The Caribbean in times of the Spanish Empire was a very busy space. There the commercial routes that linked the new and the old continents were knotted, so, in addition to the ships loaded with precious metals and merchandise, pirates and privateers proliferated who tried to capture them.
Between 1716 and 1720, piracy reached such proportions that the authorities were overwhelmed by the situation. Meanwhile, the pirates improvised in the Bahamas an alternative society that defied all the conventions of the time: egalitarian, democratic, multicultural, without social classes, nor differences of race or gender.
A society that, despite the cruelty and atrocities committed by its members, fascinates and has been feeding the popular imagination for three centuries, as proven by the success of the Pirates of the Caribbean saga or, more recently, the series Our Flag Means Death (HBO Max ) and One Piece (Netflix).
At that time, European empires fought to expand their domains and control the seas and trade routes. Since wars are very expensive, all of them were in debt and desperate to find a way to keep their creditors at ease.
The solution would have been to take over the main source of wealth of their enemies, that is, their colonial territories, but, in the meantime, they were content with looting the ships that transported metal and merchandise. It wasn’t ideal, but at least it was a way to harass them and get some money to get by.
Since arming and maintaining a fleet cost a fortune, kings used to hire privateers, private vessels to which the Crown gave a letter of marque to dock enemy ships on their behalf. The loot was then distributed among those who had “invested” in the mission, that is, between the Crown itself, the shipowners and the sailors.
In the fleets of those over-indebted empires, sailors lived in unhealthy conditions, ate little and poorly, and salaries were often paid very late, sometimes with vouchers to be collected who knows when and how. So sailors themselves were candidates for pirates, as were runaway slaves, merchants, or impoverished or indebted peasants.
In practice, there were no differences between pirates and privateers. All of them were dedicated to intimidation and theft, only some did it on their own and for their benefit and the others on behalf of the Crown they represented.
The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) marked the end of the War of Succession and hostilities between the main European powers, as well as the business for privateers. The peace also left thousands of soldiers without means of livelihood. The historian Colin Woodard explains in The Real Pirates of the Caribbean (2011) that, in just twenty-four months, the British Navy got rid of 36,000 troops and that, with so many sailors unemployed, salaries fell precipitously.
The result? Even those who found work were hungry, so they were also candidates for piracy. In short, the docks were full of “sea proletarians” without a job or benefit and resentful of the authorities and the system that had exploited them and then left them abandoned. The obvious response to these circumstances was to join criminal gangs.
The Bahamas were one of the theaters of the War of Succession in the Caribbean. Nassau had been left in ruins after being sacked by the French and Spanish four times, and Benjamin Hornigold (an ex-privateer turned pirate) and his men settled there in 1713.
It was the perfect place, with many corners to hide, in the passage of the ships returning to Europe. They had to cross the Strait of Florida to reach the Gulf Stream that would facilitate their return home. The Spanish fleets that departed from Veracruz and Portobelo passed through there, transporting precious metals and merchandise to the peninsula, but also the Spanish ships or ships from other nations that came from Santo Domingo or Jamaica loaded with “white gold” (sugar) and other products. .
Hornigold was a pirate, but he had his principles: he resisted attacking British ships. His crew members agreed at first, but then changed their minds. They saw no reason to refrain from plundering the British, who, in their opinion, deserved no mercy. Hornigold lost popularity among his men, some of whom left the gang to operate on his account.
According to Captain Charles Johnson (the pseudonym behind which Daniel Defoe hid), several famous pirates emerged from Hornigold’s ranks. Among them, Edward Teach (or Thatch), alias Blackbeard, one of the most feared, who wore a very thick beard and, before attacking, used to place lit candles or pieces of rope in it. Enveloped in a cloud of smoke, he looked like a ferocious demon straight out of hell. His victims were paralyzed by terror.
Little by little, the islands became a refuge for various bands of pirates and a unique territory, in which there were no castes or social distinctions. They were all the same. In most of the gangs there were Africans, for example, and in Blackbeard’s they were the vast majority.
