Sources and Further Reading

These documents and books underpin Black Flag's history and offer routes for further reading. Entries identify author, title, date, subject, use and reliability. Primary denotes period documents; Scholarly, modern historical studies with notes; Popular, works for general readers; Reference, catalogues, calendars and finding aids pointing to other material.

How This Book Uses Its Sources

Truth and Legend. Plain historical claims were checked against at least one strong source, usually a period letter, proclamation, statute or trial record. Unsettled claims appear in Legend boxes (Welcome, Truth and Legend): disputed plunder totals, embellished stories and undocumented traditions. They supply rumours and possibilities for play rather than established history.

Rows marked low confidence. Research figures were graded for support. Some depend on summaries, reference works or later accounts instead of original documents. Such figures appear as ranges, attributed reports or Legend. Examples include court proceeds after fees, certain wages and ship measurements. Gear and Prices distinguishes isolated price reports from series.

What is not known. Gaps remain explicit. No record places Roger Mostyn in the Bahamas after approval as governor in March 1716. Nassau's pirate counts date to 1717 and 1718, not 1716. Three totals circulate for Jennings's salvage-camp plunder; the Whydah share value is unknown. Cape Coast Castle's 1722 trial tallies fail to match their stated total. The text identifies these limits rather than supplying invented answers.

Dates. English and colonial records use Old Style, ten days behind Spanish and French New Style until 1700, eleven thereafter (Historical Reference, Notice). Dates follow their reporting records. Contemporary documents take precedence over later accounts when sources conflict.

Reading list status. Consultation ranged from complete works to relevant extracts. Some titles were encountered only in other authors' citations. Entries distinguish direct reading from second-hand knowledge; inclusion alone does not establish reliance on a work.

Pirates and Privateers

• Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates (London, 1724, with a second volume in 1728). A principal contemporary account of Teach, Bonnet, Vane, Rackham, Bonny, Read and Roberts, their crews and speeches, and Roberts' Articles. Read in full. Primary, requiring caution: the name is a pseudonym, scenes are reconstructed and several legends originate here. It is the first reference for those legends as well as pirate lives. Its trial table contains inconsistent totals.

• A. O. Exquemelin, The Buccaneers of America (Dutch 1678, English 1684). A participant and surgeon describes raids on the Spanish Main, Morgan's campaigns, sea-rover customs, shares and injury compensation. Consulted in the Gutenberg text of the Pyle edition for the earlier buccaneer period. Primary; the author's involvement gives him reasons to colour events.

• Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World (London, 1712). Rogers records the Duke and Dutchess voyage, supplying details of privateering, shares, provisions and daily life before his governorship. Consulted in part. Primary journal.

• Robert C. Leslie, Life Aboard a British Privateer in the Time of Queen Anne (1889). Rogers' journal abridged and annotated. Used to aid reading; the original journal takes precedence. Popular.

• Marcus Rediker, "'Under the Banner of King Death': The Social World of Anglo-American Pirates, 1716 to 1726," William and Mary Quarterly 3rd series, 38:2 (1981). Supports the treatment of crews, shares, shipboard democracy and quartermasters. Read directly. Scholarly; the counter-society argument remains an interpretation rather than settled fact.

• Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Beacon Press, 2004). Expands the subject of Rediker's article. Encountered through that 1981 article and citations in other works, rather than read directly. Scholarly.

• Kenneth J. Kinkor, "Black Men under the Black Flag," in C. R. Pennell, ed., Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader (New York University Press, 2001). A leading study used to frame estimates of Black participation in pirate crews. Figures were encountered through citing authors; this chapter was not directly consulted. Scholarly.

• Colin Woodard, The Republic of Pirates (Harcourt, 2007). Nassau's narrative history, from the plate-fleet wrecks to Rogers's arrival. Identified during research but not read completely; listed as a table companion rather than claimed as a foundation. Popular.

• Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars (Methuen, 2003). Places naval suppression in piracy's history from antiquity to the nineteenth century. Encountered through finding aids. Popular history by a historian.

• David Cordingly, Under the Black Flag: The Romance and the Reality of Life Among the Pirates (1995). A standard account of pirate life and the distinction between evidence and legend, useful on familiar clichés. Encountered through citing works. Popular.

• Benerson Little, The Sea Rover's Practice: Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630 to 1730 (Potomac Books, 2005). Detailed coverage of capture, boarding and fighting. Identified for Sail Combat, but not consulted in full. Popular.

