Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
A Pirate's Life No More: The Pardoned Pirates of the Bahamas

A Pirate's Life No More: The Pardoned Pirates of the Bahamas

Hahn, Steven C.

Paperback

Series: Early American Places

Caribbean HistoryGeneral World History

ISBN10: 0820373443
ISBN13: 9780820373447
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: May 15 2025
Pages: 366
Weight: 1.08
Height: 0.82 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

In 1718 the British crown in the Bahamas pardoned 209 mariners accused of piracy. In A Pirate's Life No More, Steven C. Hahn explores the lives of these retired pirates. While there are a number of famous names on that list--Benjamin Hornigold, Charles Vane, and Palsgrave Williams, for example--the vast majority of the pardoned are mostly nobodies. By focusing holistically on pirates--and on the pirates who aren't famous--the book reclaims their humanity, connects the story of piracy at sea with the land-based communities that sometimes supported it, and illuminates the entangled histories of far-flung places in the Atlantic world. This study reveals that, for most individuals, forays into piracy were fleeting and opportunistic. Moreover, class, age, and regional divisions beset the pirate community, thereby precluding adherence to any single ideology justifying their actions. The pardon was most attractive to mariners possessing greater social and economic capital, which explains why so many of them were able to return to their homes and quickly return to honest maritime work.

In addition to the standard sources employed by maritime historians, Hahn utilizes local administrative records from Britain and its American colonies, such as property, court, and church records. In so doing, he sheds new light on the ordinary activities in which the sailors were engaged when not involved in piracy and explores how they coped in the Bahamas and elsewhere after being pardoned. What emerges in this collective biography, then, are pirates who were mariners--of course--but also husbands, fathers, parishioners, and property owners.

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