On 26 July 1718, Woodes Rogers arrived in New Providence with four merchant vessels, three naval ships, soldiers for a garrison and all the materials necessary for securing the settlement at Nassau. His arrival was met with very little opposition. Only Charles Vane, one of the chief pirate captains in Nassau, protested his arrival by setting fire to a captured French ship, firing his guns and fleeing the island with around ninety men. After this, Rogers was able to peaceably land and take possession of the fort. The inhabitants, detailed as 300 men, willingly surrendered to their new governor and were granted pardon. After thirteen years without any form of governance and frequent lobbying by settlers, merchants and the Board of Trade, the Bahamas was converted from a proprietary to a crown colony and Rogers appointed as the first royal governor. Yet, this only occurred at the behest of private investors, including Rogers, who outfitted the expedition and aimed to profit through the consolidation and development of the Bahamas. As a representative of both state authority and private enterprise, Rogers was forced to contend with the issues arising from the resulting semi-private endeavour in which the Bahamas became a royal colony but remained under the control of private interests. Although this arrangement proved beneficial at first, it soon obstructed Rogers’ activities in Nassau as neither the crown nor investors proved willing to finance the security of the colony. As a result, the project shifted from a transatlantic endeavour to a local struggle against external threats.

Rogers has long been recognised as a central figure in the suppression of Atlantic piracy in the early eighteenth century, but his endeavours have been persistently misrepresented as the result of a proactive state-led operation to remove the pirate base in New Providence. As the previous chapter discussed, the British government's response to the surge in piracy in the Greater Caribbean had been restricted to a slightly increased naval presence in key regions alongside a relatively ineffective pardon. No measures had been taken to remove the pirate presence in the Bahamas. Instead, this project required the intercession of private enterprise which promised to secure the Bahamas from pirate occupation without requiring substantial public expenditure in return for rights over land-based taxes.