A Pirate's Life No More

In 1718 the British crown in the Bahamas pardoned 209 mariners accused of piracy. In A Pirate's Life No More, Steven C. Hahn explores the lives of these "retired” pirates. While there are a number of "famous" names on that list—Benjamin Hornigold, Charles Vane, and Palsgrave Williams, for example—the vast majority of the pardoned are "mostly nobodies." By focusing holistically on pirates—and on the pirates who aren’t famous—the book reclaims their humanity, connects the story of piracy at sea with the land-based communities that sometimes supported it, and illuminates the entangled histories of far-flung places in the Atlantic world. This study reveals that, for most individuals, forays into piracy were fleeting and opportunistic. Moreover, class, age, and regional divisions beset the pirate community, thereby precluding adherence to any single ideology justifying their actions. The pardon was most attractive to mariners possessing greater social and economic capital, which explains