Page 73 - The British Big Four

Pirates and Swashbucklers
The Golden Age of Piracy spanned from the
1650s to the 1730s and the Bahamas most
notorious pirate was Edward Teach, otherwise
known as Blackbeard, who made the Bahamas
his base of operations until his death on the
1718.
T here are many tales of Pirates in the Bahamas
Islands. It is known that Bahamians were re-
sourceful and courageous and their lives, wheth-
er at sea or on the islands, exemplified the theory
of the survival of the fittest. During the heyday of home from the Caribbean soon attracted the at-
piracy, pirates would use Bahamas as a haven and
a place to replenish their supplies as there are a
number of fresh water wells on the island and had
many sources of food included in the local flora
and fauna. By 1660, the English had established
themselves in Jamaica and begun treating the
Bahamas Islands as natural appendages of the
larger territory. However, apart from small settle-
ments on a few of the islands, most of the islands
were left untouched. This was ideal for pirates,
since the Bahamas also lay astride the route of
treasure galleons returning to Spain, laden with
gold and silver from the New World. This promise
of capturing Spanish treasure ships on their way
tention of a motley crowd of buccaneers, pirates
and freebooters.
The Golden Age of Piracy spanned from the
1650s to the 1730s and the Bahamas’ most
notorious pirate was Edward Teach, otherwise
known as Blackbeard, who frequented the area
from 1713 to his death on the 1718. He plundered
ships and sailed throughout the West Indies and
the Atlantic coast of North America, before he was
finally killed in a bloody battle at Ocracoke Inlet,
off the coast of what is now North Carolina by the
crew of a pair of sloops under the command of
officers of the Royal Navy. The use of the Bahamas
as pirate’s haven only lasted for about 110 years;
by the 1730s, the scourge of the buccaneers had
been largely tamed, if not discouraged by the
growing population. The era of piracy in the Car-
ibbean began in the 16th century and died out in
the 1830s after the navies of the nations of West-
ern Europe and North America with colonies in
the Caribbean began combating pirates..