More pirate facts

[Salty Dog]

One gang of pirates is responsible for virtually all of our pirate imagery
today, and were the primary inspiration for pirates of fiction from Long
John Silver to Jack Sparrow.


Did you know that.....


These pirates - who called themselves the Flying Gang -- all knew one
another, had served together in naval and merchant vessels, and
operated for a very short period of time: four to ten years starting in
1714.


They included many of the most famous pirates in history, including
Blackbeard, Sam Bellamy of Whydah fame, the "gentleman pirate"
Stede Bonnet, the bombastic Charles Vane, Calico Jack Rackham, and
the women pirates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny.

[Salty Dog]

The Flying Gang pirates were among history's most successful. By
their peak in 1718, the Royal Navy was afraid to encounter them at all.
Several of the pirates were using ships as powerful as any warship the
Navy had posted in the Americas, but the pirates had two or three time
the manpower

The Flying Gang became so successful because they had a fortified
base - a pirate Republic - in the Bahamas, from which they could not be
easily dislodged.

[Salty Dog]

The great pirates of fiction – from Long John Silver and
Captain Hook to Bluebeard and Jack Sparrow – were largely
modeled after a single circle of pirates who operated out of
the Bahamas between 1715 and 1718, and spread
throughout the world.

The pirates of the Flying Gang had several motivations.
Most of them were ex-sailors revolting against tyrannical
conditions on merchant and naval ships; for this reason, the
pirates ran their ships democratically, sharing plunder
equally, and selecting and deposing their captains by
popular vote. Africans could be equal members of their
crews – several mulattos became pirate captains – and
slaves throughout the Caribbean sought to join the pirates’
roughshod republic at Nassau in the Bahamas. Some
Englishmen went pirate as a way of supporting a global
conspiracy to restore the recently-deposed Stuart line to the
British throne

[Salty Dog]

Of the origins of Charles Vane, the rashest member of
the Flying Gang, we know very little. Prior to going pirate
in 1715 or 1716, he was living in Port Royal, Jamaica,
although records of his trial indicate he was not from
there. He joined the crew of the privateer Henry
Jennings prior to his epic assault on the camp from
which the Spanish were attempting to salvage the
wrecks of the 1715 treasure fleet, and later became one
of the denizens of Nassau, where the Flying Gang
created its pirate republic.

Charles Vane, in an early 18th century engraving
made by an artist who had never seen him.

Vane was in Nassau when Vincent Pearse of HMS
Phoenix first confronted the pirates in February 1718,
and subsequently slipped out of the harbor with his own
band of pirates, first operating out of open boats. From
then on, Vane remained a thorn in the side of British
authorities attempting to subdue the Bahamas,
capturing their trading vessels and regularly returning to
Nassau to taunt them with his prizes.


By July, 1718, Vane had become the de facto leader of Nassau’s die-hard faction, the pirates who
did not wish to accept the king’s pardon and who wished to resist the arrival of would-be-governor
Woodes Rogers. Vane’s most infamous act came on the night of July 26, 1718, when he nearly
destroyed two of the naval frigates escorting Rogers into Nassau harbor. His pirate gang escaped
Nassau in a swift sloop and did their best to disrupt Rogers’ tenuous rule by raiding Bahamian
shipping while attempting to organize an invasion of the island. On August 30 he blockaded the port
of Charleston, South Carolina, capturing several vessels.

According to A General History of the Pirates, Vane tracked down Blackbeard, then living in
“retirement” in North Carolina, probably in an effort to convince him to join an assault on Nassau.
Their crews were said to have partied on Ocracoke Island – part of the Outer Banks – before
separating to face their respective destinies. The meeting is sometimes dismissed as a legend, but
period documents found while researching The Republic of Pirates suggest the meeting probably
did in fact take place in September or October of 1718.

