In June 1723, Barrow Harris, commander-in-chief of the naval vessels stationed in Jamaica, reported to the Admiralty that “We have had little or no damage done for some time in these parts by Pirates, only by some Spaniards that call themselves Guarda Coasts.” Echoing Harris, historians have generally agreed that a decline in piracy had occurred not just in the waters surrounding Jamaica but throughout the Atlantic Ocean by 1726. This, they argue, was the result of either military–legal campaigns, declining markets for plunder, the increased availability of marine insurance, or the changing perceptions of piracy in the colonial theatre. These studies offer important perspectives on crucial factors that helped bring about a stark decline in piracy by 1726, but they also conflate or simplify the events occurring throughout the ten-year surge in piracy to emphasise the importance of one group over another – whether naval captains, lawyers, merchants, journalists, or insurers. In contrast, this book has charted the fragmented efforts to curtail piracy as Atlantic pirates spread from the Bahamas and Florida to the Greater Caribbean, North America, West Africa and the Indian Ocean, and has established that various groups reacted to the impact of piracy in these waters and played a role in the successes and failures of British anti-piracy campaigns. This process continued after 1722 when the remaining active Atlantic pirates concentrated their attacks in the locales of the Caribbean Sea and North American coastline where a high volume of shipping trafficked but where there was little naval or colonial maritime protection.

Although there was a drop in piratical activity in the Americas between 1719 and 1721, coinciding with a number of pirate crews voyaging to Africa, Brazil and the East Indies, there continued to be reports of piracy in the Caribbean and North America. Despite this sustained presence, pirates do not appear to have significantly obstructed regional trade during these years and there were no anti-piracy expeditions in the Caribbean or North America by either naval warships or private vessels outfitted by colonial governments. This changed in 1722 when significantly more piracies were reported in North America and the Caribbean. Compared to piratical activity between 1716 and 1721, the numbers of Atlantic pirates operating after 1722 had significantly diminished and attacks came to be concentrated in regions that received no or only intermittent protection by naval and colonial guardships.