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On the Cover:

http://genuardis.net/parchment/parchment-background.htm

http://www.freeinfosociety.com/media.php?id=3540

Table of Contents

Preface..................................................... …………………………………..Page 3

The Fuse is Lit………………………… …………………………………..Page 5

Unrest in Peace………………………… …………………………………..Page 9

“Upon the Account”…………………… …………………………………Page 11

Life, Liberty, and Fortune……………... …………………………………Page 13

Castaways……………………………… …………………………………Page 15

Conclusion…………………………… …………………………………Page 17

Bibliography…………………………… …………………………………Page 18

Picture citations………………………... ………………………………...Page 19

http://www.hans-zimmer.com/fr/mv/badelt/pirates.jpg

How realistic is this modern portrayal of pirates? Read on and discover their true and

surprisingly Romantic tale.

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bhane Woolley

History 10

May 2013

Preface

In 1200 or so BC, as the story goes in The Iliad, a certain man by the name of Odysseus

approached the famed Greek Achilles. His goal was to enlist the young man in the now-

immortalized war against Troy. Now, it was prophesized that if Achilles stayed in Greece, he

would lead a long life. This life, however, would be hollow and mediocre. If, on the other hand,

Achilles decided to embark across the Aegean to fight the Trojans, his life would be vibrant and

resplendent. He would rise to the fore of the Greek army, and his heroic and glorious actions

would win him fame among all men for generations to come. And—this is the catch—he would

die an early death. He would triumph and carve his name into the ledgers of history, yes, but the

triumph would be ephemeral—his renown would be all that remained for posterity. Yet instead

of existing as another dull flame in the concourse of human history, he would become a bright,

explosive burst of light on the trail of time. In the tale, Achilles, almost without hesitation, chose

the second option: he went to war, became a champion, died young, and then became a legend.

This choice of glory and wealth possibly over a long life was the choice many average men, now

notoriously known as pirates, settled on in the early 1700s, almost three thousand years after the

death of Achilles.

Yet, though regarded as villains then and even now, pirates often had more legitimacy to

a claim for glory than even Achilles. The Greek fought in his own name—that his glory might

live on infinitely—whereas, during the height of the Golden Age of piracy, which lasted during

the roughly ten years between 1715 and 1725, pirates boldly raised the infamous Jolly Roger in

the name of something much bigger than themselves. These “desperate Rogues” (Rediker, 50)

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hoisted the black flag in direct

opposition to the cruel and hierarchical

authority of the day. They formed a

brotherhood under the skull and

crossbones, ironically, in “the

perpetuation of a ‘life of liberty,’”

(Rediker, 37). And, with their own effort

and determination, these pirates, these

scourges of kings and queens alike, pulled themselves from most base poverty to form an

unprecedented collectivized and democratic social structure whose goal was not only to provide

an explosion of wealth and glory for those who previously had no hope for such comfort and

grandiosity, but also to stand up to oppression whose iron shackles had chaffed the wrists of so

many of those who turned pirate. These pirates were the Robin Hoods of their day, who came

from so little, but changed so much—kindling the embers of the American Revolution and even

facets of Communism.

In fact, when considering the extent of the impact piracy had just on their contemporary

oppressors, who often were the British, the background story of the average pirate seems that

much more Romantic and fascinating. Rarely in history does such a large group, one of destitute

laborers and even criminals, assemble and arrange a social structure in which they no longer feel

the constant weight of poverty as did those who became pirates in the early 18th

Century. Even

rarer was the surprising concord which the vastly multiethnic collection of these pirates attained,

through the development of a “pirate code” of rules and applied democratic values. This social

structure was the perhaps anachronistic result of centuries of accumulated distrust of the “Old

Fig. 1: "...desperate Rogues..."

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Regime,” and perhaps the catalyst for more modern political deviations such as the American

Revolution. But to understand this complexly volatile milestone in history, the Golden Age of

piracy, its grassroots foundations must be understood.