• Baylus C. Brooks, Pardoning Pirates: HMS Phoenix to the Bahamas, February to April 1718 (Writer's Hiding Place, 2018). Examines Nassau's response to the Act of Grace. Known solely from a citing reference article. The small-press edition needs confirmation before further reliance. Scholarly.

• Graham A. Thomas, Pirate Hunter: The Life of Captain Woodes Rogers (Pen and Sword, 2008). Rogers's governorship, arrival dates and reports supply context. Encountered through finding aids; reviewers note limited sourcing. Popular history by a historian.

• Robert Blyth, Captain Ogle's Cup (Royal Museums Greenwich Spotlight Series, 2025), and the Museums' web article on the pirate hunter's cup. Covers Ogle's capture of Roberts's crew and the commemorative cup. The museum article was consulted, the book unopened and its subtitle unverified. Popular museum publication.

Law, Courts and the Navy

• The Piracy Act of 1698 (11 Will. III c. 7). Authorises colonial Admiralty commissions to try pirates overseas instead of sending them to England. Encountered through British History Online and finding aids. Primary statute.
• The Cruisers and Convoys Act of 1708. Legislation providing naval convoy protection for merchants. Encountered through finding aids. Primary statute.
• The King's proclamation of 5 September 1717 and the Act of Grace, with the London Gazette notices. Offers pardon conditional on surrender within the stated period. Encountered through other works' notes. Primary proclamation.
• Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, volumes 27 to 32 (ed. Cecil Headlam, His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1926 to 1933; online at British History Online). Calendars of governors' correspondence, council minutes, Board of Trade business and merchant petitions. Consulted section by section for 1716 to 1720: Spotswood on Providence, Hunter on New York, Johnson on Teach's Charles Town blockade, the medicine demand, Jennings's raid and officials' tenures. Volume 17 (1699) supplied Bellomont's Kidd papers. Reference summaries close to primary records, but liable to omit details or alter spellings.
• A Full and Exact Account of the Tryal of all the Pyrates lately taken by Captain Ogle (London, 1723). Cape Coast Castle proceedings, directly consulted for court structure. The numerical tally was not extracted line by line. Primary trial record.
• The Tryals of Major Stede Bonnet and Other Pirates (1719). Charles Town proceedings identified for follow-up, not read directly. Primary trial record.
• The Tryals of Captain John Rackam, and Other Pirates (printed by Robert Baldwin, Jamaica, 1721). Jamaican proceedings against Rackham's crew, including Bonny's and Read's pleas. The original spells Rackam; Black Flag uses Rackham. Identified for follow-up through Johnson and the National Archives catalogue, without direct consultation. Primary trial record.
• Reference articles on the letter of marque, which cite David J. Starkey, British Privateering Enterprise in the Eighteenth Century (1990), and others. Background to commissions and prize law, encountered solely through finding aids. Reference.
• David Wilson, Suppressing Piracy in the Early Eighteenth Century: Pirates, Merchants and British Imperial Authority in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans (Boydell Press, 2021), and "The 1715 Plate Fleet and the Rise of the Pirates," History Today (30 July 2015). Argues that piracy's surge lasted about 1716 to 1726 and that commercial interests contributed as much as naval action to ending it. Consultation covered the introduction and one chapter abstract. Scholarly.
• N. A. M. Rodger, The Command of the Ocean: A Naval History of Britain, 1649 to 1815 (2004). Naval context for the period, encountered through other authors' notes. Scholarly.
• Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1714 to 1792 (2007), and Brian Lavery, The Ship of the Line, volume 1 (1983). Used chiefly through reference pages for naval Establishments, ratings and individual vessels; the works themselves were known through citations. Scholarly.
• Admiralty station lists. Unavailable for consultation. Only independently sourced ships are named; the station-list gap remains unresolved.

