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A privateer is a private person who or a vessel that engages in maritime warfare under a commission of war. Since robbery under arms was a common aspect of seaborne trade, until the early 19th century all merchant ships carried arms. A sovereign or delegated authority issued commissions, also referred to as letters of marque, during wartime. The commission empowered the holder to carry on all forms of hostility permissible at sea by the usages of war. This included attacking foreign vessels and taking them as prizes and taking crews prisoner for exchange. Captured ships were subject to condemnation and sale under prize law, with the proceeds divided by percentage between the privateer's sponsors, shipowners, captains and crew. A percentage share usually went to the issuer of the commission.
The era of piracy in the Caribbean began in the 1500s and phased out in the 1830s after the navies of the nations of Western Europe and North America with colonies in the Caribbean began combating pirates. The period during which pirates were most successful was from the 1660s to 1730s. Piracy flourished in the Caribbean because of the existence of pirate seaports such as Port Royal in Jamaica, Tortuga in Haiti, and Nassau in the Bahamas. Piracy in the Caribbean was part of a larger historical phenomenon of piracy, as it existed close to major trade and exploration routes in almost all the five oceans.
The Anglo-Spanish War was a conflict between the English Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, and Spain, between 1654 and 1660. It was caused by commercial rivalry. Each side attacked the other's commercial and colonial interests in various ways such as privateering and naval expeditions. In 1655, an English amphibious expedition invaded Spanish territory in the Caribbean. In 1657, England formed an alliance with France, merging the Anglo–Spanish war with the larger Franco-Spanish War resulting in major land actions that took place in the Spanish Netherlands.
Woodes Rogers was an English sea captain, privateer, slave trader and, from 1718, the first Royal Governor of the Bahamas. He is known as the captain of the vessel that rescued marooned Alexander Selkirk, whose plight is generally believed to have inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.
Isla de Providencia, historically Old Providence, and generally known as Providencia or Providence, is a mountainous Caribbean island that is part of the Colombian department of Archipelago of San Andrés, Providencia and Santa Catalina and the municipality of Providencia and Santa Catalina Islands, lying midway between Costa Rica and Jamaica.
The Providence Company or Providence Island Company was an English chartered company founded in 1629 by a group of Puritan investors including Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick in order to establish the Providence Island colony on Providence Island in the Caribbean and on the Mosquito Coast of what became Nicaragua.
Jennings first recorded act of piracy took place in early 1716 when, with three vessels and 150–300 men, Jennings' fleet ambushed the Spanish salvage camp from the 1715 Treasure Fleet. After the Florida raid, Jennings and his crew also linked up with Benjamin Hornigold's "three sets of pirates" from New Providence Island.
Nathaniel Butler was an English privateer who later served as the colonial governor of Bermuda during the early 17th century. He had built many structures still seen in Bermuda today including many of the island's coastal fortresses and the State House, in St. George's, the oldest surviving English settlement in the New World. He also has the distinction of introducing the potato, the first seen in North America, to the early English colonists of Jamestown, Virginia.
William Jackson was an English privateer who, based in Guanaja and Roatan, was in the service of the Providence Island Company from 1639 until around 1641. During that year, he captured a Spanish slave ship at the Honduran port of Trujillo and received a ransom of 8,000 pounds of indigo as well as 2,000 pieces-of-eight and two gold chains. Leaving the Providence Island Company, he sailed to England where he sold sugar and indigo to obtain supplies for another privateering expedition and, upon receiving a three-year letter of marque from the Earl of Warwick, he set sail commanding a fleet including such prominent privateers as Samuel Axe, William Rous and Lewis Morris in 1642.
James Riskinner or Reiskimmer was a 17th-century English privateer who operated from Providence Island against Spanish shipping during the late 1630s. A lieutenant on the ship Warwick, then part of a fleet under the command of Nathaniel Butler, he later took part in a privateering expedition under Butler between May–September 1639.
This timeline of the history of piracy in the 1640s is a chronological list of key events involving pirates between 1640 and 1649.
William Rous was a 17th-century English privateer in the service of the Providence Island Company. He was later enlisted by William Jackson to accompany him on his expedition to the West Indies.
Daniel Elfrith was a 17th-century English privateer, colonist and slave trader. In the service of the Earl of Warwick, Elfrith was involved in privateering expeditions against the Spanish from his base in Bermuda. He was particularly known for capturing Spanish slave ships bound for the Spanish Main and selling the slaves himself to rival colonies in the Caribbean and the American colonies.
The English overseas possessions, also known as the English colonial empire, comprised a variety of overseas territories that were colonised, conquered, or otherwise acquired by the former Kingdom of England during the centuries before the Acts of Union of 1707 between the Kingdom of England and the Kingdom of Scotland created the Kingdom of Great Britain. The many English possessions then became the foundation of the British Empire and its fast-growing naval and mercantile power, which until then had yet to overtake those of the Dutch Republic, the Kingdom of Portugal, and the Crown of Castile.
The Providence Island colony was established in 1630 by English Puritans on Providence Island, about 200 kilometres (120 mi) east of the coast of Nicaragua. It was founded and controlled by a group of English investors, the Providence Island Company.
Sussex Camock or Sussex Cammock (1600–1659) was an English privateer who was involved in establishing the Providence Island colony, a Puritan colony on what is now Isla de Providencia in the western Caribbean. Sussex Camock was the brother of Captain Thomas Cammock.
Philip Bell was Governor of Bermuda from 1626 to 1629, of the Providence Island colony from 1629 to 1636, and of Barbados from 1640 to 1650 during the English Civil War. During his terms of office in Providence and Barbados, the colonies moved from using indentured English workers to slaves imported from West Africa. The Providence Island colony, despite its puritan ideals, became a haven for privateers attacking ships in the Spanish Main.
Robert Hunt was an English soldier who was Governor of the Providence Island colony in the western Caribbean sea from 1636 to 1638.
Francisco de Murga y Ortiz de Orué was Spanish soldier and engineer who became Governor and Captain-General of Cartagena. He was governor of Marmora in Africa when he was appointed to fortify the plaza of Cartagena. He was a knight of Order of Santiago. He died in 1636.
References
- ↑ "Archived copy". bz.llano.net. Archived from the original on 5 October 2010. Retrieved 15 January 2022.
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