The Fuse is Lit

These foundations, albeit, were deep and dispersed. To survey the crew of any pirating

ship at the height of the pirates’ sway over the sea would be to encounter peoples from almost

every continent—peoples from North America and Africa were the next most prevalent amongst

the populations of crews, after those of Europe—and peoples of an array of different motives.

One commonality, however, would be clear: the tinder for the rapid boom of piracy was lit by

events in and people from Europe, specifically in and from Britain; the social constructs

established through the obscure and intricate political workings of the entwined nations of

Europe spread across the Atlantic, thus tainting its seas with revolutionary agitation. The first

simmering of such turbulence could be observed as far back as the mid-17th

Century, over half a

century before sailors went rogue and signed their lives over to the Jolly Roger.

The main impulse for revolutionary fervor was the English Civil War, which started in

1642. A series of inept decisions by English monarchs over wars, and the inevitable taxes they in

turn implicated, roused the anger and indignation of the nobles from which the taxes were most

required. Thus, the Parliament these nobles composed fought increasingly for autonomy and

power over the proportionally unraveling and central monarchy. When the Long Parliament,

which lasted from 1640 to 1660 (Kagan et al., 326), argued staunchly for more power, the

current monarch, King Charles I, gathered an army. In turn, Parliament mustered its own, and the

ensuing English Civil War deposed of the monarchy, replacing it with the admittedly flawed

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Puritan Republic under Oliver Cromwell. Though the new republic

was widely unpopular due to its prohibitive governing a rebellious

spirit had been fostered that would linger and undermine the central

authority of the crown in England for an extended period of time

thence.

Though less dramatic than civil war, two other occurrences

which undeniably shaped the courses of British history, including that

of its pirates, were John Locke’s publications, the First and Second

Treatise(s) of Government. The First denied the legitimacy of a patriarchal ruling lineage,

logically deducing its fatal flaws, and after its publication, “…no major political philosopher

again appealed to the patriarchal model…” (Kagan et al., 357). In the Second, Locke argued that

human beings, unlike they were described in the argument of Thomas Hobbes, a forerunner of

Locke’s in the field of political sciences, were innately generous and caring, and therefore

naturally tended toward a free and equal society. Thus, the only role a government should play is

that of mediator, a guardian of the civil liberties of the people. And in this vein, if a government

failed to play its role correctly, if, perhaps, it infringed on the very freedoms it was designed to

protect, the people had the inherent right to topple the government and replace it with one better

suited to defend them. This, certainly, was a bold statement to make in a time when an elite class

of landowners enormously dominated the vast majority of the common people socially,

economically, and politically.

The third major spark that lit the flame of piracy in the Atlantic, and in fact urged the

very suggestion of government reclamation Locke proposed, was the War of Spanish Succession.

When the last Habsburg monarch of the Spanish throne, Charles II, died in 1700, leaving his

Figure 2: Charles I

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nation without a direct successor, the monarchy, by default, was handed to the Bourbon lineage

of the French rulers. With the ambitions Louis XVI already at the helm of a burgeoning

imperialistic France, it seemed as if the hypersensitive equilibrium between European powers

was careening toward French favor. And nothing quite brings European powers together like the

overwhelming threat of another. Before long, England and the Holland had formed a defensive,

or, for practical purposes, a preventative, alliance against the newly integrated power of France

and Spain. Thusly, having been dubbed the War of Spanish Succession, the ensuing war lasted

from 1701 to 1714, and was brought to a close with the Treaty of Utrecht. And, as it happened,

the “cockpit of war” (Rediker, 22) was none other than the Caribbean, the epicenter of Atlantic

piracy. The internal workings of the naval aspect of this war are what so highly affected its rise.

