Woodes Rogers

Woodes Rogers (ca. 1679 – 15th July 1732) was an English sea captain and privateer, best remembered for leading the royal naval campaign to stamp out piracy in the Caribbean. 

Rogers was probably born in Poole, Dorset, and came from an affluent seafaring family. His father owned shares in many ships, and died in the first years of the 18th century, leaving Rogers control of the family shipping business. During the War of the Spanish Succession, Rogers was approached by Captain William Dampier, who sought backing for a privateering voyage. Rogers led the expedition, which consisted of two well-armed ships, the Duke and the Duchess, and captained the Duke himself. Rogers spent three years travelling the world, raiding Spanish towns and capturing vessels in the Pacific. On the 1st of February, 1709, the Duke rescued the marooned Alexander Selkirk from Juan Fernandez Island, who became the inspiration for Robinson Crusoe.  When the expedition returned to England in October 1711, Rogers had circumnavigated the globe, while retaining his original ships and most of his men, and the investors in the expedition doubled their money.

Rogers was wounded and his brother killed in combat in the Pacific, and on his return was sued by his crew, who protested that they had not received a fair share of the profits, bankrupting him and his business. In 1713, Rogers attempted to rebuild his finances by leading an expedition against pirates. He sailed to Madagascar, ostensibly to buy slaves to sell in the Dutch East Indies, but used the voyage to gather intelligence about pirates in the area. Finding many of the pirates had gone native, Rogers persuaded many of them to sign a petition asking Queen Anne for clemency. On his profitable return to London in 1715, the British East India Company vetoed Rogers' appeal to lead a colonial expedition to Madagascar, believing a colony there would pose a greater threat to its monopoly than the pirates and tribes that currently inhabited the island.
Therefore, Rogers turned his attention to the West Indies, and negotiated an agreement for a company to manage the Bahamas, which was famous for being "without face or form of government" as well as being a pirate haven. In 1718, Rogers was officially appointed governor of the Bahamas, and the King's Pardon was announced, promising clemency for all pirates who surrendered within eight months. Rogers spent several months preparing the expedition, amassing a force of seven ships, 100 soldiers, 130 colonists, and a vast range of supplies including religious pamphlets to give to the pirates, whom Rogers believed would respond to spiritual teachings. On the 22nd of April 1718, the expedition, accompanied by three Royal Navy vessels, sailed out of the Thames.

The expedition arrived exactly three months later in Nassau, surprising the town's de facto ruler, Charles Vane as he was returning from sea. When negotiations failed, Vane launched a fireship at the British vessels, forcing them out of the harbour. This gave Vane time to land and gather supplies and organise their escape. Vane and his men slipped out of the harbour on a small sloop, evading Rogers' trap but surrendering the island to his control. At the time, the island's population consisted of about two hundred former pirates and several hundred fugitives who had escaped from nearby Spanish colonies. Rogers organised a local government, granted the King's Pardon to those former pirates on the island who had not yet accepted it, and started to rebuild the island's fortifications, which had fallen into ruin under the pirates.

However, Rogers didn't have time to get comfortable, and suffered a myriad of setbacks. Within a month Vane had written to him, threatening to join forces with Blackbeard to retake the island. To make matters worse, the Spanish were also mounting a force to drive the British from the Bahamas. Disease ravaged his expedition team, an unknown sickness killed almost one hundred of those who had come with him from England, but the long-standing residents of the island appeared to be almost completely immune. The three royal navy vessels, having completed their escort and having no orders to remain, eventually left the island. An envoy ship sent to conciliate with the Spanish governor of Havana failed to arrive, its crew rebelling and turning pirate mid-voyage. Renovation of the islands fortifications proved slow going, as the local residents were disinclined to work for him.

In September, Rogers sent ex-pirate Benjamin Hornigold, who had secretly accepted the King's Pardon to gather intelligence on Vane and if possible bring him to battle. Rogers also declared martial law and set all islanders to work rebuilding the fortifications. Hornigold failed to learn anything about Vane, and in December was sent to recover the ship that had turned pirate en route to Havana, and returned with ten prisoners and three corpses. Eight of the men were hanged, and one of the condemned, Thomas Morris, said as he climbed the gallows, "we have a good governor, but a harsh one." Shortly after Christmas, a conspiracy to overthrow Rogers and restore piracy brewed, but it met with little support. The conspirators were flogged and released.

