Golden Age of Piracy

A painting depicting the era.

The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation given to one or more outbursts of piracy in the early modern period. In its broadest accepted definition, the Golden Age of Piracy spans from the 1650s to the 1720s and covers three separate outbursts of piracy: 1) the buccaneering period of approximately 1650 to 1680, characterized by Anglo-French seamen based on Jamaica and Tortuga attacking Spanish colonies and shipping in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, 2) the Pirate Round of the 1690s, associated with long-distance voyages from Bermuda and the Americas to rob Muslim and East India Company targets in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, and 3) the post-Spanish Succession period, defined by Marcus Rediker as extending from 1716 to 1726, when Anglo-American sailors and privateers left unemployed by the end of the War of the Spanish Succession turned en masse to piracy in the Caribbean, the American eastern seaboard, the West African coast, and the Indian Ocean. Narrower definitions of the Golden Age sometimes exclude the first or second periods, but most include at least some portion of the third.

The modern conception of pirates as depicted in popular culture is derived largely, though not always accurately, from the Golden Age of Piracy.

Factors contributing to piracy during the Golden Age included the rise in quantities of valuable cargoes being shipped to Europe over vast ocean areas, reduced European navies in certain regions, the training and experience that many sailors had gained in European navies (particularly the Royal Navy), and ineffective government in European overseas colonies.

Historiography

The term "Golden Age of Piracy" is an invention of historians, and was never used by anyone who lived through the period that the name denotes.^[1]

Origin

The oldest known literary mention of a "golden age" of piracy is from 1894, when English journalist George Powell wrote about "what appears to have been the golden age of piracy up to the last decade of the seventeenth century."^[2] Powell uses the phrase while reviewing Charles Leslie's A New and Exact History of Jamaica, then over 150 years old, and refers mostly to such 1660s events as Henry Morgan's attacks on Maracaibo and Portobelo and Bartolomeu Portugues's famous escape. Powell uses the phrase only once.

In 1897, a more systematic use of the phrase "Golden Age of Piracy" was introduced by historian John Fiske, who wrote: "At no other time in the world's history has the business of piracy thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth. Its golden age may be said to have extended from about 1650 to about 1720."^[3] Fiske included the activities of the Barbary corsairs, and East Asian pirates in this "Golden Age," noting that "as these Mussulman pirates and those of Eastern Asia were as busily at work in the seventeenth century as at any other time, their case does not impair my statement that the age of the buccaneers was the Golden Age of piracy."^[4] Fiske does not cite Powell or any other source for the concept of a "Golden Age."

Pirate historians of the first half of the 20th century occasionally adopted Fiske's term "Golden Age," without necessarily following his beginning and ending dates for it.^[5] The most expansive definition of an age of piracy was that of Patrick Pringle, who wrote in 1951 that "the most flourishing era in the history of piracy . . . began in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and ended in the second decade of the eighteenth century."^[6] This idea starkly contradicted Fiske, who had hotly denied that such Elizabethan figures as Drake were pirates.^[7]

Trend toward narrow definitions

However, Pringle appears to be an exception to an overall trend from 1909 until the 1990s toward narrowing the Golden Age. As early as 1924, Philip Gosse described piracy as being at its height "from 1680 until 1730." In his highly popular 1978 book The Pirates for TimeLife's The Seafarers series, Douglas Botting defined the Golden Age as lasting "barely 30 years, starting at the close of the 17th Century and ending in the first quarter of the 18th."^[8] Botting's definition was closely followed by Frank Sherry in 1986.^[9] In a 1989 academic article, Professor Marcus Rediker defined the Golden Age as lasting only from 1716 to 1726.^[10] Angus Konstam in 1998, reckoned the era as lasting from 1700 until 1730.^[11]

Perhaps the ultimate step in restricting the Golden Age was in Konstam's 2005 The History of Pirates, in which he retreated from his own earlier definition, called a 1690-1730 definition of the Golden Age "generous," and concluded that "The worst of these pirate excesses was limited to an eight-year period, from 1714 until 1722, so the true Golden Age cannot even be called a 'golden decade.'"^[12]

Recent countertrend toward broader meaning

David Cordingly, in his influential 1995 work Under the Black Flag, defined the "great age of piracy" as lasting from the 1650s to around 1725, very close to Fiske's definition of the Golden Age.^[13]

Rediker, in 2004, described the most complex definition of the Golden Age to date. He proposes a "golden age of piracy, which spanned the period from roughly 1650 to 1730," which he subdivides into three distinct "generations": the buccaneers of 1650-80, the Indian Ocean pirates of the 1690s, and the pirates of the years 1716-1726.^[14]

Rediker's is probably the most current academic definition of the Golden Age. The popular definition can only be called confused.

