Action off Cape Lopez

By 1722 Bartholomew Roberts had taken more prizes than any pirate before or since, and his squadron off the Guinea coast had grown bold enough to plunder slavers almost within sight of the European trading forts. The disruption was intolerable to the merchants, and the Royal Navy dispatched HMS Swallow, a fifty-gun warship under Captain Chaloner Ogle, to hunt the pirates down.

The consort taken

Roberts's squadron lay at Cape Lopez, on the coast of present-day Gabon. On 5 February 1722 Swallow came in sight and, to avoid alarming the whole force, feigned flight from the harbor. One of Roberts's ships, the Ranger, gave chase — exactly as Ogle intended. Once well out of earshot of the others, Swallow rounded on her pursuer and, after a sharp fight, took the Ranger. Ogle then returned to Cape Lopez to deal with the flagship.

The morning of the tenth

On 10 February Swallow stood back in toward the Royal Fortune. Many of Roberts's men were drunk on Madeira taken from a prize that morning, and the warship was mistaken at first for a returning merchantman. Roberts, dressed in his customary crimson damask, came on deck to see her too late: Swallow was already swinging broadside. Her first volley of grapeshot struck Roberts in the throat and killed him where he stood.

The end of the age

His crew, obeying a standing wish, weighted his body and cast it into the sea before the British could take it — the one prize Ogle never claimed. Leaderless and outgunned, the Royal Fortune soon struck her colors.

The prisoners were carried to Cape Coast Castle and tried. Of those convicted, fifty-two were hanged — the largest mass execution of pirates in history. Roberts had been the last of the truly formidable captains, and historians have long dated the close of the Golden Age of Piracy to the morning his blood ran out on the deck of the Royal Fortune.

Related: Bartholomew Roberts · Royal Fortune