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The shipment of precious metals from the Spanish colonies in America made piracy especially profitable. European countries supported those pirates that attacked the shipping of rival nations, a practice called privateering. The Caribbean Sea became a pirates' hang-out, with buccaneers preying on any ship of any nationality. Caribbean ports such as Port Royal in the Bahamas became pirate havens.
It was during this period, about 1680 - 1720 that piracy flourished. Called the Golden Age of Piracy, much of the romance that piracy became known for developed with such
famous pirates as Blackbeard, Henry Morgan, Stede Bonnet, Jack Rackham and many others.
The development of national navies caused the general decline of piracy.
Pirate Definitions
Pirate - A robber at sea. Any act of theft while on the oceans is piracy.
Privateer - a privateer is a sailor licensed by a government. This license authorizes the privateer captain to plunder any ship of an enemy nation. Technically a privateer was a self employed soldier paid only by what he plundered from an enemy. In this, a privateer was supposed to be above being tried for piracy. Most often privateers were semi-legal sea raiders, though many turned plain pirate when hostilities ceased between their employer nation and that nation's enemy.
Buccaneer - originally a term for those privateers who fought against the Spanish, later a general term for pirates of the Atlantic, specifically the Caribbean. The buccaneers were first hunters of pigs and cattle on the island of Hispanola (called "boucaniers"), but were driven off by the Spanish and turned to piracy.
Heave to, ye swabs, and get yerselves back to the Main Deck!
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