Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard, was an English pirate who operated around the West Indies and the eastern coast of Britain's North American colonies. Little is known about his early life, but he may have been a sailor on privateer ships during Queen Anne's War before he settled on the Bahamian island of New Providence, a base for Captain Benjamin Hornigold, whose crew Teach joined around 1716. Hornigold placed him in command of a sloop that he had captured, and the two engaged in numerous acts of piracy. Their numbers were boosted by the addition to their fleet of two more ships, one of which was commanded by Stede Bonnet, but Hornigold retired from piracy toward the end of 1717, taking two vessels with him.
Decapitation is the total separation of the head from the body. Such an injury is inevitably fatal to humans and most other animals, since it deprives the brain of oxygenated blood, while all other organs are deprived of the involuntary functions that are needed for the body to function.
Bartholomew Roberts, born John Roberts, was a Welsh pirate who was, measured by vessels captured, the most successful pirate of the Golden Age of Piracy. During his piratical career, he took over 470 prize ships. Roberts raided ships off the Americas and the West African coast between 1719 and 1722; he is also noted for creating his own pirate code, and adopting an early variant of the Skull and Crossbones flag.
The Barbary pirates, Barbary corsairs, or Ottoman corsairs were mainly Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from the Barbary states. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. The main purpose of their attacks was to capture slaves for the Barbary slave trade. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Iceland.
Captain Benjamin Hornigold (1680–1719) was an English pirate who operated during the tail end of the Golden Age of Piracy.
Jean-David Nau, better known as François l'Olonnais, was a French pirate active in the Caribbean during the 1660s.
Benito de Soto Aboal Pontevedra is in Galicia in northern Spain where the language is close to Portuguese, which has confused some sources that say he was Portuguese. He was captain of the pirate ship Defensor de Pedro, sometimes incorrectly named as the Burla Negra, that was responsible for several piracies in the Atlantic in 1828, in a period of increased piracy following the independence of the new states of South America. The most notable attacks were on the British Indiaman Morning Star and the American ship Topaz, which involved great violence. De Soto was captured and tried in Gibraltar on 20 January 1830 and he was hanged on 25 January. Other members of his crew were captured in Spain. Their trial there began on 19 November 1829 and ten men were executed on 11 and 12 January 1830.
"Nikolaus" Storzenbecher or "Klaus" Störtebeker was reputed to be leader of a group of privateers known as the Victual Brothers. The Victual Brothers were originally hired during a war between Denmark and Sweden to fight the Danish and supply the besieged Swedish capital Stockholm with provisions. After the end of the war, the Victual Brothers continued to capture merchant vessels for their own account and named themselves "Likedeelers". Recent studies manifest that Störtebeker was not called "Klaus" but "Johann".
Edward "Ned" Low was a notorious pirate of English origin during the latter days of the Golden Age of Piracy, in the early 18th century. Low was born into poverty in Westminster, London, and was a thief from an early age. He moved to Boston, Massachusetts, as a young man. His wife died in childbirth in late 1719. Two years later, he became a pirate, operating off the coasts of New England and the Azores, and in the Caribbean.
Simon of Utrecht was a warship captain of the Hanseatic League during the Middle Ages. He was probably born in Flanders, but emigrated to Hamburg, Germany, where he received citizenship in 1400. He became famous for his participation in the capturing the pirate Klaus Störtebeker in 1401.
Charles Gibbs was the pseudonym of an American pirate, born James D. Jeffers. Jeffers was one of the last active pirates in the Caribbean during the early 19th century, and was among the last persons to be executed for piracy by the United States.
Hennig Wichmann was one of the leaders of the German Likedeelers, an association of former Victual Brothers who had turned pirate.
The Barbary slave trade involved slave markets in the Barbary states. European slaves were acquired by Muslim Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
Laurens Prins, anglicized as Lawrence Prince, was a 17th-century Dutch buccaneer, privateer and an officer under Captain Sir Henry Morgan. He and Major John Morris led one of the columns that raided Panama in 1671.
John Callis was a 16th-century Welsh pirate. He was active in South Wales from Cardiff to Haverfordwest, often selling his prizes and cargo in the villages of Laugharne and Carew in Milford Haven, only a few miles south of Little Newcastle, Wales. His piratical career lasted for decades before pressure from neighbouring countries forced the government of England to take action and managed to capture him in 1576.
Vincenzo Gambi was a 19th-century Italian pirate. He was considered one of the most notorious men in the Gulf of Mexico during the early 19th century and raided shipping in the gulf for well over a decade before his death. Gambi was one of several pirates associated with Jean Lafitte and later assisted him during the Battle of New Orleans along with Dominique You, Rene Beluche and another fellow Italian-born pirate Louis "Nez Coupé" Chighizola. He is briefly mentioned in the 2007 historical novel Strangely Wonderful: Tale of Count Balashazy by Karen Mercury.
The Battle of Cape Fear River, also known as the Battle of the Sandbars, was fought in September 1718 between two sloops from the Province of South Carolina led by William Rhett and a group of pirate ships under the command of Stede Bonnet. Rhett's sloops defeated the pirates in the Cape Fear River estuary which led to Bonnet's eventual execution by hanging in Charleston, South Carolina.
Piracy on Falcon Lake refers to an increase in crime at the border between the United States and Mexico on Falcon Lake. The lake is a 60-mile (97 km) long reservoir of the Rio Grande that was constructed in 1954 and is a known drug smuggling route.
Philip Lyne was a pirate known for his cruelty and his association with Francis Spriggs.