This internal time-bomb had two main fuses. The first was Britain’s extensive use of

privateers, or “a ship or individual who is

licensed by a government to attack enemy

towns or shipping during times of war as a

private enterprise” (Minster)—in other

words, a government contracted pirate

(who, of course, wouldn’t attack his own

nation.) The incredibly immense extent of

the British Empire required even the

crown of England to employ some rough characters to do the dirty work—their Royal Navy

simply wasn’t large enough, and the French and Spanish were a step ahead in using privateers

already: “over 100 privateers operated out of the French channel port of Dunkirk alone,”

(Woodard, 55). But through the war, the British “privateer fleet grew to thirty vessels, carrying

Fig. 3: Though known for other reasons in modern times, Captain

Henry Morgan was a British privateer in his day

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between seventy and 150 men each”, which was “the equivalent of three-fourth of… the white

male population” of Jamaica, the home base of British privateers (Woodard, 64). Though these

privateers may have been necessary for the British defensive, in the long run, many of the

privateers themselves would prove to make a hole in the woodwork of the British Empire. After

all, those privateers who rather predictably made the switch to piracy simply went from

“‘plundering for others, to [doing] it for themselves,’” (Rediker, 44).

The second fuse was the rigid and hierarchical system by which the ships of the royal

navy, and even merchant ships, were run on the Atlantic during the war. Under this system, those

at the top of the chain of command held almost all of the power and authority, both economically

and structurally. Out of the very nature of the trade, sailing being a combination of keeping costs

low and surviving the surf, sailors for the navy and the merchants experienced cheap and

unhealthy conditions: “Sailors suffered cramped, claustrophobic quarters, ‘food’ that was often

as rotten as it was meager,” “devastating disease, disabling accidents, shipwreck, and premature

death,” (Rediker, 43). Similar squalor existed in the Royal Navy, except, as opposed to the

sometimes fatal merchant-ship punishments, penalties on board a naval vessel usually consisted

of execution in a vicious show of power. Even minor penalties could result in brutal whipping.

Monetarily, putting up with this wasn’t near worth it: in the navy, there were even “those who

served for years on end without being paid at all,” (Woodard, 44). Indeed, many took suit after

John Upton, a sailor of almost thirty years on a British man-of-war, who, finally having suffered

too long, deserted and singed his name over to the black flag (Rediker, 44). Walter Kennedy,

whose life as a pirate was uncommonly well-documented, was said to have joined the pirates due

to “a raging rebellion against the powerlessness he had suffered as a working sailor” (Rediker

40). Sailors had been prodded for too long, and rebellion was simmering.

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Unrest in Peace

The fuses of these two factors contributing to the rise in piracy, privateering and poor

treatment of the average sailor, were lit in 1713 with the Treaty of Utrecht. This agreement

finally ended the decade long War of Spanish Succession. Usually, the end of a war is accepted

to be grounds for celebration. On land, it was. But for almost three quarters of the sailors in the

Navy alone, things had taken a damaging turn: “The British Royal Navy in particular plunged

from 49,860 men in 1712 to 13,475 just two years later” (Rediker, 23), and now around thirty-six

thousand men were out of work. With so many sailors jobless, and the supply of able workers so

high, wages for those still employed declined rapidly. Peacetime made a heavy toll on the lives

of former sailors—and it wasn’t even fully peaceful: “Thirty-eight Jamaican vessels were…

seized in the first two years of peace” by Spanish customs ships, “costing the vessel owners

nearly £76,000” (Woodard, 86). The maritime economy had fallen hard.

The point of no return had been reached: the Golden Age of piracy was now inevitable.

As Christopher Minster wrote:

“Conditions have to be just right for piracy to boom. First, there must be many able-

bodied young men (preferably sailors) out of work and desperate to make a living. There

must be shipping and commerce lanes nearby, full of ships that carry either wealthy

passengers or valuable cargo. There must be little or no law, government or control.

[And] The pirates must have access to weapons and ships.”