Rogers ordered many supplies on credit and accrued large debts, hoping the gamble would pay off in the long term for his creditors. He redoubled the efforts to fortify the island which proved invaluable when in February of 1720, the Spanish invaded. Being wary of the fortifications Rogers had built, they landed on nearby Paradise Island, only to be driven off by Rogers' troops. Vane never returned, having been deposed by his crew, he was later recognised and captured aboard another vessel, and was hanged in Jamaica the following year. Troubled by the lack of support and communication from London, Rogers set sail for Britain in March 1721. He arrived three months later to find that a new governor had been appointed, and his company had been liquidated. Personally liable for the obligations he had contracted at Nassau, he was imprisoned for debt. Rogers spent up to two years in prison, but at some point his creditors took pity on him and absolved his debt. Rogers was reappointed governor of the Bahamas in 1728, died in Nassau on the 15th of July, 1732. "Piracy expelled, commerce restored" remained the official motto of the Bahamas until its independence in 1973.

Anne Bonny

Anne Bonny (born Anna Cormac) was an Irish pirate born in Kinsale, County Cork in 1700. Very little is known of her life, but it is known that she was the bastard daughter of a lawyer, William Cormac, and his maidservant, Mary Brennan, conceived while Cormac's wife was ill and living with her Mother in Law.  Brennan also had a suitor, a young man who worked as a tanner in the town. The tanner used to call on the house when Cormac was out, and on one occasion, slipped three silver spoons into his pocket. Brennan soon noticed they were gone, and confronted him. Alarmed, he hid the spoons under Brennan's bedsheets. When Mrs. Cormac recovered from her illness and returned to the house, Brennan told her of the missing spoons. The tanner was called for, and claimed it was a jest, and told Mrs Cormac the spoons were in Brennan's bed. The matter was then settled, however Mrs. Cormac then realised that Brennan would surely have found the spoons if she had been sleeping in her own bed. She then left her husband, and Cormac and Brennan (who was pregnant) moved to Kinsale where Bonny was born.
They moved to Carolina when Bonny was 12, and her mother died shortly after. Her father failed to establish himself as a lawyer and joined a more profitable merchant business.
Bonny is said to have been a comely lass with red hair and a hot temper, and is said to have badly beaten a young man who tried to rape her, and he lay ill of it for a considerable time. Her father expected a good marriage for her, however at a young age she married James Bonny, a poor sailor and small-time pirate who hoped to inherit Cormac's estate, but Cormac disowned his daughter. The two moved to Nassau, a haven for pirates in the Caribbean. When Woodes Rogers arrived to quell the pirate fleets, James Bonny became his informant.

Once in Nassau, Bonny quickly tired of her husband and left him. It was then she met Captain "Calico" Jack Rackham, and became his lover and accomplice aboard the ship Revenge. She had a son by him in Cuba, who would take the name Cunningham, and once recovered, she returned to sea with Rackham. Reports say that Bonny was a competent pirate and skilled in combat, and Woodes Rogers included her name in a list in a 'Wanted Pirates' circular in the continent's only newspaper, The Boston News-Letter. It was then that she met "Mark" Read, a pirate in Rackham's crew, who she took a fancy to. After endeavouring to mate his better acquaintance, Mark revealed himself to be a woman, Mary Read. She revealed herself to Rackham also to calm his jealousy, but her identity remained a secret to all others.

When Rackham's crew was attacked by pirate hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet in 1720, most of the crew including Rackham were dead drunk, and only Read, Bonny, and one unnamed other stood on deck to fight the hunters. They were overwhelmed and taken to Jamaica for trial. Like Read, Bonny was pregnant at the time of her trial, and was able to "plead the belly" to stay her execution. Her last words to Rackham were, "I am sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you need not have been hang'd like a dog."

There is no historical record of what happened to Bonny after her imprisonment, only that she was never executed. Some speculate that her father ransomed her, or that she escaped, or that she lived out her days in jail, but nobody knows for sure.

The Caribbean

Without a doubt the most famous area for piracy has been The Caribbean, and this week I cover the rise and fall of the Caribbean pirates.