Vane, like the fictional Jack Sparrow, was ultimately deposed by his own men, after he declined to
attack a French warship in November of 1718; command of his brigantine to Calico Jack Rackham.
Vane and 15 followers were left with a captured sloop, with which they tried to rebuild their fortunes,
brazenly attacking vessels around Jamaica, headquarters of the Royal Navy’s West Indies squadron.
While Vane avoided the authorities, he could not outrun the powerful hurricane that wrecked him on
an island off the coast of what is now Honduras or Southern Belize in February 1719. He was
ultimately captured there, when a merchant captain recognized him and turned him over to authorities
in Jamaica. For reasons that are unclear he remained incarcerated for more than a year before
being hung at Gallows Point, Port Royal, on March 29, 1721.

[Salty Dog]

Samuel Bellamy, the self-styled Robin Hood of the
Seas, is believed to have been born in the late winter of
1689 in the English hamlet of Hittisleigh, Devon. A
sailor, he showed up in New England after the end of the
War of Spanish Succession (1702-1712) and,
according to legend, made his way to Eastham,
Massachusetts on Cape Cod. There he is said to have
romanced a young woman, Maria or Mary Hallet, a
folktale given new credence by Ken Kinkor’s discovery
that a young woman of that name was in fact living in
Eastham at the time. Perhaps in an effort to earn her
hand, Bellamy formed a partnership with Paulsgrave
Williams of Rhode Island to attempt to recover riches
from the sunken Spanish treasure fleet in Florida.


Like many would-be salvers, Bellamy and Williams discovered that much of the treasure had already been
recovered by the Spaniards, Henry Jennings, and others. The two resolved to attack Spanish vessels
instead, and by March 1716 were in the Bay of Honduras, at the head of a gang operating out of two large
sailing canoes. In early April they forced an English merchant to tow them to eastern Cuba, where they
encountered the privateer Henry Jennings and Benjamin Hornigold, the founder of the Bahamian pirate
republic. In a particularly bold move, Bellamy and Williams stole a large cache of treasure from Jennings and
joined Hornigold’s pirate flotilla. These forgotten events are told in detail in The Republic of Pirates.

While serving with Hornigold, Bellamy made served with several leading members of the Flying Gang,
including Blackbeard and Olivier La Buse. Hornigold became increasingly unpopular due to his refusal to
attack English vessels and, after several months cruising the waters around Cuba and Hispanolia, Bellamy,
Williams, and La Buse set out on their own. In the summer and fall of 1716, their gang cruised the length of
the Antilles chain, steadily building their strength, numbers, and wealth, until, in late February or early March
1717, they captured a well-armed slave ship, the 300-ton Whydah.

After overhauling their new flagship in the southern Bahamas, Bellamy and Williams sailed up the Eastern
seaboard, just in time for the spring shipping season. The plan appears to have been to separate – Bellamy
going to Cape Cod, Williams to Block Island – and regroup at Damariscove Island in Maine. Instead,
Bellamy was caught in a powerful storm and driven ashore near Eastham, Cape Cod on the night of April 26,
1717. Only two men survived the wreck of the Whydah; Bellamy was not among them. They and the seven survivors of another wrecked pirate vessel were quickly apprehended and sent to Boston where all but one were tried, and ultimately, executed.

[Salty Dog]

Paulsgrave Williams, who rose to become one of the most
infamous pirate captains, was an unlikely candidate to join
this maritime revolt: a middle-aged silversmith from a wealthy
family, with a wife and two young children. His father was a
wealthy merchant and Rhode Island’s attorney general; his
mother was descended from the Plantagenet kings of
England.

But as told, the trajectory of
Williams life was altered at age 11, when his father died. His
mother remarried a Scots exile, and moved from Newport to
Block Island, then a center of smuggling and black market
activity. One of his sisters married a leading associate of
Captain Kidd; another married a man believed to be the
nephew of a retired Rhode Island buccaneer.




Block Island, Rhode Island, where Williams made his home and, perhaps,
left part of his treasure..


Inspired, perhaps, by Block Island’s outlaw ethos, in 1715 Williams formed a partnership with Sam Bellamy, and
set out in a small boat for Florida, where a powerful hurricane had wrecked the annual Spanish treasure fleet.
They probably intended to try their hand at salvaging treasure from the shallow wrecks, but discovered others had
beaten them to it.

