Where it happened

By region

The Caribbean

• Anguilla A poor, dry English island far to leeward of Saint Christopher's, living by tobacco, salt and land crabs, whose deputy governor held his commission from the Leeward Islands government and where pirates were put ashore in 1720 and William Kidd was refused succour in April 1699.Events here: The Capture of the Quedagh Merchant (1698); Trial of William KiddPeople: William Kidd
• Antigua Leeward Islands sugar colony and a seat of the English Leeward Islands government, where commissioners appointed for the trial of piracies tried and hanged pirates at St John's in May 1723 and whose southern inlet at English Harbour became a naval yard from the mid 1720s, the legislature assigning the harbour to the Crown in 1725.Events here: The Capture of the Quedagh Merchant (1698); The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702); Anstis Splits from Roberts (1721); The Cape Coast Trial and Executions, 1722People: Bartholomew Roberts
• Barbados An English colony in the West Indies whose Carlisle Bay was the harbour where most ships put in and whose town, the Bridge, stood on a bog at its head, and whose Council and General Assembly made the island's law, including the acts governing its enslaved people and an act of December 1684 for trying pirates on the island as if their offences had been done upon land.Events here: The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702); The Treaty of Utrecht (1713); The Trial and Hanging of Stede Bonnet (1718)People: Bartholomew Roberts, George Lowther
• Havana The walled Spanish city and landlocked harbour on the north coast of western Cuba where the Nueva Espana and Tierra Firme treasure fleets combined for the Atlantic passage, seat of the governor and captain general of Cuba, and through 1690 to 1725 the state port from which counter-piratical force was projected rather than any kind of pirate haven.Events here: The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702); The Wreck of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet; The Trials of Rackham's CompanyPeople: John Rackham
• Ile a Vache The Isle of Ash of English colonial papers, used as Henry Morgan's 1670 rendezvous, occupied by pirates and French privateers in the late 1680s, and close enough to threaten Jamaica.Events here: Morgan's Sack of Panama (1671)
• Jamaica The island England took from Spain in 1655 and ran by council, assembly and parish. Its governors commissioned the privateers of the buccaneering decades; the Admiralty court at St Jago de la Vega tried and hanged the pirates of the 1720s.Events here: Morgan's Sack of Panama (1671); The Voyage of the Batchelor's Delight (1683 to 1691); The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702); The Treaty of Utrecht (1713); The Wreck of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet; The Act of Grace, the King's Pardon (1717 to 1718); The Capture of John Rackham (1720); The Trials of Rackham's Company; Anstis Splits from Roberts (1721); The Final Anti-Piracy Campaigns (1726 to 1728); The Mutiny and Execution of William Fly (1726)People: Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Charles Vane, Henry MorganDrawn beside Port Royal, which shares the spot on the map.
• Nassau / New Providence New Providence island and its north-shore town of Nassau, the pirate haven of the 1710s and the colony Woodes Rogers reclaimed for the Crown in 1718.Events here: The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702); The Treaty of Utrecht (1713); The Wreck of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet; Hornigold Voted Out (1716); The Act of Grace, the King's Pardon (1717 to 1718); Woodes Rogers Takes Nassau (1718); The Trial and Hanging of Stede Bonnet (1718); The Capture of John Rackham (1720); Anstis Splits from Roberts (1721); The Final Anti-Piracy Campaigns (1726 to 1728)People: John Rackham, Woodes Rogers, Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold
• Port Royal The fortified town at the mouth of the Jamaica harbour, and the island's chief port from the 1660s, where the buccaneers sold their plunder. The earthquake of 1692 cut it off from the mainland, fire took it again before the autumn of 1703, and by the 1720s it was the place where pirates were hanged.Events here: Morgan's Sack of Panama (1671); The Voyage of the Batchelor's Delight (1683 to 1691); The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702); The Wreck of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet; The Capture of John Rackham (1720)People: John Rackham, Charles Vane, Henry MorganDrawn beside Jamaica, which shares the spot on the map.
• The Bahamas The low English archipelago colony held from 1670 by the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, whose collapse into effective ungoverned status after the Franco-Spanish raid of 1703 supplied the constitutional and commercial vacuum in which the Nassau pirate base grew until the Crown took the government and Woodes Rogers arrived in 1718.Events here: The Treaty of Utrecht (1713); The Wreck of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet; The Act of Grace, the King's Pardon (1717 to 1718); The Trials of Rackham's CompanyPeople: Edward Thache (Blackbeard), John Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, Woodes Rogers
• Tortuga The island off Hispaniola whose single southern anchorage made it a French buccaneer haven. Its harbour had two channels and would take ships of seventy guns, and everything taken at sea was carried in and sold whole to the ships waiting in the port. Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin landed there in 1666 and was sold as a servant when the West India Company wound up its plantation. Jamaica's governors and council spent the same decade drawing its men away, refusing to attack it and dealing with Ogeron as its governor.Events here: Morgan's Sack of Panama (1671); The Treaty of Ryswick (1697)People: Francois l'Olonnais

