🏴‍☠️ The Republic of Pirates

Between roughly 1706 and 1718, Nassau was not a British colony in any meaningful sense. It was a pirate republic. The harbor's shallow approach made the town almost invincible against large naval vessels, and its proximity to the shipping lanes between the New World and Europe made it irresistible to the men and women who preyed on those lanes. Blackbeard made Nassau his base. So did Charles Vane, Calico Jack Rackham, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read — the last two among the few documented women pirates in history. At the republic's peak, roughly a thousand pirates lived in Nassau, outnumbering the legitimate settlers. They operated a loose democracy, voted on where to sail next, and divided plunder by written contract.

The end came in 1718, when the British Crown appointed Woodes Rogers as Governor of the Bahamas with a mandate to clean up Nassau. Rogers arrived with a small fleet and a royal proclamation: any pirate who surrendered would be pardoned; any who refused would be hanged. Most surrendered. Eight who didn't were tried and hanged in the fort yard. Rogers had the bodies left on public display, and Nassau returned, reluctantly, to the empire. The phrase Rogers chose as his motto — and the Bahamas later adopted as its national motto — was Expulsis Piratis, Restituta Commercia: Pirates Expelled, Commerce Restored.