In the 1720s, the end of the Pirate's golden age, was when pirates like Black Beard, Captain Kidd, Black Bart Roberts and when the female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, sailed the seas under the captaincy of ‘Calico’ Jack Rackham. These pirates operated in a world of expanding empire led by overseas trade. The discovery and colonization of the New World had led to a demand for new products: tobacco, sugar and cotton, grown on plantations in the Americas and the Caribbean. Plantations needed slaves to work them and a triangular slave trade had developed. Merchants in ports like Bristol and Liverpool were making vast profits from the sale of sugar and tobacco from the Americas and slaves from Africa.

The expansion of trade to the Far East and India meant that there were rich pickings to be made there, too, not just for European merchants but for the pirates who preyed on their ships. Colonial expansion had also resulted in periods of open warfare between competing European nations. In time of war, a privateer, or buccaneer as they were often called, could apply for a letter of marque which allowed him to attack enemy shipping. When peacetime came many of these privateering crews saw no reason to stop their profitable activities and began taking ships of any nation, becoming pirates.

Many of them saw piracy was an attractive alternative to serving on a Naval or Merchant vessel. Life on board ship was tough: discipline harsh, food often rotten, water foul, financial reward small, and sometimes sailors were not paid at all. The work was dangerous, injuries frequent and the likelihood of any recompense small. Pirate ships were different.

Pirate ships were run as democracies, every man on board signing to Articles (the Pirate Code) and agreeing to be ruled by a ships’ council. The men themselves made the decisions about who would be captain, as well as on matters of discipline, compensation, distribution of food, water and plunder. There was huge wealth to be made, more than any individual could possibly expect in a lifetime’s service on a regular ship. Few merchant ships even bothered to put up a fight when attacked by pirates and captains, navigators, first officers, doctors, as well as ordinary seamen took up the chance when offered to ‘go on the account’. Pirate ships did not discriminate. Their crews were made up from different nations and often included people of colour: runaway slaves and free men from the West Indies, America and Africa. Black sailors made up nearly a third of Bartholomew Roberts’ crew.

The golden age of piracy lasted from around 1700 to 1730. At one time there were an estimated 2000 pirates operating in the Caribbean alone, but their activities ranged along the eastern seaboard of America, across to West Africa and around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. The pirates were becoming almost as numerous and powerful as the Royal Navy, and the threat and interference to trade could no longer be tolerated. They were ousted from the havens they had set up for themselves, in the Caribbean, the Bahamas, and Madagascar. Some took amnesties offered by the crown, the rest were hunted down, tried and hung, their bodies left to rot in gibbets as a warning to others. Their time was over, leaving international commerce free for the merchants.