to Europe, where a portion of the cargo was sold for manufactured goods, which (along with the remainder of the original load) were then transported to the Caribbean, where they were exchanged for sugar and molasses, which (with some manufactured articles) were then borne to New England. Ships in the Triangular Trade often made money at each stop.[25]
As part of the settlement of the War of the Spanish Succession, the BritishSouth Sea Company obtained theasiento, a Spanish government contract to supply slaves to Spain's New World colonies, which provided British traders and smugglers more access to formerly closed Spanish markets in America. This arrangement also contributed heavily to the spread of piracy across the western Atlantic. Shipping to the colonies boomed along with the flood of skilled mariners after the war. Merchant shippers used the surplus of labor to drive wages down, cut corners to maximize profits, and create unsavory conditions aboard their vessels. Merchant sailors suffered from mortality rates as high or higher than the slaves being transported.[26] Living conditions were so poor that many sailors began to prefer a freer existence as pirates.[citation needed] The increased volume of shipping traffic also could sustain a large body of brigands preying upon it.
During this time, many of the pirates had originally been either sailors for the Royal Navy, privateersmen, or merchant seamen. Most pirates had experience living on the sea, and knew how harsh the conditions could be. Sailors for the king often had very little to eat while out on the sea, and ended up sick, starving, and dying. That resulted in some sailors deserting the king and becoming pirates instead. This also allowed for pirates to better fight the navy. Unlike other seafarers, pirates had strict rules for how they were to be treated on the ship. Contrary to popular belief, pirate captains did not have a dictatorship over the rest of the pirates on their ship. Captains had to be voted in, and there were strict rules for them to follow as well. The captain was not treated better (with more food, better living conditions, etc.) than the other members of the crew, and was expected to treat the crew with respect. This was in deliberate contrast to merchant captains, who often treated their crews terribly. Many pirates had formerly served on these merchant ships and knew how horrid some captains could be. Because of this, ships often implemented councils composed of all of the crew members on the ship. Some councils were used daily to make ordinary decisions, while others were used as a court system only when criminal incidents or legal matters necessitated it. Whatever the case, crewmembers on pirate vessels often had as much power as the captain outside of battle. The captain only had full authority in times of battle and could be removed from this position if he showed cowardice in the face of the enemy.[27] He was also to be bold in battle. The pirates did not want things to end up the same way as on a navy ship.[28]
Between the years 1719 and 1721,Edward England,John Taylor,Olivier Levasseur, andChristopher Condent operated fromMadagascar. Taylor and Levasseur reaped the greatest prize in the history of the Golden Age of Piracy, the plunder of the PortugueseEast IndiamanNossa Senhora Do Cabo atRéunion in 1721, stealing diamonds and other treasures worth a total of £800,000.
Condent was also a successful pirate, but England was not. He was marooned onComoros by Taylor and Levasseur in 1721, and died not long afterward. Despite the success of Taylor and Levasseur, the Pirate Round quickly declined again.Edward Teach, the notorious "Blackbeard", died in battle in a fight with LieutenantRobert Maynard's navy ship. He was allegedly stabbed twenty times and shot five times before death.
Many of the best-known pirates in historical lore originate from this Golden Age of Piracy:
The Barbary pirates were pirates andprivateers that operated from theNorth African (the "Barbary coast") ports ofAlgiers,Morocco,Salé,Tripoli, andTunis, preying on shipping in the westernMediterranean Sea from the time of theCrusades as well as on ships on their way to Asia around Africa until the early 19th century. The coastal villages and towns ofItaly,Spain andMediterranean islands were frequently attacked by them, and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants; since the 17th century, Barbary pirates occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north asIceland. According to Robert Davis,[29][30] between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold asslaves in Northern Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries.
Barbary pirates flourished in the early 17th century as new sailing rigs bySimon de Danser enabled North African raiders, for the first time, to brave the Atlantic as well as Mediterranean waters. More than 20,000 captives were said to be imprisoned in Algiers alone. The rich were allowed to redeem themselves, but the poor were condemned to slavery. Their masters on occasion allowed them to secure freedom by professingIslam. Many people of good social position–Germans, Italians, Spaniards, and English travelers in the south–were captives for a time.[31]
In 1627,Iceland was subject to raids known as theTurkish Abductions.Murat Reis is said to have taken 400 prisoners; 242 of the captives were later sold into slavery on theBarbary Coast. The pirates took only young people and those in good physical condition. All those offering resistance were killed, and the old people were gathered into a church, which was set on fire. Among those captured wasÓlafur Egilsson, who was ransomed the next year and, upon returning to Iceland, wrote aslave narrative about his experience. Another famous captive from that raid wasGuðríður Símonardóttir. The sack ofVestmannaeyjar is known in thehistory of Iceland asTyrkjaránið.
