"From 1715 to 1718 the Caribbean was alive with pirates: famous names such as Blackbeard, Calico Jack Rackham with Anne Bonney and Mary Read, Samuel Bellamy, Howell Davis, Charles Vane … and my own fictional pirate, Jesamiah Acorne! At first no one particularly worried, but then the rich merchants began to feel the pinch as trade suffered. This was the dawn of the Atlantic trade, when sugar, tobacco and a little later, cotton, had to be transported from America to Europe. Pirates were a nuisance. Something had to be done.
The something was a someone. Woodes Rogers. The Colonies all had appointed governors, but most of them were as corrupt as the pirates. Rogers was different, he was honest and determined to put an end to the scourge of the seas.
The eldest son of a successful shipping family, he had served as a merchant sailor and had circumnavigated the world (during which voyage he was to rescue a marooned man, Andrew Selkirk, better known as Defoe's Robinson Crusoe.) His remit was to clear the Bahamas of pirates and to make the Caribbean an unfriendly place for anyone ‘on the account'. He was to try to achieve this by offering an amnesty, the King's Pardon. Appointed as Captain General and Governor in Chief of the Bahamas by George I on 6th January 1718, he spent several months preparing everything and finally set sail on 22nd April 1718 with a fleet of seven ships, accompanied by three Royal Navy vessels as official escort…."
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