They also had some individuals from the other end of the social spectrum, such as Stede Bonnet (the “gentleman”), owner of a sugar plantation, who belonged to a well-established family and decided to leave everything to try his fortune as a pirate. As did Paulsgrave Williams, who also came from a rich lineage of British nobility.
Nationality was also not valid as a discrimination criterion. Thus, the Frenchman Olivier La Buse operated together with Hornigold, and testimonies suggest that all the gangs brought together people of different origins.
Furthermore, the documentation mentions at least two women among the pirates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny. According to Defoe, both were reckless fighters and were pregnant when they were captured, which was an excuse to postpone the execution.
Another legendary pirate was the fearsome Black Sam (Samuel Bellamy, who gave rise to the character of Bellamy the Hyena in One Piece), who was said to have already captured at least fifty ships before the age of twenty-nine. His crew called themselves “Robin Hood’s men.”
When the pirates flew the Jolly Roger – the flag with a skull on a black background that warned the opponent that they should surrender or die, or, the even more fearsome one, the skull on a red background (all-out fight, no one would come out alive) – , they did not consider themselves criminals or thieves, but rather they felt that they were taking their just revenge against shipowners, captains and society in general, which had abused them.
Logically, the authorities did everything possible to intimidate them. When they captured them, they organized spectacular executions, but they didn’t care. They knew well the life and sacrifices that corresponded to their place in traditional society, so they didn’t care. In his opinion, an intense and short but good life was better than a long, painful and boring life. They knew the price to pay if they were captured, and they assumed it in advance.
The historian Marcus Rediker recounts in Villains of all Nations (2004) the case of the pirate Fly, who, at the moment he was going to be hanged, boldly told his executioner that he was not doing his job well and that his It wasn’t a good slipknot. He offered to teach him how to do it and, with complete calm, he himself knotted the rope with which they would hang him. The attendees were stunned.
In 1717, the islands were already home to between three and four thousand pirates, who were having a great time. Abundant food, drink, parties and loot and high morale, as told by the captives who survived.
The organization, inspired by military life, was very hierarchical and orderly, but with an essential difference: the boss was thanks to the consensus among his subordinates and the loot was distributed equally. Another detail: if someone was seriously injured or lost a limb, they received help from the community, which could reach considerable sums.
The democratic sense among pirates has caused rivers of ink to flow and led several historians to see a kind of republic in pirate society. Probably, it was more similar to anarchy or a federation of pirate gangs, with their own codes.
That did not prevent, as in any community, conflicts and betrayals from occurring, such as when, as Defoe relates, Bellamy and Williams escaped after a robbery to meet with Hornigold, taking, in the process, Henry Jennings’s loot.
The authorities felt helpless. Pirate actions discouraged naval officers from pursuing them, impeded trade, interrupted communications and, if that were not enough, exposed them to the risk of losing their colonies.
Woodard mentions that as early as 1716 the governor of Jamaica complained that pirates captured more than half of the ships. The British Navy, even diminished by budgetary and logistical issues, was still the most powerful in the world, and yet it was powerless against the pirates.
The practical solution to deactivate them came from Woodes Rogers, a former slave trader and privateer, who proposed that they be pardoned in exchange for abandoning their activities before January 1, 1718. The France of Louis XIV made a similar proposal: amnesty, on the condition of leaving piracy and settling in America.
That ploy worked, as it divided pirate society. Rediker explains that the war became more savage and cruel from then on, in a kind of dialectic of terror between the Navy and the pirates. In mid-1718, the British took control of Jamaica, with the support of some expirites such as Hornigold and Jennings, who had availed themselves of the pardon. In 1726 the last executions were recorded. The problem was already solved.
In reality, the Caribbean islands remained under pirate rule for less than a decade. The experience did not last long, but it allowed us to see that societies and ships could function according to a logic and discipline different from the usual ones.
