Black Pirate Incorporated

By Cindy Vallar

Some estimate that nearly 5000 pirates hunted prey between 1715 and 1726. Of that number, about twenty-five to thirty percent came from the cimarrons, black slaves who ran away from their Spanish masters. Other blacks joined after pirates attacked slave ships. For example, when Sam Bellamy and his fellow pirates seized a “Guinea Ship,” twenty-five blacks went on the account. Stede Bonnet’s crew also included former slaves and freemen, and of the eighty sea rovers who followed John Lewis numbered at least forty blacks from English colonies. Francis Sprigg’s cook was black and was entrusted with dividing the spoils equally for the crew...

read the rest here "Go on the account!"

"Only Free At Sea" 

 Pirates threw the law of the land overboard. During a time when their skin color made them nobodies, their skill made them somebodies. The "Whydah" was one ship with 30 of 50 pirate crew being of African decent - all treated as equals. Learn about this vessel with "Black Sam" as the Black captain here:

National Geographics - "Pirates of the Whydah" 

"Black Caesar"

Black Caesar (Henri Caesar) was born in the mid-1760's to Haitian slaves owned by a wealthy French planter named Arnaut. He spent his childhood performing various tasks inside as a houseboy, but was later moved to the lumberyard in an effort to employ his larger physique.  read more...

Black Caesar - "Black Pirates in history"