Topics Related to Golden Age
In about 1698, a young woman found herself in jail for stealing, pregnant with her married employer’s illegitimate child and no husband to support her. Despite these grim circumstances, Anne Bonny’s mother was soon released from jail, raising her daughter disguised as a boy and living as the lady of the house with her still married-to-another-woman former employer. The three of them eventually moved from Ireland to the Carolinas, where Anne’s father bought a plantation and started a business of his own.
This year marks the centennial of women’s suffrage, and we wanted to participate in DNCR’s She Changed the World Campaign by highlighting female pirates through the ages. Follow along throughout the year as we further explore these lesser-known figures in piracy, and take a look at other notable female contributions to maritime history.
After the battle of Ocracoke in November 1718, only sixteen members of Blackbeard’s crew were rounded up and brought to Virginia to await trial. The men waited for three months for the seemingly inevitable guilty verdict of piracy and death sentence. During this time some of the crew attempted to save their lives by turning on their deceased pirate Blackbeard and becoming informants for Governor Spotswood. The informant crew members hoped the evidence they provided during their imprisonment would be enough to trade a death sentence for life enslavement.
When we last visited the story of the gentleman pirate, Stede Bonnet had been convicted for his crimes of piracy. Bonnet had to wait an entire month until his scheduled hanging.
Early November 1718 proved a busy time in the life of Stede Bonnet. If you recall, the gentleman pirate escaped custody in Charleston in October.
When we last visited Stede Bonnet, he was in a bad way, injured and relegated to the role of passenger after having ceded control of his shi
On July 25, 1718,* Woodes Rogers arrived in the Bahamas as the islands’ first appointed Royal Governor. Piracy grew rampant in the untamed colony, and Rogers’ official mission was to stamp it out. He first tried diplomacy, armed with another round of pardons for pirates willing to peacefully surrender their criminal ways.
In March 1718, the HMS Phoenix arrived in New Providence carrying the King’s Pardon, and among the first to sign was none other than Blackbeard’s former commander Benjamin Hornigold. Hornigold arrived on the scene as a privateer before the island of New Providence became a pirate haven and attempted to continue his legitimacy as such by claiming to only attack French and Spanish ships, well after official privateering rights were revoked.
In late September 1717, Stede Bonnet met Blackbeard.
The most prominent symbol for piracy in popular culture is a black flag decorated with the infamous skull and crossbones. This flag has been used within the mythos of pirates, both real and fictional, for over 300 years. With the expansive mythology surrounding piracy, and particularly Blackbeard, it is worthwhile to look deeper into this iconic flag and its connections to the infamous pirate.