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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.

Also writtenBahama Islands (the standard English official style of the colony in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries); Bahama (originally the name of the island now called Grand Bahama, later extended to the whole group); Los Lucayos, also Islas de los Lucayos (the Spanish name for the group, from the Lucayan inhabitants, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries); Lucayan Archipelago (a modern geographical term taking in the Turks and Caicos Islands; a twentieth-century convenience that should not be back-projected onto period documents); The Bahamas (the modern state name)

In period paperwork the Bahama Islands is a jurisdiction before it is a geography, and after 1703 the two senses come apart. The government then existed on paper in London and in Charles Town in Carolina while the islands were run by whoever was strongest in the harbour. Nassau has its own record, and the events of 1718 belong there.

The channel

The chain sits astride the homeward route from the Spanish Caribbean: the plate fleets left Havana and ran north through the Bahama Channel.1

Proprietors who could not govern

The Bahama Islands were granted by patent at Westminster on 1 November 1670 to six of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, named in the enrolment as Christopher Duke of Albemarle, William Earl of Craven, John Lord Berkeley, Anthony Lord Ashley, Sir George Carteret and Sir Peter Colleton, constituted absolute Lords and Proprietors under Charles II. That date leaves no room for the July 1668 acquisition one secondary account gives. The first governor under the Proprietors was Hugh Wentworth, whom the inhabitants of New Providence had chosen and whom the Proprietors approved in 1670 and commissioned on 24 April 1671; John Wentworth was commissioned in the same form on 26 December 1671, after Hugh's death. Their governors struggled from the outset to impose authority on independent residents, and John Graves testified in 1709 that in twenty-two years the Proprietors had sent "but four barrils of powder".2

The vacuum after 1703

A Franco-Spanish force fell on New Providence during the War of the Spanish Succession. The nearest contemporary report, forwarded from Barbados on 31 October 1703, has three hundred French and Spaniards landing about the latter end of August 1703, plundering the country, carrying off the President, Mr Lightwood, and a pilot, blowing up the fort and flinging the guns into the sea, and staying on the island about a fortnight before they sailed away. That agrees with neither the October nor the July dating that later writers give, and the report gives no burning of the church, no two hundred and fifty inhabitants surprised and no death toll. By 11 December 1703 the Council of Trade and Plantations reported the island burnt and destroyed and the people all put to the sword or carried off, and by July 1704 the same Board described the Bahamas as remaining uninhabited since their destruction.3

Of about 150 families formerly on the island, 12 were reported remaining. The Proprietors gave up governing, and a decade and a half passed without effective government. The pirate companies moved into an administrative vacancy; no working colony was left for them to conquer.

The plate fleet and the salvage rush

The Spanish plate fleet was destroyed on the Florida coast in 1715. Lieutenant Governor Spotswood of Virginia reported on 24 October 1715 that it consisted of eleven sail and that all but one were cast away in the Gulf of Florida to the southward of St Augustine. Two sloops commissioned at Jamaica by Lord Archibald Hamilton on 21 November 1715, the Eagle and the Barsheba, under Captain Jennings and Captain Edward James, anchored under Spanish colours in the Canal of Bahama on the Florida coast, landed their people and carried away, by the captors' own account, to the value of 120,000 pieces of eight besides the wrought silver. A separate representation places the wrecked flota at Palmar.4

Lord Archibald Hamilton, Governor of Jamaica, disowned that raid and declared Jennings a pirate. Jennings made Nassau his base, and the flying gang consolidated there around him and Benjamin Hornigold, at least twenty captains using the harbour as home port, among them Edward Thache and John Rackham.

The Crown returns on private credit

The Lords Proprietors' deed of surrender of the Bahama Islands was sent to the Attorney General to be enrolled in Chancery on 7 March 1718. David Wilson's study calls the change a conversion that "required the intercession of private enterprise", paid for with "rights over land-based taxes". The King's Instructions to Woodes Rogers as Governor of the Bahama Islands are dated at St James's 6 February 1718, which may be what lies behind the 6 February date given for his commission. Rogers arrived on 26 July 1718 and landed the next day, as he told the Board himself: "I arriv'd in this port 26th July in company with the men of warr ordered to assist me", and "On the 27th I landed and took possession of the fort, where I read H.M. Commission in the presence of my officers, soldiers and about 300 of the people found here".5

The pardon was proclaimed on 5 September 1717, and its figures must be kept apart. Captain Vincent Pearse of HMS Phoenix listed 209 who surrendered in February 1718; about 400 are said to have taken the amnesty overall; 500 to 700 are described as wanting pardons when Rogers arrived; and approximately 1,000 as pardoned by him. They count different populations at different dates.

