About This Website

When I began researching and writing Captain Hornigold and the Pirate Republic, I thought I would simply follow Captain Benjamin Hornigold as he sailed the Caribbean after the Queen Anne’s War but my investigation turned out to be much more interesting.

My initial inquiry was purely informational. I was writing an historical novel so the history needed to be as accurate as possible. Developing a chronology for Benjamin Hornigold from 1713 when the Queen Anne’s War was coming to a close and he became a pirate through 1719 when he was a pirate hunter for the governor of the Bahamas and King George I of England, Scotland and Ireland was not as simple as it first appeared.

The information gathered was often conflicting but a coherent story needed to be told. An example of the inconsistency was whether Blackbeard (Edward Thache) was a a protege of Benjamin Hornigold or his peer and what difference did it make. Slowly a coherent narrative evolved.

As I burrowed into history, I came upon many questions that I never had a need to think about before. For example, the pirates were seizing Spanish vessels hoping to find bags of pieces of eight as well as provisions to keep themselves fed. What would these pieces of eight buy when they came ashore in an English port? Or where was it safe to discuss the overthrow of the king and the reinstallation of “their king?”

As an academician, these rabbit holes were just plain interesting. As I was writing, I came upon a recent web posting about the Royal Navy ship Gloucester that wrecked on a sandbar off the coast of Norfolk, England, in 1682. It sank within an hour killing 130-250 passengers and crew. James, the Duke of York, was on that ship and was rescued. He was Catholic and became the king of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1685 but was forced to abdicate three years later (The Glorious Revolution) and to flee to France where he set up a court in exile. He sought to reclaim the three thrones in 1689 and that led to a series of Jacobite uprisings. How timely! I was writing about James and the Jacobites were “the other pirate faction” in the Caribbean. I joined several other writers in wondering what would have been the historical impact had James gone down with the Gloucester.

A number of these topics I develop and present in more detail on this website. I hope you find them interesting and possibly useful.

~ Martin

P.S.  A few articles have been reproduced from my book. They provide important background when thinking about the pirates during this period. For example, the section on sailing gives the nautical miles between Nassau and a number of other locations. Using this information helps determine an approximate number of sailing days between point A to point B. Maybe Captain Hornigold did not help Blackbeard capture La Concorde near Martinique when he was in Nassau, 1500 nautical miles and at least 15 sailing days way.