A Short History of Barbados and the Pirate Stede Bonnet

[Sully Cross]

   The Colony of Barbados was claimed by England in 1625. It quickly grew to become the third major English settlement in the Americas (behind Jamestown and Plymouth) due to its prime eastern location. In the period 1640–1660, the West Indies attracted over two-thirds of the total number of English emigrants to the Americas. By 1650, there were 44,000 settlers in the West Indies, as compared to 12,000 on the Chesapeake and 23,000 in New England. Barbados generated more trade than all the other English colonies combined. This remained so until it was eventually surpassed by geographically larger islands like Jamaica in 1713. Bridgetown, the capital, was one of the three largest cities in English America (the other two being Boston, Massachusetts, and Port Royal, Jamaica.) By 1700, the English West Indies produced 25,000 tons of sugar and replaced tobacco, which had been the island's main export. So much land was devoted to sugar that most foods had to be imported from New England. The poorer whites who were moved off the island went to the English Leeward Islands, or especially to Jamaica. From 1663-1670, the provinces of North and South Carolina became official, when some of the surplus population left Barbados for the Carolina Colony.

 

   Stede Bonnet was a Barbadian-born pirate and military officer, known as the Gentleman Pirate, because he was a moderately wealthy landowner before turning to a life of crime. Bonnet was born into a wealthy English family on the island of Barbados and inherited the family estate after his father's death in 1694. Bonnet decided he should turn to piracy in the spring of 1717, bought a sailing vessel, the Revenge, and travelled with his paid crew. He met the infamous pirate Blackbeard, and was found incapable of leading his crew. He temporarily ceded his ship's command to Blackbeard and plundered and captured merchant ships along the East Coast. Blackbeard and Bonnet separated and a few months later was captured off North Carolina. Bonnet was taken to Charleston, South Carolina to be tried as a pirate. It was there that he temporarily escaped, believed to have been aided by fellow Barbadians that lived in Charleston. He was recaptured and hanged Dec 1718.

 

   The island negotiated its independence at a constitutional conference with Britain in June 1966. Barbados became an independent state on 30 November 1966, with Errol Barrow its first prime minister, with Elizabeth II as Queen of Barbados.

 

Map of Barbados circa 1688.

Edited May 22 by Sully Cross