All these conditions had been met. By 1714, whipping wounds stinging and bellies empty,

sailors were desperate and angry, but also hardened to and skilled on the seas—well used to the

“carefully synchronized cooperation” (Rediker, 25) aboard a ship. The “valuable cargo” was

present in the form of the triangle trade—which the “overextended” European empires “could

not easily control” (Ibid). The rebellious and individualistic tone of politics in the preceding

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century coupled with a tyrannical system of authority and punishment had instilled the

characteristic qualities of the pirates’ social structure. In a reaction to overextended authority,

pirates would elect their own captains to, as pirate Walter Kennedy put it, “‘avoid putting too

much power in the hands of one man’” (Rediker, 42), and, having experiences the sufferings of

poor pay and provisions, pirates would form “collectivist” and socialistic system of payment,

“holding all things ‘in common’” (Rediker, 45). Hoisting the Jolly Roger, pirates would take full

advantage of mercantilism to their own individual benefit, at the expense of the empires which

had treated them so harshly. Now, all defiant sailors needed was “access to weapons and ships”:

all they needed was mutiny.

For some, this mutiny was “a revolution in miniature” (Rediker, 47): a group of

emboldened and goaded sailors would organize themselves to overthrow the hierarchical

authority which commanded their ship, and

proceed to draft a sort of “pirate constitution”

which would outline the general rules and

social structure of their new order. In the first

two decades of the 1700s, “At least thirty-

one mutinies erupted on merchant ships,”

(Ibid), one of these being the crew-takeover

of the Buck by destined pirate captains

Walter Kennedy, Howell Davis, and Thomas Anstis (Rediker, 39).

But mutiny took other forms: sometimes simply in quiet but blatant disregard for the

orders of higher command. Benjamin Hornigold, one of the first “pirate” figures, took exactly

this approach. Hornigold, a former privateer decided that, though his native nation might accept

Fig. 4: "Jolly Roger" of mutinous Walter Kennedy

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the Treaty of Utrecht, he would not. He struck out to the Bahamas with some accomplices to set

up a headquarters from which to go “back to attacking Spanish shipping, avenging and enriching

themselves at the same time,” (Woodard, 87). From there, they could pray on trade passing

through the Straits of Florida in the triangle trade of the Atlantic. Hornigold himself was

notorious among his pirate peers for his unwillingness to attack British ships, but nevertheless,

his actions showed his true intentions: when British officials threatened to subjugate Hornigold’s

pirate colony in the Bahamas, he returned the threat (Woodard). This colony, in fact, grew

greatly under his leadership, but in the interim, piracy was evolving to become not just a form of

survival, but also a society and way of life.

“Upon the Account”

By 1715, piracy was spreading quickly across the Caribbean and into the Atlantic, and it

was spreading fast. An increasing number of men turned themselves over to the Jolly Roger

when the merchant ships aboard which they had worked were captured by pirates. The men of

the black flag preferred to take volunteers over forcing men to join their cause, as those who

enthusiastically joined “would create social cohesion within the group,” (Rediker, 48). The

expanding number of willing pirates understandably grew as the movement grew: it soon became

clear that there was finally an opportunity to break down deeply-entrenched social barriers,

which had existed for over a millennium in Europe, and become “Gentlemen of ffortune”

(Rediker, 57). Many knew that becoming a pirate would likely eventually lead to their execution

or imprisonment, but nevertheless they seized the extremely rare opportunity to live a sweet,

short life of inconceivable wealth and “merriment.” As the extremely successful pirate

Bartholomew Roberts said:

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"In an honest Service, there is thin Commons, low Wages, and hard Labour; in this,

Plenty and Satiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power; and who would not ballance

Creditor on this Side, when all the Hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sower

Look or two at choaking. No, a merry Life and a short one shall be my Motto."

(Rediker, 10)

It was in this way that piracy was a precursor to later social wars, like the American and French

Revolutions. And it was in this way that piracy attracted such a broad scope of peoples.

