Spanish Gold: Captain Woodes Rogers and the True Story of the Pirates of the Caribbean

by David Cordingly (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2012

  $3.25

  Today most of us know what we know about pirates from classics like Treasure Island and the films starring Johnny Depp and Keira Knightley. But who were the real pirates of the Caribbean and where did they come from? And how were they tamed? David Cordingly's latest book reveals the true story to have been at least as fascinating and gripping as the legends. When the Treaty of Utrecht ended the War of the Spanish Succession in 1713, there was an explosion of piracy across the Caribbean and along the eastern seaboard of North America. Hundreds of unemployed sailors roamed the seaports and many were tempted to take to piracy. Unable to attack enemy targets any longer, they replaced their national flags with the black flag and became 'pyrates and enemies of all mankind'. Nowhere was the problem greater than in the Bahamas. So, after years of ignoring the problem, the British Government was forced to act. Three warships were despatched across the Atlantic with orders to suppress the pirates and it was agreed that a Governor of the Bahama Islands be appointed 'to drive the pirates from their lodgement'. The man selected for the nigh impossible task was Captain Woodes Rogers, a former privateer who had made his name (he rescued Alexander Selkirk, the model for Defoe's Robinson Crusoe) and his fortune (GBP9m) by leading a highly successful voyage round the world. This is the story of his battle with the pirates, told in David Cordingly's inimitable style.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2011

  $3.25

  Stories of individual pirates in the Caribbean, from Blackbeard to Calico Jack, have been the stuff of legend since the eighteenth century, but in Spanish Gold pirate expert David Cordingly at last gives us the big picture in all its bold and ruthless truth. Cordingly shows how the attacks of the buccaneers on the treasure ports of the Spanish Main, and the sacking of Panama by Sir Henry Morgan in 1671, were the prologue to an explosion of piracy which led to the establishment of a pirate colony at Nassau in the Bahamas. By 1717, so many ships had been raided and trade so badly disrupted that the merchants of London had to act. The man they selected `to drive the pirates from their lodgement' was Captain Woodes Rogers, himself a former privateer who had sailed round the world with William Dampier the buccaneer explorer as his pilot. Woodes Rogers had captured the fabled Manila treasure galleon, and rescued Alexander Selkirk from a remote Pacific island - indeed, it was his account of Selkirk's ordeal that inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Woodes Rogers' resolute actions as Governor of the Bahamas restored order to the colony and proved a defining step in the campaign against the pirates, inspiring the fight-back against men like Blackbeard, Calico Jack and Bartholomew Roberts, all of whom died in dramatic circumstances. Played out against the background of fierce colonial rivalry between Britain, France and Spain, linked with the slave trade, the sugar plantations of the West Indies, and the fabulously rich trade in gold and silver from the New World, the true story of the rise and fall of the pirates of the Caribbean makes for a tale even more interesting and surprising than the legends themselves.