Chapter XVI

THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRATES. The business of piracy has never thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century 338 Pompey and the pirates 338 Chinese and Malay pirates on the Indian Ocean and Mussulman pirates on the Mediterranean Sea 339 The Scandinavian Vikings cannot properly be termed pirates 339, 340 Sir William Blackstone's remarks about piracy 340 Character of piracy 341 To call the Elizabethan sea-kings pirates is silly and outrageous 341, 342 Features of maritime warfare out of which piracy could grow 342, 343 Privateering 343 Fighting without declaring war 344 Lack of protection for neutral ships 344 Origin of buccaneering; "Brethren of the Coast" 345 Illicit traffic in the West Indies 346 Buccaneers and filibusters 347 The kind of people who became buccaneers 348 The honest man who took to buccaneering to satisfy his creditors 349 The deeds of Olonnois and other wretches 349, 350 Henry Morgan and his evil deeds 350, 351 Alexander Exquemeling and his entertaining book 352 How Morgan captured Maracaibo and Gibraltar in Venezuela 353 The treaty of America of 1670 for the suppression of buccaneering and piracy 353 Sack of Panama by Morgan and his buccaneers 354 How Morgan absconded with most of the booty 355 How English and Spanish governors industriously scotched the snake 355 How the chief of pirates became Sir Henry Morgan, deputy-governor of Jamaica, and hanged his old comrades or sold them to the Spaniards 356 How the treaty of America caused his downfall 357 Decline of buccaneering 357 Pirates of the South Sea 358, 359xv Plunder of Peruvian towns 360 Effects of the alliance between France and Spain in 1701 360 Pirates in the Bahama Islands and on the Carolina coast 361 Effect of the navigation laws in stimulating piracy 362, 363 Effect of rice culture upon the relations between South Carolina settlers and the pirates 363 Wholesale hanging of pirates at Charleston 364 How pirates swarmed on the North Carolina coast 365 Until Captain Woodes Rogers captured the Island of New Providence in 1718 365 The North Carolina waters furnished the last lair for the pirates 365 How Blackbeard, the last of the pirates, levied blackmail upon Charleston 366, 367 Epidemic character of piracy; cases of Kidd and Bonnet 368 Fate of Bonnet and Blackbeard, and final suppression of piracy 369