Source Information About Pirates & Buccaneers

Image: Edwaert Collier - Vanitas Still Life (1673) Although one book from the period is usually suggested as THE source for information on pirate history from the golden age of piracy (The General History of the Pyrates by Charles Johnson), most of it comes from other sources, chunks of it are known to be fictional and other bits are suspected to be. To really understand where the material comes from, the reader is urged to purchase the Dover Maritime edition of the General History which contains both the first and second book along with excellent endnotes that explain the sources of the material. The footnotes also highlight the material which lacks support from other sources and may well be fictional. No other version is recommended for those who want understand the history behind the History. Outside of what can be sourced elsewhere in that book, primary source information on pirates must be found elsewhere.

While the list below is incomplete, it provides a good starting point for source books along with a few other things that seemed relevant to the topic. It contains several sources with information in them on golden age (1690-1725) pirates (those with the author's surname listed in green), along with a variety of sources for buccaneers (author in blue), some privateers (purple) and a few that are just good books on sailor's lives (yellow). If you actually read them, they will keep you busy for many months and you will have a much deeper understanding of what it was to be a sailor at this time.

When I first started writing articles about the medicine and health related to this period, I had to go to universities and plunder their databases. Now many of these books are freely available via Google Books, Project Gutenburg and Archive.org (among others.) Where free sources can be found on such sites, they are linked to here. Where they are not, I have linked to Amazon. (A few of them are too expensive for most people to buy (including me), but they are included in this list for reference. This does not make them any less important, just harder to procure. Check your local library or inter-library loan for those.) If interested in locating other information from this period, I go into detail about how I used to obtain resources in Finding and Obtaining 17th/18th Century Surgical Resources Page.

Primary Sources

Key: Green - GAoP, Blue - Buccaneers, Purple - Privateers, Yellow - Other

Ashton, Jr., Philip, Ashton's Memorial: A History of the Strange Adventures and Signal Deliverances of Mr. Philip Ashton, 1725

Atkins, John, A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil and the West Indies, Frank Cass & Co. Ltd., London, 1737

Artist: Thomas_Murray - William Dampier (c. 1697-8)

Barlow, Edward, Barlow's Journal of his Life at Sea in King's Ships, East and West Indiamen & Other Merchantman From 1659 to 1703, Volume I, 1659-1677,  Transcribed by Basil Lubbock, London, 1934.

Baer, Joel, British Piracy in the Golden Age, Vols 1-4, 2007 - These books contain an extensive list of pirate trial records

Cooke, Edward, A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World in the Years 1708 to 1711, 1712

Dampier, William, A New Voyage Round the World, 1699

--, A New Voyage Round the World, Vol. 2, 1699

--, A Voyage to New Holland & c (Vol. 3), 1703

Downing, Clement, A Compendious History of the Indian Wars, 1737

Exquemelin, Alexander O., Bucaniers of America, 1684

Fox, E.T., editor, Pirates in Their Own Words, Fox Historical, 2014

Funnell, William, A Voyage Round the World, 1707

Hacke, William A collection of original voyages [1699], Scholar's Facimiles and Reprints, Delmar, New York, 1993 - This book contains an alternate account of buccaneer Bartholomew Sharp's Voyage (probably edited and modified from the original logbook) as well as buccaneer William Ambrosia Cowley account of captains Eaton, Cook and Davis.

Hamilton, Alexander, A new account of the East Indies, 1727
Frontispiece from Jean-Baptiste Labat's
Memoirs

Hill, George, "Episodes of Piracy in the Eastern Seas", The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 48 (1919) & Vol. 49 (1920)

Jameson, John Franklin, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period, 1923

Labat, Pére Jean-Baptiste, The Memoirs of Pére Labat 1693-1705, translated and edited by John Eaden, Frank Cass & Co. Ltd, 1970

Ringrose, Basil, The Voyages and Adventures of Capt. Barth. Sharp And Others in the South Sea, London, 1684

Roberts, George, The Four Years Voyages of Capt. George Roberts, 1726 - Note, this is probably NOT by Defoe, no matter it says, but it is quite possibly a fictional account

Rogers, Woodes, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, 1712

Snelgrave, Captain William, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade, 1734

Artist: William Hogarth - Woodes Rogers (1729)

Teonge, Henry, The Diary of Henry Teonge, Chaplain on Board H.M.'s Ships Assistance, Bristol, and Royal Oak, 1675-1679, London, 1825

Uring, Nathaniel, A history of the voyages and travels of Capt. Nathaniel Uring, with a new draught of the Bay of Honduras, London, Cassell and company ltd., 1928

Wafer, Lionel, A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America, Reprinted from the original edition of 1699, Edited by George Parker Winship, The Burroughs Brothers Company, Cleveland, 1903

Select Secondary Sources

Dow, George Francis and Edmonds, John Henry, The Pirates of the New England Coast 1630-1730, 1923

Earle, Peter, The Pirate Wars, 2006

Fox, E.T., Jolly Rogers, The True History of Pirate Flags, 2015

Grey, Charles, Pirates of the Eastern Seas, 1618-1723, 1933

Artist: Willem van de Velde the Younger
English Sixth Rate Firing a Salute (1706)

Little, Benerson, The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730, Potomac Books, Washington, D.C., 2005

Schonhorn, Manuel, A General History of the Pyrates, Dover Maritime, New York, 1999

Select Web Links

Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, UK National Archives - This page provides links to all the official Calenders of State Papers for the West Indies which contain official communications between people living there and officials in England. There are more primary source documents about pirates to be found in these records than anywhere else I have yet found, but they are scattered among all the other communications. These are probably one of the best primary sources out there if you have the patience to search through them.

British History Online - This contains digital copies of the above material as well as some other official English communications. Unfortunately, the search function is very poor and it is usually quite difficult to narrow down searches, making the site much less useful than it could be. However, if you can find what you want, it will at least point you to the right book.

Baylus Brooks' Pirate's Library - West Indies Pirates - East Indies Pirates

The Proceedings of the Old Bailey - Records of criminal trials in London. Not quite as useful as it sounds because many pirates were tried in the colonies rather than in London, but still interesting to peruse.