The North American seaboard

• Beaufort Inlet (Topsail Inlet) The tidal inlet through the southern Outer Banks of North Carolina, called Topsail Inlet in the golden age, on whose bar Edward Thache lost the Queen Anne's Revenge and the sloop Adventure in June 1718.Events here: Blackbeard's Blockade of Charles Town (1718); The Grounding of the Queen Anne's Revenge (1718); The Ocracoke FightPeople: Edward Thache (Blackbeard)Drawn beside Ocracoke Inlet, which shares the spot on the map.
• Boston Chief town and port of the Province of Massachusetts Bay on the Shawmut peninsula, the largest town and busiest shipping centre of British North America in the golden age, and the colonial courtroom and gallows where the piracy statute of 1700 was tried out in America.Events here: The Kidd Privateering Venture Formed (1695); The Killing of William Moore (1697); The Capture of the Quedagh Merchant (1698); Kidd and Culliford at Madagascar (1698); Kidd Arrested at Boston (1699); The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702); Hornigold Voted Out (1716); The Final Anti-Piracy Campaigns (1726 to 1728); The Mutiny and Execution of William Fly (1726)People: John QuelchDrawn beside Newport, which shares the spot on the map.
• Charles Town (Charleston) The port town of the proprietary Province of Carolina, standing in the precinct the Lords Proprietors ran from Charlestown to Goose Creek between the rivers Ashley and Cooper, blockaded from its bar in 1718 by the company Governor Robert Johnson reported to London as Teach alias Blackbeard, and the town whose Court of Vice-Admiralty sat that October and November on the pirates taken in the Royal James, who were hanged at White Point outside it.Events here: The Act of Grace, the King's Pardon (1717 to 1718); Blackbeard's Blockade of Charles Town (1718); The Grounding of the Queen Anne's Revenge (1718); The Trial and Hanging of Stede Bonnet (1718)People: Charles Vane
• Gardiners Island The privately held island at the mouth of Gardiners Bay in Suffolk County, New York, erected into a manor in 1686, where William Kidd lodged a chest of treasure by permission in June 1699 and where the Earl of Bellomont recovered it before 26 July.Events here: Kidd Arrested at Boston (1699); The Execution of William Kidd (1701)People: William Kidd
• New York Port town and provincial capital at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, in the 1690s the chief North American base, market and political shelter of the Red Sea and Madagascar trade, and by the 1720s a coastal port whose merchants sought protection against pirates.Events here: The Kidd Privateering Venture Formed (1695); Kidd Departs England (1696); The Treaty of Ryswick (1697); Kidd Arrested at Boston (1699); The Execution of William Kidd (1701)People: William Kidd, Thomas Tew, Adam Baldridge
• Newport Deep, sheltered Atlantic port at the mouth of Narragansett Bay, seat of the elective government of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations under the charter of 1663, and the town that on 19 July 1723 hanged twenty-six of Edward Low's consorts between the tide marks at Gravelly Point.Drawn beside Boston, which shares the spot on the map.
• Ocracoke Inlet The inlet through the North Carolina barrier islands where Blackbeard was killed in a boarding action on 22 November 1718, in an expedition financed and directed from Virginia.Events here: Blackbeard's Blockade of Charles Town (1718); The Grounding of the Queen Anne's Revenge (1718); The Trial and Hanging of Stede Bonnet (1718); The Ocracoke FightPeople: Edward Thache (Blackbeard)Drawn beside Beaufort Inlet (Topsail Inlet), which shares the spot on the map.
• Philadelphia Quaker capital of the province of Pennsylvania, laid out in 1682 on the Delaware, accused by Crown officers in the 1690s of sheltering Henry Every's men and, in 1718, a port whose trade was said to be blocked by pirates at its own Capes.Events here: The Voyage of the Batchelor's Delight (1683 to 1691); The Ocracoke FightPeople: William Kidd, Henry Every, Edward Thache (Blackbeard)
• Trepassey A cod-fishery harbour on the south-eastern Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, and the anchorage Bartholomew Roberts entered under black colours in June 1720, burning the shipping and the planters' fishing stages and taking a Bristol galley for his flagship.Events here: Roberts Sacks Trepassey (1720)People: Bartholomew Roberts

