Travel destinations tied to historical piracy?

[Mission]

I have spent years researching historical piracy. Since most of the places I would like to visit are tied to things I have seen or read, I have a list of historically significant places I would see. In fact, I have already visited one of them... Robinson Crusoe Island, once called Más a Tierra or, in the bucaneer accounts, Juan Fernandez. I almost made it to Ile Ste. Marie (now called Nosy Boraha), Madagascar which was home to many of the East Indies pirates and the site of Adam Baldridge's pirate trading post at the turn of the 18th century, but... covid scotched that for me.

I have a short list of other desired historically significant pirate destinations like these. So what's on your list?

[Mary Diamond]

Ah, our favorite wandering surgeon… what a wonderful topic! I would love to see Robinson Crusoe Island, Port Royal…

[madPete]

I've been mostly shipwrecked since the pandemic. But I'm looking forward to new adventures in travel. we'll see how it works out...

 

[Stynky Tudor]

1 hour ago, madPete said:

I've been mostly shipwrecked since the pandemic.

Me too, looking forward to some new adventures.

[hurricane]

Port Royal was awesome until they added a cruise ship dock. I can’t imagine what it’s like now that it’s flooded with touristas. 
 

https://cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/2020/01/first-cruise-ship-docks-at-jamaica-s-new-port-royal/

[William Brand]

Martinique is high on my list.  I would also like to return to Acre (Akko) in Israel.  

[Bräckvattenspirat]

Right now I'm just checking of the list here close to home.

I created a city walk here in Stockholm, Sweden with all the places I found connected to our pirate history, and there are actually a few!

I'm also trying to see as many other places as possible here close by. A while ago I checked out the foundry where two of the guns found on Queen Annes Revenge were made, Ehrendahls Styckebruk, a bit south of Stockholm.

This summer I combined sailing with the schooner Constantia and visiting Visby, and the ruins of Visborg Castle, that was the base of Baltic pirates and privateers for over a hundred years between the late 14th century and the early 16th century.

I visited the ruins of Skenäs Castle at Bråviken, where the actual pirate princess Cecilia Vasa had her base of operations in the 1560's, a while back.

I made sure to see the Riddarholmen ship here at the Medieval Museum before they closed last weekend. The Riddarhomen ship was part of the privateer fleets in he Baltic sea in the 1520's, before it sank here in Stockholm. Another museum find I visited recently was the Historical Museum where they keep the hunting horn of Erik Av Pommern, Swedish king turned pirate in the 15th century.

And of course Mariehamn Maritime Museum with the Jolly Roger(been there a gazillion times as a kid, since my mother is from the Turku archipelago).

I am looking at re-visiting Onsala, and Onsala church, on the Swedish west coast, where Swedish pirates/privateers Lars and Ingela Gathenhielm were born and are buried in huge caskets decorated with skull and crossbones(not as a sign of piracy, but of death. But it is suiting!), pretty soon. It has been almost 20 years since I went there last time, and it's worth revisiting. Also I will make sure to see the graves of the Swedish 17th century pirates Gustaf Adolf Skytte af Duderhoff and Gustaf Drake in the close future as well.

The thing is, that as I dig more and more in the Swedish archives, I keep finding new places to visit all the time. But I am planning on getting further away too. Northern Germany have a bunch of places connected to the Vitaliebrüdern/the Victual Brotherhood. London and a bunch of other British places of course. St. Malo have a couple of Swedish pirate connections too. And Ireland with all the places of Gráinne Ní Mháille. Salé/Rabat would be nice, but Tripoli and Tunis will have to wait until things calm down in the region. The US east coast, as a road trip from New England to Florida. Port Royal, and St Chatherines church in Jamaica. Tortuga will also have to wait a while for Haiti to calm down.

Pictures shown. Visborg Caslte, Skenär Castle, Ehrendahls Bruk, Riddarholmsskeppet

[Stynky Tudor]

Wow, this is very cool - thank you for posting!

This makes complete sense, but aside from the vikings, I never really gave Sweden much thought when it comes to piracy.

It looks like there's another place I want to travel, please feel free to share some more. 

[Bräckvattenspirat]

Both the North Sea and the Baltic Sea have been full of pirates and privateers since beginning of time up until the Paris Declaration in 1856. We must remember that this was a violent area. Denmark and Sweden are, depending on how you define stuff, the two countries in the world that have fought the highest amount of wars between them. Up until the 1800's Denmark and Sweden were fighting wars all the time. And most of these wars included privateering in one way or another. Sweden did not get a real navy until 1522, and it took a few decades until it was a proper navy. Denmark was a bit faster, but I'm not really sure when they got a navy. They might have been about a hundred years faster, because I seem to remember that Queen Margarete had access to a navy during her battles with the Hansa and the Victual Brotherhood. But don't quote me on it...

But until the navies were established, all naval warfare was based on piracy and privateering around here. Before we had proper national states we had Vendish tribes on the southern coast of the Baltic, and prior to that of course Vikings. Once the nations started to form piracy also started to develop to privateering, even though the line was veeeery blurry between privateering and pure piracy up until the end in the 1800's. Most famous among the early pirates was the Victual Brotherhood. Originally north German pirates turned privateers, then turned pirates again, in the late 14th century early 15th century.

This all means there are maaaany places around here with a connection to piracy. How ever, piracy have not been a big subject among historians of Scandinavia(except the Vikings of course), so one have to dig a bit in different books and archives before those places are found.

