The Ten Most Infamous Pirates

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Born in Wales, Henry Morgan was sanctioned as an admiral and a privateer during the mid to late 1600s. He left school as soon as he could to travel to Jamaica in order to claim fame and fortune. Even though he didn’t have much experience as a sailor, he was quickly taken on by the Royal Navy for their operation to take the Spanish holdings in the Caribbean. He worked his way up the ranks to become a captain of his own ship that constantly attacked the Mexican coast under the title of privateer. However, Governor Modyford of Jamaica continued to let Morgan keep up his acts of attacking and stealing form the Spanish even though the King of England had ordered him to call all privateers back to port. Morgan’s disreputable acts of killing surrendered men became well known during this time, but he soon became eager to retire due to his failing health. He died in 1688 after four years of retirement with little legal reprimand against him.

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While most people generally think only of pirates being in the Western Hemisphere, several notorious ones existed in the East as well. Zheng Zhilong was a Chinese pirate during the early 1600s. Bringing shame to his family, he was kicked out of his father’s home at the age of 17. He had no real other place to go, and ended up in Macao with his uncle. The city had recently been flooded with Westerners, and Zheng Zhilong converted to Catholicism and was baptized at 18 under the “Christian” name Nicholas Gaspard. His integration into Western culture made him an invaluable resource in the sea ports of China. He soon took up a post on a ship working in collaboration with the Dutch to secure a route past China to Japan. When his commander died, Zheng Zhilong inherited the ship and starting pirating on his own. In 1628, he defeated the Ming Dynasty’s fleet. However, part of the terms that ended the fighting merely made him head of the Ming fleet, commanding all their ships. He used this possession of nearly 800 ships to switch allegiances so that he would then be a pirate to the invading Dutch ships. Zheng Zhilong retired extremely wealthy but was executed later in life because his son acted as a pirate against the Qing government instead of changing sides at opportune moments like his father.

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The man known as Blackbeard was actually named Edward Teach. He was born in England but ended up working mostly in the West Indies of the Caribbean and the American colonies on the east coast of North America during the early 1700s on his own ship called the Queen Anne’s Revenge. Once he had established his reputation, Blackbeard preferred theatrics to actually being brutal. Many sources claim that he liked to light fuses and tie them under his hat to seem like a smoking, ghostly apparition to his enemies. He was killed by a small collection of sailors led by Robert Maynard during a ferocious battle in 1718 because he had ran his ship aground and requested a royal pardon before he started pirating again.

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Anne Bonny is one of the few female pirates who had a reputation all to herself. She was considered to be a red-headed beauty who was born in Ireland to a married man and his maid before being taken to the colony of South Carolina with her father where she showed her brutal side in no time at all by stabbing a servant girl in the stomach when she was thirteen. Although she was an illegitimate daughter, her looks were enough to secure her a quick marriage to a poor sailor named James Bonny. Her pirating activities took place mostly in the Bahamas as she and her husband moved to Nassau shortly after marrying. However, since the city was a huge piracy hub, Anne soon started mingling with many pirates at the local pub. The pirate John “Calico Jack” Rackham caught her special attention though, and they had an affair. Anne suffered a beating for adultery before running away with Calico Jack to be a leader in his crew until they were both captured in 1720. Calico Jack was killed but Anne seems to vanish from the record until her announced death at the impressive age of eighty back in South Carolina, making many people try to guess how she escaped her jail time and execution sentence in the Bahamas.

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Bartholomew Roberts was born John Roberts in Wales. He is considered to be the most successful pirate during the Golden Age of Piracy of the late 1600s and early 1700s. It is speculated that he captured just over 470 ships. His early days of pirating began in the waters off Brazil and the Caribbean Islands after he saw no future in being part of the merchant navy. After his crew’s first big capture of a fleet of Portuguese royal ships, he and his men swore to a set of new articles to appease the men which they swore upon the Bible. He then set sail up the eastern coast of North America all the way to Newfoundland. However, once he caught an incredibly fast French ship which he named Good Fortune, he decided to head back to the Caribbean to have a bigger number of ships to capture. To make sure that he could continue piracy unhindered, he made his way to Martinique where he captured the governor and then subsequently hung him to let all his crew see. Roberts got bored again in the Caribbean and headed for the west coast of Africa. However, it was in 1722 off of Cape Lopez on West Africa the Royal Navy had a standoff with Roberts’s crew and fleet. He was killed in battle, but before the Royal Navy could retrieve his body to show off, the pirates weighed his body down to have him buried at sea according to his wishes.

Author: Dan Seitz — Copyrighted © roadtickle.com