These peoples came “almost without exception… from the lowest social classes,”

(Rediker, 50), rather predictably. But fascinating, especially in the early 18th

Century, was the

diversity in race among pirates. Even

the unity and cooperation among

different nationalities of Europeans

aboard pirate ships were surprising: for

example, “Benjamin Evan’s crew

consisted of men of English, French,

Irish, [and] Spanish” descent (Rediker,

53). But nowhere in the world did such

tolerance and equality among Europeans

and African Americans exist as did on pirate ships in the Golden Age; such tolerance and

equality wouldn’t exist for another 150 or so years. According to research, “In 1718, 60 of

Blackbeard’s crew of 100 were black,” and these men were often honored with a position in the

vanguard, where their ferocious fighting was essential and prized. The large amount of African

Americans on pirate ships, upon consideration, is actually not very surprising, given that a piracy

by definition was a radical reaction against those who had oppressed the lower classes for so

Fig. 5: "…a merry Life and a short one…" –Bartholomew Roberts

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long. And no lower a class existed than that of the slaves brought over to plantations from

Africa. “Historian Hugh Rankin writes that a substantial number of the unruly [slaves] ‘went off

to join those pirates who did not seem too concerned about color differences,’” (Rediker, 55-56).

Such equality aboard pirate ships wouldn’t be seen in European culture for at least another

hundred years, and would form the argument for tolerance in nations like America long after the

last Atlantic pirate had been eradicated.

Life, Liberty, and Fortune

All these sailors and slaves who did flock to the Caribbean during the height of piracy, as

has previously been mentioned, were required to sign a “pirate constitution” in order to serve

under the skull and crossbones. In many ways, these constitutions were the progenitors to

socialistic and communistic values which would arise in Europe in the mid-1800s. One of the

most notable facets of the on-deck “governments” pirates set up was their democratic style of

decision making. The body of the crew “permit him to be Captain, on Condition, that they may

be captain over him,” (Rediker, 65), or in other words, though the captain would have absolute

power in the event of battle, in all other areas, the crew balanced the authority. Distrustful of

such concentrated power by experience, pirates would designate two main checks on their

captain: a quartermaster, and a “common council”. The quartermaster served as a representative

of the average crew member, and held for the crew “a supremely valued position of trust,

authority, and power,” (Rediker, 66). His role would be to evenly distribute wages and, in some

cases, “veto” the captain’s decisions. Yet the ultimate authority aboard a pirate vessel was a

council of the whole crew, which would itself determine the most important issues, like whether

or not to attack a ship. These ideas of multiple branches of government were later clearly

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expressed in Enlightenment philosophe Montesquieu’s political theories, which were applied in

Revolutionary America. In this way, pirates were more than a half-century ahead of their time.

So, if the pirate community was actually generally progressive, why were they so

branded in their time as agents of terror? The answer is simple: they were. The Jolly Roger they

hoisted before approaching their victims and their warning shots they fired were clearly methods

of instilling dread in the hearts of the merchants aboard the ships they were to raid. How does

this seemingly barbarous quality of pirates meld with

their relatively humane society? First, “Pirates preferred

their prey to surrender without a shot, so that no person

or any valuable goods were damaged,” (Smithsonian).

If at all possible, pirates would not risk the destruction

of the plunder, be it the provisions inside the ship or the

ship itself, or, more importantly, the destruction of the

lives of their crewmembers. Therefore, pirates took a tip

from “Black Sam” Bellamy, of the ship the Whydah,

whose crew in one of their first captures had “gone into battle looking like they were capable of

anything, and, as a result, they hadn’t had to do anything at all. For Bellamy, it was a lesson…

that fear can be the most powerful of weapons,” (Woodard, 129). Bellamy lost no cargo or men

that day. Perhaps the most enduring image of pirates’ terror is that of Blackbeard: who would

braid lit fuses into his beard to create a terrifying wreath of smoke around his head during battle.

Finally, the pirates had no quarrel with the sailors aboard the ships they were to plunder, only

with the men at the top of the twisted and aristocratic chain of command—the merchant captains,

who selfishly hoarded profits and enriched themselves at the expense of their crews.