Unwilling to return to New England empty-handed, Bellamy and Williams decided to “salvage” treasure from
vessels that were still afloat. By March 1716 they were at the head of a gang of 50 men, looting small merchant
vessels in the environs of the Yucatan peninsula from a pair of large sailing canoes. One year later they were
leading a band of nearly 250 – including at least 25 former slaves – with a sleek sloop-of-war and an 28-gun
flagship, the Whydah, that was more than a match for most of the naval frigates in the region.

Even after months of tropical piracy, Williams continued to wear a powdered gentleman’s wig, his captives later
reported, which contrasted with his strikingly tanned skin. He commanded the Marianne, a well-armed sloop, her
hull still gaily painted the blue and yellow colors of her original French owners. Like other pirates, his crew was of
mixed origin: thirty Brits, five Frenchman, five Africans, and an Indian; all were apparently equal members of the
crew. Pirate vessels may have been one of the most racially tolerant places in the Americas.

As they sailed north in late March 1717, Bellamy and Williams became separated in fog. They had a contingency
plan: to rendezvous at Damariscove Island, Maine on or around May 20. Williams visited his mother and sisters
on Block Island, staying ashore for a number of hours, possibly a day or two, and probably disposed of some of
his plunder. He then made his way to Damariscove and, after waiting two weeks for Bellamy (who was, by then,
dead), returned to the pirate base at Nassau. He was present there in February 1718 when Vincent Pearse of
HMS Phoenix visited the island, but apparently fled to Africa prior to the arrival of Woodes Rogers. He was last
seen off Sierra Leone in April 1720, serving as an officer aboard a pirate ship commanded by the notorious
French pirate, Olivier La Buse

[Salty Dog]

Benjamin Hornigold was the founder of the pirate republic in the Bahamas and a mentor to both Blackbeard and
Sam Bellamy. A leader of one of the largest pirate factions at Nassau, he ultimately switched sides, becoming a
leading pirate hunter and a trusted lieutenant of the pirate's arch nemesis, Woodes Rogers.

As revealed in The Republic of Pirates, Hornigold's piracy career began in August 1713, far earlier than
previously thought, and just months after the conclusion of the War of Spanish Succession. Hornigold is thought to
have served as a privateer out of Jamaica during the war, and he apparently shared the concerns of many
Englishman about continued peacetime attacks by Spanish privateers. Likely motivated by a combination of
patriotism and profit-seeking, Hornigold and two accomplices took up residence at Nassau, which had been
utterly destroyed during the war. Operating out of large sailing canoes, his gang preyed on Spanish merchant
vessels and plantations off the coast of Cuba and in the Florida Straits, quickly amassing a considerable fortune.

In several fits and starts, Hornigold and his colleague, John Cockram, built the foundations of the pirate society in
the Bahamas. Cockram took up the business end, moving to Harbour Island (50 miles north of Nassau), marrying
the daughter of the leading merchant there, and setting up a sophisticated smuggling, supply, and
money-laundering operation for Hornigold and his growing cohort of pirates. Hornigold purchased several of his
early pirate vessels -- sailing canoes and small sloops -- from local settlers. Edward Thatch -- alias Blackbeard --
was likely a member of his early gang.

Throughout his career, Hornigold avoided attacking English vessels, but he made no pretense of acting lawfully.
As pirates streamed into Nassau following the wreck of the Spanish treasure fleet on the nearby coast of Florida
in 1715, Hornigold threatened British authorities who tried to confront and arrest the pirates. By early 1716 his
own pirate gang numbered more than 200, and the pirates' control of the Bahamas was uncontested.

Hornigold and Henry Jennings were rivals and detested one another, a legacy of an April 1716 incident off the
coast of Cuba, when Hornigold sheltered two upstart pirates -- Sam Bellamy and Paulsgrave Williams -- who had
just stolen a large quantity of treasure from Jennings' gang. Hornigold, Bellamy, Williams and French pirate Olivier
La Buse operated together throught the summer of 1716, but they broke ranks when the other pirate captains
grew weary of Hornigold's refusal to attack English vessels. He remained active throughout 1716 and 1717, and
was a leading figure at Nassau. Blackbeard was among his most loyal followers, and continued to sail with
Hornigold even after being given his own command.

