EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRACY
Q: What and when was the golden age of piracy?
A: It was a period of time when piracy was most active within the Atlantic world – primarily the Caribbean, North America, Britain, Europe and the west coast of Africa.
Piracy’s golden age can really be divided into three main periods: in the 1670s and parts of the 1680s, buccaneers of the Caribbean, mostly French pirates, fought over different land territories and were more land-based than sea-based. Then, there were the British pirates in the Indian Ocean in the 1690s. Here, we see figures such as Henry Every and Captain Kidd, both of whom disrupted trade between the British and Indian Mughals.
The third period – and the one that most people associate with piracy’s golden age – took place between c1713 and c1730, during which time there were large organised bands of pirates. It was in this last period that the pirates most people have heard of were operating: Blackbeard, Charles Vane, Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Captain Hornigold and so on. It’s also the time when the pirate republic at Nassau, on the island of Providence in the Bahamas, was established.
