River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1893-07-27
FIFTY YEARS OF PIRACY.
nuccaneering on the American Coast Flour
ished from 1878 to Is25.


The half century extending from
about 1875 to l725 was the heyday of
piracy on the North American coast.
The old buccaneers had been driven
out during the last days of the Stuart
supremacy in England, and most of
those who still chung TO their old sea-
faring life either attached themselves
TO the English navy or repaired TO the
east coast of Africa, where they could
plumber the rich commerce of the great
Indian potentates without fear of in
terruption. But the buccaneers were
not forgotten in the western world, and
the wild stories of their old free lives
incitsd many of the lawless characters
which had settled in the American coli
onies to emulate their example, and to
seek by lawless warfare on the sea that
livelihood which they could not secure
by honest means on land. The seven
teenth century had not yet closed be-
fore they had made themselves so for
midable that William IL. had especially
severe laws enacted against them. and
forwarded instructions to all the colo
nial authorities to use every effort to
extirpate them. But the pirates had
grown too bold to fear the kings proc
lamations, and the colonists found their
trade with the lawless freebooters too
profitable to make any effort to stamp
out the public enemy. There was
scarcely a colony on the Atlantic
coast which did not in one way or
another tolerate and encourage them,
and not many years of the eighteenth
century had passed before the pirates
had grown strong enough to defy both
the English AMI the colonial authori
ties, and in some sections they had so
overawed the officiais that they were
enabled TO come and go without any
apprehension of arrest or detention.
Particularly was this the case in the
southern colonies, and VIGOROUSLY in
North Carolina. That colony had
never from its first settlement enjoyed
strong government, and by the year
1915, when Charles Eden was governor,
the pirates had grown so audacious
that they did not hesitate to sail into
the ports of the province. land their
plumber at the public wharves. and
boast openly in the streets N the CAPT
tai of their desperate exploits. James
Logan, the secretary of the province of
Pennsylvania, is authority for the
statement that at this period there
were over 1900 pirates on the North
American coast, and ii is safe to as
sumo that there were few of the traders
who were not acquainted more or less
intimately with the coast of North
Carolina. If we are to credit the state
ments of Gov. Spotswood, of Virginia,
and other contemporary writers, that
turbulent colony had become an ordi.
nary receptacle for this class of out
laws, and was too feeble TO make any
effort to drive them out, even if il had
had the inclination. The old records
connect the names of many famous sea
robbers with the history of North Caro-
lima of that time, but towering above
all others in infamy stood the name OF
Edward Teach, better known as
Blackboard, whose uncouth sobri-
quet was for decades afterward a
household word of terror on the whole
South Atlantic coast.-St. Louis Globe
Democrat.