The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down

If you enjoyed the Starz show "Black Sails" you'll probably like this book. It tells the complete detailed story of how Woodes Rodgers took over Nassau and changed the lives of pirates in the Bahamas forever.

You might think a person interested in pirates would get into the historical records to learn more about those rough wanderers. Colin Woodard came at it from the other direction: he has a fascination with history and "got into" pirates as a vehicle to bring U.S. colonial history to life. "The Republic of Pirates" is the fascinating product of his research. Woodard focuses on what he calls "the Golden Age of Piracy," a ten-year period from 1715 to 1725. The few thousand men -- and a few women -- who populate this story were a different breed from the government-sanctioned privateers of earlier times. As Woodard describes them, they were " ... engaged in more than simple crime and undertook nothing less than a social and poitical revolt. They were sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves rebelling against their oppressors: captains, ship owners, and the autocrats of the great slave plantations of America and the West Indies." Some of them were set up as a rebel navy by supporters of James Stuart, the half-brother of Queen Anne, exiled after her death in 1714. Woodard's three main pirate subjects -- Samuel Bellamy, Charles Vane, and Edward "Black Beard" Thatch, grew up in an England made harsh for the lower classes by the waning of feudalism, the enclosure of public grazing land, and the flight from rural regions to London. The fourth focus of the book is Woodes Rogers, a Bahamian governor and former privateer who would eventually be the downfall of the pirates' Golden Age. Funded in part by the wreck of a great Spanish treasure fleet off Florida in 1715, the pirate bands began to congregate in the Bahamas and to grow in strength and daring. They roamed up and down the coast, finding safe harbor in Virginia, Long Island, Cape Cod, and the islands off the coast of Woodard's native Maine. While the pirate bands were based on a model of democratic decision-making and equal sharing of booty, Woodard leaves us with no doubt that life on the main was harsh and dangerous. "The Republic of Pirates" is a lively look at the realities of life in England and America in the eighteenth century, and is a great example of dry records and correspondence giving up their treasure to one who knows how to search them out. Colin Woodard is a native of the tiny Maine town where I live now and he spoke last year at the local library, a rare and precious event for the town. He lit the room up with his passion for those old days, both the wild adventures and the mundane relationships. Three hundred years ago -- but as real as yesterday in this wonderful book. Highly recommended to anyone who enjoys seeing history brought to life. Linda Bulger, 2008

Generally speaking, if you take a closer look at historical events such as the surge in piracy in the early 1700, you will find rational explanations for why they occurred. In the case of the pirates of the Caribbean, who threatened to shut down the shipping of at least three empires, a combination of factors came together which meant most sailors had little to lose and much to gain by turning pirate. This richer history is contained in "The Republic of Pirates" by Colin Woodward, a highly readable book that goes well beyond the old clichés of eye patches, parrots, and the throaty growl "argh." To start with, the overwhelming majority of the pirates came from the British Isles and a look at the conditions most people in Britain endured makes a mockery of the nickname merry old England. As the 1700s began, aristocrats began kicking tenant farmers off their lands so they could raise sheep and cattle swelling a tide of impoverished, rootless people flooding into the cities. By some estimates, up to half of Britain's six million people were living at or below subsistence. One surprising statistic in the book is the claim that members of the aristocracy and middle class stood an average of six inches taller than the underclass, a by product of the starvation endured by many. Both the Royal Navy and even regular merchant ships kidnapped men from the streets of the port cities and forced them to become sailors and then imposed a brutal discipline under which a ship's captain could mete of floggings with impunity. When the War of Spanish Succession, 1702-1713, broke out, the number of men forced to serve in the Royal Navy surged. Likewise, when peace came, the Royal Navy simply kicked the men of the ships with no thought of what the highly-trained sailors would do next. When Queen Anne died without an heir, the way was open to rival claimants to the throne. While George I took the throne, he faced uprisings in 1715 and 1719 intent on setting a Stuart king on the throne. These Jacobite uprisings provided a political rallying point for the pirates coalesce around. Finally, sailors of the day were very familiar with the story of Henry Avery, a pirate who raided the Moghul of India's treasure fleet in 1694. Avery's took a haul of treasure of mind-boggling proportions and managed to disappear in England with his loot. Here was a clear example of the point that crime does, in fact, pay and pays very well. All the pirates needed was a safe haven to operate from and they found it on Providence Island in the defunct English colony of the Bahamas in 1713. Once Nassau was open for pirate business, men and ships poured in, founding a society based on democracy and an equal chance for everyone. Soon, the pirates brought the shipping of the Spanish, French and English empires nearly to standstill in the Caribbean. A handful of pirate captains even offered to back a Stuart claimant to the British throne in a bid to overthrow the monarchy. Needless to say, the ari

There is currently a glut of books on the history of pirates, due to the new movie and so on. I can't speak for the others, since I haven't read them (yet!), but this book is worth your time. Woodard, instead of trying to talk about all of pirate history, creates a very detailed, interesting narrative on a particular moment in time. People who don't love history may find some parts a little dry, but there are plenty of direct quotes from famous pirates themselves to keep it lively. You will learn a lot about famous pirates like Edward Teach (Blackbeard), the history of the Bahamas and how pirate ships were run. A very entertaining read.

