Shift #20 - Beginning Research on Piracy
Tuesday, June 11 2024 | 6-7 pm CST/7-8 pm EST (1 hr)
Details
Michelle Hurt, student/intern
Jennifer Gonzalez, practicum supervisor
These are screenshots from my beginning research on piracy. Though the Law Library's collection on pirate trials is small, it is rich with information!
Even though I haven't finalized my research plan, last night, I began my research into the Law Library's Pirate Trials collection. Searching for items in the Library of Congress website is pretty easy, so I just pulled up the first item on the results list, which is a blog post written by a previous intern about modern piracy in regards to the case of U.S. versus Ali and Title 18, Chapter 81 in the U.S. Code of Law. While well-written, this blog post didn't exactly tie to my topic of historical pirates in the Law Library's collection so I did read the next blog post on Stede Bonnet, a pirate during colonial days and who was known as the "Gentleman Pirate". This was such an interesting read for my research! Bonnet came from a seemingly well-to-do plantation-owning family. He even married well, had children with his wife, inherited his father's business, and began his early adulthood years in a respectable profession (as a Justice of the Peace in Barbados). Records conflict on what happened to Bonnet and why he became a pirate. It is reported that he just abandoned his comfortable life and family because of problems in his marriage and supposed homosexuality (which was illegal at the time). Life as a pirate would have given him more freedom to the life he wanted as he traveled across oceans (for example, less physical and societal restrictions). He also may have just wanted more money, even though he was already rich and was set for life. I do wonder whatever happened to his wife and children. He lived during the "Golden Age of Piracy" where some pirates weren't necessarily criminals because they brought in goods to colonies, helping local economies.
A side note - I learned that a lot of pirates during those days were previously privateers (men who worked on ships and vessels during war time, like a mercenary but on the high seas). Privateers had to have licenses to fight on behalf of a nation but after wars and licenses ended, privateers kept attacking ships for money and thus, they became pirates. In Great Britain, pirates became enemies of the state and became a problem for colonies and the shipping industry. As I saw, Bonnet was not a privateer. His pirate days began when he plundered ships in the colonies along the Chesapeake Bay and the Carolinas. He eventually escaped to the Bahamas where he met the famous Blackbeard. They partnered for a while and attacked ships, but then separated and went on their own travels until 1718. Together, they blockaded the port in Charleston for seven days, even taking hostages for ransom. Prior to these events, King George of England had given royal pardons to pirates as part of his "Proclamation for suppressing pirates", perhaps as a sort of bribe to get pirates to stop their actions. Bonnet was pardoned but with another war brewing (the War of the Quadruple Alliance), he ended up getting stranded in North Carolina with a ransacked ship and no crew (he was abandoned by Blackbeard). It became every man for himself. So Bonnet did what any man would do - he took on a new persona/name - as Captain Edwards - renamed his ship and turned back to piracy to gained what he had lost. In only a couple of months, he attacked and plundered 11 ships.
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