Origins

Some historians mark the beginning of the Golden Age of Piracy at around 1650, when the end of the Wars of Religion allowed European countries to resume the development of their colonial empires. This involved considerable seaborne trade, and a general economic improvement: there was money to be made—or stolen—and much of it traveled by ship.

In 1713, a succession of peace treaties was signed, known as the Treaty of Utrecht, which ended the War of the Spanish Succession (also called 'Queen Anne's War'). With the end of this conflict, thousands of seamen, including Britain's paramilitary privateers, were relieved of military duty. The result was a large number of trained, idle sailors at a time when the cross-Atlantic colonial shipping trade was beginning to boom. In addition, Europeans who had been pushed by unemployment to become sailors and soldiers involved in slaving were often enthusiastic to abandon that profession and turn to pirating, giving pirate captains for many years a constant pool of trained European recruits to be found in west African waters and coasts.

Triangular trade

Trafficking on shipping lanes between Africa, the Caribbean, and Europe began to soar in the 18th century, a model that was known as triangular trade, and was a rich target for piracy. Trade ships sailed from Europe to the African coast, trading manufactured goods and weapons for slaves. The traders would then sail to the Caribbean to sell the slaves, and return to Europe with goods such as sugar, tobacco and cocoa. Another triangular trade saw ships carry raw materials, preserved cod, and rum to Europe, where a portion of the cargo would be sold for manufactured goods, which (along with the remainder of the original load) were transported to the Caribbean, where they were exchanged for sugar and molasses, which (with some manufactured articles) were borne to New England. Ships in the triangular trade made money at each stop.^[15]

As part of the war's settlement, Britain obtained the asiento, a Spanish government contract, to supply slaves to Spain's new world colonies, providing British traders and smugglers more access to the traditionally closed Spanish markets in America. This arrangement also contributed heavily to the spread of piracy across the western Atlantic at this time. Shipping to the colonies boomed simultaneously with the flood of skilled mariners after the war. Merchant shippers used the surplus of sailors' labor to drive wages down, cutting corners to maximize their profits, and creating unsavory conditions aboard their vessels. Merchant sailors suffered from mortality rates as high or higher than the slaves being transported (Rediker, 2004). Living conditions were so poor that many sailors began to prefer a freer existence as a pirate. The increased volume of shipping traffic also could sustain a large body of brigands preying upon it.

Pirates of the era

Blackbeard's severed head hanging from Maynard's bowsprit

Many of the most well known pirates in historical lore originate from this Golden Age of Piracy.

• Henry Morgan, a buccaneer who raided the Spaniards and took the city of Panama. He was to be executed in England but was instead knighted and made governor of Jamaica. He died a natural death in 1688.
• William "Captain" Kidd, who was executed for piracy at Execution Dock, London in 1701, is famous for the 'buried treasure' he is supposed to have left behind.
• "Black Sam" Bellamy, captain of the Whydah Gally, who was lost in a storm in 1717.
• Stede Bonnet, a rich Barbadian land owner, turned pirate solely in search of adventure. Bonnet captained a 10-gun sloop, named the Revenge, raiding ships off the Virginia coast in 1717. He was caught and hanged in 1718.
• Edward Teach, more commonly known as Blackbeard, ruled the seas with an iron fist from 1716 to 1718 as perhaps the most famous pirate in the Western Hemisphere. Blackbeard's most famous ship was the Queen Anne's Revenge, in response to the end of Queen Anne's War. Blackbeard was killed by one of Lieutenant Robert Maynard's crewmen in 1718.
• Calico Jack Rackham, was captured, then hanged and gibbeted outside Port Royal, Jamaica in 1720.
• Bartholomew Roberts, sometimes called "Black Bart", has been considered by many as the most successful pirate of all time. He was killed off the coast of Africa in 1722.
• Edward Low, active 1721–1724, who was notorious for torturing his victims before killing them.
• William Fly, whose execution in 1726 is used by historian Marcus Rediker to mark the end of the Golden Age of Pirates.

Female pirates

Women entered the career of piracy as well (most usually disguised as men). Some of the best-known female pirates were Calico Jack Rackham's cohorts, Anne Bonney (also sometimes spelled Bonny) and Mary Read.

Bonney grew up ferocious, and, unable to leave an earlier marriage, eloped with Rackham, with whom she was in love. Mary Read had been dressed as a boy all her life by her mother, and had spent time in the British military. She came to the West Indies (Caribbean) after the death of her husband, and fell in with Calico Jack and Anne Bonney.^{[citation needed]}

When their ship was assaulted, the two women were the only ones that defended it. The other crew members were too drunk to fight. In the end they were captured and arrested.^{[citation needed]}

After their capture, both women stalled their death sentences (the punishment for piracy) by claiming to be pregnant. Read died in jail, many believe of a fever or complications of childbirth. Bonney disappears from the record entirely.

