page_title: Golden Age of Piracy
section_title: Pirate Round, c. 1693–1700
hierarchical_section_title: Golden Age of Piracy / History / Pirate Round, c. 1693–1700
caption_attribution_description: Avary sells his Jewels: this was originally published in Pyle, Howard (June–November 1887). "Buccaneers and Marooners of the Spanish Main — Second Paper". Harper's Magazine 75 (448): p. 502. New York, United States: Harper and Brothers.
context_page_description: The Golden Age of Piracy is a common designation for the period between the 1650s and the 1730s, when maritime piracy was a significant factor in the histories of the Caribbean, the United Kingdom, Indian Ocean states, North America, and West Africa.
  Histories of piracy often subdivide the Golden Age of Piracy into three periods:
  The buccaneering period, characterized by Anglo-French seamen based on Jamaica and Tortuga attacking Spanish colonies, and shipping in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.
  The Pirate Round, associated with long-distance voyages from the Americas to rob Muslim and East India Company targets in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea.
  The post-Spanish Succession period, when Anglo-American sailors and privateers left unemployed by the end of the War of the Spanish Succession turned en masse to piracy in the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the North American eastern seaboard, and the West African coast.
  Narrower definitions of the Golden Age sometimes exclude the first or second periods, but most include at least some portion of the third.
context_section_description: A number of factors caused Anglo-American pirates, some of whom had learned how to be a pirate during the buccaneering period, to look beyond the Caribbean for treasure as the 1690s began. The fall of Britain's Stuart period had restored the traditional enmity between Britain and France, thus ending the profitable collaboration between English Jamaica and French Tortuga. The devastation of Port Royal by an earthquake in 1692 further reduced the Caribbean's attractions by destroying the pirates' chief market for fenced plunder. Caribbean colonial governors began to discard the traditional policy of "no peace beyond the Line," under which it was understood that war would continue (and thus letters of marque would be granted) in the Caribbean regardless of peace treaties signed in Europe; henceforth, commissions would be granted only in wartime, and their limitations would be strictly enforced. Furthermore, much of the Spanish Main had simply been exhausted; Maracaibo alone had been sacked three times between 1667 and 1678, while Río de la Hacha had been raided five times and Tolú eight.
  At the same time, England's less-favored colonies, including Bermuda, New York, and Rhode Island, had become cash-starved by the Navigation Acts.  Merchants and governors eager for coin were willing to overlook and even underwrite pirate voyages; one colonial official defended a pirate because he thought it "very harsh to hang people that brings in gold to these provinces." Although some of these pirates operating out of New England and the Middle Colonies targeted Spain's more remote Pacific coast colonies well into the 1690s and beyond, the Indian Ocean was a richer and more tempting target. India's economic output dwarfed Europe's during this time, especially in high-value luxury goods such as silk and calico, which made ideal pirate booty; at the same time, no powerful navies plied the Indian Ocean, leaving both local shipping and the various East India companies' vessels vulnerable to attack. This set the stage for the famous piracies of Thomas Tew, Henry Every, Robert Culliford, and (although his guilt remains controversial) William Kidd.
caption: Henry Every is shown selling his loot in this engraving by Howard Pyle. Every's capture of the Grand Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai in 1695 stands as one of the most profitable pirate raids ever perpetrated.
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