- Amazon Business : For business-only pricing, quantity discounts and FREE Shipping. Register a free business account


Follow the Author
OK
The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down Paperback – Illustrated, June 30, 2008
Colin Woodard
(Author)
Find all the books, read about the author, and more.
See search results for this author
Are you an author?
Learn about Author Central
|
Price
|
New from | Used from |
Audible Audiobook, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
Free with your Audible trial |
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry"
|
$22.30 | — |

Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Ask Alexa to read your book with Audible integration or text-to-speech.
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now
Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Download to your computer
|
Kindle Cloud Reader
|
Frequently bought together
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
- Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious PiratesPaperback
- Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the PiratesPaperback
- Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global ManhuntHardcover
- The Pirate World: A History of the Most Notorious Sea RobbersHardcover
- Blackbeard: America's Most Notorious PiratePaperback
- A General History of the PyratesCaptain Charles JohnsonPaperback
Customers who bought this item also bought
- Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the PiratesPaperback
- Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious PiratesPaperback
- A General History of the PyratesCaptain Charles JohnsonPaperback
- Blackbeard: America's Most Notorious PiratePaperback
- The Pirate World: A History of the Most Notorious Sea RobbersHardcover
- The Buccaneers of AmericaAlexander O. ExquemelinPaperback
Special offers and product promotions
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Fascinating . . . beyond rip-roaring adventure stories from the distant past, [the book offers] an opportunity to understand pirates as they truly were."―The New York Times Book Review
"It's a rollicking tale, filled with rich details of the lives of men who, for their own personal gain, challenged the spread of empires."―The Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
From the Inside Flap
For a brief, glorious period the pirate republic was enormously successful. At its height it cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Britain, France, and Spain from their New World empires. The Royal Navy went from being unable to catch the pirates to being afraid to encounter them at all. Imperial authorities and wealthy shipowners denounced the pirates as the enemies of mankind, but huge numbers of common people saw them as heroes. Finally one man volunteered to pacify the pirate’s Bahaman lair and destroy any who resisted -- Woodes Rogers, a famous privateer himself and scion of a powerful merchant family.
Drawing on extensive research in the archives of Britain and the Americas, Colin Woodard tells the dramatic untold story of the Pirate Republic that shook the very foundations of the British and Spanish Empires and fanned the democratic sentiments that would one day drive the American revolution.
From the Back Cover
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Legend
1696
The sloop arrived in the afternoon of April Fool’s Day 1696, swinging around the low, sandy expanse of Hog Island and into Nassau’s wide, dazzlingly blue harbor.
At first, the villagers on the beach and the sailors in the harbor took little notice. Small and nondescript, this sloop was a familiar sight, a trading vessel from the nearby island of Eleuthera, fifty miles to the east. She came to Nassau, the capital of the Bahamas, on a regular basis to trade salt and produce for cloth and sugar, and to get news brought in from England, Jamaica, and the Carolinas. The bystanders expected to see her crew drop anchor, load their goods into their longboat, and row toward the beach, as the capital had no wharves or piers. Later, their cargoes disposed of, the crew would go drinking in one of Nassau’s public houses, trading updates of the ongoing war, the movements of the infernal French, and cursing the absence of the Royal Navy.
But not on this day.
The sloop’s crew rowed ashore. Its captain, a local man familiar to all, jumped onto the beach, followed by several strangers. The latter wore unusual clothing: silks from India, perhaps, a kerchief in bright African patterns, headgear from Arabia, as rank and dirty as the cheap woolens worn by any common seaman. Those who came near enough to overhear their speech or peer into their tanned faces could tell they were English and Irish mariners not unlike those from other large ships that came from the far side of the Atlantic.
The party made its way through the tiny village, a few dozen houses clustered along the shore in the shadow of a modest stone fortress. They crossed the newly cleared town square, passing the island’s humble wooden church, eventually arriving at the recently built home of Governor Nicholas Trott. They stood barefoot on the sun-baked sand and dirt, the fecund smell of the tropics filling their nostrils. Townspeople stopped to stare at the wild-looking men waiting on the governor’s doorstep. A servant opened the door and, upon exchanging a few words with the sloop’s master, rushed off to inform His Excellency that an urgent message had arrived.
~Nicholas Trott already had his hands full that morning. His colony was in trouble. England had been at war with France for eight years, disrupting the Bahamas’ trade and supply lines. Trott received a report that the French had captured the island of Exuma, 140 miles away, and were headed for Nassau with three warships and 320 men. Nassau had no warships at its disposal; in fact, no ships of the Royal Navy had passed this way in several years, there not being nearly enough of them to protect England’s sprawling empire. There was Fort Nassau, newly built from local stone, with twenty-eight cannon mounted on its ramparts, but with many settlers fleeing for the better protection of Jamaica, South Carolina, and Bermuda, Trott was finding it almost impossible to keep the structure manned. There were no more than seventy men left in town, including the elderly and disabled. Half the male population was serving guard duty at any one time in addition to attending to their usual occupations, which left many of them, in Trott’s words, “terribly fatigued.” Trott knew that if the French attacked in force, there was little hope of holding Nassau and the rest of New Providence, the island on which his tiny capital was perched. These were Trott’s preoccupations when he received the merchant captain from Eleuthera and his mysterious companions.
The strangers’ leader, Henry Adams, explained that he and his
colleagues had recently arrived in the Bahamas aboard the Fancy, a private warship of forty-six guns and 113 men, and sought Trott’s permission to come into Nassau’s harbor. Adams handed over a letter from his captain, Henry Bridgeman, containing a most outlandish proposition. The Fancy, Bridgeman claimed, had just arrived in Eleuthera from the coast of Africa, where he had been slave trading without the permission of the Royal Africa Company, which owned a monopoly over such activities. Captain Bridgeman’s letter explained that the Fancy had run low on provisions and its crew was in need of shore leave. Were the governor to be so kind as to allow the ship into the harbor, he would be amply rewarded. Every member of the crew would give Trott a personal gift of twenty Spanish pieces of eight and two pieces of gold, with Bridgeman, as commander, kicking in a double share. The strangers were offering him a bribe worth some £860 at a time when a governor’s annual salary was but £300. To top it off, the crew would also give him the Fancy herself, once they had unloaded and disposed of the (as yet) unspecified cargo. He could pocket nearly three years of wages and become the owner of a sizeable warship simply by letting the strangers ashore and not asking any pointed questions.