While pirates are commonly depicted witheyepatches, this is largely a myth originating in nineteenth century novels and tales of buccaneers that included payment for a lost eye.[32] Few historical pirates wore patches over their eyes, although some, like the 18th centuryArab pirateRahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah, did.[33]
Whilst the Golden Age of European pirates is generally considered to have ended between 1710 and 1730, the prosperity of the Barbary pirates continued until the early 19th century. Unlike the European powers, the young United States refused to pay tribute to the Barbary states and responded with theFirst Barbary War and theSecond Barbary War against North Africa, when the Barbary pirates captured and enslaved American sailors.
Buccaneers operated mainly in the Caribbean. They originated in Tortuga around the 17th century as hunters, but became "pirates" when government officials paid groups of men to attack and loot Spanish ships. These buccaneers later began attacking any ship of value, enemy or not.[citation needed]
Privateers were private persons who engaged in maritime warfare under a commission of war. The commissions were known asletters of marque, which gave them the authority to raid enemy ships and exemption from piracy charges.[citation needed] Privateers have existed from as far back as the Middle Ages, where "Letters of reprisal" were issued to ship owners who were wishing to seek revenge for a loss of their own ship[34]
The Spanish employed privateers calledguarda costa (coast guard) to hunt pirates and smugglers in the Spanish main. These privateers were highly active and successful, although the lines between them and their prey were often blurred.[17]
The best-known female pirates of the era wereAnne Bonny andMary Read.
Anne Bonny (possibly died December 1733) at some unknown point traveled to Nassau and metJohn Rackham. What her background is, is unclear and highly debated.
Mary Read followed a similar course. Her background is unknown but at some point became acquainted with Rackham.[35]
On 22 August 1720, Bonny, Read, and multiple other pirates under the command of Rackam stole the sloop William from the merchantJohn Ham. For 61 days they robbed ships across the Caribbean. On 22 October 1720, they were captured and arrested following a short fight with former privateerJonathan Barnet. After their capture, both women were convicted of piracy and sentenced to death, but they stalled their executions byclaiming to be pregnant. Read died in jail months later, many believe of a fever or complications of childbirth. Bonny disappeared, with no record of her execution nor childbirth. In December 1733, the burial of a woman in Jamaica named Ann Bonny was noted.[36]
By the early 18th century, tolerance for privateers was wearing thin in all nations. After theTreaty of Utrecht was signed, the excess of trained sailors without employment was both a blessing and a curse for all pirates. Initially, the surplus of men had caused the number of pirates to multiply significantly. This inevitably led to the pillaging of more ships, which put a greater strain on trade for all European nations. In response, European nations bolstered their own navies to offer greater protection for merchants and to hunt down pirates. The excess of skilled sailors meant there was a large pool that could be recruited into national navies as well.
Piracy was clearly on a strong decline by 1720. The Golden Age of Piracy did not last the decade.
The events of the latter half of 1718 (including the arrival of GovernorWoodes Rogers in Nassau) represent a turning point in the history of piracy in the Western Hemisphere. Without a safe base and with growing pressure from naval forces, the rovers lost their momentum. The lure of the Spanish treasures had faded, and the hunters gradually became the hunted. By early 1719, the remaining pirates were on the run. Most of them headed for West Africa, seizing poorly defendedslavers.[37]
Stories and histories from the Golden Age form the foundation of many modern depictions of pirates and piracy.A General History of the Pirates (1724) byCaptain Charles Johnson is the source of many biographies of well-known pirates, providing an extensive account of the period.[38] Johnson gives an almost mythical status to the more colorful characters such asBlackbeard orJohn Rackham. In 2002, English naval historianDavid Cordingly wrote an introduction to Johnson's 1724 book, stating: "...Captain Johnson created the modern conception of pirates."[38] Johnson's book influenced the pirate literature ofRobert Louis Stevenson andJ. M. Barrie.[38]
The mystique of pirates is partly related to attributes of real pirates. For example, they wore earrings in hopes that the gold or silver would be used to pay for a decent burial when they died. They also wore earrings for superstitious reasons, believing the precious metals had magical healing powers.[39]
More recently, we see even less accurate depictions of historical-era pirates (e.g.,Talk Like a Pirate Day), continuing the romantic image of the pirate as a treasure-buryingswashbuckler in popular culture.[40]
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Barbary Pirates".Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
