Pirates: A History by Travers Tim

Author:Travers, Tim [Travers, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780752488271
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-06-10T23:00:00+00:00

7

Death to the Pirates

In the western world of the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and along the coasts of the Americas, government forces were engaged in a concentrated campaign of suppression against the pirates in the period from roughly 1700 to the mid 1720s. Traders, merchants, slavers, and colonial governors combined to put pressure on governments to try to put an end to piracy in the West Indies and the Caribbean in this period, and an improved Royal Navy made this possible. It is too much to say that ‘Piracy would come to an end by 1726’, since there were occasional pirate attacks throughout the eighteenth century, and a very considerable resurgence of piracy in the early 1820s in the West Indies, to say nothing of what was happening in eastern seas. But certainly most of the well known western pirates of the early 1700s would come to an unfortunate end – with perhaps 500–600 Anglo-American pirates being executed between 1716 and 1726. Some 2,000 pirates were operating at any one time during the ‘golden age’ of piracy from the 1680s to the mid 1720s, and it is estimated that altogether around 5,000 pirates went ‘on account’ over this time frame. Rather than try to follow all their stories, it will be useful to focus on just three of the best known pirates of this time – Blackbeard, or Edward Teach, who was killed in 1718; ‘Calico’ Jack Rackam, who was hanged in 1720; and Bartholomew Roberts, who was killed in 1722.1

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