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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Khalid Elhassan January 7, 2020 32 min

17. A Spectacular Start

Few pirates ever got started with as big a bang as that of Black Bart. He kicked off his career as a pirate captain by sailing to South America, where he came upon a Portuguese treasure fleet assembling in a bay in northern Brazil. Pretending to be one of the convoy, Black Bart slipped into the fleet, a wolf in sheep’s clothing. That night, he quietly seized one ship, forced its captain to point out the fleet’s richest vessel, then captured it and fled before the escorting Portuguese warships realized what was happening under their noses.

The loot came to over 40,000 gold pieces, plus jewelry commissioned for the king of Portugal. That daring deed to start off his piratical career struck a chord and made Black Bart famous. Sailing north into the Caribbean, pirates flocked to his side, and he put them to good use.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.