When word of the King's pardon reached Nassau in late December 1717, the pirates split into two camps, one
wishing to take the amnesty, the other intending to carry on to the bitter end. Hornigold emerged as the leader of
the pro-pardon camp, and he and his closest followers sailed to Jamaica to take the pardon in January 1718.
When Woodes Rogers arrived to take control of the Bahamas, Hornigold organized a formal welcoming party and
later volunteered his services as a pirate hunter, pursuing Charles Vane and capturing many recalcitrant pirates
with the help of his old colleague, John Cockram. Later, in the War of the Quadruple Alliance, Hornigold obtained
a privateering commission from Rogers and again sailed out against the Spanish. He was captured near Havana
in the spring of 1719 and apparently died in captivity, as he was never heard from again

[Salty Dog]

Henry Jennings was one of the early members of the pirate republic in the Bahamas, and the leader of one of the
two major pirate factions there. Apparently motivated by a desire to restore the Stuarts to the British throne,
Jennings was one of the more violent and merciless pirates, with far fewer reservations about using deadly force
against opponents, captives, and rivals. He was a mentor to the hot-headed Charles Vane, an enemy of rival
pirate leader Benjamin Hornigold, and, ultimately, a turncoat who would become a leading pirate hunter.

Jennings was a wealthy and successful merchant captain, an educated man with an estate on Jamaica. As
revealed in The Republic of Pirates, he did not intend to become a pirate but, rather, was involved in the global
conspiracy to overthrow George I and put James Stuart on the throne. Under the direction of the pro-stuart
Governor of Jamaica, Archibald Hamilton, Jennings armed his 80-ton sloop Bathsheba and at the end of 1715
sailed out to salvage loot from the wrecks of the Spanish treasure fleet. Instead, he launched an all-out assault on
the Spanish salvage camp at Palma de Ayz, Florida, stealing £87,000 in gold and silver. He then put in at
Nassau, where he offended Hornigold, before returning to Jamaica on January 26, 1716.

Although his raid was illegal -- Britain and Spain were at peace -- Jennings was unmolested by Jamaica
authorities. He set out again in March, sailing to Cuba where, on April 3, he illegally seized a French merchant
ship with the help of a motley group of pirates lead by Samuel Bellamy. Bellamy subsequently stole a large portion
of the treasure and slipped away to join Hornigold, who happened to be operating in the area. This attack on
neutral French shipping triggered a diplomatic storm that ultimately resulted in Jennings being declared a pirate
by King George. He moved his operations to Nassau, where he would remain a leading figure for the next two
years. Like Hornigold, he did not target English ships.

When word of the King's pardon reached Nassau in late December 1717, the pirates split into two camps, one
wishing to take the amnesty, the other intending to carry on to the bitter end. Jennings was one of those who
chose clemency, though curiously he and his close followers chose to surrender in Bermuda, not Jamaica, a
decision that fuels speculation that Jennings had family ties there. He re-outfitted Bathsheba there and reportedly
cruised the Bahamas hunting Charles Vane and other recalcitrant pirates; he did not return to Nassau. During the
War of the Quadruple Alliance he was a successful privateer and, subsequently, he enjoyed a successful
merchant career out of Bermuda. In 1745, during the War of the Austrian Succession, he was captured by the
Spanish and presumably died in custody

[Salty Dog]

Olivier La Buse -- also known as Louis Labous, La Bouse, La Bouche, La Buze, and Olivier Levasseur -- was the
leading French captain of the pirate republic in the Bahamas, and one of the most successful pirates of the
Golden Age of Piracy. He is often said to have been born in Calais, although I was unable to find corroborating
evidence for this assertion while researching The Republic of Pirates,

La Buse first appears in English records in early 1716, when he was the captain of the pirate sloop Postillion and
operating in consort with Benjamin Hornigold and Sam Bellamy. Most of the crew of the Postillion and La Buse's
subsequent commands were French, but this did not prevent him from assisting and collaborating with
English-domianted pirate crews. After weeks of successful cruising in the vicinity of Cuba, La Buse and Bellamy
had a falling out with Hornigold, abandoning him to embark on a successful cruise to the Eastern Caribbean
together in the fall and early winter of 1716. The two appear to have remained close partners and allies.