The Spanish, French, Dutch, Danish and English Empires

• Spanish colonial records, through John E. Worth, "The Governors of Colonial Florida, 1565 to 1821" (web page, University of West Florida), the Real Academia de la Historia's Diccionario Biográfico electrónico, and the studies of David F. Marley (2010), Benerson Little (2007 and 2014) and Vera Moya Sordo ("Los corsarios guardacostas del Golfo-Caribe hispanoamericano," Revista Universitaria de Historia Militar 10:20, 2021) on the Armada de Barlovento and the guardacostas. Used for Spanish Caribbean offices, governorships and naval forces through web pages and finding aids. The books and article were not opened. Marley and Little titles follow their citing references. Scholarly and reference.
• Kip Wagner, Pieces of Eight (1966), and Lowell W. Newton, "Juan Esteban de Ubilla and the Flota of 1715," The Americas 33:2 (1976), pages 267 to 281. Accounts of the 1715 fleet disaster encountered through citing works. Wagner supplies popular history; Newton, scholarly study.
• Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (University of Illinois Press, 1999). Florida's Black settlers, soldiers and Fort Mose, encountered through citations. Scholarly.
• Frances Gardiner Davenport and Charles Oscar Paullin, eds., European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States and Its Dependencies, four volumes (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1917 to 1937). Collected treaty texts include Breda, Madrid and Utrecht. Volume 3 spans 1698 to 1715; volume 4 begins in 1716. Encountered through finding aids. Primary documents in scholarly editions.
• Iberville, du Casse, Duguay-Trouin and Cassard, through the French and English reference articles that cite the archives of the French colonies, and the 1685 Code Noir. French government, naval campaigns and colonial law. The Code Noir was directly consulted in a reference edition as primary text; the remaining material is reference.
• Paul Butel, Les négociants bordelais (1974), and Jane Anson's writing on the Bordeaux trade. Bordeaux's colonial commerce. Butel remains follow-up reading; Anson was encountered second-hand. Scholarly and popular.
• Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Cornell University Press, 2016), and the studies of the Dutch West India Company by van Dillen, Postma and den Heijer. Curaçao, Sint Eustatius and Dutch African commerce, encountered in reference articles' citations. The 2016 Klooster title is identified, but its correspondence to cited pages remains unchecked. Scholarly.
• Neville A. T. Hall, Slave Society in the Danish West Indies: St. Thomas, St. John and St. Croix, ed. B. W. Higman (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992; reissued by the University of the West Indies Press), and Isaac Dookhan, A History of the Virgin Islands of the United States (1974). Danish island history encountered through other authors' notes. Scholarly.
• John Oldmixon, The British Empire in America (1708). Contemporary survey used for Barbados, Jamaica, Bermuda and the Bahamas. The islands volume was consulted directly. Primary, with promotional interests.
• Reference articles on the Navigation Acts and the Board of Trade, which cite the statutes by regnal year. Colonial commercial administration and its statutes. Consulted directly. Reference.
• Michael Craton and Gail Saunders, Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People, volume 1 (University of Georgia Press, 1992). Identified as the standard Bahamian history and a key work on 1716, but not consulted. Harbour Island and Eleuthera accounts therefore rely on the Calendar of State Papers.
• Edward Crisp, A Compleat Description of the Province of Carolina (London, 1711), and the Charleston Library Society's essays on the walled town. Charles Town's map and plan, encountered through catalogues and essays. Primary cartography with popular commentary.

Trade, Ships and Money

• John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America, 1600 to 1775: A Handbook (University of North Carolina Press, 1978). A standard currency and exchange reference identified for follow-up but unavailable in text. Livre and colonial rates therefore rely on available documents. Title and date follow catalogue records; the work was not opened. Scholarly.

• Andrew McFarland Davis, "Andros's Proclamation Money," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 13 (1900), pages 500 to 508. Examines the 1704 proclamation's piece-of-eight rating. Consulted directly. Older scholarship, dependable on the proclamation.

• Queen Anne's proclamation of 18 June 1704 on foreign coin in the plantations. Sets a colonial rating of 6 shillings for the piece of eight. Encountered through Davis's article above. Primary.

• Hans Sloane, A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica (1707). Medical and natural observations from Jamaica and Barbados in 1687 to 1689, including cassava-bread, turtle and logwood prices. Relevant sections were read. Primary.

• Frank Wesley Pitman, The Development of the British West Indies, 1700 to 1763 (Yale University Press, 1917). Used for sugar, capital, currency and slave trading. Relevant chapters were consulted, with doubtful OCR figures checked. Older scholarship.

• David W. Galenson, "The Atlantic Slave Trade and the Barbados Market, 1673 to 1723," Journal of Economic History 42:3 (1982), and Traders, Planters and Slaves (1986). Barbadian slave-price studies encountered through abstracts. Scholarly.

• K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company (1957). Standard company history, referred to here as the African Company or RAC. Encountered through finding aids. Scholarly.

• Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, volume 2 (Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1931). Collected documents include a 1704 factor's letter and company contracts of 1720 and 1721. Cited items were consulted directly. Primary records in a scholarly collection.

