Pirate ships were the equivalent of modern get-away cars of bank robbers. Peumansend Creek supposedly memorializes where a privateer/pirate named Peuman was killed Peuman was killed there, and today the place where he "met his end" is called Peumansend Creek. Local colonists blocked his escape back to the Chesapeake Bay, and he ended up trapped in a creek near the town of Port Royal. Sometime before 1670, according to local lore, Captain Peuman raided up the Rappahannock River one too many times. In addition, pirates raided towns and poorly-defended plantations on shore.įar inland in Caroline County, Peumansend Creek is reportedly named after a French privateer or pirate. English pirates brought the first enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619, after seizing them as human cargo from a Portuguese ship headed to Mexico.įrench, Dutch, and English pirates preyed on Portuguese and Spanish ships - and on ships from any nation when convenient. Almost all of the colonists accepted his offer of a return trip from Roanoke Island to England, and Drake may have left those enslaved people there or on a nearby island.Ĭapturing a ship in the Treasure Fleet bringing silver and gold to Spain was a pirate's dream, but ships headed west to the colonies were also an attractive target. His ships may have been loaded with 200 enslaved people when Drake stopped at Roanoke Island in 1586.
Those colonies, and the ships going to and from them, were the primary targets for pirates.įrancis Drake seized Cartegena in 1586 and looted it. In the 1500's, Spain was a dominant military power with full control over all colonies in the Western Hemisphere except Brazil. Pirates were (and are) highway robbers operating on water. More accurately, pirates were thieves who stole from ships, seized entire ships, and raided plantations on land.
Pirates are often romanticized as resourceful entrepreneurs on the fringes of the wilderness, taking daring risks while creating egalitarian communities on ships that honored a code of behavior. Though pirates are romanticized today as swashbucklers, they were primarily thieves and murderers
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