In 1718, over 200 mariners accused of piracy were pardoned by the British crown. Steven C. Hahn explores the lives of these “retired” pirates in “A Pirate’s Life No More.”
While Hahn takes into account famous pirates like Benjamin Hornigold and Charles Vane, most of these pages detail the lives of lesser known pirates.
With a comprehensive examination of these pirates, this 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 distant places in the Atlantic world.
Hahn reveals that, for most individuals, instances of piracy were fleeting and opportunistic. Class, age and regional divisions plague the pirate community, keeping them from adopting any single ideology to justify their actions. Due to greater social and economic capital, some pirates were able to obtain pardons for their crimes and quickly return to honest maritime work.
Along with the standard sources employed by maritime historians, Hahn utilizes local administrative records from Britain and its American colonies such as property, court and church records. With these secondary sources, he sheds new light on the ordinary activities in which the sailors were engaged when not involved in piracy and explores how they lived in the Bahamas and elsewhere after being pardoned. Through this collective biography emerges pirates who were mariners, of course, but also husbands, fathers, parishioners and property owners.