In January 1717, off the coast of South America, La Buse's company decided to go solo, apparently intending to
capture a large "ship of force." He appeared seven months later off the New England coast in command of a
26-gun ship crewed by some 200 men, making La Buse one of the most formidable pirates at the time. He
captured several small vessels crossing the Gulf of Maine before vanishing for several months. It is possible that
he was the pirate who built a fortified base in Machias, Maine and raided vessels off Newfoundland, actions
falsely attributed to Sam Bellamy by Captain Charles Johnson, the author of the General History of the Pyrates, a
hypothesis I put forward in an August 2007 article in Down East magazine.

In June 1718, La Bous lost his ship and barely avoided being captured by Captain Francis Hume of the HMS
Scarborough at La Blanquilla in the Eastern Caribbean. Escaping with 60 men in a small sloop, he eventually
migrated to West Africa, where, in early 1719, he was voted captain of large pirate ship. Another refugee from the
Caribbean, Paulsgrave Williams, served as his quartermaster in this period. La Bous outlived most of his
colleagues and had a long and generally prosperous career in West Africa and the Indian Ocean until his capture,
in 1730, by French authorities on the island of Reunion. His grave is a popular tourist site there.

[Salty Dog]

Woodes Rogers, the man who developed the
crown’s response to the great piracy outbreak, was
born in Poole, Dorset, England in 1679, the son of
an aspiring merchant. His father built a successful
long-distance shipping concern, trading for fish in
Newfoundland and, later, slaves in West Africa, and
made a number of influential friends in the process,
including Sir William Whetstone, a royal navy
admiral who commanded the West India fleet
during the War of Spanish Succession. Young
Woodes married Whetstone’s daughter, Sarah, in
1704, elevating the Rogers to the highest circles of
West Country society. When his father died at sea
in 1705, Woodes took control of the family’s affairs.

Bristol merchants suffered tremendous losses
during the War of Spanish Succession, and Rogers


Woodes Rogers (seated at left) with his daughter, Sarah, and son, William
Whetstone Rogers, in a 1729 portrait by William Hogarth. Hogarth painted
Rogers in profile to conceal his disfigurement from a Spanish musketball.


was no exception. In 1708 his 130-ton slave ship, Whetstone Galley, was captured by French privateers en
route to Africa. Partly in response to this loss, Rogers lobbied his fellow merchants to fund an ambitious
privateering mission to raid Spanish shipping in the Pacific Ocean. His father’s friend, the circumnavigator
and onetime buccaneer William Dampier, suggested it might be possible to capture one of Spain’s fortress-
like Manila treasure galleons.

Intrigued by this possibility, the merchants of Bristol underwrote the construction of two private warships, the
Duke and the Dutchess, and placed them under Rogers command. His 1708-11 expedition circumnavigated
the globe, captured a small Manila ship, rescued the castaway Alexander Selkirk (the inspiration for Robinson
Crusoe), traded slaves, and made Rogers a household name across the British Isles. It also brought hardship:
Rogers brother died in combat; Rogers himself took a musketball in the face during the capture of the treasure
ship and, on returning to England, was bankrupted by a protracted law suit brought against him by the East
India Company. His infant son died shortly thereafter and, in the aftermath, his marriage became undone.




