Pirates are popularly associated with the eye-patched, peg-legged buccaneers who ransacked the ships of colonizing powers in the 17th and 18th century Caribbean, a period historians call the "Golden Age" of piracy.
Gold, booze and weapons
The Vikings were pirates too, raiding the coasts of Europe by ship very successfully several hundred years, beginning in the eighth century. Pirates have been at work in Asia just as long.
Despite their worldwide proliferation, it is the pirates of the Caribbean that have long captured the popular imagination.
Conditions in the Americas from the 16th to the 18th centuries were ripe for piracy, which has traditionally thrived in places with unstable governments or power vacuums. With the colonial powers of Spain, England, France and the Netherlands, the Caribbean Sea became a relatively lawless territory during this time.
European sailors put out of work at the end of wars, pirate gangs settled in safe harbors such as Tortuga (Haiti) and Port Royal (Jamaica), where raids were launched on ships traveling between the new colonies and Europe. Spanish ships laden with gold and silver coins were popular targets, but pirates also plundered gems, caskets of wine, equipment and weapons.
Famous pirate raids of this era include:
• Francis Drake's 1573 sacking of Spain's "Silver Train" fortune in Panama.
• The week-long blockade and plundering of the port of Charleston by Edward Teach in 1718.
• Henry Morgan's attack coin stores of Panama City in 1671, which earned him a knighthood in England.
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