Trott pocketed the letter and called an emergency meeting of the colony’s governing council. The minutes of that meeting have since been lost, but from the testimony of others in Nassau at the time, it’s clear that Governor Trott neglected to mention the bribes to the councilmen. Instead, he appealed to their shared interest in the colony’s security. The Fancy, he pointed out, was as large as a fifth-rate frigate of the Royal Navy, and her presence might deter a French attack. The addition of her crew would nearly double the number of able-bodied men on New Providence, ensuring that Fort Nassau’s guns would be manned in the event of an invasion. And besides, where would they be if Bridgeman chose to refit his vessel at the French port of Martinique or, worse, decided to attack Nassau itself? Violating the Royal Africa Company’s monopoly was a fairly minor crime, an insufficient reason to deny him entry.
The members of the council concurred. The governor gave Henry Adams a “very civil” letter welcoming the Fancy to Nassau, where she and her crew “were welcome to come and to go as they pleased.”
Not long thereafter, a great ship rounded Hog Island,* her decks crowded with sailors, her sides pierced with gun ports, and her hull sunk low in the water under the weight of her cargo. Adams and his party were the first to come ashore, their longboat filled with bags and chests. The promised loot was there: a fortune in silver pieces of eight and golden coins minted in Arabia and beyond. Longboats ferried the crew ashore throughout the day. The rest of the crew resembled the landing party: ordinary-looking mariners dressed in oriental finery, each bearing large parcels of gold, silver, and jewels. The man calling himself Captain Bridgeman also came ashore and, after a closed meeting with Trott, turned the great warship over to him. When the governor arrived aboard the Fancy, he found they had left him a tip: The hold contained more than fifty tons of elephant tusks, 100 barrels of gunpowder, several chests filled with guns and muskets, and a remarkable collection of ship’s anchors.
* In 1962, the Bahamian legislature renamed it Paradise Island at the request of American supermarket tycoon Huntington Hartford. It is now taken up by luxury resort hotels.
Trott would later claim to have had no reason to suspect the Fancy’s crew of being involved in piracy. “How could I know it?” he testified under oath. “Supposition is not proof.” Captain Bridgeman and his men had claimed to be unlicensed merchants, he added, and the people of New Providence “saw no reason to disbelieve them.” But Trott was no fool. He had been a merchant captain himself and well knew that treasures of the sort the Fancy carried were not the product of some unsanctioned bargaining with the people of Africa’s Slave Coast. Standing aboard the Fancy, her hold filled with ivory and weapons, her sails patched from cannonball damage and musket balls embedded in her deck work, Trott was forced to make a choice: enforce the law or pocket the money. He didn’t ponder very long.
On the governor’s orders, boats began ferrying the Fancy’s remaining cargo ashore. Soon the beach was littered with chests of ivory tusks and firearms, piles of sails, anchors and tackle, barrels of gunpowder and provisions, heavy cannon and their ammunition. Trott put his personal boatswain and several African slaves aboard the ship. The ivory tusks, the pieces of eight and bags of gold coins were delivered to his private quarters. Captain Bridgeman and his men were free to drink and carouse in Nassau’s two pubs and could leave whenever they wished. Copyright © 2007 by Colin Woodard
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.
Product details
- Publisher : Mariner Books; First edition (June 30, 2008)
- Language: : English
- Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 015603462X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0156034623
- Item Weight : 11.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.77 x 8 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#26,477 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #10 in Caribbean History
- #97 in Crime & Criminal Biographies
- #138 in Traveler & Explorer Biographies
- Customer Reviews:
Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
There are many more men (and women) who engage in piracy and the culmination of their demise by the efforts of Woodes Rogers, the Governor of the Bahamas, himself a tragic figure in the long run.
Colin Woodward has gone to great lengths to detail the short careers of these people and their successes as well as failures with their pillages and subsequent 'booty' taken in these raids. What surprised me is most anything was 'treasure' to the pirates. Forget the gold, silver and pieces of eight stories you've heard. Sure that was the stuff to have but cloth, silk, flour, wine, bread, livestock and even barrels of nails and wood were taken as well. Pirate captains were elected by their crews. Do well and manage to raid commerce vessels whose holds contained marketable goods and you kept your position as leader of the crew. Have repeated failures (life Stede Bonnet) and you could find yourself either voted out and back as a regular crew member or worse, contest your ouster and have the crew dump you on the nearest sandbar or uninhabited island as you stood watching your ship and former comrades sail off in the distance. I also never knew that pirates slaughtering crew members of ships they raided was a rarity. Most pirates would attempt to get these sailors to join their ranks (piracy was much more lucrative than being a sailor on a merchant vessel) or some were impressed into it because of a needed skill like a surgeon, carpenter or seasoned deck hand. After cleaning out the hold of a ship sometimes the captain was given a token payment for the cargo or he and his crew were set ashore somewhere desolate. Usually a place they would be found long after the pirates were gone. In most cases their ship was either seized and added to the pirate fleet, burned to the waterline or in many cases kept by the pirates and the captain and crew given a smaller vessels from the pirate fleet that had been seized earlier and sent on their way.
This book is a terrific read and chock full of details. Well worth the money spent.
Through the use of court documents, testimonies, and scribes Collin Woodard strips the eye patch and not only explains the chain of events that spawned the pirate republic but also humanized the people behind the legends. An extraordinary tale about extraordinarily lives. I almost ran out of pages on my notebook and learned more than I expected. Fascinating stuff.
I regard this book with mixed emotions. On one hand I loved the information and was impressed with the level of detail. On the other I couldn't help but think that the book needed a more efficient approach. Reading this book is laborious due in lart to the dry writing style and it also contains unneeded material that's best fitted in the footnote section.
Except from my notes:
This book helped me strip the eye patch and introduced me to the real people behind the legends. Captains like Sam Bellamy (Black Sam) believed that their deeds were justified and even fancied himself a Robin Hood. Edward Thatch aka Blackbeard was the stereotypical pirate. He embraced the rugged appearance to the point of having fire and smoke emanate from his hat in order to scare his rivals into submission.
Sam Bellamy steals the show from his more well-known compatriots, thanks to his fiery speech in defense of piracy, recorded for posterity by one of the captains he kidnapped during Bellamy's year-long capture of the greatest pirate treasure ever amassed. The fate of Bellamy and his treasure is perhaps the most compelling of the many ripping (yet true) yarns in Woodard's narrative.
Woodard goes to the court documents of piracy trials and other original sources to reconstruct the lives of these four men, and their many compatriots, allies, betrayers and foes. Along the way you'll meet the female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, the feckless Calico Jack Rackham, and many more.
Top reviews from other countries