• David Eltis, "The Volume and Structure of the Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Reassessment," William and Mary Quarterly 58:1 (2001); David Eltis, Frank D. Lewis and David Richardson, "Slave Prices, the African Slave Trade, and Productivity in the Caribbean, 1674 to 1807," Economic History Review 58:4 (2005), pages 673 to 700; and the Slave Voyages database (slavevoyages.org). Provides Atlantic embarkation estimates by period and carrier. Published database tables were consulted; carrier columns came from a summary. Scholarly work and a database subject to revision.

• Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade (1997). General background on slave trading, encountered through citing notes. Popular history by a historian.

• Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography. Supplies the London lodging price for 1725. Consulted directly. Primary.

• Royal Museums Greenwich, Caird Library blog, "18th-century sailing times between the English Channel and the coast of America: how long did it take?" (8 November 2018), and "The ship's biscuit." Consulted for ocean passages and sailors' rations. Popular museum material.

• Marco Pierini, "A History of French Rum," a series in Got Rum? magazine, drawing on Bertie Mandelblatt (French History 25:1, 2011), D. Kervégant (Rhum et eaux-de-vie de canne, 1946) and Lange. Examines France's molasses-spirit ban and its effects. Web instalments were read, but issue dates were not recorded; cite the series title. Popular. The 1713 declaration was not directly consulted, so its date and penalty depend on secondary accounts.

Slavery and Resistance

• The Slave Voyages database, Eltis, Galenson and Donnan (above). Supplies counts, prices and documentary evidence for the millions carried in Atlantic slave trading. The account retains the trade's full historical weight.
• The Code Noir of 1685 and the French and English legal texts on slaves (above). Documents French island slavery in the terms of its governing law.
• Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (1999), and the studies of Fort Mose. Examines flight from English Carolina into Spanish Florida. Scholarly.
• Trial records and Johnson, on Black seafarers who sailed with pirates. The cited Whydah survivors' account records 25 African-descended men among 146. Kinkor's estimates come through authors citing him. Primary and scholarly.
• Margaret Williamson and others, "Jamaican Slave Names in Plantation Inventories, 1731 to 1788," Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 6:4, and Margaret Williamson, "Africa or old Rome? Jamaican slave naming revisited," Slavery and Abolition 38 (2017). Jamaican naming practices, encountered through search summaries and journal listings. Neither article was opened; the data paper's publication year and page range remain unchecked. Scholarly.
• Barry Higman, Slave Populations of the British Caribbean, 1807 to 1834 (1984). Identified for further work on names and population figures, without direct consultation. Scholarly.
• Women's wills in colonial Jamaica, in Christine Walker, Jamaica Ladies: Female Slaveholders and the Creation of Britain's Atlantic Empire (Omohundro Institute and University of North Carolina Press, 2020), and "Beyond Property: Uncovering Enslaved People in Women's Wills in Colonial Jamaica," Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 6:3. Property-owning Jamaican women, including slaveholders, encountered through summaries. The journal article's authors and year remain unverified. Scholarly.

Peoples, Maroons and Black Communities

• The Jamaican Maroons and the First Maroon War, from the National Library of Jamaica's history notes. Jamaican Maroon history encountered through a brief summary. Reference.

• Free Black people in Jamaica, from the Journals of the Assembly of Jamaica (19 November 1724). Evidence on free Black Jamaicans, encountered through a reference article quoting the Assembly. Reference to a primary record.

• The Miskito people and Jeremy I and II, on the Mosquito Coast, and the Yamasee, from reference articles and the Florida Historical Quarterly. Alliances and warfare involving coastal peoples, encountered through finding aids. Reference. Each people appears under its own name.

• Martin Martin, A Description of the Western Islands of Scotland (1703). Supports the cast's Highland dress. A web extract was consulted. Primary.

• Margaret Sankey, Jacobite Prisoners of the 1715 Rebellion: Preventing and Punishing Insurrection in Early Hanoverian Britain (Ashgate, 2005), with Jonathan Oates and others on the rising and the Preston prisoners. Underlies estimates of transported prisoners. Encountered through a review and search summaries; the study remains unread follow-up. Scholarly.

• Reference articles on Akan day names and the Coromantee, which cite Edward Long, The History of Jamaica (1774), and Brian Dyde, A History of Antigua: The Unsuspected Isle (Macmillan Caribbean, 2000; a later printing is dated 2003). Akan names and the Gold Coast peoples transported to Jamaica, encountered through finding aids. Reference.