As I write this, Johnny Depp is about to bring us a third installment of his characterization of Captain Jack Sparrow, who defines the romantic villain of the colorful pirate for our times. He is following a long tradition, of course. Pirates were admired rogues even in their own times, and the tradition continued long after classical pirating was history, through Robert Louis Stevenson in _Kidnapped_, James Barrie in _Peter Pan_, Gilbert and Sullivan in _The Pirates of Penzance_, and countless Hollywood versions. We have International Talk Like a Pirate Day every 19 September; the styles of no other rascals or robbers have so completely become part of our entertainment culture. Yet, according to _The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down_ (Harcourt), the popular pirate is a legend carried on from only a narrow decade, 1715 to 1725, which author Colin Woodard calls the Golden Age of Piracy. There were pirates before, and we even now have contemporary pirates with armaments far more fearsome than cannon and sword. Woodard shows, however, that the image we have of pirates is a not very exaggerated version of the specific scoundrels from the western Atlantic almost three hundred years ago. Authorities during the Golden Age of Piracy found it useful to spread stories about how pirates were addicted to murder, rape, and chaos; there is no doubt that some pirates were of this variety, but pirates were folk heroes in their time. They were seen by many as nautical Robin Hoods, stealing from wealthy merchants and giving to poor sailors. The pirate ship was a democratic organization, with the crew voting on who should be captain. The captain had absolute authority during combat, but after the battle, he could be voted out of office. Unlike on a privateer, the captain got perhaps half a share more than an ordinary sailor in the profits made by the ship. Folk heroes or not, the pirates valued and used their terrifying image for their own purposes. No pirate used the image more fully than Blackbeard, formerly Edward Thatch. He braided his hair and beard and used ribbons in them, but most memorably in battle he tied fuses to his hat and beard, lighting them so that his head had an appearance of being infernally surrounded by smoke and fire. He knew exactly what he was doing; one ship after another would surrender without firing a shot when Blackbeard and his similarly wild-looking crew were spied. Blackbeard was a threatening apparition, but before his final battle, he had to do little but threaten; there is no evidence that in all his other actions he ever killed anyone. The pirates indeed set up a colony in the Bahamas known as New Providence. It was a haven for pirate sailors, of course, but also for runaway slaves and for farmers who had not been able to get a start in the plantations of the American colonies. The main force to break up the republic was Woodes

Colin Woodard has authored a wonderful history of the pirates of the Caribbean in their heyday, with the prime years being 1715-1725. The lives of Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver fascinate us; the real pirates, as depicted by Woodard, are perhaps even more interesting. He tells the story of the "pirate republic," headquartered in the Bahamas. He uses the term "republic" purposefully. He contends that (and this appears to me to be hyperbole) the pirates fueled (page 1) ". . .the democratic sentiments that would later drive the American revolution." Some fascinating tidbits related to this thesis: pirates shared their spoils relatively equally; rank-and-file pirates elected and deposed ships' captains; decisions were often made in what Woodard calls "open councils"; runaway slaves sometimes came aboard as pirates and were often treated as equals by their fellow pirates. As Woodard notes (page 4): "The pirate gangs of the Bahamas were enormously successful. At their zenith they succeeded in severing Britain, France, and Spain from their New World empires, cutting off trade routes. . . ." The primary figures covered in this book are three pirate leaders, Samuel ("Black Sam") Bellamy, Edward ("Blackbeard") Thatch, and Charles Vane. Of course, many others are mentioned as well, including "Calico Jack" Rackham, Benjamin Hornigold, Josiah Burgess, Henry Jennings, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read. The fourth primary character is the man who devoted himself to destroying the pirate republic--Woodes Rogers. The book tells the story of the pirates and their depredations. It also tells the story of Rogers, who made it his aim to destroy those pirates. All in all, a rip roaring volume. The book tells of the poor living conditions in ships, the collaboration of some political leaders with the pirates, the role of the pirates in American waters, and so on. Basically, this is a nice volume to introduce one to the real Caribbean pirates, not just the film versions thereof.