A collection of Woodes Rogers letters written during his round-the-world
privateering expedition (1708-11), now housed in the National Archives in
Kew, England. (c) 2006 Colin Woodard


Rogers through himself into his work, becoming
interested in the activities and possible
suppression of the pirates of Madagascar, made
famous by the exploits of Henry Avery. He groveled
before his enemies at the East India Company, and
received their permission to carry slaves from
Madagascar to the EIC base on the island of
Sumatra (now part of Indonesia). As detailed in
The Republic of Pirates, Rogers’ encounters with
fugitive pirates led him to develop the outlines of a
strategy to defeat them – a combination of carrot (a
royal pardon to those who would surrender) and
stick (a robust military action against those who
would not.) He would wind up executing this plan
not in Madagascar, but in the Bahamas

He used his contacts to lobby for and, eventually,
receive a royal commission to act as Governor of


of the Bahamas, so long as he would liberate them from pirate control. King George put key elements of
Rogers Madagascar strategy into practice, offering a pardon to divide the pirates, and supplying Rogers
with a naval escort to conquer those who remained. Rogers’ fleet – which included a private mercenary force
and a shipload of colonists – arrived at Nassau in July 1718 and, after a confrontation with Charles Vane,
took control of the island. While he won the assistance of several leading pirates, including Benjamin
Hornigold, Rogers’ hold on power was tenuous. The Republic of Pirates describes the harrowing
challenges he faced: disease, defection, the destruction of commerce by Vane’s gang, and the constant
threat of invasion from Spain from December 1718.

Rogers’ strategy was ultimately successful, ending the pirate republic and dispersing the remaining pirate
gangs across the world, where most of them were picked off, one by one. Nonetheless, he was relieved of
his governorship in 1722 and wound up in debtor’s prison for personal loans he took out to protect the colony
from invasion. His reputation was restored following the publication of A General History of the Pyrates
(1724), ultimately resulting in compensation from the crown and, in 1728, his restoration to the governorship
of the Bahamas. He died in Nassau on July 15, 1732

[Salty Dog]

Charles, Eden (1673-1722) was the governor of North Carolina during era of the Flying Gang
pirates. In 1718, Stede Bonnet and, separately, Blackbeard journeyed to Bath, the colony's sleepy
village capital, to take the king's pardon from Gov. Eden. Blackbeard and Eden apparently came
to some sort of arrangement, as the arch-pirate promptly settled in Bath, set up an underground
piracy operation and channelled at least once large consignment of plunder to Eden and his
underling, Tobias Knight. Blackbeard married a local girl and, according to A General History of
the Pyrates, Eden presided over the ceremony.

When Edward Mosely, a leading colonist, denounced Eden for failing to apprehend Blackbeard,
and was arrested for his troubles. While Eden was officially cleared of wrongdoing, his reputation
never recovered. After his death, of yellow fever, he was buried in what is now Bertie County,
beneath a tombstone that noted that he had "died much lamented."

[Salty Dog]

Lord Archibald Hamilton (1673-1754) was the
governor of Jamaica in 1715 and 1716, and helped
put several of the Flying Gang pirates in business,
including Henry Jennings and, by extension, Charles
Vane. As revealed in The Republic of Pirates, Lord
Archibald was a conspirator in the Jacobite Rebellion
of 1715, a failed attempt to restore the House of
Stuart to the throne of Britain.

The seventh son of Lord William Douglas, the third Duke of Hamilton, Lord Archibald was the scion of
one of Scotland's leading noble families, a family that was deeply offended when the next in line to the
British throne, James Stuart, was passed over in favor of George I. Several of his relatives participated
in the 1715 uprising.

A career officer in the Royal Navy, in 1711, Hamilton was appointed governor of Jamaica by Queen
Anne, the last Protestant Stuart. After her death and the ascension of George I in 1714, Jacobites (as
pro-Stuarts were called) began organizing an empire-wide uprising to put James Stuart on the throne.
Hamilton's role was apparently to organize an undercover Jacobite naval force to support the uprising.
To do so, he issued privateering commissions to a number of trusted merchant captains, including
Henry Jennings, and, despite it being peacetime, sent them to attack French and Spanish shipping.
Their depredations -- including Jenning's assault on a Spanish salvage camp in Florida -- triggered a
storm of diplomatic protests. Rather than round up the pirates, Hamilton appears to have shared their
plunder. He also conducted a sudden purge of Jamaica's colonial administration, filling the vacancies
with Stuart sympathizers.

