Golden Age of Piracy
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John Phillips
John Phillips was an English pirate who escaped indentured servitude in Newfoundland to begin a short piracy career off the Atlantic coast of Canada and New England in 1723-1724. He drafted a set of pirate articles that survives as one of the more detailed examples of pirate ship governance. His career ended when several forcibly…
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John Bowen
John Bowen was a pirate active in the Indian Ocean during the early years of the ‘Pirate Round,’ commanding the ship Speaker and raiding shipping around Mauritius, the Comoros, and India. He is noted for maintaining relatively cooperative relations with local rulers in the region. Accounts of his death around 1704 following a shipwreck are…
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Nathaniel North
Nathaniel North was an American-born pirate whose long career in the Indian Ocean was marked by repeated cycles of piracy, capture, pardon, and return to piracy over roughly two decades. He eventually settled among Malagasy communities on Madagascar, reportedly becoming a respected local chief. He was killed there around 1710 in a local conflict unrelated…
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John Taylor
John Taylor was an English pirate active in the Indian Ocean, best known for co-commanding, with Olivier Levasseur, the 1721 capture of the Portuguese carrack Nossa Senhora do Cabo off Réunion Island, netting one of the largest hauls in the history of piracy. He later sailed to the Caribbean and reportedly accepted a Spanish pardon…
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Thomas Anstis
Thomas Anstis served under Bartholomew Roberts before breaking away to command his own pirate crew aboard the Good Fortune, raiding shipping in the Caribbean. Facing dwindling options as anti-piracy patrols intensified, his crew reportedly petitioned for a royal pardon while continuing to raid. Sources disagree on the precise circumstances of his death, though most agree…
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Philip Lyne
Philip Lyne was a pirate active in the Caribbean and Atlantic in the mid-1720s, reportedly claiming to have killed dozens of captives during his short career. He was captured by a British ship near Cape Corrientes, Cuba, in 1726. He was tried and hanged shortly afterward, among the final pirates executed as the classic Golden…
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John Quelch
John Quelch was an English sailor who led a mutiny aboard the privateering ship Charles and turned to piracy off the coast of Brazil in 1703, attacking Portuguese shipping despite England being at peace with Portugal. He was captured on his return to Massachusetts. His 1704 trial and execution in Boston is considered one of…
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William Fly
William Fly led a brief and violent mutiny aboard the slave ship Elizabeth in 1726, killing the captain and renaming the vessel Fame’s Revenge to pursue piracy. His piracy career lasted only about a month before his own crew turned him over to authorities. He was tried and hanged in Boston in 1726, reportedly showing…
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Emanuel Wynn
Emanuel Wynn was a French pirate operating around 1700, cited in British naval records as one of the earliest pirates documented to fly a black flag bearing a skull and crossbones design, an early precursor to the classic Jolly Roger. Beyond a 1700 encounter with a Royal Navy ship recorded by Captain John Cranby, little…
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Jacquotte Delahaye
Jacquotte Delahaye is a figure said to have been a female pirate of mixed French and Haitian descent in 17th-century Saint-Domingue, reputedly faking her own death to evade capture. However, no contemporary primary sources or historical records verify her existence, and most modern historians consider her story to be a later legend rather than documented…