The Gentleman Pirate bought his ship and paid his crew wages
Stede Bonnet was a rich Barbados landowner with a wife, young children and no idea how to sail. In 1717 he commissioned his own ten-gun sloop, hired more than seventy men on salaries rather than shares of loot, and slipped out of harbour at night to become a pirate.
Christened in July 1688, Bonnet inherited an estate of more than 400 acres near Bridgetown when his father died in 1694 and grew up among the island's wealthiest families, raised partly by a grandfather who served as deputy secretary of Barbados. He held the rank of major in the local militia, though nothing shows he fought. He married Mary Allamby in 1709, and the three surviving children were all under five when he left. The historian Robert C. Ritchie suggests he may have been fleeing an unhappy marriage or chasing lost youthful adventure.
Almost everything about his start was unconventional. Most pirates took ships by mutiny or boarding; Bonnet had the Revenge built at a local yard. Knowing nothing of seamanship, he leaned on his quartermaster, and his crew never much respected him. He raided off Virginia, burning a Barbadian vessel to keep word from reaching home, went north toward New York and back to the Carolinas. On the way to the pirate haven of Nassau a Spanish warship mauled the Revenge, leaving Bonnet badly hurt and half his crew killed or wounded.
In Nassau he met Blackbeard. Unable to command, he handed over his ship, and the pair plundered merchant vessels along the coast. After a failed attack on the Protestant Caesar his men deserted to Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge, and Bonnet stayed aboard as a mere guest. In summer 1718 North Carolina's governor Charles Eden pardoned him and allowed him to privateer against Spain. Bonnet renamed his ship Royal James, called himself Captain Thomas and was raiding again by July.
While he repaired the ship on the Cape Fear River, Colonel William Rhett, sent by South Carolina's governor Robert Johnson, attacked. After hours of fighting the outnumbered pirates surrendered and were taken to Charles Town. Bonnet escaped, was caught on Sullivan's Island, and was sentenced to death by Judge Nicholas Trott for two acts of piracy. Johnson refused clemency, and Bonnet was hanged on 10 December 1718.
Source: Stede Bonnet