Piracy began in the Carribbean during the Anglo-Spanish War of the mid 17th Century, and privateers were enlisted by both sides to raid enemy ships and settlements. However at the conclusion of the war, with Spain and England technically at peace, a lot of privateers were put out of work, and either turned to piracy or were tempted by the French governors to lend their services to the French crown. Therefore, keeping English sailors in the Restoration inactive meant losing them to France, and so blind eyes were turned to various raids against the Spanish. One pirate captain who took advantage of this situation was Henry Morgan, who in 1668 launched several attacks on Spanish dominion without official condemnation. The English crown refused to condemn him, as he was helping to fill the pockets of many beached English adventurers throughout the West Indies, and averted the danger of them going over to France.
However in 1670, the Spanish officially recognised English dominion of Jamaica, and English ships were given free movement of the Caribbean. This led to a heavy decline in the number of illegal attacks, not just from the external politics of the European crowns, but also the domestic needs of the islanders. Sugar plantation owners, who had previously been accomplices in many illegal raids, now sought only peace and security, and feared reprisals for their part in the raids on neighbouring Spanish territories. Therefore, to distance themselves from the pirates with whom they had had dealings, they openly denounced these former watchmen of their coasts and violent defenders of English interests, and the pirates became personae non gratae in the West Indies. Another factor in the decision of the plantation owners to sever ties with the pirates may have been their continued disruption of the Spanish merchant vessels, who were now peaceful trading partners seeking English sugar.
Between pressure from the European crowns and being shunned by the plantations, piracy in the Carribbean declined and pirates shifted to easier areas of plunder. English and French buccaneers under the captains Coxon, Sharp and Cook discovered a convenient overland trail through the Isthmus to the South Pacific, and plundered enormous wealth from the undefended cities of the Pacific coast, and the English campaign in that area was the most famous and well documented voyage of the age. 
Piracy declined sharply in the new world in 1701, when the War of the Spanish Succession were declared, and the mobs of unemployed seamen found work in the naval and privateering services of their respective countries, and England offered a mass pardon for all pirates who agreed to participate in the war. During these years these enemies of all civilised people became privateering patriots, and piracy all but disappeared from the seas. When the Treaty of Utrecht was signed in 1713, the fleets were dispersed, and seamen were once again out of work. However, following this peace, the newly unemployed sailors found themselves bolstered by new armaments, larger Men-O'-War and changes in naval strategy, and these factors led to the greatest decade of pirate activity in modern history. With the peace between the European powers breeding much commerce and prosperity, the pirates of the Caribbean found easy plunder among the slow, poorly defended merchant vessels. In addition, the governors of the islands, through necessity as much as greed, continued to be casual over the commission and allegiance with captains of questionable character. Pirate ships remained largely unchallenged in the Caribbean, as naval captains were reluctant to attack well-armed and fiercely defended pirate vessels when there was no guarantee of capturing a treasure-laden prize that would justify the risk posed by attacking them.

The pirate fleets grew strong enough to rival the European powers, and pirate havens sprang up across the West Indies, a The most famous of the pirate havens was Nassau, a town that between 1703 and 1718, had no official governor and was not occupied by any European force, making in a main place for pirates operating in the area. The Governor of Bermuda stated that there were over 1000 pirates in Nassau and that they outnumbered the mere hundred inhabitants of the town. The pirates proclaimed Nassau a pirate republic, arguably the first modern democracy, and established themselves as "governors." By April 1718, Captain Woodes Rogers was dispatched from England with the sole purpose of ridding the Caribbean of pirates for good, and although general pardons were offered to pirates who peacefully surrendered, and bounties offered to those bringing them to justice, piracy continued to be so rife in the area that it all but paralysed trade in the West Indies. The English fleet eventually coaxed the pirates into submission, and with the symbolic death of the deadliest pirate of the day, Bartholomew Roberts, in 1722, the Golden Age of Piracy came to a close. Other examples of pirates that used Nassau as their base are Charles Vane, Thomas Barrow, Benjamin Hornigold, "Calico" Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and the infamous Blackbeard. I will write articles about all of them separately in following weeks.

Hope you enjoyed this week's instalment folks, come back next Wednesday for an article about Madagascan pirates - Captain