The Pirate Republic
The amazing story of when outlaws conquered an island
The Golden Age of Piracy has come to describe the decade between 1715 and 1725 where, with the Treaty of Utrecht bringing an end to Britain’s involvement in the War of the Spanish Succession, a number of enterprising and ruthless commodores had taken to the seas for private gain. British sailors had suffered particular hardship with the signing of the treaty and the Royal Navy’s subsequent mothballing of its enormous fleet. This left sailors out of work, and those who did find employment saw their wages slashed in the new economic climate.
Indeed, dissatisfaction was so prevalent among those who sailed with merchant vessels or those still working with the Royal Navy that very often, when captured by pirates (or buccaneers as the Caribbean operatives became known), many men immediately switched sides. On board a pirate vessel, not only would they stand to boost their wages, but they would also enjoy a less stringent brand of discipline. One famous example of maritime defection is the standoff between Bahaman pirates and HMS Phoenix in 1718, where, under the cover of darkness, a clutch of Royal Navy men sneaked off to join the outlaws.
Many of the early buccaneers had been privateers, operating under licence from the crown and granted the legal right to harry enemy shipping. During the Golden Age, however, this changed and men took to the sea knowing full well that they were in open revolt against the authorities. As well as out-of-work and disaffected sailors, pirate numbers were boosted by the arrival of runaway slaves, indentured servants and all sorts of other outlaws, including the politically and religiously agitated, many of whom objected to George I’s ascension to the throne of England in 1714. He had succeeded Queen Anne at the expense of the House of Stuart, much to the chagrin of Jacobite sympathisers. It is no coincidence that Blackbeard renamed his flagship, the captured slaver La Concorde, as Queen Anne’s Revenge.
The authorities regularly painted pictures of these pirates as brutal monsters, bent on rape and pillage, but the truth is often quite different. Many colonists regarded them as folk heroes and though the infamous duo of ‘Black Sam’ Bellamy and Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach took more than 300 ships between them, there are no reports of their having killed a single captive.
Much to the authorities’ annoyance, these pirate gangs enjoyed enormous success, harrying French, Spanish and English shipping throughout the West Indies and raiding the coast. Chief among them were the pirates who set up in the port of Nassau on the Bahaman island of New Providence. The island was around 60 square miles in size and was situated 200 miles east of Florida, thereby offering a sound base to harass the shipping lanes.
The island offered fresh fruit, meat and fresh water while Nassau’s harbour was tailor-made for defence and the unloading of booty. It could take around 500 vessels, though it was too shallow to accept large battleships. With Hog Island splitting the harbour into two inlets, it was also difficult to blockade. The surrounding region, meanwhile, offered plenty of protection amid its waterways and no sensible captain would sail these waters without an experienced pilot at the helm.
Buccaneers had long recognised New Providence’s strategic importance, though it came into its own when selected as the base of operations by the privateer-turned-pirate Benjamin Hornigold in 1713. Hornigold, along with his great rival Henry Jennings, became the unofficial overlord of a veritable pirate republic, which played host to the self-styled Flying Gang.
In truth, however, New Providence had suffered greatly during the War of the Spanish Succession and had witnessed Spanish incursions during 1703, 1704 and 1706. By the time Hornigold had set his sights on the island, there was only a skeleton settlement in the town of Nassau, and Thomas Walker was the island’s only remaining appointed official. Though the evidence is hard to come by, it appears that he was acting in the role of deputy governor upon Hornigold’s arrival and he did not take kindly to the pirates’ presence.
He took it upon himself to stand up to the buccaneers and, calling for reinforcements, he penned copious letters to anyone and everyone, sending missives to the proprietors of Bahaman estates, the lords of the admiralty and the press, informing them of the growing pirate menace operating from his island. He whipped up a huge amount of interest and concern, with the acting governor of Bermuda, Henry Pulleine, writing to officials in London that the Bahamas had become a veritable “nest of pyrates”.
Walker, meanwhile, who lived a few miles from Nassau with his freed black wife and their children, set about planning an attack on the Bahaman pirates. Sailing against the men on Harbour Island, due east of New Providence, he captured the pirate Daniel Stillwell, a number of his associates and the pirate ship Happy Return. His luck ran out, however, and while Walker was away on business Hornigold freed Stillwell and hatched his own plan in a bid to rid New Providence of Walker and his troublesome ways. This was a key moment in the history of the island, for with Walker out of the way there would be no opposition to the Flying Gang, who would rule the Bahamas as they saw fit.
According to a deposition given in Charleston by Walker’s son, Thomas Jr, the young man ran into Hornigold in late 1715 in the port of Nassau and the pirate told him that his father was a “troublesome old fart” and that if he did not desist from his meddling ways, Hornigold would murder him, burn his house to the ground and whip his family.
