John Martel (also recorded as Jean Martel, and possibly French rather than English despite Captain Johnson’s 1724 account calling him an English privateer out of Jamaica) commanded a growing pirate squadron in the Caribbean between about 1713 and 1717, built up from a single 8-gun sloop to a 22-gun flagship with several consorts. In January 1717 his fleet was caught off St. Croix by the Royal Navy warship HMS Scarborough; after the Scarborough destroyed his shore defenses and sank one of his sloops, Martel ran his flagship aground, burned it to keep it out of the Navy’s hands, and escaped aboard a smaller captured vessel. Most of his surviving crew went on to join Samuel Bellamy’s company later that same month. Martel himself disappeared from the historical record after the escape; some accounts suggest he accepted the pardon King George I offered pirates later in 1717, but this is not confirmed, and modern researchers have questioned whether several of the captures attributed to him actually took place.
John Martel