West Africa

• Bunce Island A Royal African Company fort and factory in the Sierra Leone River, surveyed by William Smith in 1726, where he counted thirty-three cannon and recorded a locally reported attack by Bartholomew Roberts in 1720.People: Bartholomew Roberts
• Cape Coast Castle The Royal African Company's chief Gold Coast fort and administrative seat, described by William Smith and John Atkins, and the site of the Admiralty court that tried the men captured from Bartholomew Roberts's ships in 1722.Events here: The Battle of Cape Lopez (1722); The Cape Coast Trial and Executions, 1722
• Cape Lopez A wooded headland and provisioning bay on the West African coast, described by John Atkins, where Chaloner Ogle's HMS Swallow captured Bartholomew Roberts's squadron in February 1722.Events here: Roberts and the Bahia Treasure Fleet (1719); Roberts Sacks Trepassey (1720); Anstis Splits from Roberts (1721); The Battle of Cape Lopez (1722)People: Bartholomew Roberts
• Whydah (Ouidah) The open slaving road and kingdom on the Guinea coast that sold off as many enslaved people as all the rest of that coast together, forty or fifty ships a year working their cargoes through its double bar, with an absolute king six miles inland at Sabbee, and overrun by the king of Dahomey in 1727.Events here: The Wreck of the Whydah Gally (1717); The Battle of Cape Lopez (1722); The Cape Coast Trial and Executions, 1722People: Bartholomew Roberts

The Indian Ocean and Red Sea

• Ile Sainte-Marie (Nosy Boraha) A small island belonging to Madagascar, used by near a hundred English, French and Dutch, whose port held Robert Culliford's Moca frigate when William Kidd came in on 1 April 1698 and lost the greater part of his company to her, and where the Adventure Galley was lost.Events here: The Treaty of Ryswick (1697); Kidd and Culliford at Madagascar (1698)People: William Kidd, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, Robert Culliford, Thomas Tew, Adam Baldridge, Condent
• Madagascar Indian Ocean island central to late seventeenth-century pirate activity.Events here: Kidd Departs England (1696); The Treaty of Ryswick (1697); The Killing of William Moore (1697); The Capture of the Quedagh Merchant (1698); Kidd and Culliford at Madagascar (1698); The Treaty of Utrecht (1713)People: Robert Culliford, John Bowen
• Mocha The Red Sea port where the fleet lay that Kidd came in for, and whose convoys the East India Company agreed to continue a year at a time.People: William Kidd, Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, Robert Culliford, Henry Every, John Bowen
• Surat The Mughal port on the Tapti in Gujarat, its seagoing shipping lying miles below the city in the open road at Swally. It was the home port of merchants whose ships were taken in the Indian seas, and the place where the East India Company's resident factors were ironed and held for what pirates had done at sea.Events here: Henry Every and the Ganj-i-Sawai (1695); Trials of Every's CrewPeople: John Bowen
• The Cape of Good Hope The Dutch East India Company's fortified anchorage and refreshment station at Table Bay, where William Dampier and Woodes Rogers both put in: a fort with the Governor in it, a town of fifty or sixty houses, a walled Company garden worked by enslaved people, a tavern taxed by the Company and a monopoly of the cattle trade with the Khoi, and used in English statutes and proclamations as the headland beyond which prizes, pardons and the African trade were reckoned.Events here: Kidd and Culliford at Madagascar (1698)People: William Kidd, Henry Every
• The Red Sea The sea whose southern gate carried the pilgrim and trading fleets between Surat and Mocha, and where English crews out of America lay at anchor waiting for them. Every's company took two ships out of the fleet in 1695, and Kidd's crew watched three weeks at the same anchorage for another.Events here: The Voyage of the Batchelor's Delight (1683 to 1691); Henry Every and the Ganj-i-Sawai (1695)People: William Kidd, Thomas Tew