When, in December of that year, Hornigold captured the mighty Spanish
warship that he vainly named Benjamin, it looked as though Walker had lost control. By the time Henry Jennings and his men sailed into Nassau in January 1716, their decks laden with Spanish treasure, a new age really had been born. A short while later, Hornigold refortified the harbour, refitting the old fort and arming it with cannons. Walker conceded defeat. He set sail for Charleston with his family, never to return. New Providence, to all intents and purposes, belonged to pirates.
According to Captain Johnson’s original source, A General History Of Pirates (as it came to be known), by 1716 Nassau played home to not just Hornigold and Jennings, but also to the former’s loyal lieutenant Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach, John Martel, Olivier La Buse, Charles Bellamy and Edward England, among many others. The island of New Providence also acted as a rendezvous for a clutch of other infamous pirates, including Stede Bonnet, Jack Rackam and the pirate women Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
As 1716 wore on, the outlaw population on New Providence blossomed, boosted by log cutters from Campeche in Mexico and any number of the disaffected. The citizenry began to drift away, fearful of their treatment at the hands of the swaggering newcomers. One Thomas Barrow, the leader of the men that had worked on the Spanish wreckers, earned a nasty reputation for extorting the men and upsetting the island’s women. Hundreds of tents and huts, houses and hovels sprung up as the pirates made the place their own. Wives and prostitutes moved in and alehouses did a roaring trade.
The better homes in and around Nassau, meanwhile, were populated by the merchants and smugglers to whom the pirates sold their booty and with whom they traded for ammunition and other valuable supplies. However, even the traders were not always ensured safe passage around New Providence. Barrow is said to have robbed a brigantine from New England around this time and to have beaten up the master of a Bermudan trading vessel.
Still, the place was not entirely lawless. Generally, the pirates operated within the rules of an unwritten code of conduct, which ensured that their existence was
“When captured by pirates, many men switched sides”
the very best among sailors, and certainly more profitable and enjoyable than the life of a Royal Navy tar or a merchant. The Flying Gang came to elect their captains and, if they felt he had failed them, they could depose him. When in combat, the captain was granted full command but the majority of decisions, from deciding where to attack to choosing suitable punishments for transgressors, were made democratically by the ship’s crew.
Prizes were split pretty evenly between all crew members, with the captain only taking a little more than his men and the cabin boy taking the smallest share. The crew also appointed a quartermaster to ensure that food and supplies were doled out equitably. Hornigold and Jennings were the pre-eminent pirate leaders, though some have written that Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach was appointed as a magistrate on the island. Whatever the truth of this claim, he certainly became a powerful pirate leader.
Such was the power of this pirate republic, and the damage it caused to the ships of all nations, the British authorities finally took a decisive course of action with a three-pronged plan of attack. First, the Royal Navy would dispatch three warships to Caribbean waters. Second, George I would offer the King’s Pardon to any surrendering pirate, forgiving them for all piracies committed prior to January 1718. Third, the authorities would appoint Woodes Rogers as governor and garrison commander of the Bahamas with a precise
“George I offered the King’s Pardon to any surrendering pirate, forgiving their violent plundering”
remit: deliver the King’s Pardon to any who would accept. Those that did not were to be ruthlessly hunted down.
Rogers had already proven himself an able commander and had been a successful privateer himself, operating under the sponsorship of the mayor and corporation of Bristol. He arrived at New Providence in July 1718 on board the Delicia, a former East Indiaman, and was accompanied by the warships HMS Milford and HMS Rose along with the sloop-of-war Shark. In total, he brought seven armed ships and more than 500 men – more than enough, the authorities reckoned, to take down the republic of pirates. Several prominent figures, such as Hornigold himself, having already received news of the King’s Pardon, decided to turn themselves in. Others, such as Charles Vane and Blackbeard, decided to fight on regardless.
Vane was holed up in Nassau upon Rogers’ arrival but quickly fired his guns and fled, leaving the island to the new governor, who immediately set about reassuring the civilians and rebuilding the crumbling fort that overlooked the growing town. He recruited Benjamin Hornigold and Captain Cockram as pirate hunters and sent them after Vane. Though Vane eluded him, in October Hornigold caught up with a clutch of pirates on the island of Exuma. These men had accepted the King’s Pardon before swiftly going back to their old ways. They included two notable men, John Augur, a former commander of the sloop Mary, and William Cunningham, who had been one of Blackbeard’s gunners. Rogers hanged them, with a total of eight recidivists swinging on the gallows on the morning of December 12.
Rogers’ arrival and his execution of these Nassau pirates did not bring an end to the age of buccaneering, but it terminated New Providence’s position as a haven for outlaws and scoundrels. Though the likes of Blackbeard and Vane remained at large for a while, the Pirate Republic had breathed its final breath.