Pirates
Captains, quartermasters, and crew who hoisted the black flag — buccaneers, privateers turned outlaw, and pirates born of mutiny or desperation.
Edward Teach
Blackbeard
The most theatrical pirate of his age, whose smoldering beard and blockade of Charleston made him a legend before a Royal Navy boarding party ended him at Ocracoke.
Anne Bonny
She-Pirate of the Caribbean
An Irish-born woman who left her husband for Calico Jack Rackham, fought on the deck of his sloop in trousers and pistols, and vanished from the record after her capture in 1720.
Mary Read
The Soldier Who Turned Pirate
Raised disguised as a boy, she served as a foot soldier in Flanders before going to sea, falling in with Calico Jack's crew, and standing beside Anne Bonny when the navy came.
John Rackham
Calico Jack
A pirate of moderate success and considerable wardrobe, whose chief contribution to history was the company he kept — Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and the Jolly Roger that bore his name.
Bartholomew Roberts
Black Bart
The most successful pirate of the Golden Age — a teetotal Welshman in damask waistcoats who took over four hundred prizes in three years before a Royal Navy broadside ended him off Cape Lopez.
Henry Morgan
Privateer of Panama
The Welsh buccaneer who sacked Portobelo, burned Panama City, and was rewarded for it with a knighthood and the lieutenant-governorship of Jamaica.
Charles Vane
The unrepentant
The pirate who fired a blazing ship at the Royal Navy rather than take the King's pardon, and who was deposed by his own crew for refusing a fight — cruel, defiant, and hanged at last at Gallows Point.
Samuel Bellamy
Black Sam
The "Robin Hood of the sea" — an eloquent, egalitarian captain who took more than fifty prizes in a single year and drowned at twenty-eight when his flagship foundered off Cape Cod.
Stede Bonnet
The Gentleman Pirate
A wealthy Barbados planter who bought his own ship, hired a paid crew, and sailed off to piracy — an amateur so out of his depth that Blackbeard simply took his vessel from under him.