[Stynky Tudor]

Wow very cool - awesome stuff! I've always had an interest in piracy/privateering outside the GAoP, Golden Age of Piracy time frame - 14, 15 & early 1600s between Europe & North Africa, but never really gave the Baltic much thought.

It sounds like you've delved or are delving into this a lot on your own, please continue to do so and share with us what know. Thank you. 

[Bräckvattenspirat]

I thought I would follow up on the last post.

I while ago I stumbled upon someone called "the last pirate on the Baltic Sea". While reading up on him I remembered reading about him back in the early 00's or late 90's.

The reason I did not dig deeper back then is that he was in the grey area that some call piracy and some don't. He was a wrecker on the Island of Gotska Sandön in the early 1800's. Local legends have painted him out as both serial killer and someone who actively tricked ships to wreck. Neither of these things check out when you look into them.

What rather seem to be the case, I have still to do more research but the major things seem clear, is that he worked as a caretaker at the Island Gotska Sandön in 1814. Gotska Sandön is located about 40 km north of the Island Gotland in the Baltic sea(I post a map of Gotland with Gotska Sandön visible at the top) and is still mostly uninhabited. During the fall and winter back in the early 1800's there were only the caretaker and his family there. In October of 1814 two ships collided in the Baltic somewhere of the coast of Gotland. One of the ships, Cerberus av Greifswald, were abandoned and set adrift. It got wrecked on the shores of Gotska Sandön. Petter Gottberg found her there some time prior to Christmas 1814. He started looting the ship. In May of 1815 relatives of his wife came to visit, and he had to report the wreck to the authorities. And the rest of the wreck was salvaged by the government. A while later he went on a visit to Stockholm, where he sold some of the goods from the wreck. One of the wolf skin coats he sold were recognised and he was arrested. In December 1816 he was sentenced for the wrecking and had to spend two years in jail. That was about it. Not that much actually. But local folklore have painted him into a pirate and a monster, which is what makes him interesting.

In 1829 he moved to the area Boo outside Stockholm and died there in 1831. Today I visited the cemetery where he was buried, Boo Gamla Kyrkogård, to see if there was a way of finding his grave. Today it is located in one of the poshest suburbs of Stockholm, and the road there is through areas with some of the most expensive houses in Sweden. But in the early 1800's things were quite different. The area was somewhere where poor people lived and died. This was also mirrored in the cemetery. How ever, in the late 1800's things had changed, and so did the cemetery. People with more money were buried there, and more graves with headstones and crosses were created.

So that was my problem. Petter Gottberg was buried in a poor mans grave, which means he had no headstone. But thanks to signs written by local historians the approximate area where he was buried were easy to find. The first two pictures are of that area in the cemetery. The third is to get a better idea of the cemetery itself and the third is a map of Gotland.

I know this is not the most "piratey" and exciting of my finds, but I will post more.

[Stynky Tudor]

Wow more great historical stuff, thank you!

And no worries about the the topic not being pirate enough. Though this message board is called Pyracy.com, a lot of us are here for the stories and history of sailors and nautical maritime history.

Please feel free to share more. 

[Bräckvattenspirat]

8 hours ago, Stynky Tudor said:

Wow more great historical stuff, thank you!

And no worries about the the topic not being pirate enough. Though this message board is called Pyracy.com, a lot of us are here for the stories and history of sailors and nautical maritime history.

Please feel free to share more. 

I think I will take you up on that offer to share more of what I find. But to not ending up hijacking this thread I will start a new one in the Captain Twill section.  🙂

But not until I share this photo taken from the main mast of Constantia of me and my friend Per fixing something out on the bowsprit last summer. I honestly don't remember what it was.

[Tartan Jack]

Off the top of my head …

(Edit: Thinking mostly is 1715-25/GAoP tighter dating)

Many Caribbean islands, Barbados, Bahamas, & the eastern sea coast from just south of Savannah to north of Massachusetts have historic sites. Many locals may of may not know them & many false-legends have arrisen over the centuries, as half-remembered stories are blended together.

Those were British-held territory.

What became Georgia was a “buffer area” claimed by both the Charleston & St Augustine. In 1720, South Carolina established a fort (Fort King George) at a disputed riverhead halfway between the 2, in what was basically a land-grab/claim.

The Royal Army manned it for a while, then they pulled up everything in 1727 & returned to Charleston.

(It was built by South Carolina Navy sailors, whom are likely to include some who were part of the post-blockade Blackbeard hunt that snarred Bonnet & Worley. It was less than 2 years later.)

 

South of there was Spanish territory & raided (such as the storm wrecks) or home to Spanish pirates.

 

Most of the land-sites, sadly, have have changed significantly- as people moved in, farmed, then built “vacation developments” along prime-spots. Many sites because the spot offered the same reasons making it desirable in 1715-20 as in 1970-2023.

 

The above Fort King George is now a Georgia State Park, with the fort reconstructed a few hundred feet from the original site. 
It had been a sawmill site later, which collapsed & the land was fallow & availsbld for the park service to purchase.

The present fort was built in the 1980s & 90s, based on the original 1720-27 one.

I was pleasantly pleased when we got to do an event there last weekend.

(All photos but the one with the flag are from the web. The solo house is where we stayed & my table is under that flag)

Edited November 21, 2023 by Tartan Jack