Britain and Ireland

• Execution Dock The usual place for the execution of pirates, on the Thames at Wapping east of the City of London, where the men condemned at the English Admiralty sessions were hanged, among them Henry Every's crew in November 1696 and William Kidd in May 1701.Events here: Henry Every and the Ganj-i-Sawai (1695); Trials of Every's Crew; The Killing of William Moore (1697); Trial of William Kidd; The Execution of William Kidd (1701)People: William Kidd, George LowtherDrawn beside The Old Bailey, which shares the spot on the map.
• The Old Bailey The sessions house of the City of London and Middlesex, standing beside Newgate Gaol on the street called Old Bailey, and the room in which the Admiralty sessions, a commission of oyer and terminer issued under the Offences at Sea Act 1536, tried six of Henry Every's crew from 19 October to 6 November 1696 and William Kidd on 8 and 9 May 1701, before the Piracy Act 1698 moved the characteristic piracy trial out to the colonies.Events here: Trials of Every's Crew; The Killing of William Moore (1697); Trial of William Kidd; The Execution of William Kidd (1701)People: William Kidd, Robert Culliford, Henry Every, George LowtherDrawn beside Execution Dock, which shares the spot on the map.

South America and the Spanish Main

• Cartagena The fortified Spanish treasure port and asiento slave market on the Caribbean coast of what is now Colombia, sacked in 1697 by a French royal squadron under the baron de Pointis with Saint Domingue filibusters as auxiliaries, and through the golden age proper a defended naval and judicial station that pirates avoided rather than attacked.Events here: The Treaty of Ryswick (1697); The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702)
• Panama The Spanish isthmus corridor joining the Pacific city of Panama to the Caribbean fleet terminus of Portobelo and the fortified mouth of the Chagres, carrying the Peruvian silver to the Tierra Firme galleons, sacked by Henry Morgan in 1671 and, through the golden age of 1690 to 1725, a template carried in print rather than a target attacked.Events here: Morgan's Sack of Panama (1671); The Voyage of the Batchelor's Delight (1683 to 1691)
• Providence Island (Providencia) The island in the western Caribbean that held an English colony until the Spaniards took it in 1641, was seized back for Jamaica by Mansvelt's privateers in 1666 and lost again the same August, and afterwards had governors on paper in London who never held it.Events here: Morgan's Sack of Panama (1671)

Atlantic islands and crossings

• Bermuda An isolated mid-Atlantic English colony, governed by the Somers Isles Company until the Crown took over in 1684, whose sloops, salt raking and privateering commissions placed it inside the golden-age pirate world as a supplier of hulls, men and prizes rather than as a haven of the New Providence kind.Events here: The War of the Spanish Succession Begins (1700 to 1702); The Act of Grace, the King's Pardon (1717 to 1718)People: Thomas Tew, John Bowen