Golden Age Of Piracy Essay

In 1860, Charles Eden and his companions travelled to the ruined city of Leon in Nicaragua, to scale the nearby volcano of El Viejo. From his account of this journey, within first edition of The Alpine Journal in 1864, was the earliest known mention of the phrase ‘golden age of piracy’ is used. The ‘golden age of piracy’ is a problematic term, both to define and to use in historiographical debate. Piracy on the one hand, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is “the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea.” While within the same dictionary, the term ‘golden age’ is defined to be “an idyllic, often imaginary past time.” A contrasting and contradictory pair to place together, yet this term was given to encompass the three outbreaks of piracy in the early modern world; the Buccaneering period, the

‘Pirate Round’ and the post-Spanish-Succession period. Eden’s use of the term would suggest that the term was not a contemporary term, instead proposing it was created by nineteenth-century academics.
Maritime historians debate over the dates of the ‘golden age of piracy’, from as early as Tudor England around 1580, to as late as 1730. It is the purpose of this essay to examine whether there was a ‘golden age of piracy’, and if so, support it with evidence of piracy and explain occurrences that led to it. This will be done by examining the scale of piracy, from 1580 to 1730. This essay will also be inspecting the number of men that would have taken part in piracy and exploring why men turned to piracy, as well as contesting the opinions of other leading historians on the dates a ‘Golden age of Piracy’ could have occurred by contrasting the evidence to the dates. English/British piracy will be examined exclusively throughout this essay and will also be taking the stance that the Post-Spanish succession period will be the most likely candidate for a ‘Golden age of Piracy’.
To discern whether there was a ‘Golden age of Piracy’ by quantifying the scale of piracy being undertaken during the specified time periods, with the most acts of piracy constituting the golden age.

One way this essay will be able to quantify piracy will be by how many letters of marque were issued by the Admiralty. For example, the total number of British privateers operating around the territorial waters of England, Ireland and France between 1589 & 1591 was recorded at 236. This was during a time when the reigning monarch, Queen Elizabeth I of England, advocated privateering and regulated it throughout the Anglo-Spanish War with ‘Letters of Reprisal’ (lettre de mark). She did this for several reasons, but one of them was to distance herself from any direct aggression towards hostile European powers. These letters were only obtainable by the Admiralty court, if the person in question could prove they had been robbed by a foreign power at sea. Nonetheless, it counts as an act of piracy and does show that the dates sourced in the title for Golden age of Piracy are too narrow, as this evidence shows piracy being advocated by the British as early as