Suppression ran largely on pirate labour. Hornigold hunted pirates for Rogers and took the men tried at Nassau in December 1718, eight hanging with one reprieved on one account and nine on another. In August 1720 Rackham stole the sloop William with Anne Bonny and Mary Read aboard, was taken in October and tried and executed in Jamaica. That is the last well known pirate act to originate here in these years.

Slavery inside the window

For 1690 to 1725 the islands were a slaveholding society without being a plantation colony on the scale of Barbados or Jamaica. Enslaved people were there from the beginning of proprietary settlement and were treated as portable property, the Proprietors' own costing for settling the islands, drawn up about 1670, budgeting for "600 slaves, 18,000 l." and for "8,000 negroes to be delivered at Providence in two years before any returns can be expected". Thomas Lacy deposed that he was lying at New Providence on 19 January 1684 when the Spaniards came and plundered the town, and the narrative laid before the Lords of Trade that November records that the Governor of Havana afterwards sent a second party which "burnt all the houses, murdered the Governor and several more in cold blood, stripped the rest of the men naked, and carried away the women, children, and negroes to Havana". A report that the Spanish force repulsed from Nassau in 1720 carried off over a hundred enslaved people does not appear in the calendared correspondence for that year. The plantation economy arrived after 1783, with Loyalist refugees and cotton, and emancipation came in August 1834.6

What the sources cannot yet give is the paperwork of the colony's own turning points: whether it is properly a crown colony from 1717 or 1718, the day of Rogers's commission, the name of the company that financed him, and any enslaved population figure for 1690 to 1725. The day the 1715 plate fleet left Havana and the day of the storm are unfixed too, as are the number and dates of the raids said to have followed that of 1703, in 1706 or 1709. CO 23 at Kew would settle much of it, and it has not been read through. No excavation record for a golden-age pirate site in these islands has been retrieved either, and no period soundings for any harbour or channel in the chain.

What the evidence does not settle

New Providence raids

  • 1703 raid on New Providence dated July by one account
  • 1703 raid on New Providence dated October by another accountLikely

Bahamas constitutional dates

  • Rogers's royal commission dated 6 January or 6 February 1718
  • The company that financed Rogers's expedition

Bahamian pirate site archaeology

  • The depths of Bahamian harbours and channels in period sailing records
  • Whether any Golden Age pirate site in the Bahamas has an excavation record

