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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Khalid Elhassan January 7, 2020 32 min

6. The Pirate Who Ended His Days as a Pirate Hunter

Benjamin Hornigold. Golden Age of Piracy

Early in his seafaring career, Benjamin Hornigold (1680 – 1719) was a privateer during the War of the Spanish Succession, licensed with Letters of Marque to legally prey upon French ships. After the war, he switched from privateering to outright piracy. His first recorded act of piracy dates to 1713, when he used sailing canoes and a small sloop to capture and loot merchant ships around the Bahamas.

Eventually, Hornigold became one of the Caribbean’s most notorious pirates, before accepting a royal pardon in 1718. He then turned against his former friends and colleagues, and became a successful pirate hunter.

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.