Take a tour through some of the most famous pirate havens of history, and meet the marauders who helped build them.
1.Port Royal
During'”golden age of piracy”, at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, Royal Port, Jamaica, was one of the most popular ports of call for thieves, prostitutes and pirates of all kinds. The small port’s association with marauding began in the mid-1600s, when Jamaican governors offered it as a refuge to pirates in exchange for protection from the Spanish. The buccaneers accepted the deal, and the town quickly became an important stopover for British and French privateer ship captains commissioned by the Crown to disrupt Spanish shipping in the Caribbean and Atlantic. One of the most famous of these state-sanctioned pirates was Sir Henry Morgan, a Welsh captain who used Port Royal as a base of operations for raids on the Spanish strongholds of Portobello, Cartagena, and Panama City.
Port Royal thrived on its pirate economy, and by the 1660s its streets were lined with taverns and brothels eager to satisfy the whims of young buccaneers who preyed on Spanish booty. Contemporary accounts describe a sordid port overrun by gambling, prostitution and drinking, where hard-lived sailors often wasted thousands of Spanish reals in a single night. Even after the end of the era of corsairs, the so-called “baddest city in the world” continued to serve as a haven for a new breed of independent, lawless pirates. But when these raiders began indiscriminately plundering maritime traffic in the Caribbean, the colonial authorities at Port Royal were finally brought to bear. By 1720, the town had begun to clean up its act and its “Gallows Point” became a notorious site for pirate hangings. Among countless others, buccaneers like the ruthless Charles Vane and the flamboyant “Calico” Jack Rackham (the famous pirate who adopts the pirate flag skull) will eventually meet their end in Port Royal.
2. The island of Sainte-Marie
Wooden-legged pirates and sword-wielding sea captains are commonly associated with Caribbean, but many of the most successful buccaneers plied their trade in the Indian Ocean. From the end of the 17th century, bands of buccaneers well-armed ships used the African island of Madagascar as a base of operations for raids on European and Asian shipping. According to pirate legend, some of these pioneer thieves even established a utopian colony called Libertalia, where they mingled with native women and organized a democratic government. Libertalia is most likely a maritime myth, but Madagascar was home to several other pirate strongholds, the most famous of which is Sainte-Marie Island on the northeast coast.
In the 1690s, Sainte-Marie had around 1,500 inhabitants and served as a supply base for pirates like the cCaptain Kidd, Thomas Tew and Henry Every. Mary’s attacked ships carrying exotic goods from India, and local traders then sold the loot to shady merchants in cities like New York and Boston. Some of these raids were among the most lucrative crimes in history. For example, in 1695, Henry Every used a fleet of six ships to attack a treasure ship belonging to the Great Mughal of India. After a bloody fight, he fled with the equivalent of some $200 million in loot.
3. Turtle
In the early 1600s, the rocky island of Tortuga was the main stronghold for a ragtag group of adventurers, thieves, and escaped slaves who preyed on the treasures of Spanish ships in the Caribbean. These raiders began as a group of French hunters on the neighboring island of Hispaniola (now Haiti), and it was the French word for their method of drying meat, “boucaner”, that inspired their nickname feared: the buccaneers. The buccaneers fled Hispaniola for Tortuga around 1630 after the arrival of Spanish settlers, and they quickly turned to the lucrative trade of piracy. To support their operations, they made Tortuga a fortified stronghold. Jean le Vasseur, a buccaneer leader who had worked as a military engineer, even built a 24-cannon castle called Fort de Rocher to help guard the island’s port.
Tortuga became a destination of choice for pirates, attracting men of character as far away as England, Holland and Portugal. As future marauders arrived on the island, they organized themselves into a brotherhood of thieves called the “Brothers of the Coast” and developed their own code of conduct. Many of these brothers received privateering commissions from England and France, and they proved to be a thorn in the side of the Spanish, who responded with repeated attacks on Tortuga. The buccaneers later served under Sir Henry Morgan during his famous raids on the Spanish Main, but their influence waned with the end of privateering. While a few continued to prowl the Caribbean for several decades, the Tortuga buccaneers had all but disappeared by the early 18th century.