Of these men, chiefly English, the most notorious were Teach, Every, Kidd,
Roberts, England, and Tew; but there were many others less known to fame,
who helped almost to extinguish trade between Europe, America, and the
East. Some idea of the enormous losses caused by them may be gathered
from the fact that Bartholomew Roberts alone was credited with the
destruction of four hundred trading vessels in three years. In a single
day he captured eleven vessels, English, French, and Portuguese, on the
African coast.
War in Europe, and the financial exhaustion that ensued, rendered it
almost impossible for the maritime powers to put an effective check on
the pirates either in the East or the West. With peace their numbers
increased by the conversion of privateersmen into freebooters. Slaver,
privateers-man, and pirate were almost interchangeable terms. At a time
when every main road in England was beset by highwaymen, travellers by
sea were not likely to escape unmolested. But the chief cause of their
immunity lay in the fact that it was the business of nobody in particular
to act against them, while they were more or less made welcome in every
undefended port.
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