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Naval Suppression and Its Tactics

The tactics by which the British state broke organised Atlantic piracy between about 1717 and 1726. The reoccupation of the havens, station ships, hired shallow-draught sloops and cash bounties worked together, resting on statutes that allowed trial by vice-admiralty commission in the colonies.

Also writtenSuppression of piracy; Anti-piracy campaign; Pirate hunting; The Royal Navy against the pirates

Naval suppression is the shorthand for the instruments by which the British state broke organised Atlantic piracy between about 1717 and 1726. The Navy was only one of the instruments. Much of the work was done by proclamations, colonial governors, hired merchant sloops, bounty money and the gallows. The tactics are set out below; the outcome is at the end of the golden age, and the mercy at pirate pardons.

Behind the campaign sat the legal architecture that made a capture productive: the piracy statutes of 1698 and 1721, and the commissioned vice-admiralty courts that could try a pirate where he was taken.1

Station ships

The Navy's standing contribution was the station ship. The list printed in the London Gazette with the pardon proclamation of 1717 names the ships kept at Jamaica, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Virginia, New York and New England, and directs that they join upon occasion "for annoying the Pirates, and the Security of the Trade", so that convoy protection and the suppression of pirates were a single standing charge on the same vessels. A dedicated hunting cruise, a warship sent after one named company and nothing else, was the rarer method, and depended on an energetic captain. Suppression rested heavily on local initiative and on hired civilian vessels: in 1718 the captains of the men of war on the Virginia station were unwilling to bear the charge of hiring sloops, which they had no orders to do, and Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood supplied sloops and pilots at his own charge while the men of war supplied the men.2

The hired sloop

The tactical problem was draught. Deep-hulled men-of-war could not follow into the shoal inlets and sounds where companies careened and sheltered. The answer was to borrow a shallower hull: governors hired merchant sloops, put pilots aboard, manned them from the station ships and sent them in under a naval officer. The action at Ocracoke Inlet on 22 November 1718 is the model case. Finding it impracticable for the men of war to go into the shallow and difficult channels of North Carolina, Spotswood hired two sloops at his own charge, and the captains of the King's ships, the Pearl and the Lyme lying in the James River, put 55 men aboard them under the first Lieutenant of the Pearl, Robert Maynard. They came up with the company in the inlet, where Blackbeard was killed with nine of his crew in a short boarding action, ten of the King's men being killed and twenty-four wounded.3

Denying the base

Denying the pirates a secure base was central to the whole design. Woodes Rogers, holding the King's commission as Governor of the Bahama Islands, arrived at Nassau on 26 July 1718 in company with the men of war ordered to assist him, among them the Rose, the Milford and the Shark sloop, landed on the 27th, took possession of the fort and read his commission before his officers, soldiers and about 300 of the people found there, who received him under arms. The inhabitants and their black servants were set to repairing the fort and mounting guns, and by the end of 1718 Rogers reported it tenable, with 112 men mustered in his Independent Company and 152 of the marooners and inhabitants at the last muster. Charles Vane refused the terms: a French prize of 22 guns that he had taken was set on fire in the harbour to drive out the Rose, which cut her cables and ran out in the night, and the next morning Vane and about 90 of his men made off in a sloop, outsailing the two sent after them. The reoccupation removed Nassau, the single most important pirate base in the Atlantic.4

The dedicated cruise

HMS Swallow, rated at fifty guns, under Captain Chaloner Ogle, is the outstanding example of the rarer method. She ran down Bartholomew Roberts's squadron off Cape Lopez, taking the consort Ranger first, on 5 February 1722, and bringing Roberts's own ship to action on the 10th, in which Roberts was killed, struck in the throat by a grape-shot, by one account. About 200 Englishmen and 60 or 70 enslaved black men were found in the three ships, together with a large quantity of gold dust that the ship's surgeon reckoned at eight or ten thousand pounds, and the prisoners were carried to Cape Coast Castle, where a court of admiralty sat on them from 28 March 1722 under a commission from the King under the seal of the Admiralty.5

Fifty-two of Roberts's men were hanged after the trials that followed. The printed history of 1724 tabulates the whole as acquitted 74, executed 52, respited 2, to servitude 20, to the Marshalsea 17, killed in the Ranger 10, killed in the Fortune 3, died in the passage 15, died afterwards in the castle 4, and 70 black men in both ships, a total of 276. The fifty-four given in some accounts is the number condemned, two of whom, George Wilson and Thomas Oughterlaney, were respited until the King's pleasure should be known, while twenty men who petitioned the court had their sentence changed from death to seven years' servitude with the Royal African Company.6