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 chain sits astride the homeward route from the Spanish Caribbean, the plate fleets leaving Havana and running north through the Bahama Channel, that is the Straits of Florida, before turning east for Europe. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Government research project: 300th Anniversary of Spanish Silver Fleet's fatal encounter with a hurricane, NOAA AOML hurricane research blog, for the Bahama Channel as the homeward route
  2. The Bahama Islands were granted by patent at Westminster on 1 November 1670 to six of the Lords Proprietors of Carolina, named in the enrolment as Christopher Duke of Albemarle, William Earl of Craven, John Lord Berkeley, Anthony Lord Ashley, Sir George Carteret and Sir Peter Colleton, constituting them absolute Lords and Proprietors under Charles II. The first governor under the Proprietors was Hugh Wentworth, whom the inhabitants of New Providence had chosen and whom the Proprietors approved in 1670 and commissioned on 24 April 1671; John Wentworth was commissioned in the same form on 26 December 1671, after Hugh's death. The date 1 November 1670 on the enrolment leaves no room for the July 1668 acquisition date given by one secondary account. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Royal patent and proprietary commissions, calendared: Grant of the Bahama Islands, Westminster, 1 November 1670, Patent Roll, 22 Car. II, pt. 9, calendared as item 311 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 7, 1669-1674, ed. W. Noel Sainsbury (London, 1889), pp. 122-140 at page 122, read on British History Online: "Grant to Christopher Duke of Albemarle, William Earl of Craven, John Lord Berkeley, Anthony Lord Ashley, Sir George Carteret, and Sir Peter Colleton, their heirs and assigns, of 'all those islands called Bahama, Eleutheria, Ucanis (?), Providence, Inagua, and all other those islands lying in the degrees of 22 to 27 north lat., commonly known by the name of the Bahama Islands, or the Islands of the Lucayos.' Constituting them absolute Lords and Proprietors"; with item 308 of the same volume, pp. 110-122 (Lord Ashley to John Dorrell and Hugh Wentworth, October 1670: "having heard that Wentworth is chosen Governor by the people, their Lordships approve same"), and item 509, pp. 189-209 at page 206 (24 April 1671, "Lords Proprietors of the Bahama Islands to Gov. Hugh Wentworth, and the Councillors and Assistants. Commission", with the memorandum "John Wentworth commissioned in the same form 26 December 1671")
  3. New Providence was destroyed by a Franco-Spanish descent in 1703. The nearest contemporary report, forwarded from Barbados on 31 October 1703, has it that about the latter end of August 1703 three hundred French and Spaniards landed on Providence, plundered the country, carried off the President, Mr Lightwood, and a pilot, blew up the fort and flung the guns into the sea, and stayed on the island about a fortnight before sailing away. That dating agrees with neither the October 1703 nor the July 1703 dating carried by later accounts, and the report gives no burning of the church, no figure of two hundred and fifty inhabitants surprised, and no death toll. By 11 December 1703 the Council of Trade and Plantations reported the island burnt and destroyed and the people all put to the sword or carried off, and by July 1704 the same Board described the Bahamas as remaining uninhabited since their destruction. A further raid in 1706 or 1709 is not established by anything read here. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Official correspondence, calendared: Governor Sir Bevill Granville to William Popple, Barbados, 31 October 1703, item 1223 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 21, 1702-1703, ed. Cecil Headlam (London, 1913), pp. 771-791 at page 787 (C.O. 28, 7. No. 6), read on British History Online: "That on Sept. 17, severall persons known inhabitants of Providence, came to Rhode Island and reported that about the latter end of August 300 French and Spaniards landed upon Providence, that they plundered the country, carryed off Mr. Lightwood the President and a pilot: that they blew up the Fort and flung the gunns into the sea: that they remain'd upon the Island about a fortnight and then sailed away"; with item 1383 of the same volume, pp. 872-891 (Council of Trade and Plantations to the Earl of Nottingham, 11 December 1703, C.O. 5, 3. No. 9: "Providence, the chief of the Bahama Islands, has been burnt and destroyed by the French and Spaniards, and the people all put to the sword or carryed off"), and item 458 of volume 22, 1704-1705, pp. 211-223 at pages 219-220 (C.O. 324, 8: the Bahama Islands "remaining uninhabited since their being destroyed by the French and Spaniards")
