Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, Vol. 2 (of 2)
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, 359
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