Region
West African Coast
2 pirates in the codex documented as operating here.
The West African coast was the principal terminus of the transatlantic slave trade and, accordingly, a regular cruising ground for pirates after slaving vessels and their European trading partners. Howell Davis and Bartholomew Roberts both worked these waters, and Roberts was killed in action against the Royal Navy off Cape Lopez in modern Gabon in February 1722 — the engagement that effectively closed the operational phase of the Golden Age. The slave forts at Cape Coast Castle and elsewhere served both as supply points for legitimate slaving traffic and, repeatedly, as the trial venues at which captured pirates were hanged.
Pirates of this region
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Howell Davis
c. 1690 – 19 June 1719Welsh pirate active 1718–1719, briefly elected captain of a vessel taken from his employers and then a small consort fleet on the West African coast; killed in an ambush at Príncipe just weeks before Bartholomew Roberts was elected to succeed him.
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Bartholomew Roberts
17 May 1682 – 10 February 1722Welsh pirate considered by most reckoning the most successful of the Golden Age; captured an estimated four hundred vessels across a three-year career spanning the Caribbean, West African coast, and Atlantic seaboard.