Bounty money

Cash worked on the pirates and on the men sent against them. The Virginia Assembly, in a session begun at the Capitol in Williamsburgh on 11 November 1718, passed an Act to encourage the apprehending and destroying of pyrates, and Spotswood published its scale by proclamation on 24 November: one hundred pounds for Edward Teach, commonly called Blackbeard; forty pounds for every other commander of a pirate ship, sloop or vessel; twenty for every lieutenant, master, quarter-master, boatswain or carpenter; sixteen for every other inferior officer; and ten for every private man taken on board. The rewards ran for a year from 14 November 1718, within stated bounds of latitude and distance, and were payable out of the public money in the hands of the Treasurer of the colony.7

What comes through Johnson

The suppression reaches most readers as a sequence of duels, the naval officer as nemesis and the pirate captain dying sword in hand. That shape comes from the General History of the Pyrates of 1724, which gives set-piece accounts of the Ocracoke and Cape Lopez fights and supplies many of the remembered particulars. The engagements are independently documented; the particulars are not. The Scottish highlander said to have delivered Blackbeard's fatal stroke, the count of five shot and some twenty cutlass wounds on his body, and the reported by-play of dialogue descend from early narrative accounts, Johnson's among them. The proclamations, station-ship rosters, hired sloops and bounty accounts that did the work carry no such stories.

The statutes, proclamations and printed trials are firm, and the arithmetic around them is not. The Cape Coast totals come from the printed history of 1724 rather than from the court's own minutes, the two sloops Spotswood hired are nowhere named in the correspondence read here, and the relative weight of pardon, force and base denial is a matter of emphasis rather than settled fact. The Admiralty and Colonial Office papers at Kew, with the trial minutes, would settle several of these, and are unread.

