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The ArchivesInstitutionsThe Royal Navy

The Royal Navy

The fleet, its officers and its men, which under Board of Admiralty direction furnished the armed force used against the golden-age pirates through colonial station ships, convoy escorts and occasional dedicated hunting cruises, and which was the arresting arm of a system whose courts Parliament had built.

Also writtenThe Navy

Not the Admiralty

The Board of Admiralty was the governing body and the Royal Navy was the fleet, its officers and its men. The Board was a commission of Lords Commissioners executing the office of Lord High Admiral, sitting at the Admiralty Office in London, and its warrants directed colonial governors to commission the officers of the vice-admiralty courts.1

The 1698 Act

The Navy has no founding charter of the kind that made a chartered company. It grew as a permanent institution of the English state across the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and its administration was settled well before the golden age. What mattered for the pirate war was an Act of Parliament: the Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy, 11 William III chapter 7, passed in the session of 1698 to 1699 and commonly cited as the Piracy Act 1698. It allowed pirates to be tried in the colonies before commissioned vice-admiralty courts rather than being sent to England for trial at the High Court of Admiralty. The Navy was the arresting arm of a system whose courts Parliament had built.2

Stations, convoys, cruises

The overseas presence was organised around stations: ships assigned to the waters of Jamaica, the North American seaboard, the West Indies more broadly. A station ship answered to the Admiralty and in practice worked with the local governor, who could ask for an escort or press for a hunting cruise. Command at sea rested with the captain, who could detach a lieutenant to take a boat party or a small vessel where the ship herself could not go. Manning was a standing difficulty: crews were thinned by tropical disease, and captains sometimes hired local craft and put their own seamen aboard.

Against the size of the task the service was thin. Too few ships were available for the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the West African coast together, so protection was uneven and pirates worked the gaps between stations. The successes were concentrated blows and not a continuous blockade.3

Ocracoke, 22 November 1718

At Ocracoke Inlet on the North Carolina coast, a naval party killed Edward Thache, known as Blackbeard, in a close and bloody fight in which he and nine of his crew were killed. The 1724 account adds that he fell after five and twenty wounds, five of them by shot, and that his head was severed and carried back to Virginia hanging at the bowsprit end; Spotswood's despatch mentions neither the wounds nor the head.4

Alexander Spotswood, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, set the expedition on foot himself, working with the captains of two men of war then in the Chesapeake, HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme; the Admiralty did not set it on foot. The captains had no orders to hire sloops, so Spotswood hired two at his own charge and put pilots aboard, the men of war being unable to enter the shallow and difficult channels of that country. The fifty five men the captains furnished went in under the first lieutenant of the Pearl, named in the 1724 account as Robert Maynard, one of the two sloops being called the Ranger. The killing blow was struck by naval men from vessels that were not King's ships.5

Cape Lopez, 10 February 1722

Off Cape Lopez, on the coast of present day Gabon, HMS Swallow, under Captain Chaloner Ogle engaged and destroyed the company of Bartholomew Roberts, the most successful pirate of the age. The Swallow had been cruising the coast with her consort HMS Weymouth. At Cape Lopez the Swallow closed with the Royal Fortune; in the exchange of fire Roberts was killed. The charge of grapeshot to the throat is Johnson's detail, carried as possible on his own record, Ogle's dispatch giving no cause. His crew, demoralised, was taken. The engagement has its own record here. Royal Museums Greenwich records his knighthood in 1723, and gives him as the only naval officer so honoured for an anti-piracy operation.6

The survivors were carried to the Court of Admiralty sitting at Cape Coast Castle on the Gold Coast and tried there under the powers the 1698 Act had extended overseas. Royal Museums Greenwich gives 72 men sentenced to death, of whom 52 were hanged and 20 had sentences commuted to indentured labour in the mines. The printed trial record does not carry the 72 capital sentences: its tables give 54 condemned, 52 hanged and 2 respited, and its commutation is seven years' servitude to the Royal African Company, not the mines. The two agree on the 52 hanged.7

The slave trade on the same coast

The cruising that ended Roberts cannot be separated from what else was on that coast. The same waters and the same forts, Cape Coast Castle among them, were the machinery of the slave trade, and the ships that hunted pirates there also stood guard over the shipping of the Royal African Company and its successors. Marcus Rediker and other modern historians have made this doubleness central to how the period is read: the policeman of the seas was also the shield of the slaving commerce, a historiographical argument, well grounded, and carried here as one.

What it left

The naval blows of 1718 and 1722, taken with colonial trials, the withdrawal of the pardon and a hardening imperial temper, are conventionally where the end of the golden age is placed, by the middle of the 1720s. The Navy itself never pardoned anybody; the Act of Grace was the Crown's, administered through governors, though it was naval and colonial pressure that gave surrender its meaning. The station system improvised in these years matured across the century into permanent commands, most directly the North America and West Indies Station. Ogle rose to admiral.

The ordinary work of this institution is the part the sources do not give. Where the station ships and convoy escorts were in the West Indies and North America through the piracy years is barely covered outside the archives, and the tallies of Roberts's men sentenced and reprieved are contested between the museum account and the printed record of the trial; the Admiralty records at Kew, with the captains' logs and journals, the High Court of Admiralty papers and the Calendar of State Papers Colonial, are where both would be settled.

