For a time the Caribbean was ruled by lawless seafarers, but then it all came crashing down
Piracy in the Caribbean began on a small scale, with a small but growing number of attacks being recorded from 1714 on. One of these early pirates was Benjamin Hornigold, who quit Jamaica to base himself in the Bahamas. It was a struggling backwater of a colony, its settlers eking out a threadbare existence through farming and salvage. By the time Hornigold arrived in Nassau in 1714, there wasn’t any real authority in the islands, so he was able to establish himself in the small port. Then, when Henry Jennings and his treasureladen followers arrived in Nassau in early 1716, the scale of the problem grew exponentially. In all, it was reckoned as many as 2,000 pirates were operating between 1714 and 1725.
For the most part, pirates were largely unknown seamen, and only really appeared on this historical radar when they began committing crimes. These left a trail of evidence, the most useful being the depositions – witness statements if you will – filed by their victims, the merchant ship captains whose ships were attacked. In 1715 there were around 30-40 such attacks recorded in Caribbean waters. By the following year, this had more than doubled to just over 100. By 1718, more than 550 attacks were recorded, from Newfoundland down to the West Indies. For the most part, the majority of these attacks can be linked to the pirates who based themselves in Nassau.
Today, many of the names of these pirates are still well known. The exploits of pirates like Blackbeard (Edward Thatch or Teach), Bartholomew Roberts, ‘Black Sam’ Bellamy, ‘Calico Jack’ Rackham or Charles Vane became the stuff of legend, which explained why the first book about them, Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of Pirates became such a runaway bestseller in 1724. It’s still in print today. For the British government though, as well as the whole maritime community, from financial backers and shipping magnates to maritime insurers and sailors, this was a real nightmare. In mid 1718, it was reckoned that some 20 per cent of vessels operating in the Caribbean were being attacked by pirates.
Tipping Point
While the damage to maritime trade was bad enough, what really tipped things over the edge was Blackbeard’s blockade of Charles Town (now Charleston, South Carolina) in April 1718. He appeared with a small flotilla of pirate vessels, and lay off the port, capturing any ships trying to come in or out. For the authorities in British Colonial America, this was intolerable. Trade in one of the largest American ports had ground to a halt, thanks to the actions of one notorious pirate.
By then the complaints from colonial governors had been piling up in Whitehall, and it was clear something drastic had to be done. In particular, Governor Spotswood of the Virginia colony