1585.
In comparison, “The Admiralty [issued] 490 letters of marque against France [alone], during the Nine-years’ war between the years 1688-97” . As one of the last wars during the “Golden age of Piracy”, the letters of marque issued during the Nine-years’ war shows that there was a marked increase of privateering, we can see from these two statistics that the figure that almost doubles over the course of a century. Maritime historian David J. Starkey argues that most acts of piracy occurred through periods of European warfare, when privateers become part of the machinations of war to harass the trade of the enemy for personal & state gain. The latter statistic of letters of marque does not show us how many men were on board these ships, or how many ships were listed in each letter of marque, however this essay interprets this figure to mean a minimum of a single ship, regardless of ship size or crew number. However, these are all privateers who have registered with the Government and been given letters of marque, in order to regulate them and provide a quantification for use. The likelihood is these numbers would increase, due to those who committed the act of piracy in British territories and did not register.
At this point, some historians may probably discount these facts on piracy, as they are dealing with privateering. The term ‘privateer’ is used to describe “An armed ship … crewed by private individuals holding a government commission known as a letter of marque authorizing the capture of merchant shipping belonging to an enemy nation” . The term is also synonymous with the “commander or crew member of a privateer, often regarded as a pirate.” However the distinction between the pirate and the privateer is in the eye of the beholder. Therefore, this essay will not draw any distinction between the two. Regardless of any perceived motivations that drove a man towards piracy, whether it was patriotic support of their nation-state or from the allure of personal profit at the expense of others, both parties engaged in the practice of piracy. Notable privateers in the Tudor period, such as Sir Francis Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, should be accounted for in a British ‘golden age of piracy’. If they did the deed, they should be included.
Another way to quantify, and to better understand, if there was a “Golden Age of Piracy” is to examine the numbers of men who joined in acts of piracy and why. Marcus Rediker makes one such figure clear within the second chapter of Villains of the Seas, in which he states that “The Royal Navy plunged from nearly 50,000 men to a meagre 15,000 and below from 1712-14.” After a time of war, particularly after the Post-Spanish Succession Period, the British in particular were unable to provide other labour to the sailors who lost their jobs after any subsequent European wars. This created the conditions that saw the largest increase in pirate activity during the post-succession period when These thirty-five thousand men had to find work on the merchant ships of the period or find a new form of employment, as their trade as a sailor fell into economic decline.
As a consequence of this, many sailors in English territories had to then accept lower pay in order to be given honest work aboard any merchant ships. Colin Woodard states that “merchant captains slashed wages by 50 percent; those lucky enough to find work had to survive on twenty-two to twenty-eight shillings (£1.1 to £ 1.4) a month.” This made their average annual wage £16.8, which was £1.2 less than what the average agricultural worker received in 1710. It does not bode well for our early eighteenth-century, early common sailor. With such a wage, this essay speculates that it would have been unlikely for a sailor to even maintain himself properly at sea, let alone be able to sustain a family or save up for a future. It is therefore unsurprising that piracy, after a long tradition of privateering on behalf of the English crown, began to foster dreams of plunder and prizes for our every-day sailor in the early eighteenth-century.
Likewise, the men aboard these ships were likely not to be all of fair complexion. According to a table in Kenneth Kinkor’s Black Men under the Black Flag, Pirate crews from 1682 to 1726 often had coloured sailors working aboard, with no less than ten percent of a ship’s crew being of coloured skin. Crews varied in size, from as little as ten men to three-hundred and eighty. The deck of a Pirate ship may very well have been the most empowering place for a former slave, where he may attempt to make a living for himself, according to Simon Smith. This raises the interesting concept of cultural and social restrictions being relaxed during the “Golden Age of Piracy” on former slaves and men of African descent, which could be argued to create an idealistic notion of a Golden age in a time of camaraderie for sailors of every background, despite the pall of piracy.
A similar scenario also happened during the first and second periods of the Civil War between 1642 and 1649, when privateers would have multi-nationals aboard their ships, mostly coming from the need to hire sailors from captured ships and the different ports along the Channel. The majority of crews aboard ships, whom were involved in acts of piracy, appear to be rarely consist of a single ethno-regional group. The reason is unclear, however one example gives the impression that this would allow privateers to deceive the enemy ships around the mouth of the English Channel, all in an attempt to bring their ships closer for an encounter and boarding. However, this also has the unexpected consequence of crews being a melting-pot of different cultures, which could challenge the established social order of western society.
The dates of a ‘Golden age of Piracy’ are strongly debated among historians, particularly on how long the golden age lasted and when the dates of it are. Rediker argues that there was a golden age of piracy from 1650 to 1730, however he partitions it into three "generations" of piracy; the 1650-80 buccaneers, the Indian Ocean pirates of the 1690s, and the post-Spanish succession pirates. For the most part, this essay agrees with this because of the scale of British piracy, however it questions to what extent why the Elizabethan privateers are excluded within the Rediker’s depiction of the golden age of piracy. The iconic figures of Drake and Raleigh can be seen as the forerunners of the British privateering tradition, spending their time either at sea, or actively involved within the practice of privateering within the High Admiralty. It is most likely due to a brief period, during the reign of James I of England, that Rediker distinguished between the pirates of his golden age and the privateers of late Tudor England.
To this end, the historian Patrick Pringle’s view is that the age of piracy started with Elizabethan England with the Anglo-Spanish War, ending in the early part of the eighteenth century, with the death of figures like Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet. However, Pringle vies away from the term of “Golden Age”, by naming the time in which he researched an “Age of Piracy” several times in his works. This stance leaves this essay under the impression that the “Golden age” would be the period of time in which piracy was most active, therefore surmising that “Golden Age of Piracy” would most likely be the third generation of piracy, during the Post-Spanish succession period. This is view is constructed from the former fact that almost thirty-five thousand men were put out of work in the Royal Navy, alongside at least a collective century’s tradition of piracy and privateering within the British Isles and the territories of the Caribbean.
In comparison, the explorer and TV presenter Douglas Botting suggests that historians are ironic to name the period a “Golden age of Piracy” as he believes the age “barely lasted thirty years…starting at the close of the 17th Century and ending in the first quarter of the 18th." He makes this statement after recollecting the tale of Captain Snelgrave, an English trader who was captured pirates and subsequently wrote his experiences. Botting believes Snelgrave to have been captured during the height of the Golden age and holds up the trader’s testimony as an invaluable source on piracy during the period. The majority of this view comes from Botting’s emphasis on Captain Charles Johnson’s A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates (1724), which in itself is a two-volume book which concentrates more on the late 17th and early 18th century pirates than any other period. Nonetheless, Botting recognises that Johnson’s book was likely created for popular consumption, turning the men in its pages into mythical figures. Botting argues that the cause of the “Golden Age of Piracy” was due to the large number of desperate sailors, who had been forced into the profession of piracy during a time of economic and political circumstance, which led to them to places such as Madagascar and the Caribbean. This fits with Rediker’s figures of some thirty-five thousand sailors being left unemployed, from the Royal Navy after the Post-Spanish succession period, however Botting makes no other case to support his view.
If there was a ‘Golden age of Piracy’, then Mark G. Hanna proposes that it only lasted for as long as there was an active “Land & Sea relationship” between the pirates and those places where they could take refuge, in order to trade and barter their stolen cargos while hiding from the Royal Navy. There are several points in the age of piracy where pirates have been able to create places of refuge, such as Nassau in the Bahama Islands during the Post-Spanish succession period. Hanna writes that the end of the Golden Age was the work of colonial administrators in the thirteen colonies like Edward Randolph, who presented treatises on how to deal with those who were associated with pirates on land. By cutting off pirates from their land routes, he would break down the market of piracy, which enabled sea rovers from fencing stolen goods. This effectively brought down the support structures of those committing piracy with the early eighteenth century.
Maritime historians will likely debate the existence of a “Golden age of Piracy” and its subsequent dates of occurrence for many years to follow, however it is the belief of this essay that there was a series of piratical behaviour on the part of the British in all the aforementioned periods, as well as prior to the 1650 start date. However, this essay would hesitate to name any one of these periods a “Golden Age”, as many of the periods in question are rather sporadically placed. While being the first British privateers, the exploits of Sir Francis Drake and others are unlikely to be classed within the Golden age, since they are too far displaced from the other periods of piracy. That said, they could very well have been used as the models for other acts of piracy against Britain’s enemies, themselves being looked upon as a golden age as each period of piracy progressed onto the next.