What the evidence does not settle

Roberts's crew sentencing figures

  • Prisoner, hanging and commutation figures for Roberts's crew unsettled

Chaloner Ogle's appointment to HMS Swallow

  • Ogle's appointment to HMS Swallow dated 11 March 1719

Navy's role in suppressing piracy and the slave trade

  • Navy simultaneously suppressed piracy and protected the slave trade

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. The Board of Admiralty in this period was a board of commissioners executing the office of Lord High Admiral, sitting at the Admiralty Office in London, whose warrants directed colonial governors to commission the officers of the vice admiralty courts. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Admiralty warrant: Warrant of the Commissioners for executing the Office of Lord High Admiral for the commissioning of an Admiralty judge, Admiralty Office, 29 April 1697, New York State Archives, Albany, Historical MSS., vol. XLI, p. 60, printed in J. F. Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents (Washington, 1923), doc. 69: "By the Comiss'rs for Executing the Office of Lord high Admirall of Engl'd. Irel'd. etc.... You are therefore hereby Empower'd and directed, to give unto them Commissions for their said Employm'ts respectively... Dated at the Admiralty Office this 29th of April 1697", subscribed Russell, G. Rooke, Jno. Houblon and Kendall, and addressed "To his Ma'tis Governour of New-Yorke and Connuticutt, and East-Jersey/ for the time being".
  2. The Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy, 11 William III chapter 7, passed in the session of 1698 to 1699 and commonly cited as the Piracy Act 1698, allowed pirates to be tried in the colonies before commissioned vice-admiralty courts instead of being sent to England for trial at the High Court of Admiralty, and so supplied the judicial complement to naval capture. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Statute: "William III, 1698 to 9: An Act for the more effectuall Suppressions of Piracy", 11 Gul. III c. 7, Statutes of the Realm vol. 7 (British History Online)
  3. The Navy was chronically short of hulls for the expanse of ocean it was asked to police, covering the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the West African coast with too few ships, so that protection was uneven, pirates operated in the gaps between stations, and the service's successes were concentrated blows rather than a continuous blockade. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Modern secondary synthesis: "Pirates: the Royal Navy and the suppression of maritime raiding 1620 to 1830" (Military History Matters)
  4. A naval party killed Edward Teach, known as Blackbeard, at Ocracoke Inlet on the North Carolina coast on 22 November 1718, Teach and nine of his crew being killed in a close fight; the 1724 account adds that he fell after five and twenty wounds, five of them by shot, and that his head was severed and carried back to Virginia hanging at the bowsprit end. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Governor's despatch and a period narrative: Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Virginia, 22 December 1718, Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, 1717-1718, no. 800, pp. 430-431 (C.O. 5, 1318, no. 61): "they came up with Tach at Ouacock Inlett on the 22nd of last month" and "Tach with nine of his crew were killed, and three white men and six negros were taken alive but all much wounded". A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724): "till he received five and twenty Wounds, and five of them by Shot", "The Lieutenant caused Black-beard's Head to be severed from his Body, and hung up at the Bolt-sprit End", and "sailed back to the Men of War in James River, in Virginia, with Black-beard's Head still hanging at the Bolt-sprit End". Spotswood does not mention the wounds or the head.
  5. The Ocracoke expedition was organised by Alexander Spotswood, Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, acting with the captains of HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme rather than on Admiralty direction: the captains had no orders to hire sloops, so Spotswood hired two of them at his own charge and put pilots aboard, and because the men of war could not enter the shallow channels the fifty five men the captains furnished went in under the first lieutenant of the Pearl, named in the 1724 account as Robert Maynard, one of the two sloops being the Ranger. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Governor's despatch and a period narrative: Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Virginia, 22 December 1718, Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 30, 1717-1718, no. 800, pp. 430-431 (C.O. 5, 1318, no. 61): "It was found impracticable for the men of war to go into the shallow and difficult channells of that country, and the Captains were unwilling to be at the charge of hyring sloops wch. they had no orders to do, and must therefore have paid out of their own pocketts, but as they readily consented to furnish men, I undertook the other part of supplying at my own charge sloops and pilots. Accordingly I hyred two sloops and put pilotes on board, and the Captains of H.M. ships having put 55 men on board under the command of the first Lieutenant of the Pearle and an officer from the Lyme". A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724): "the Command of them given to Mr. Robert Maynard, first Lieutenant of the Pearl" and "Mr. Maynard's other Sloop, which was called the Ranger".
  6. Off Cape Lopez on 10 February 1722 HMS Swallow, commanded by Captain Chaloner Ogle, engaged and destroyed the company of Bartholomew Roberts, who was killed aboard the Royal Fortune, the charge of grapeshot in the throat being Johnson's account, carried as Possible on his own record. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Museum account: "Death of Bartholomew Roberts" (Royal Museums Greenwich)
  7. The survivors of Roberts's company were tried before the Court of Admiralty at Cape Coast Castle in 1722 under the powers extended overseas by the 1698 Act; Royal Museums Greenwich gives 72 men sentenced to death, of whom 52 were hanged and 20 had sentences commuted to indentured labour in the mines, a sentencing tally the printed trial record does not support, its tables giving 54 condemned, 52 hanged and 2 respited, with the 20 sentenced to seven years' servitude to the Royal African Company rather than to the mines, which is the count the Archive's trial record carries as Confirmed and this record follows. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Museum account and printed trial record: "Death of Bartholomew Roberts" (Royal Museums Greenwich); the printed record of the Cape Coast Castle trials, J. Roberts, London, 1723