Notes

"For a brief, glorious period the pirate republic was enormously successful. At its height it cut off trade routes, sacked slave ships, and severed Britain, France and Spain from their new world empires. The Royal Navy went from being unable to catch the pirates to being afraid to encounter them at all. Imperial authorities and wealthy ship owners denounced the pirates as the enemies of mankind, but huge numbers of common people saw them as heroes. Finally one man volunteered to pacify the pirates' Bahamian lair and destroy anyone who resisted - Woodes Rogers, a famous privateer himself and scion of a powerful merchant family"--Fly-leaf.