Benjamin Hornigold
| Benjamin Hornigold | |
|---|---|
| Born |
c. 1680 Norfolk, England |
| Died | 1719 (aged 39) Off the coast of Mexico |
| Piratical career | |
| Type | Pirate, Pirate Hunter |
| Allegiance |
|
| Years active | 1713–1718 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Base of operations | West Indies |
| Commands |
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Captain Benjamin Hornigold (c. 1680–1719) was an 18th-century English pirate who operated during the tail end of the Golden Age of Piracy. His career lasted from 1715 until 1718, after which he became a pirate hunter and pursued his former allies on behalf of the Governor of the Bahamas. He was killed when his ship was wrecked on a reef during the hurricane season of 1719.
Hornigold's early life is unrecorded, although he is sometimes claimed to have been born in the English county of Norfolk, where the surname Hornigold or Hornagold appears. If so, he might have first served at sea aboard ships whose home port was either King's Lynn or Great Yarmouth. His first documented acts of piracy took place in the winter of 1713–1714, when he employed periaguas (sailing canoes) and a sloop to menace merchant vessels off the coast of New Providence and its capital Nassau, where he had established a 'Privateers' or 'Pirates' republic. By 1717, Hornigold had at his command a thirty-gun sloop he named the Ranger, which was probably the most heavily armed ship in the region, and this allowed him to seize other vessels with impunity.
Hornigold's second-in-command during this period was Edward Teach, who would later be better known as the pirate Blackbeard. When Hornigold took command of the Ranger, he delegated the captaincy of his earlier sloop to Teach. In the spring of 1717 the two pirate captains seized three merchant ships in quick succession, one carrying 120 barrels of flour bound for Havana, another a Bermudan sloop with a cargo of spirits and the third a Portuguese ship travelling from Madeira with a cargo of white wine.
In March 1717 Hornigold attacked an armed merchant vessel sent to the Bahamas by the Governor of South Carolina to hunt for pirates. The merchantman escaped by running itself aground on Cat Cay, and its captain later reported that Hornigold's fleet had increased to five vessels, with a combined crew of around 350 pirates.
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