For a brief, glorious period the Republic was a success as the pirates became heroes in the eyes of the people. They cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Europe from its New World empires. Along with their fellow pirates - former sailors, indentured servants, and runaway slaves - this "Flying Gang" established a crude but distinctive democracy in the Bahamas, carving out their own zone of freedom in which servants were free, blacks could be equal citizens, and leaders were chosen or deposed by a vote. In the early eighteenth century, the Pirate Republic was home to some of the great pirate captains, including Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, "Black Sam" Bellamy, and Charles Vane. Here is the true story of the rise and fall of the Republic of Pirates.īook Synopsis An entrancing tale of piracy colored with gold, treachery and double-dealing (Portland Press Herald), Pulitzer Prize-finalist Colin Woodward's The Republic of Pirates is the historical biography of the exploits of infamous Caribbean buccaneers. Rogers vowed he would not rest until he had destroyed Teach and Bellamy. One man volunteered to take on the pirates-a man named Woodes Rogers, once a privateer himself and now the owner of a merchant fleet. For a brief, glorious period they were astoundingly successful, and so disruptive to shipping that the governors of Jamaica, Virginia, Bermuda, and the Carolinas all began clamoring for intervention. Along with their associates in the Bahamas-based "Flying Gang," Teach and Bellamy banded together to form a pirate cooperative, culminating in a form of government in which blacks were equal citizens, the rich were imprisoned, and a sailor could veto his captain by egalitarian means.
The Republic of Pirates features the 18th-century pirates Edward "Blackbeard" Teach and "Black Sam" Bellamy, both of whom rose from England's underclass to become wealthy, notorious, and enormously powerful.
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