Fig. 6: Blackbeard, an agent of terror

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This whole theory of “wealth at another’s expense” was the direct spawn of mercantilism,

a delicate system which the pirates manipulated and turned against its users—the European

empires. The Western Heritage defines mercantilism as an:

“Economic theory in which governments heavily regulated economic activity and

promoted empires in order to produce a positive balance of trade… for a favorable trade

balance siphoned gold and silver away from trading partners.”

(Kagan et al., 397)

Through their severe impact on Atlantic trade from around 1715 to 1726, pirates demonstrated

the destructive side of mercantilism. They would take wealth from megaliths like the British

Empire to bolster their own lives—and in this, they were ruthless: “Unlike navies and privateers,

pirates routinely sunk or burned their prizes, which increased… short- and long-term economic

losses.” The end of the Golden Age of piracy had already seen “a total of more than 2,400

vessels captured and plundered” (Rediker, 33-34). The pirates succeeded at “siphoning” wealth

away from European trade routes, and, as a result, a pirate haven of sorts had thrived for a short

period in the mid-to-late 1710s.

Castaways

This haven, referred to colloquially as the “Flying Gang”, really was, as historian Colin

Woodard has described it, a “Republic of Pirates”: a very nation to itself. It was here where the

social developments of pirates were applied and expressed in the form of a city for an illustrious

instant in time. This community was founded by Benjamin Hornigold in the summer of 1713

when he and some accomplices, as mentioned earlier, disregarded the Treaty of Utrecht and

sailed to Nassau in the Bahamas to prey on Spanish trade passing nearby. His partner, John

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Cockram, established ties with nearby merchants on Eleuthera Island, thereby creating a middle-

man between the Flying Gang and the rest of the world through which to do trade and gain

wealth. Before long, the community grew on itself, attracting peoples who, previously beaten to

the bottom of the status-quo social hierarchy, saw restitution with the libertarian community of

pirates. Because of this, New Providence, the island on which Nassau was built, “became a

sanctuary for runaway slaves and free mulattos alike,” (Woodard, 159) in a time when elsewhere

in European colonies, blacks were enslaved an oppressed. These Africans mixed, unimpeded,

with a wide array of Europeans, including those from Spain, France, England, and Holland,

making a total of around 1000 people at the community’s height. The Bahamian pirate republic

was becoming a true melting-pot, a camp of hopeful refugees.

Fig. 7: The Bahamas, a "nest for pyrates"

Here in Nassau, “Jamaica Discipline”, or the “Law of Privateers” was likely applied from

the decks of pirate ships. This code of rules “featured democratic controls on authority”, and,

perhaps most radical, “provision for the injured” (Rediker, 62): a welfare system in the early

1700s. This unprecedented care for the individual was clearly expressed when, in early 1717,

Hornigold and Blackbeard scoured the Florida Straits for medical attention for an ill crewman,

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an average sailor (Woodard, 162). This “all for one, one for all” mentality is what underscored

life in the “nest for pyrates” (Woodard, 98) in the Bahamas. In a pirate community such as

Nassau, an “equitable distribution of plunder” (Rediker, 70) would have been commonplace,

adapted from the system of a communal chest of loot aboard a pirate ship: after all, pirates

thought themselves “to be the Robin Hoods men”, according to merchant Thomas Checkley

(Rediker, 85). To those acclimated with a life in a modern democracy, the pirates’ Nassau might

seem like anarchy—“Amid the palms… rose… a hundred huts, tents, and hovels. Most of these

were made from whatever was handy: driftwood, old spars, decking, and worm-eaten hulls…”

(Woodard, 139)—but the residents of Nassau were living a life of, to them, inconceivable liberty

and happiness. Theirs was a social piracy; they took from the rich and gave to the poor:

themselves. This social piracy inspired the Romantic admiration of men in their time, which

lived on in the American Revolution, later in the development of communism, and even today, in

elaborate film franchises which intrigue our spirits to route for the underdogs, the pirates.

