Plutarch avoids theatrical detail precisely to expose...
Cover image: A colorized engraving from around 1724 captures Bartholomew Roberts—better known as Black Bart—the infamous Welsh pirate (c. 1682–1722). The image depicts him amid the high seas, surrounded by the various fearsome flags he flew to terrorize his victims into surrender. Each banner, emblazoned with skeletons, swords, and hourglasses, broadcast the deadly reputation that made Roberts one of the most dreaded figures of the Golden Age of Piracy. Through these striking emblems, Roberts turned psychological warfare into an art, ensuring that even before battle began, merchant crews often capitulated without resistance. (From an edition of ‘A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates’ by Daniel Defoe/Charles Johnson).
Bartholomew Roberts—better known as “Black Bart”—emerged in the second decade of the eighteenth century as one of the most formidable figures of the Caribbean’s so-called Golden Age of Piracy. Born in Wales in 1682, Roberts did not enter piracy by ambition or ideology; he was forced into it. Captured by pirates in 1719 while serving as a mate on a slave ship, he joined their ranks after the death of their captain. Despite this accidental entry, Roberts adapted with astonishing speed and soon became the most prolific pirate commander of his era.
Roberts’s success stemmed from discipline, strategic sense, and relentless activity. His ships—several of which bore the name Royal Fortune—operated not only in the Caribbean but across the Atlantic world: the coast of Brazil, the Gulf of Guinea, and the waters between Newfoundland and Barbados. Contemporary and near-contemporary sources credit him with capturing more than 400 vessels during his brief career(!!). This figure, while large, fits the record; many of these prizes were modest merchant ships taken in quick succession, reflecting opportunism rather than grand naval battles.
Source: A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates
Roberts pursued targets with a clear purpose: not reckless destruction, but profitable, fast operations. ”In the warm Caribbean waters of 1720, Roberts’s fleet bore down on unsuspecting merchantmen, black flag snapping in the tropical wind. Within hours, ships surrendered without a shot, recognizing the deadly precision of the Welshman’s command. When resistance arose, Roberts himself led the boarding parties, sword in hand, his crew a disciplined whirlwind of smoke, shouting, and cutlasses.”
His crews operated under an unusually strict code. Accounts describe a man who insisted on sober conduct during combat, maintained order and hierarchy, and understood that an undisciplined crew was a dead crew when facing European naval forces. This discipline did not sanitize the brutality inherent in piracy, but it separated Roberts’s command from the chaotic violence associated with other pirate captains of the age.
In February 1722, Roberts met his end off the coast of West Africa, near Cape Lopez. A British man-of-war, the Swallow, hunted him down. The battle was short. A cannon shot killed Roberts outright. ”Off Cape Lopez in 1722, the Royal Fortune met the British man-of-war Swallow. Cannon fire shattered rigging, splintered wood, and screamed across the waves. Roberts, undeterred, strode the deck, rallying his crew with a roar above the gunfire. Even as a cannonball struck him down, the legend of his fearlessness seared itself into history. His men fought to the last, a storm of defiance, until capture and execution ended their rebellion.”
His men, knowing the consequences of surrender, fought briefly, then the survivors were captured. Dozens were executed in the mass trials that followed—one of the largest anti-piracy judicial actions ever conducted by the British. Roberts’s death marked a symbolic turning point: the British state, the Royal Navy, and the expanding Atlantic empires were no longer willing to tolerate piracy as a cost of maritime commerce. Suppression became systematic, and Roberts’s fall signaled the beginning of the end for the Golden Age.
If Roberts represents the height of sustained pirate activity, Henry Every—also known as Avery or “Long Ben”—stands for something different: the single most explosive and consequential act of piracy in early modern history. Born around 1659 in England, Every surfaced as a pirate only briefly, in the mid-1690s. His career did not span years of steady predation but hinged almost entirely on one major operation: the seizure of Mughal treasure ships in the Indian Ocean in 1695. Yet that single event had geopolitical consequences far beyond ordinary piracy.
Every commanded the Fancy, a fast, heavily armed frigate he and his crew mutinied to obtain. Operating with a small number of allied vessels—far fewer than the inflated popular legends would later claim—Every sought rich targets along the maritime routes between the Red Sea and Mughal India. In September 1695 he intercepted a convoy returning from the pilgrimage to Mecca. Among these ships were two giants: the Fath Mahmamdi and the Ganj-i-Sawai, the latter a massive, well-armed Mughal vessel carrying immense wealth belonging to merchants and nobles under Mughal protection.
Every’s attack succeeded because of discipline, timing, and luck. The Ganj-i-Sawai suffered early damage that disabled parts of its artillery. The Fancy’s crew then boarded and captured the ship after fierce resistance’. ”The massive Ganj-i-Sawai, bristling with cannons, thundered in retaliation, but Every’s crew, nimble and ruthless, scaled her sides amid flying splinters and smoke. Hours of brutal combat left the Mughal galleon in their control. Gold, silver, rubies, and diamonds glimmered in the hold, a fortune that dwarfed the wildest dreams of ordinary sailors. The Indian Ocean had never seen a strike so audacious, nor a pirate disappear so completely with his prize.”
The loot, by contemporary reports, amounted to several hundred thousand pounds sterling—an extraordinary sum for the period, equivalent to tens of millions in present-day value. But the importance of this event lies not only in the treasure. The Mughal Empire, under Emperor Aurangzeb’s successors, reacted with outrage. British traders in India faced severe pressure and even temporary closure of their factories. The East India Company found itself negotiating to preserve its commercial privileges. The English crown, fearing diplomatic collapse and economic loss, launched an unprecedented global manhunt for Every and his crew.
Every, however, vanished. After reaching the Atlantic and reportedly landing somewhere in Ireland in 1696, he disappears from the verifiable historical record. His fate remains uncertain. No credible trace of the treasure has ever been found. His disappearance fed folklore across Britain and the Americas, shaping the image of the pirate as a cunning, elusive figure able to slip permanently beyond the reach of empire.
The careers of Roberts and Every illustrate two distinct faces of early eighteenth-century piracy. Roberts represents system, discipline, and volume: a commander who turned piracy into a quasi-military operation, seizing hundreds of ships and building a short-lived but formidable maritime presence. Every symbolizes the exceptional strike: one raid so economically disruptive that it shook empires and forced the British state to treat piracy not as nuisance but as crisis.
Both men operated in the shifting geopolitical environment of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds—spaces where weak state control, lucrative long-distance trade, and the mobility of seafarers created conditions for sudden bursts of maritime violence. Their stories, filtered through later romanticism, retain an adventurous tone, but the historical core remains clear. Roberts’s sustained predation and Every’s singular raid both reveal the fragility of early modern maritime order and the limits of imperial reach. Their legacies endure because they demonstrate how individuals, acting for private gain, could—if only briefly—disturb the global structures of their age.
Sources:
Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, publ. London: T. Warner, 1724–1728.
Benerson Little, The Golden Age of Piracy: The Truth Behind Pirate Myths, New York: Skyhorse, 2016
G. H. Maynadier, ed. The Works of Daniel Defoe (New York: Jenson Society, 1905)
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