Bartholomew Roberts

Welsh pirate

• Born: May 17, 1682
• Birthplace: Casnewydd-Bach, Pembrokeshire, Wales
• Died: February 10, 1722
• Place of death: Cape Lopez, Gabon

Cause of notoriety: Capturing more than 450 vessels during his relatively short career, Roberts became one of the most successful marauders in the history of piracy.

Active: 1719-1722

Locale: Both sides of the Atlantic Ocean

Early Life

Bartholomew Roberts (bar-THAWL-oh-mew RAW-buhrts) was a stunning man with a dark complexion and was known for his elegant style of dress. His sailing life began in the merchant service. In 1719, he signed on as second mate on the slave ship Princess. Captain Howell Davis, a well-known Welsh pirate, captured the Princess, and Roberts decided to sign on as a pirate with Davis at the relatively old age of thirty-six.

Pirating Career

Six weeks after taking over the Princess, Davis was killed in a surprise attack at a Portuguese settlement on Prince’s Island in the Guinea Gulf. Roberts’s skills and courage had impressed the crew of the Princess, and they voted him as the ship’s new captain.

Roberts’s first act as captain was an act of revenge toward the Portuguese settlement for ambushing and killing Captain Davis. Roberts destroyed the settlement and then set sail across the Atlantic Ocean toward Brazil.

At the Bay of All Saints in East Bahia, Brazil, Roberts spotted forty-two Portuguese ships anchored in the port and loaded with goods to be shipped to Lisbon, Portugal. Robert boarded one of the ships and took the ship’s captain as hostage. Through interrogation of the Portuguese man, Captain Roberts learned which of the merchant ships was carrying the most prized cargo. He forced his hostage to hail that ship’s captain, and before the merchant ship could take defensive action, Roberts boarded it and claimed its cargo. Two guard ships that were charged to protect the merchant ships were unaware that pirates had ransacked the ship. Roberts safely sailed away with a load of sugar, gold coins, and tobacco before the guard ships could respond. One of the treasures aboard the Portuguese merchant ship was a large diamond-studded, gold cross designed for the king of Portugal. Roberts took the cross and wore it on a massive gold chain around his neck throughout his life.

In the summer of 1720, Roberts and his crew sailed from the Caribbean north to Newfoundland. At Trepassey Bay, Roberts, who had developed a reputation as being fearless, added to his infamy by attacking—with a single ten-gun sloop and a crew of sixty men—twenty-two ships lying at anchor. Approximately twelve hundred sailors were aboard the twenty-two ships, but they chose to abandon their ships rather than take their chances with Black Bart. Roberts next came across a large group of French ships not far from the harbor. He successfully attacked and destroyed the flotilla, keeping one large brigantine to carry his booty. He later armed the brigantine with more guns, named it the Royal Fortune, and made it his flagship.

Roberts’s reputation grew, as did his coffers. In fact, Roberts became such a good pirate that by 1721, there was very little left to plunder. Roberts captured more than four hundred ships in less than four years as a pirate. However, he also became known for his harsh treatment of those he captured. Roberts felt he needed to teach the governors of Martinique and Barbados a lesson for making attempts to capture him, and he treated especially harshly any seamen from those islands whom he encountered. He was known to whip these sailors almost to death; he used others for target practice. However, Roberts was also well known for his fairness to his own crew and for his Shipboard Articles, which gave the crew the ability to vote on issues, equal access to food, and a standard percentage of the booty according to their rank on the boat.

In 1722, the commander of the Swallow, Captain Chaloner Ogle, who had been trying for six months to capture Roberts and his crew, finally brought Roberts’s pirating career to an end. Ogle took Roberts and his hungover crew by surprise, and Roberts was killed. Roberts’s crew threw him overboard, in his fancy dress and diamond-studded cross, just as he had instructed them to do upon his death.

Members of Roberts’s crew who were captured were tried at Cape Coast Castle in Ghana in April, 1722. It was the largest trial for piracy ever held. Of the 264 pirates captured, some died in jail and a few, who pleaded that they had been forced into piracy by Roberts, were let go. However, most were found guilty and hanged. Eighteen of the pirates were coated with tar, put in metal encasements, and left hanging near the harbor as a warning to all that piracy would no longer be tolerated.

Impact

Bartholomew Roberts’s ability to plunder so effectively took a financial toll on merchant traffic between countries on both sides of the Atlantic. In order to crack down on piracy, the Piracy Act was expanded in 1721, and officials who had cooperated with pirates became replaced by men who would uphold the laws and arrest pirates. The perceived romanticism of pirate life also began to fade as the general public became aware of the brutality with which Roberts and other pirates treated their captors.

Bibliography

Cordingly, David. Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates. Orlando, Fla.: Harvest Books, 1997. Provides a colorful history of Roberts’s exploits, his shear genius as a pirate, the ships he commanded, and his cruelty to those he captured.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Pirates: Terror on the High Seas, from the Caribbean to the South China Sea. Atlanta, Ga.: Turner, 1996. An excellent resource on the lives, ships, and playgrounds of most of the major pirates. It provides lively descriptions of Robert’s career, how he outfitted his ships, and his effect on history.

Konstam, Angus. The Pirate Ship, 1660-1730. London: Osprey, 2003. Discusses the different ships that Roberts used during his career, how he traded up to better ships, and how he outfitted ships he captured to be more efficient and better armed.