The Saltbeard & Chronicle

The Saltbeard & Chronicle

Dispatches on piracy, privateering, and the merchant empires of the long seventeenth century.

Complete Archive

Every essay in chronological order, most recent first. One hundred and thirty-three pieces over six and a half years; the longer ones are nearer the bottom.

2025

  1. 18 BRUMAIREThe Sack of Portobelo, 1668: Henry Morgan's most audacious raid
  2. 14 BRUMAIREThe East India Company's first factory at Surat, 1612
  3. 9 BRUMAIRECalico Jack and the two women who sailed with him
  4. 2 BRUMAIREThe hidden cost of Madagascar's "Pirate Republic"
  5. 26 VENDÉMIAIRELetters of marque: how privateering actually worked
  6. 19 VENDÉMIAIREThe cartographer's revenge: a 1671 map of Tortuga
  7. 12 VENDÉMIAIREReading Esquemeling against Esquemeling
  8. 5 VENDÉMIAIREThree minor mutinies of the EIC's Bombay Marine
  9. 28 FRUCTIDORWhat a pirate's "share" was actually worth in 1715
  10. 21 FRUCTIDORThe vanishing Dutch: VOC ships lost to no one in particular
  11. 14 FRUCTIDORA short defence of Bartholomew Roberts's reading habits
  12. 7 FRUCTIDORSir Thomas Modyford and the inconvenient art of plausible deniability
  13. 30 THERMIDORTwo letters from Port Royal, July 1672
  14. 23 THERMIDORThe myth of the buccaneer surgeon

2024

  1. DECEMBERThe Roanoke of the Pacific: what really happened at Juan Fernández
  2. DECEMBERA bibliography for the patient reader
  3. NOVEMBERThe slow death of the Spanish carrera de Indias
  4. NOVEMBEREdward Teach and the Charleston blockade: an exercise in nerve
  5. OCTOBERWhy nobody actually buried treasure
  6. OCTOBERThe peculiar career of Sir Christopher Myngs
  7. SEPTEMBERA Dutch invoice for Antigua, 1681
  8. SEPTEMBERReading Defoe's General History in the light of what we now know
  9. AUGUSTThe Maracaibo lagoon and the geography of failure
  10. AUGUSTOn the alleged "pirate code"
  11. JULYBartholomew Sharp's Pacific voyage: a re-evaluation
  12. JULYThe Cassard expedition and the politics of compensation
  13. JUNEFive things popular history gets wrong about Stede Bonnet
  14. JUNEA genealogy of the Jolly Roger
  15. MAYThe Asiento de Negros and the South Sea Bubble: a reader's guide
  16. MAYWhat the buccaneers ate
  17. APRILMadagascar revisited: the case of Adam Baldridge
  18. APRILOn not being too hard on Esquemeling
  19. MARCHThe Cartagena raid of 1697 and the limits of French ambition
  20. MARCHThree forgers of the eighteenth century
  21. FEBRUARYSir Henry Mainwaring's pardon
  22. JANUARYA year of corrections: errata and apologies

2023

  1. DECEMBERThe Treaty of Madrid and the awkward business of Jamaica
  2. DECEMBERA reading list for the long flight to Jamaica
  3. NOVEMBERWilliam Dampier as a (rather bad) navigator
  4. NOVEMBERThe siege of San Lorenzo, 1671
  5. OCTOBERCocoa, contraband, and the Caracas Company
  6. OCTOBERWhy so many pirates came from Bristol
  7. SEPTEMBERThe boucaniers of Hispaniola, before they were buccaneers
  8. SEPTEMBERA peculiar invoice from the Whydah wreck
  9. AUGUSTOn the difficulty of dating Calico Jack's actual death
  10. JULYPierre Le Grand: real, imaginary, or both?
  11. JUNEThe case against Captain Kidd
  12. JUNEThe case for Captain Kidd
  13. MAYQuaker shipowners and the strange peace of Newport, Rhode Island
  14. APRILThe Brethren of the Coast: an institution that wasn't
  15. MARCHReconstructing a ship's purchase in Port Royal, 1670
  16. FEBRUARY"Pieces of eight" and what they actually were
  17. JANUARYA long look at the Royal African Company

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