What the evidence does not settle

Cape Coast Castle hanged total

  • Fifty two of Roberts's men were hanged after the 1722 trialsVery likely

Spotswood's 1718 bounty proclamation

  • The bounty schedule and its funding are known only secondhand

Maynard's hired sloops

  • The sloop names Jane and Ranger rest on later accounts

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 suppression of Atlantic piracy between about 1717 and 1726 rested on the legal architecture of the piracy statutes of 1698 and 1721 and the commissioned vice-admiralty courts that could try a pirate in the colony where he was taken. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Statute texts: "An Act for the more effectuall Suppressions of Piracy," Statutes of the Realm vol. 7, pp. 590 to 594, British History Online; "1721: 8 George 1 c.24: The Piracy Act," The Statutes Project
  2. The Royal Navy's standing contribution was the station ship. The list published with the pardon proclamation of 1717 names the ships kept at Jamaica, Barbados, the Leeward Islands, Virginia, New York and New England, and directs that they join upon occasion for annoying the pirates and for the security of the trade, so that convoy protection and the suppression of pirates were a single standing charge on the same vessels. Suppression nonetheless rested heavily on local initiative and on hired civilian vessels: in 1718 the captains of the men of war on the Virginia station would not bear the charge of hiring sloops, having no orders for it, and Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood hired two sloops and put pilots aboard at his own charge while the men of war supplied only the men. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Official gazette and colonial state papers: The London Gazette, issue 5573, for Saturday 14 to Tuesday 17 September 1717, front page, read from the scanned issue: "A List of His Majesty's Ships and Vessels employed, and to be employed, at the British Governments and Plantations in the West-Indies", entering ships under Jamaica, Barbados, Leeward Islands, Virginia, New York and New England, with the direction that "Those at Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the Leeward Islands, are to join upon Occasion, for annoying the Pirates, and the Security of the Trade: And those at New-England, Virginia, and New-York, are to do the like"; Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Virginia, 22 December 1718, C.O. 5, 1318, no. 61, calendared as Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 30, 1717 to 1718, no. 800, read on British History Online: "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"
  3. Deep-draught men-of-war could not follow pirates into the shoal inlets and sounds where they careened and sheltered, so colonial governors hired shallow-draught sloops, put pilots aboard, manned them with seamen drawn from the station ships and sent them in under a naval officer. The model case is the action at Ocracoke Inlet on 22 November 1718: finding it impracticable for the men of war to go into the shallow and difficult channels of North Carolina, Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood hired two sloops at his own charge, and the captains of the King's ships, the Pearl and the Lyme lying in the James River, put 55 men aboard them under the first Lieutenant of the Pearl, named in the printed history of 1724 as Robert Maynard. Blackbeard was killed with nine of his crew in a short boarding action, ten of the King's men being killed and twenty four wounded. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Colonial state papers and a period narrative: Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Virginia, 22 December 1718, C.O. 5, 1318, no. 61, calendared as Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 30, 1717 to 1718, no. 800, read on British History Online: "It was found impracticable for the men of war to go into the shallow and difficult channells of that country... 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, they came up with Tach at Ouacock Inlett on the 22nd of last month", and, of the outcome, "Tach with nine of his crew were killed... there being (?) ten killed in the action, and four and twenty wounded of whom one is since dead of his wounds"; for the officer's name, A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), attributed to Charles Johnson, read in the Project Gutenberg text: "the Command of them given to Mr. Robert Maynard, first Lieutenant of the Pearl"
  4. Woodes Rogers, holding the King's commission as Governor of the Bahama Islands, arrived at Nassau on 26 July 1718 in company with the men of war ordered to assist him, among them the Rose, the Milford and the Shark sloop; he landed on the 27th, took possession of the fort and read the King's commission before his officers, soldiers and about 300 of the people found there, who received him under arms. The inhabitants and their black servants were set to repairing the fort and mounting guns, and by the end of 1718 Rogers reported it tenable, with 112 men mustered in his Independent Company and 152 of the marooners and inhabitants at the last muster. Charles Vane refused the terms: a French prize of 22 guns that he had taken was set on fire in the harbour to drive out the Rose, which cut her cables and ran out in the night, and the next morning Vane and about 90 of his men made off in a sloop, outsailing the two sloops sent after them. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Colonial state papers and official gazette: Governor Woodes Rogers to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Nassau on Providence, 31 October 1718, C.O. 23, 1, no. 10, calendared as Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 30, 1717 to 1718, no. 737, read on British History Online: "I arriv'd in this port 26th July in company with the men of warr ordered to assist me... found a French ship (that was taken by the pirates of 22 guns) burning in the harbour, which we were told was set on fire to drive out H.M.S. the Rose who got in too eagerly the evening before me, and cut here cables and run out in the night for fear of being burnt, by one Charles Vane who command'd the pirates... he with about 90 men fled away in a sloop wearing the black flag... 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, who received me under armes and readily surrendered", with the same letter for the musters of 112 and 152 men and for the Shark sloop "that came wth. us"; The London Gazette, issue 5706, for 23 to 27 December 1718, front page, letter from the Town of Nassau, read from the scanned issue, for the repair of the fort by "a Number of the Inhabitants and of their Negroes"; Governor Rogers to Mr Secretary Craggs, Nassau, 24 December 1718, C.O. 23, 13, ff. 20 to 24v, calendared as the same volume, no. 807: "the fort is now made tenible"
