Hello, sailor!

23 June 2007

Richard Sanders recalls the exploits of Bartholomew Roberts, a swashbuckling 18th-century buccaneer to match Johnny Depp — except that he drank tea, and was probably gay

Roberts was finally cornered at Cape Lopez in modern Gabon on 10 February 1722 by HMS Swallow, a 50-gun man-of-war. The pirates had taken a prize the day before and, having raided the liquor store, most of the men were either drunk or nursing fierce hangovers — the scenario Roberts had always dreaded. Trapped against the headland, Roberts knew he was facing almost certain death. But he was determined to go out in style and dressed in ‘a rich crimson damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his hat, a gold chain round his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it’. In an apocalyptic final battle, fought in a raging thunderstorm, Roberts was killed, his throat ripped out by grapeshot as his men floundered drunkenly about the deck.

The defeat of Roberts and his men proved a turning-point in the history of the Atlantic. Within four years pirates had been swept from the seas altogether — and the number of slaves being shipped to the New World had increased dramatically, from 24,780 in 1720 to 47,030 in 1725. Piracy had been the thorn in the side of the fabulously lucrative triangular trade between Britain, Africa and the Americas. Its destruction helped create a world safe for slavery.

Richard Sanders’s ‘If a Pirate I Must Be...: The True Story of Bartholomew Roberts, King of the Caribbean’ is published by Aurum Press, £14.99.