For the most part, Woodard is pretty engaging, and does a good job integrating those historical facts into a larger narrative that paints a thorough picture of the era. Occasionally he seems to get a bit carried away, leading to speculative sections that - while clearly noted as such - feel a little reaching. At most, though, that's a minor quibble.
I was more disappointed with the relatively abrupt end to the book. Unfortunately, in setting out to follow the four men mentioned above, Woodard runs out of steam and detail when they are, for various reasons, taken out of the picture. Bartholemew Roberts, described as taking over 400 ships, barely gets a mention. The female pirates Mary Read and Anne Bonny also get very little material, despite records of their incarceration. Perhaps it's just that there was not enough historical data for him to draw together an interesting narrative. The only other negative point is that sometimes, in the flurry of names being thrown around and the way the book jumps between multiple perspectives (not to mention the ever-changing allegiances of the various pirate groups), it's easy to lose track of some of the less important players.
I highly recommend this to anyone with an interest in the Caribbean pirates or the era in general, as it also gives a remarkable insight into the slave trade, European wars and rivalries of the time, and early colonies in the Americas.


Overall, not too heavy going, very interesting and exactly what you want when it comes to real pirate stories.

What other items do customers buy after viewing this item?
- Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious PiratesPaperback
- Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the PiratesPaperback
- American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North AmericaPaperback
- Enemy of All Mankind: A True Story of Piracy, Power, and History's First Global ManhuntHardcover
- Blackbeard: America's Most Notorious PiratePaperback
- A General History of the PyratesCaptain Charles JohnsonPaperback
There's a problem loading this menu right now.