16. The English Gentleman Who Abandoned His Plantation to Go on a Piratical Crime Spree
Stede Bonnet (circa 1680 – 1718) was nicknamed “The Gentleman Pirate“. A wealthy Barbados plantation owner and a British Army major, Bonnet decided one day, out of the blue, to take up a life of crime and become a pirate. He became famous – or infamous – not because of any piratical success, but because of his utter failure at sea. Bonnet displayed remarkable incompetence after he took up a piracy career that he had no business pursuing, and that he probably should have left to roughnecks better suited to its travails and vicissitudes.
Bonnet, the scion of a wealthy family of landed gentry, had led a peaceful life for years, living with his wife in a profitable sugar plantation. Then in 1717, amidst a midlife crisis, he decided to escape marital difficulties and boredom at home by buying a ship, naming it the Revenge and arming it with cannons. He hired a crew of 70 sailors and sailed off into the deep blue to become a pirate. As might be expected from a rich dilettante who took to piracy on a whim, Bonnet was not very good at it, and soon revealed himself an incompetent sailor and worse leader.
