The television series Black Sails reimagines many historical pirates, but few are depicted with the same sharp...
Pirates
The Golden Age of Piracy, spanning roughly from the 1650s to the 1730s, was marked by a surge in maritime raiding across the Atlantic and the Caribbean. This period saw the rise of infamous figures such as Edward Teach, Henry Every and Bartholomew Roberts, operating at a time when empires were expanding and naval power was in flux. Pirates targeted merchant shipping routes, often exploiting colonial rivalries and weak enforcement. While romanticised in later fiction, piracy in this era was brutal, opportunistic and shaped by the politics and economics of empire, trade and war. It left a complex and lasting historical legacy.
Sir Francis Drake was a privateer, explorer, naval commander and symbol of Elizabethan ambition. Celebrated in England...
Pirates left more than just tales of buried treasure and shipwrecks behind. Many of the words and...
Edward Low, also known as Ned Low, was one of the most notoriously violent pirates of the...
Cheung Po Tsai was one of the most infamous pirates of the early nineteenth century, operating in...
Jean Lafitte remains one of the most enigmatic figures of early 19th-century piracy. Smuggler, privateer, slave trader,...
Samuel Bellamy, often called “Black Sam,” was one of the most notorious pirates of the early 18th...
Pirates have long occupied a strange place in popular imagination, part brutal criminal, part folk hero. Their...
Christopher Condent, also known by the nickname “Billy One-Hand,” was one of the more enigmatic figures of...
Treasure maps have long stirred the imagination. From pirate legends and buried chests to cryptic symbols and...