Barbary pirates

Cornelis Hendricksz Vroom, Spanish Men-of-War Engaging Barbary Corsairs, 1615.

The Barbary pirates were pirates and privateers that operated from the North African (the "Barbary coast") ports of Tunis, Tripoli, Algiers, Salé and ports in Morocco, preying on shipping in the western Mediterranean Sea from the time of the Crusades as well as on ships on their way to Asia around Africa until the early 19th century. The coastal villages and towns of Italy, Spain and Mediterranean islands were frequently attacked by them and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants; since the 17th century, Barbary pirates occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland. According to Robert Davis,^[16][17] between 1 million and 1.25 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in the Arab world between the 16th and 19th centuries.

The early 17th century may be described as the flowering time of the Barbary pirates. This is because the introduction of new sailing rigs by Simon de Danser enabled the North African raiders, for the first time, to brave the Atlantic as well as Mediterranean waters. More than 20,000 captives were said to be imprisoned in Algiers alone. The rich were allowed to redeem themselves, but the poor were condemned to slavery. Their masters would on occasion allow them to secure freedom by professing Islam. A long list might be given of people of good social position, not only Italians or Spaniards, but also German and English travelers in the south, who were captives for a time.^[18]

Iceland was subject to raids known as the Turkish abductions in 1627. Murat Reis (Jan Janszoon) is said to have taken 400 prisoners; 242 of the captives later were sold into slavery on the Barbary Coast. The pirates took only young people and those in good physical condition. All those offering resistance were killed, and the old people were gathered into a church which was set on fire. Among those captured was Ólafur Egilsson, who was ransomed the next year and, upon returning to Iceland, wrote a slave narrative about his experience. Another famous captive from that raid was Guðríður Símonardóttir. The sack of Vestmannaeyjar is known in the history of Iceland as Tyrkjaránið.

One of the stereotypical features of a pirate in popular culture, the eye patch, dates back to the Arab pirate Rahmah ibn Jabir al-Jalahimah, who wore it after losing an eye in battle in the 18th century.^[19]

While the Golden Age of European and American pirates is generally considered to have ended between 1710 and 1730, the prosperity of the Barbary pirates continued until the early 19th century. Unlike the European powers, the young United States refused to pay tribute to the Barbary states, and responded with naval attacks against North Africa when the Barbary pirates captured and enslaved American sailors. Although the U.S. met with only limited success in these wars, France and Great Britain with their more powerful navies soon followed suit and stamped out the Barbary raiders.

Effect on Popular Culture

Although the details are often misremembered, the effect upon popular culture of the Golden Age of Piracy can hardly be overstated. Such literary works as Treasure Island and Peter Pan, while romanticized, drew heavily on pirates and piracy for their plots. In turn, they helped implant an (often inaccurate) image of old-time pirates in contemporary minds.^[20]

More recently, even less accurate depictions of historical-era pirates (e.g., Jack Sparrow and Talk Like a Pirate Day) have advanced to the forefront. However, these phenomena have only served to advance the romantic image of piracy and its treasure-burying swashbucklers in popular culture.^[21]

Decline

By the early 1700s tolerance for privateers was wearing thin by all nations. After the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, the excess of trained sailors without employment was both a blessing and a curse for all pirates. Initially the surplus of men had caused the number of pirates to multiply significantly. This inevitably led to the pillaging of more ships, which put a greater strain on trade for all European nations. In response European nations bolstered their own navies to offer greater protection for merchants and to hunt down pirates. The excess of skilled sailors meant there was a large pool that could be recruited into a nation’s navy as well. Piracy was clearly on a strong decline by 1720. The Golden Age of Piracy didn’t last the decade.

See also

• Piracy in the Caribbean

References

• Rediker, Marcus. Villains of all Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age. Beacon Press: Boston (2004).
• Adams, Cecil. "The Straight Dope: Did pirates bury their treasure? Did pirates really make maps where 'X marks the spot'?" October 5, 2007.
• Adams, Cecil. "The Straight Dope: Why are pirates depicted with a parrot on their shoulder? What's the origin of the skull and crossbones pirate flag?" October 12, 2007.
• Rediker, Marcus. “Pirates and the Imperial State.“ Reviews in American History 16.3 (1988) : 351-357
• Swanson, Carl E. “American Privateering and Imperial Warfare, 1739-1748.” The William and Mary Quarterly 42.3 (1985) : 357-382

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Piracy

• Paul Gilbert, "Historiography of the Golden Era of Anglo-American Piracy in the Atlantic 1680–1730"
• "The Golden Age of Piracy" from The Mel Fisher Maritime Heritage Society
• Cindy Vallar, "The Golden Age of Piracy"
• A short history of the Golden Age of Piracy
• The UnMuseum, "The Golden Age of Piracy"
• History of Piracy