Ports and Places

• David Fictum, "The Strongest Man Carries the Day: Life in New Providence, 1716 to 1717," Colonies, Ships, and Pirates (blog, 26 July 2015). Nassau account with 52 endnotes, consulted as a route to the underlying sources. Popular, with documented references.
• Matthew B. Mulcahy, "The Rise and Fall, and Rise and Fall Again, of Port Royal, Jamaica" (paper, American Historical Association annual meeting, January 2010), Donny L. Hamilton on the Port Royal excavations, Michael Pawson and David Buisseret, Port Royal, Jamaica (1975), and Nuala Zahedieh on Jamaica's trade. Port Royal around the earthquake of 7 June 1692. Abstract and encyclopaedia case study read; books known second-hand. Scholarly and reference.
• Adrian L. Denis, "Treasure City: Havana," Commonplace 3:4 (July 2003), drawing on Gemelli Careri, Voyage du Tour du Monde, volume 6 (Paris, 1727). Havana described by a traveller, consulted directly in a modern article. Primary account.
• Lindley S. Butler, "Blackbeard's Terror," American Heritage 61:1 (Spring 2011), and Robert E. Lee, "Blackbeard the Pirate," Dictionary of North Carolina Biography (1986; online at NCpedia). Teach's activities at Ocracoke and Charles Town. Consulted directly. Popular and reference.
• Clarence V. H. Maxwell on Bermuda (Royal Gazette, 5 February 2002), and the Bermuda sloop literature. St. George's and Bermudian sloops. Consulted in the newspaper article. Popular.
• The English Pilot, Fourth Book (1716 edition), Herman Moll, A Map of the West-Indies (c. 1715), and William Burgis' view of Boston (drawn 1722, engraved by John Harris and published in London in 1725; some catalogues give 1723). Period cartography and views used as map references. Consultation covered catalogue descriptions and images. Primary.
• The state historic site and museum material on the Queen Anne's Revenge (North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources) and the Whydah (Expedition Whydah). Accounts of both wrecks, consulted in summary form. Popular and museum material.

Ships and Gunnery

• Howard I. Chapelle, The History of American Sailing Ships (W. W. Norton, 1935). Standard history of Bermuda sloops, schooners and American vessels. Cited second-hand; scan unavailable. Scholarly.
• Brian Lavery and Rif Winfield (above), as cited by reference articles on the rating and ships of the Royal Navy. Ratings, the 1706 and 1719 Establishments, and vessels including Scarborough. Known through finding aids.
• Ian McLaughlan, The Sloop of War 1650 to 1763 (Seaforth, 2014). Naval sloop history encountered through finding aids. Scholarly.
• Liam Taylor, "Leopards of the Seas: Bermuda Sloops in the Golden Age of Piracy," Blood and Pigment (blog, 18 October 2020). Bermuda sloops, with reference to Randolph (1700). Consulted directly. Popular wargaming article.
• Royal Museums Greenwich, object records for guns and the weather gage. Gun weights and the weather gauge, consulted through snippets of object records. Reference.
• The Exodus NDS sourcebooks listed in the Gear and Prices chapter. Owns every gun and vessel stat line. Historical material supplies dates; sourcebooks control statistics.

Medicine and Daily Life

• James Lind, A Treatise of the Scurvy (Edinburgh, 1753). Dates later scurvy knowledge. Known through reference material. Primary, outside the play period.
• Piratesurgeon.com, "History of Sea and Pirate Surgeons," citing Johnson (1724), Leo Eloesser, Pirate and Buccaneer Doctors (1926), and Ducoin. Surgeons at sea. Read. Popular, qualified sources; Ducoin untraced beyond the page.
• National Park Service, Saint Croix Island International Historic Site pages on the scurvy winter of 1604 to 1605, and the Royal College of Physicians garden entry. Scurvy and herbal treatment, consulted through snippets. Reference.
• Royal Museums Greenwich, Pepys' ration table of 1677 (the sea ration). Encountered through the museum page and search snippets. Reference.
• Forum threads on prices and pay, including the piratesurgeon.com "Price and Cost of Day to Day items." Finding aid to Admiralty High Court and probate prices. Used to locate documents, never price authority. Reference, low confidence.

Reading for the Table

The following works offer atmosphere and enjoyable reading for players and GMs. Fiction and film serve as touchstones, not historical evidence.

• Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island (1883). Pirate maps, parrots and one-legged cooks: a source of familiar clichés.
• Rafael Sabatini, Captain Blood (1922). A physician becomes a Caribbean buccaneer in the 1680s. Entertaining swashbuckling.