by Colin Woodward
Harcourt Press

In person, Colin Woodward is smart, genial and well spoken. His enthusiasm for history and its enduring legacies is engaging, educational and infectious. An award winning journalist and maritime author, his work as correspondent for The Christian Science Monitor and The Chronicle of Higher Education has sent him all over the planet, reporting from more than 40 countries on six continents. He’s covered the ethnic conflict in the Balkans, the East Asian financial crisis and the effects of climate change on Antarctica. As a native of Portland, Maine, however, he’s cultivated a lifelong curiosity surrounding New England’s shores, and particularly the obstacles and intricacies of colonial life. His previous historical work, “The Lobster Coast,” focused primarily on the stubborn perseverance of plucky Mainers, and stands as terrific evidence of his strength in research and ability to illustrate the impact of the past on the present.

It is no coincidence that Harcourt Press is releasing his latest book, titled “The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down,” on the heels of the latest Disney pirate epic with Johnny Depp. The suspiciously commercial timing of the release, however, should in no way diminish the work itself. Meticulously researched over the course of the last two years, Woodard went to great extremes to paint a clear, factual and exciting portrait of a very real group of revolutionary spirits, who have been buried in near-complete obscurity under the weight of their own myth. He reminds us that the stereotypes we’ve come to expect from the true pirates’ fictional counterparts are only dim reflections of a vibrant, commanding crew of people. Many pirates of colonial times spearheaded exactly the kind of democracy and egalitarianism for which the United States fought three generations later in the American Revolution. Indeed, he points out, many of the players involved in the pirates’ heyday, between 1715 and 1725, were not just thieves and brigands. They were governors and nobles attempting to re-seize the power of the throne from King George I by methodically cutting off trade routes to the new colonies.

Woodard spins a compelling story, focusing on the unlikely but very real coalition formed in the early 18th century by sailors, indentured servants and runaway slaves like Edward “Blackbeard” Thatch, the flamboyant Calico Jack Rackham, the hot-headed Charles Vane, the gentleman Stede Bonnet and even the cross-dressing female captain Anne Bonny. Under the flag of this “Flying Gang,” sailors received unprecedented rights and protections. While the English and Spanish Navies literally kidnapped the destitute into service, denying them all basic human dignities and often duping them out of their pay, life on a pirate ship was one in which blacks were treated as equals, plunder was shared uniformly and ordinary sailors could depose their captains by popular vote. Securing the very defensible colony of the Bahamas as their capitol, they designed a systematic campaign of high seas robbery. For a brief, glorious period, the campaign cut off trade routes, sacked hundreds of vessels and effectively severed three of the world’s greatest powers of the time—England, Spain and France—from their New World Empires. Not too shabby.

While imperial forces publicly denounced the actions of these rebels as barbarous atrocities, writings of the common people showed a growing respect for the daring stand against social inequity. Plays and books came out casting the captains as heroes against those that would trample the rights of the people. Governors complained routinely in their writings that their people were offering the pirates safe harbor and supplies. As the pirates grew in social and naval power, imperial forces went from being unable to catch them to being frightened to encounter them at all. Eventually, they dispatched a solution in the person of privateer Woodes Rogers. Fiercely loyal to the throne—and an equal to any
pirate captain on the sea—Rogers was sent to disband their Bahamian headquarters and destroy their hold on the Carribean once and for all. I won’t ruin the ending for you, but suffice it to say there’s no more Pirate Republic in the Bahamas today.

Listening to Woodard talk about this era, one is struck at the depth and breadth of his understanding of the period. The author, who recently signed copies of his new book at Barnes & Noble in Newington, speaks with uncanny detail of deadly showdowns, stolen treasure and cannon fire. But he places all the action within a complex social ecology, illustrating the interconnected roles of politics, government, economy and sociology. He even points out the impact of prevailing weather patterns on trade routes and naval strategy. Basing his story completely on archival documents sourced from England, Spain and the Americas, Woodard invents no dialogue, creates no connections more than the evidence makes explicit, and reels out a rousing maritime account of adventure and revolution, possibly even more exciting than Disney’s, because it’s all true.