Conclusion

This Romantic life of freedom in the Bahamas, however, was regrettably ephemeral. On

September 5th

, 1717, King George of Great Britain declared, in “A Proclamation for Suppressing

of Pirates” (Rediker, 138), amnesty for pirates in Nassau, should they wish to accept it. Bearing

this message of redemption was Woodes Rogers, who arrived in the Bahamas in July of 1718. It

was this simple abstract idea of amnesty which led to the downfall of the Atlantic Golden Age of

piracy. It “split the pirates’ ranks, causing the surrender of a great many their best leaders and the

scattering of so many others,” (Woodard, 248), and though many pirates, such as Bartholomew

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Roberts and Jack Rackham, escaped and furthered the Flying Gang’s ideas of democracy and

class equality aboard their ships, they were soon hunted down and hanged.

Nevertheless, publications such as Daniel Defoe’s A General History of the Pyrates

immortalized the Romantic ideals and impact the “desperate Rogues” had on the previously

seemingly-invincible tyrannical empires of Europe—ideals and impacts which would be

mirrored by events such as the American Revolution and, later, Marxism. For a fleeting breadth

of history, the individual crew member of a pirate ship truly mattered, and as a result, pirates all

mattered, as one: together as the Flying Gang. We root for them today in movies like Pirates of

the Caribbean because they were the underdogs: courageous, perhaps ignorant, men who

endeavored to challenge on the force kings in the name of all those oppressed. They might have

failed. But their vision took hold—today, Nassau once again is a haven for people of all classes

and races, as is a good portion of the world. First world countries, in a way, all live under the

black flag, but not one of terror and violence: one of freedom, and hope, for the everyman.

Bibliography

Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Boston: Beacon,

2004. Print.

Kagan, Donald, Ozment Steven, and Turner M. Frank. The Western Heritage. 6th ed. Vol. 2.

Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2010. Print.

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Woodard, Colin. The Republic of Pirates. Orlando: Harcourt, 2007. Print.

Minster, Christopher. "The Golden Age of Piracy." About.com Latin American History.

About.com, n.d. Web. 6 Apr. 2013.

<http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/TheGoldenAgeofPiracy1700-1725/a/The-Golden-

Age-Of-Piracy.htm>.

Woodard, Colin. "The Republic of Pirates." Colin Woodard, n.d. Web.

<http://www.republicofpirates.net/index.html>.

"Pirates in the Atlantic World." On the Water. Smithsonian National Museum of American

History, n.d. Web. 7 Apr. 2013. <http://amhistory.si.edu/onthewater/exhibition/1_5.html>.

Ossian, Robert. "Woodes Rogers." The Pirate King. N.p., n.d. Web.

<http://www.thepirateking.com/bios/rogers_woodes.htm>.

Greenspan, Jesse. "8 Real-Life Pirates Who Roved the High Seas." History.com. A&E

Television Networks, 19 Sept. 2012. Web. 6 Apr. 2013. <http://www.history.com/news/8-real-

life-pirates-who-roved-the-high-seas>.

Picture Citations

Fig. 1: The Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard;

http://www.magnoliabox.com/art/103330/The_Capture_of_the_Pirate_Blackbeard_1718

Fig. 2: Portrait of Charles I; http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/STUcharles1.htm

Fig. 3: Henry Morgan; http://www.history.com/news/8-real-life-pirates-who-roved-the-high-seas

Fig. 4: Flag of Walter Kennedy; http://worldmythtory.blogspot.com/2012/08/pirates.html

Fig. 5: Bartholomew Roberts;

http://www.wwnorton.com/college/english/nael/18century/topic_4/illustrations/imroberts.htm

Fig. 6: Blackbeard’s smoking facial hair; http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/11274

Fig. 7: “a nest for pyrates”; http://www.sailingthetanqueray.com/2012/03/and-were-back.html