Golden Age of Piracy Timeline

William 'Captain' Kidd was executed for piracy at Execution Dock, London, in 1701, and remains famous for the 'buried treasure' he supposedly left behind, a legend that has captivated imaginations for centuries.

Image source: William Kidd

Edward 'Blackbeard' Teach (Thatch), active from 1716 to 1718, is perhaps the most notorious pirate among English-speaking nations, striking fear into sailors across the Atlantic with his fearsome appearance and bold attacks.

Image source: Blackbeard

Samuel Bellamy, captain of the Whydah Gally, was lost in a storm off Cape Cod in 1717, going down with his ship and much of her crew along with their plunder.

Image source: Samuel Bellamy

Stede Bonnet captained a 10-gun sloop named the Revenge and raided ships off the Virginian coast in 1717. He was caught and hanged in 1718.

Image source: Stede Bonnet

Blackbeard was killed by one of Lieutenant Robert Maynard's crewmen in 1718, ending the reign of the most infamous pirate of the Golden Age.

John Rackham, famous for his partnership with female pirates Anne Bonny and Mary Read, was captured, then hanged and gibbeted outside Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1720.

Image source: John Rackham

Anne Bonny and Mary Read were finally captured on October 22, 1720, but their death sentences were stalled by claiming to be pregnant. In December 1733, the burial of a woman in Jamaica named Ann Bonny was noted.

Image source: Anne Bonny

Edward Low, born in Westminster, was active from 1721 to 1724, was never captured, and was notorious for torturing his victims before killing them; he cut off ears, lips, and noses.

Image source: Edward Low

The death of Bartholomew Roberts in 1722, one of the most successful pirates of the era, is considered by historians to mark the end of the Golden Age in the Caribbean.

Image source: Bartholomew Roberts

William Fly's execution in 1726 is used by historian Marcus Rediker to mark the end of the Golden Age of Pirates. His death, along with those of Bartholomew Roberts and Olivier Levasseur, is considered by historians to mark the end of the era.

Image source: William Fly

Mary Critchett, a former prisoner-turned-pirate, was hanged in 1729, one of several examples of female pirates active during the era alongside Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

Image source: Mary Critchett

Olivier Levasseur himself, unlike his contemporaries, was captured and hanged on July 7, 1730, before he could retire with his riches, closing out the Golden Age of Piracy in the Indian Ocean.

A General History of the Pirates (1724) by Captain Charles Johnson is the source of many biographies of well-known pirates, providing an extensive account of the period although its accuracy has been called into question.

Image source: A General History of the Pyrates

The oldest known literary mention of a 'Golden Age' of piracy came in 1894, when the English journalist George Powell wrote about 'What appears to have been the golden age of piracy up to the last decade of the 17th century,' while reviewing Charles Leslie's A New and Exact History of Jamaica.

In 1897, historian John Fiske introduced a more systematic use of the phrase 'Golden Age of Piracy,' writing, 'At no other time in the world's history has the business of piracy thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth.'

As early as 1924, Philip Gosse described piracy as being at its height 'from 1680 until 1730,' helping establish the boundaries later historians would debate for the Golden Age.

Image source: Philip Henry Gosse

Patrick Pringle wrote in 1951 that the most flourishing era in the history of piracy began in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and ended in the second decade of the eighteenth century, starkly contradicting Fiske, who denied that Elizabethan figures such as Francis Drake were pirates.

David Cordingly, in his influential 1994 work Under the Black Flag, defined the 'great age of piracy' as lasting from the 1650s to around 1725, very close to Fiske's definition of the Golden Age.

Angus Konstam in 1998 reckoned the Golden Age of Piracy as lasting from 1700 until 1730, reflecting the trend among historians toward narrowing the period.

Image source: Angus Konstam

Rediker described the most complex definition of the Golden Age to date, proposing a 'golden age of piracy, which spanned the period from roughly 1650 to 1730,' subdivided into three distinct 'generations': the buccaneers of 1650–1680, the Indian Ocean pirates of the 1690s, and the pirates of the years 1716–1726.

Image source: Marcus Rediker