Charles Vane

Nassau, on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas, became, between roughly 1706 and 1718, the operational headquarters of the Golden Age's most famous pirates.

Charles Vane was there.

Benjamin Hornigold was there.

The man history remembers as Blackbeard, Edward Teach or Thatch, depending on which record you consult, was there.

And then he decides that he's not going to be a pirate anymore.

Remember, Charles Vane was begging him to join the cause, but that wasn't for Blackbeard.

He didn't care about Nassau, so he was going to get the pardon, but he didn't tell anyone this.

He just scuppered his own ship so he could take over Steve Bonnet's ship when Steve Bonnet went to get the pardon.

That is how many men were under his command.

He is the quintessential pirate captain.

If you could have combined him and Charles Vane into one personality, then you really get the sense that you would have had a genuine shot at creating a new pirate nation there.

Because if Vane

Rackham himself was hanged in Jamaica, his body displayed as a warning.

Charles Vane, fierce and defiant, was captured and executed in 1721.

Bartholomew Roberts, known as Black Bart, perhaps the most successful pirate of them all, captured hundreds of ships in his career.

But in 1722, he too was killed in battle, his death a final shattering blow to the Golden Age.

For his crew, that meant living at the intersection of crime and government, never entirely sure which side their captain really served.

Charles Vane, by contrast, gave the authorities a different sort of headache.

When royal pardons were offered in the Bahamas, he refused, not because he was incapable of understanding the odds, but according to sources, because he saw surrender as betrayal of the life, of the code, of the men still at sea.

Vane's story shows the limits of pirate democracy.

His crew did not always agree.

At one point, when he declined to attack a promising prize, they voted him out and chose a new captain.

In terms of numbers, Rackham's impact was modest, yet his name endures in pamphlets, plays, and modern media.

This reminds us that history remembers pirates unevenly.