Unfortunately for Hamilton, the 1715 uprising failed, and George I had the governor brought home in
chains and declared Jennings and the other privateers to be pirates. Jennings would go on to become
a leading member of the pirate republic in the Bahamas. Hamilton used his considerable political ties
to beat the rap for treason, and even got the British Council of Trade and Plantations to order the
government of Jamaica to pay him his share of his privateers' illegal plunder. He married an earl's
daughter and died comfortably on London's tony Pall Mall in 1754. He was buried at Westminster Abby.

[Salty Dog]

While its merchant vessels were regularly plundered by them,
Boston’s closest encounter with the Flying Gang pirates came
in the late spring of 1717 when nine members of Sam Bellamy’s
gang were held there.

The pirates had been apprehended on Outer Cape Cod and
brought to Boston overland under heavy guard. They were
incarcerated at Boston Jail, located at what is now 26 Court
Street, a stone’s throw from the Old State House. Eight of the
men were tried on the latter building’s second floor in October
1717, found guilty, and hung on the mudflats of the Charlestown
ferry landing (now filled in) on November 25. Cotton Mather, the
Puritan divine best known for his role in the Salem Witch Trials,
took an interest in the pirates, visiting them in their cells and
delivering long-winded sermons about their impending, eternal
damnation.


A ninth pirate, John Julian, a man of mixed Afro-Indian descent, was not tried, and was probably sold
at Boston’s slave market. The Republic of Pirates cites evidence suggesting he may have been
purchased by the ancestors of a future president.

At the time Boston was the largest and most sophisticated city in British North America, with a
population of 10,000. It was also the hub of the continent’s information infrastructure, being home to
its only newspaper, The Boston News-Letter. This weekly was published by John Campbell, the city’s
postmaster, who developed a network of correspondents along the New York, Philadelphia, and
Portsmouth post rider routes, and was the first to receive mail and information from newly-arrived
ship captains. Campbell devoted considerable coverage to the activities of the pirates, providing a
wealth of information for subsequent researchers.

[Salty Dog]

Pirates had a special affinity for the City of Brotherly Love.
Members of the crew of the infamous Henry Avery -- an
inspirational figure for later pirates -- retired here at the end
of the 17th century under the protection of Pennsylvania
Governor William Markham. As told in The Republic of
Pirates, Markham allowed one wanted pirate to marry his
daughter, and threw a royal agent in prison for trying to
arrest the man. Philadelphia - then a modest town of 4000 -
appears to have been the most pirate-friendly port in North
America.

Throughout the great piracy outbreak of 1715-25,
Philadelphia's shipping was regularly targeted. Several
Flying Gang pirates are known to have blockaded the
mouth of Delaware Bay, including Paulsgrave Williams,
Blackbeard, and Stede Bonnet.

But the city's most famous link with the pirates are the visits
Blackbeard allegedly made sometime between 1716 and
1718. Early 19th century historians interviewed several


elderly Philadelphia residents who claimed their parents had seen or interacted with the famous pirate. Blackbeard
was said to frequent an inn at the corner of High and Second Streets, to have brought a vessel to the Schuylkill River
for supplies. These accounts cannot be confirmed by period documents, but it is known that several of Blackbeard's
men came here in 1718, and the pirate himself was reported to have visited the city while he was living in Bath,
North Carolina. Perhaps he knew some of Avery's men, who may well have been living in Philly at the time.

[Salty Dog]

1. In 2008 a dog tried to save his owners lives after 5 armed pirates hijacked their yacht off the coast of Venezuela. After the men climbed aboard the dog furiously attacked them, biting and snapping until he was stabbed and then shot. The dog survived and the pirates left almost empty-handed.

2. The most successful pirate of all time was a Chinese prostitute called Ching Shih. She commanded over 1,800 ships and up to 200,000 pirates. She was one of the few pirates to actually retire.

3. Stede Bonnet also known as “The Gentleman Pirate”, became a pirate to get away from his nagging wife.

4. MIT awards pirate certificates to undergraduates. To get a pirate certificate at MIT, one must complete courses in archery, pistol shooting, sailing, and fencing.

5. When pirate Jean Lafitte saw the governor advertising a $500 reward for his capture, Lafitte offered $5,000 for the capture of the governor.