TOW #7 - The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down by Colin Woodard

Many of the famous pirates people know today such as Samuel "Black Sam" Bellamy and Edward "Blackbeard" Thatch came from the Golden Age of Piracy. Source: www.crwflags.com

                In a chapter in his book The Republic of Pirates, Colin Woodard explains to his adventure loving audience about the people who played crucial roles during the time between June of 1716 to March of 1717 in order to set the stage up for the great event where all of these characters' lives would be intertwined. Samuel Bellamy was a penniless sailor who became a commodore of a gang of pirates within a year. In search of recruitments after a failed attempt to capture a French ship, Bellamy went to a harbor named ST. Croix to avoid a gale where he accidentally found a band of lost and hungry pirates. Eventually, they captured a great battle ship called Whydah by using the essence of fear as a weapon. At a young age of twenty-seven, Bellamy officially became a pirate king. Meanwhile, Captain Benjamin Hornigold, a pirate who still considered himself as a servant of his county England, decided to give a captured sloop that would be an excellent pirate vessel to his protégé, Edward Thatch. Thatch, better known as Blackbeard who would one day be the most powerful pirate in the Atlantic, finally had a ship that he could control for pirating purposes. During all these commotions at the sea, a former privateer Woodes Rogers was planning to end piracy once and for all by forming a corporation named The Copartners for Carrying on a Trade & Settling the Bahama Islands. His wish of being a governor and garrison commander of the Bahamas was granted, a wish that he would soon regret. Throughout the chapter, the author uses metaphors and personification in order to help the audience to imagine each event with clear details. When describing the harbor of St. Croix, Woodard says, "On the reef guarding the harbor entrance, the surf battered at the charred remains of a vessel" and the rhetorical devices used here strengthens the descriptions. I believe that the author did a great job explaining all the necessary information in order to show how one man ultimately ended the Golden Age of Piracy.