  4. The Spanish plate fleet was destroyed on the Florida coast in 1715 and its salvage camp was robbed the following winter. Lt. Governor Spotswood of Virginia reported on 24 October 1715 that the fleet consisted of eleven sail and that all but one were cast away in the Gulf of Florida to the southward of St Augustine; the day of the departure from Havana and the day of the storm are not fixed by anything read here. Two sloops commissioned at Jamaica by Lord Archibald Hamilton on 21 November 1715, the Eagle and the Barsheba, commanded by Captain Jennings and Captain Edward James, anchored under Spanish colours in the Canal of Bahama on the Florida coast, landed their people and carried away, on the captors' own account as calendared, to the value of 120,000 pieces of eight besides the wrought silver; a separate representation places the wrecked flota at Palmar. The name John Wills for the second commander, and the alternative valuation of about 87,500 pounds, are carried by neither document. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Official correspondence and calendared complaints: Lt. Governor Spotswood to [? Mr. Secretary Stanhope], Virginia, 24 October 1715, item 651 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 28, 1714-1715, ed. Cecil Headlam (London, 1928), pp. 314-327 at page 317 (C.O. 5, 1342. No. 3), read on British History Online: "the Spanish Plate Fleet richly laden, consisting of eleven sail, are, except one, lately cast away in the Gulf of Florida to the southward of St. Augustin"; and item 158 with enclosures i, iv and vii in volume 29, 1716-1717, pp. 76-101 at pages 78 to 82, read on British History Online: "They carried away to the value of 120,000 pieces of eight, besides the wrought silver, this is what the captors own themselves"; "In Novr. there was two sloops fitted out of Jamaica, one belonging to Capt. Edward James, the other to Capt. Jennings, which had my Lord Hamilton's Commission for suppressing of piracys, but this design, as they said themselves was upon the wrecks"; "The sloops Eagle and Barsheba were commissioned 21st Nov. last by Governor Lord A. Hamilton to go to sea for six months"; and "The English sloops under pretence of clearing the coasts of pirates, against all equity have been diving for the silver wch. was lost on the Flota at Palmar"
  5. Woodes Rogers arrived at New Providence on 26 July 1718 and landed the next day. He says so himself in his first despatch home: "Pursuant to my Instructions I take leave to acquaint your Lordships, I arriv'd in this port 26th July in company with the men of warr ordered to assist me", and "On the 27th I landed and took possession of the fort, where I read H.M. Commission in the presence of my officers, soldiers and about 300 of the people found here". The Lords Proprietors' deed of surrender of the Bahama Islands was sent to the Attorney General to be enrolled in Chancery on 7 March 1718, and the King's Instructions to Rogers as Governor of the Bahama Islands are dated at St James's 6 February 1718, which may be what lies behind the 6 February date given for his commission. The commission date of 6 January 1718, the Proprietors' retention of their land title, and the twenty-one year lease to Rogers and his backers are carried by nothing read here. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Governor's despatch and Board of Trade papers, calendared: Governor Woodes Rogers to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Nassau on Providence, 31 October 1718, item 737 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 30, 1717-1718, ed. Cecil Headlam (London, 1930), pp. 359-381 at page 372, read on British History Online; with item 420 of the same volume, pp. 196-215 (7 March 1718, "Mr. Popple to Mr. Attorney General. Encloses deed of surrender by the Lords Proprietors of the Bahama Islands to be enrolled in Chancery etc.", C.O. 24, 1. p. 18) and item 353, pp. 168-186 ("Feb. 6. St. James's. H.M. Instructions to Woodes Rogers, Governor of the Bahama Islands", C.O. 324, 33. pp. 127-129)
  6. Enslaved people were present in the Bahamas from the beginning of proprietary settlement and were treated as portable property. The Proprietors' own costing for settling the islands, drawn up about 1670, budgets for "600 slaves, 18,000 l." and for "8,000 negroes to be delivered at Providence in two years before any returns can be expected". Thomas Lacy deposed that he was lying at New Providence on 19 January 1684 when the Spaniards came and plundered the town; and the narrative of occurrences laid before the Lords of Trade in November 1684 records that the Governor of Havana afterwards sent a second party which "burnt all the houses, murdered the Governor and several more in cold blood, stripped the rest of the men naked, and carried away the women, children, and negroes to Havana". No reliable figure for the enslaved population of the islands between 1690 and 1725 has been retrieved, and the report that the Spanish force repulsed from Nassau in 1720 carried off over a hundred enslaved people was not found in the calendared correspondence for that year. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Depositions and official narratives, calendared: Narrative of occurrences at New Providence, received 7 November and read at the Committee 8 November and 6 December 1684, item 1927 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 11, 1681-1685, ed. J. W. Fortescue (London, 1898), pp. 713-725 at page 718 (Col. Papers, Vol. LIV, No. 70), read on British History Online; with item 1926 of the same volume, the deposition of Thomas Lacy (Col. Papers, Vol. LIV, No. 69), who "was lying at New Providence on 19th January 1684, when the Spaniards came, plundered the town, carried away his ship and cargo, and killed two of his men"; and item 312 of volume 7, 1669-1674, pp. 122-140 at page 123, "A short computation of expense in settling and improving the Bahama Islands for the first three years"