Woodes Rogers

The son presents plans for the port of Nassau to his father Woodes Rogers (right).

Woodes Rogers (* around 1679 in Bristol , England ; † July 15, 1732 in Nassau , Bahamas ) was a privateer tolerated by the British Admiralty who attacked and robbed Spanish merchant ships at the beginning of the 18th century. Later, as Governor of the Bahamas, he vigorously fought piracy with a combination of pardons and military strength. His motto Expulsis Piratis Restituta Commercia ( German "Pirates expelled, trade restored" ) remained the national motto of the Bahamas until independence in 1973.  

Pirate voyage around the world 1708–1711

Woodes Rogers circumnavigated the globe as commander and captain of the Duke (320 tons, 30 cannons and 117 men) and the Duchess (260 tons, 26 cannons and 108 men) on a pirate voyage from 1708-1711 and brought abundant booty. The pirate trips were related to the War of the Spanish Succession , which began in 1701 and lasted until 1714. The English crown authorized the capture of enemy ships and demanded a fifth of the booty as a commission. In 1708 this share was canceled. Woodes Rogers wanted to benefit from this when he set sail in Bristol on August 2, 1708. In addition, the traders of this time wanted to break the Spanish trade monopoly with the South American Pacific coast. On September 11, 1708, they brought up a barque with 45 passengers. Then they prepared to sail around Cape Horn.

Encounter with "Robinson Crusoe"

The navigator on board was William Dampier . This had already undertaken a pirate voyage around the world as captain with the St. George and the Cinque Ports (under the command of Thomas Stradling ) 1703–1707, but had failed because he was unable to keep the crew in line as captain to keep. On the voyage, Alexander Selkirk was voluntarily released in 1705 on an uninhabited island in the Juan Fernández archipelago , which was renamed Isla Robinson Crusoe in 1966 . Selkirk had been sailing master on the Cinque Ports . Rogers was surprised to take this Alexander Selkirk on board during a stopover on February 2, 1709 for fresh water replenishment and reported in England that he was an islander. His 1712 memoir, entitled A Voyage Around the World , is considered a model for Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe .

The trip goes on

Around March 16, 1709, the two ships brought up 5 Spanish ships between 16 t and 500 t off the coast of Peru within one month. After these successes, they attacked the city of Guayaquil and demanded 30,000 silver peso ransom. The sea battles did not always go smoothly, however. Woodes Rogers was seriously wounded in a skirmish off California:

I was shot through, the bullet knocked away a large part of my upper jaw and some of my teeth, parts of which fell on the deck where I hit the ground.

By July they had captured more ships, another in August, and another on December 22, 1709. The crew hoped to catch the Begonia , a 900-ton ship with 60 cannons that was in the area. In fact, they met her on December 26th. However, after a hard fight they had to find out that the Begonia was too strong and break off the fight. Woodes Rogers was wounded again. A splinter of wood smashed his heel bone.

In October 1710 (1711?) They reached Texel in Holland. The Dutch East India Company wanted to seize the ships for allegedly violating their trading rights, but after a delay they finally sailed up the Thames on October 14, 1711. The trip, which had cost £ 14,000, generated over £ 170,000 in net income. Woodes Rogers settled at 19 Queen Square in Bristol for a while, but he had further plans to colonize Madagascar and the Bahamas.

Governor of the Bahamas

In 1717, Rogers was named governor of New Providence and the rest of the Bahamas . He set out there on April 11, 1718. In his luggage he had a royal pardon for all pirates who surrendered before September 5, 1718. He traveled aboard the Delicia , which was accompanied by the warships HMS Milford and HMS Rose and the two sloops Shark and Buck . On July 26, 1718, he reached New Providence Island . As he neared the harbor, he found a burning ship that had been set on fire by Charles Vane in the hope of luring one of the warships. However, when everyone approached, he fled. Immediately after landing, Woodes Rogers set about repairing the fort, which had fallen into disrepair, and sent Blackbeard's old mentor, Captain Benjamin Hornigold , who had accepted the royal pardon, on the hunt for Charles Vane.

Hornigold managed to capture a group of ten pirates on the island of Exuma, 130 nautical miles southeast of New Providence. Woodes Rogers decided to make an example, and eight of them were hanged on December 12th. Illnesses and lack of money forced him to give up his far-reaching projects, because soon the government was not sending any more money and no longer responding to his request for help. In 1720 he therefore returned to London. However, his successor George Phenney was so incompetent that Rogers returned to the Bahamas in 1729 at the request of the islanders with son and daughter. Although he did not achieve much of what he had set out to do, he drove the pirates from the Bahamas and broke the stranglehold they had put on the Caribbean. He died on July 15, 1732 in Nassau, Bahamas.

Rogers is said to have pardoned the infamous pirate Anne Bonny only because he was drunk at the time.

literature

• David Cordingly, Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean: The Adventurous Life of Captain Woodes Rogers, Random House 2011
• Bryan Little: Crusoe's Captain. Being the life of Woodes Rogers, seaman, trader, colonial governor . Othams Press, London 1960
• Graham Thomas, Pirate Hunter: The Life of Captain Woodes Rogers, Pen & Sword Books (Ncr), 2008
• Alexander Winston: No purchase, no pay. Sir Henry Morgan, Captain William Kidd, Captain Woodes Rogers in the great age of privateers and pirates, 1665-1715 . Eyre & Spottiswoode, London 1969
• Robert Bohn : The pirates. 2nd edition, Verlag CH Beck, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-48027-6 .