Letter to Queen Anne from the most Serene Maritime Advisor

Ryan Doolan

Literature of the Sea

 The new frontier for many of the European superpowers was the untapped wealth of the

Americas. The Spanish and the Portuguese capitalized on their maritime progress, and their

devout need to further their conquest out of what was then known as Al-Andalus. They

conquered King Montezuma, and spread the Spanish flag throughout this new and uncharted

land. While us English was late in comparison, this doesn’t change the fact that there is immense

wealth to be had that can aid in the betterment of Brittania. However, one thing that should be

noted by my Grace is the onset of pirates, and the similar groups that seek to plunder the riches

of these lands that we have achieved through hard work and determination.

Over the last century there have been multiple waves of plundering thieves that many

would consider pirates. “If the plantation capital of the Caribbean, allied with the merchant

capital of the metropolis, killed the first generation of pirates—the buccaneers of the 1670s—and

if the capital of the East India Company killed the pirates of the 1690s”(Rediker 144). This can

help to really understand how to control and combat piracies in the long term. Through the allies'

efforts of industries such as the growing power of the East Indian Company proper defense of

trade can be secured. However, this does not mean that this could be a quick solution due to the

fact that Henry Avery committed a mutiny against the East Indian Company and turned to a life a

piracy(Rediker 38).

What is important to note is that through our respective organization of our overall

maritime endeavors outside of Europe, the pirates themselves will attempt to organize more to

combat our encroachment on their wave of life. For instance if you compare the previous wave

of piracy with the onslaught from the buccaneers, while they had tactical prowess they were

oftentimes used to help fight wars and take settlements due to the organizational nature of their

lifestyle. However, these new age pirates such as Henry Avery and William Kidd are much more
crafty with their plans of halting our progress against the Turks and the Portuguese in the Indian

Ocean. With a firm base on the island of Madagascar they have the ability to harass any unwary

ship that dares to try and make it to Indian when transiting the Cape of Good Hope(Rediker 8).

The story of the Buccaneers is a tale worth diving more into. While they may seem just as

feral as any pirate that plagues any good nation on this world, they are different from those of

pirates. While we use Privateers as an instrumental tool of war used against your enemies they

are employed through letters of marque. Buccaneers worked using a code which many pirates

went on to form their own code of what they can and can not do out at sea(Rediker 84).

However, this didn’t mean that the Buccaneers were analogous to pirates primarily due to the

fact that more often than not they were able to be bought by nations to help fight wars in the

caribbean. This meant they worked in a weird gray area between privateer and pirate. The

Buccaneers during the Anglo-Dutch Wars where they can be sent in to defend our holdings rather

effectively.

If I may speak honestly of your grace, one thing that has contributed more to piracy than

any other factor is the condition of the English Navy. While some may say it is the best in the

world, it is hard to prove them right when our sailors have a high rate of mutiny which outright

leads these skilled seamen to turn to piracy. While the New World had an enormous amount of

wealth to be had, and that many of the navy and merchant seamen did take part in the plundering

of the landmass of riches, the average person can earn a tremendous amount of money by

sacking settlements and looting the ships. It is a purely economical issue that many of these

sailors have to deal with due to the nature that many people don’t go out to sea because they

enjoy it, and that they have families to feed when they get home. Many navy men held opinions
that naval service was synonmous with slavery, which further shows the incentive to go to a life

of a piracy.

While we can change the culture of the navy in the future, one thing that King James set

forward for your regency was the Proclamation of 1688 which demanded that all pirates

surrender to the crown. The Proclamation stated that “Whereas frequent Robberies and Piracies

have been, and are daily committed…which has occasioned a great prejudice and great Scandal

to the Trade and Commerce…any such Pirate or Privateer Pirate or Privateers shall…Surrender

him or themselves”. The punishment for piracy should be carried out systematically to enforce a

better environment for trade around England's possessions( Compelled). One of the reasons why

this proclamation has gone into effect is to further combat the congregation of pirates into larger

groups or even confederacies like we have seen out of Henry Avery. This notion makes a lot of

sense since during the Golden Age of piracy both navies and pirates grew tactically so having the

government try to get ahead of any overly ambitious pirate would be good.

England with her colonies and the East India Company has led to the convergent need of

protecting the seas for safe trade that the Romans needed during their time as rulers of the

Mediterranean. During the time of Pax Romana the Romans controlled the entirety of the

Mediterranean which meant that it had to properly control multiple peoples' need to go out and

pillage one another on the high seas. The Greeks for instance, had a culture where they went out

to plunder to look for new lands and “hospitality” from the natives that they were interacting

with. Pirates were a major problem for the Mediterranean due to the fact that they were similar to

bandits, but they were able to launch more effective attacks due to their naval abilities at the

time. This created a large growing need for rulers of the ancient Mediterranean to fight against

pirates to keep their waters clear from piracy(De Souza). While many of the petty kingdoms of
Europe struggled against pirates, only Rome really sought out pirates and stuffed them out before

they could go and raid again. An example of this is from the island of Rhodes where they were

constantly harassed by pirates from crete. While the Rhodians did a decent job defending their

maritime routes, the onslaught of pirates made it more and more difficult for the island kingdom

which was bleeding resources fighting this fruitless war. Rome allowed Rhodes to join the

Republic and with their ultra-militaristic culture completely annihilated the Creton pirates.

Another instance of this was the Balearic islands which were a traditional pirate stronghold in the

western mediterranean. If Rome did this to annex more land or for a justifiable reason is up for

debate, but what matters is they allowed for the greatest amount of commerce in the western

world up until that time period, which can be attributed to the role the Romans had in halting

piracy.

The reason why Rome is important for this conversation is because it is a proper

analogue to how England should be. With our mighty Navy any nation whether that be friend or

foe wouldn’t have to worry about the greedy onslaught of pirates in and around their waters.

While the Mediterranean is a microcosm for the reach that our navies can go, we should use the

lessons we learned from Rome in order to combat piracy around the world and help to secure

trade to England propper.

From what I can gander about the future I think that this anti-piracy ideology will

inevitably lead to a stronger England. With us controlling large swaths of the New World, Indian

Ocean and many other territories it should be paramount that we continue to patrol the seas in

order to protect against any plundering pirate that could potentially harm the maritime trade that

our empire is going to receive.

 What I can accurately predict is that a man named Bartholmew Robets with his crew will

go to Boston due to them having a response to the Governor executing some pirates in 1720.

Their response could be them burning down several vessels and offering a bounty toward the

official who did it to them(Rediker 13). While this prediction may seem bad, this might as well

be on of the last resistance of the pirates that have terrorized the seas for so long in the Atlantic.

The reason why I mention this grueling premonition is because it shows that pirates are being

caught and King James's Proclamation is working in order to bring the marauders to justice and

clear our seas of crime. On top of this pirates getting executed for their crimes have become

more and more common. For instance I can predict, “ the greatest number of pirates hanged were

1718 (110) and 1722 (148)(Rediker 36). This means that although it may be economically viable

to be a pirate in the future, it has become more and more dangerous to the point that the English

legal system will probably catch up with you and have you executed for your terror on the high

seas. The last days of the pirates will be not about booty or coin, but the survival of their

lifestyle. The majority of the pirates were marked for death so the idea that they should just come

foward was just suicide. While their way of life was raiding settlements along the frontiers of the

powers of Europe, those frontiers kept on getting pushed further and further to the point where

the pirates were essentially starving themselves for a good raid(Rediker 37).
 Work Cited

Rediker, Marcus. Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age.

Verso, 2012.

Souza, Philip De. Ancient Rome and the Pirates, EBSCO, Sydney, 2003.