  5. HMS Swallow, rated at fifty guns, under Captain Chaloner Ogle, ran down Bartholomew Roberts's squadron off Cape Lopez, taking the consort Ranger first, on 5 February 1722, and bringing Roberts's own ship to action on the 10th, in which Roberts was killed, struck in the throat by a grape-shot on the printed history's account, which is the only one to describe the manner. About 200 Englishmen and 60 or 70 enslaved black men were found in the three ships, together with a large quantity of gold dust reckoned by the ship's surgeon at eight or ten thousand pounds, and the prisoners were carried to Cabo Corso Castle on the Gold Coast, where a court of admiralty sat on them from 28 March 1722 under a commission from the King under the seal of the Admiralty. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Period narratives and a printed trial: A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), attributed to Charles Johnson, read in the Project Gutenberg text, for the Swallow and Weymouth as "two Men of War, of 50 Guns each", for the sighting at Cape Lopez Bay on the 5th and for the action of the 10th, in which "Death, who took a swift Passage in a Grape-Shot, had not interposed, and struck him directly on the Throat"; John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies (London, 1735), read in the Project Gutenberg text of the 1735 edition: "We found in the three Ships about 200 Englishmen, 60 or 70 stout Negro Slaves, great plenty of trading Goods, and, what more attracted the Eye, a large quantity of Gold Dust, by computation, 8 or 10000l."; A Full and Exact Account, of the Tryal of All the Pyrates, Lately Taken by Captain Ogle (London, printed and sold by J. Roberts, 1723), read from the Internet Archive scan, for "A Journal of the Proceedings of the Court of Admiralty, held at Cabo Corso Castle on the Coast of Africa, March the 28th, 1722" and for the summons issued "By Virtue of the Power and Authority to Us given from the King, under the Seal of Admiralty"
  6. Fifty-two of Roberts's men were hanged after the Cabo Corso Castle trials of 1722. The figure is tabulated in the printed history of 1724, which gives the account of the whole as acquitted 74, executed 52, respited 2, to servitude 20, to the Marshalsea 17, killed in the Ranger 10, killed in the Fortune 3, died in the passage to Cape Corso 15, died afterwards in the castle 4, and 70 black men in both ships, a total of 276. The fifty-four given in some accounts is the number condemned, two of whom, George Wilson and Thomas Oughterlaney, were respited from execution until the King's pleasure should be known. Twenty men who petitioned the court had their sentence changed from death to seven years' servitude with the Royal African Company. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period narrative and a printed trial: A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), attributed to Charles Johnson, read in the Project Gutenberg text: "two others, viz. George Wilson and Thomas Oughterlaney, were respited from Execution, till his Majesty's Pleasure should be known... the Account of the whole stands thus, Acquitted, 74. Executed, 52. Respited, 2. To Servitude, 20. To the Marshalsea, 17. Kill'd in the Ranger, 10. Kill'd in the Fortune, 3. Dy'd in the Passage to Cape Corso, 15. Dy'd afterwards in the Castle, 4. Negroes in both Ships, 70. Total, 276", and for the petition granting "seven Years Servitude, at any of the Royal African Company's Settlements in Africa"; the respites corroborated in A Full and Exact Account, of the Tryal of All the Pyrates, Lately Taken by Captain Ogle (London, 1723), read from the Internet Archive scan, where sentence on Wilson is "referr'd to the King's Pleasure"
  7. Colonial assemblies and governors offered cash rewards for named pirates. The Virginia Assembly, in a session begun at the Capitol in Williamsburgh on 11 November 1718, passed an Act to encourage the apprehending and destroying of pyrates, and Lieutenant Governor Alexander Spotswood published its scale by proclamation at Williamsburgh on 24 November 1718: for Edward Teach, commonly called Captain Teach or Blackbeard, one hundred pounds; for every other commander of a pirate ship, sloop or vessel, forty pounds; for every lieutenant, master, quarter-master, boatswain or carpenter, twenty pounds; for every other inferior officer, sixteen pounds; and for every private man taken on board, ten pounds. The rewards ran for a year from 14 November 1718, within stated bounds of latitude and distance, and were payable out of the public money in the hands of the Treasurer of the colony. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Proclamation printed in a period narrative, with colonial state papers: Proclamation by Alexander Spotswood, "Publishing the Rewards given for apprehending, or killing, Pyrates", given at the Council-Chamber at Williamsburgh, 24 November 1718, printed in full in A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724), attributed to Charles Johnson, which states "The original Proclamation being in our Hands", read in the Project Gutenberg text: "for Edward Teach, commonly call'd Captain Teach, or Black-Beard, one hundred Pounds, for every other Commander of a Pyrate Ship, Sloop, or Vessel, forty Pounds; for every Lieutenant, Master, or Quarter-Master, Boatswain, or Carpenter, twenty Pounds; for every other inferior Officer, sixteen Pounds, and for every private Man taken on Board such Ship, Sloop, or Vessel, ten Pounds", to be received "out of the publick Money, in the Hands of the Treasurer of this Colony"; corroborated by Lieutenant Governor Spotswood to the Council of Trade and Plantations, 22 December 1718, C.O. 5, 1318, no. 61, calendared as Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 30, 1717 to 1718, no. 800, read on British History Online: "I proposed to our late Assembly and prevailed with them to pass an Act giving rewards for apprehending and destroying of pyrates, by which there is to be paid particularly for Tach 100l., and half the rewards promised by H.M. Proclamation, for every one of his, or any other crew of pyrates taken on this coast, to be paid out of the publick money now in the hands of the countrey's Treasurer"