Woodes Rogers
Woodes Rogers ended the pirate republic in the Bahamas and rescued the man Robinson Crusoe was based on. Born in Poole around 1679 into a shipping family, he inherited his father's business in Bristol and became a merchant captain. In 1708 he was given command of a privateering expedition of two ships against Spanish shipping in the Pacific, with William Dampier as pilot. In February 1709 he called at the uninhabited island of Más a Tierra in the Juan Fernández group and found Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailing master who had been marooned at his own request four years and four months earlier after quarrelling with his captain about his ship's seaworthiness — the ship had subsequently sunk. Rogers took him aboard and made him a mate. His published account of the voyage in 1712 gave Daniel Defoe his material. The expedition captured a Manila galleon off Baja California and returned in 1711 having circumnavigated the globe with a very large prize, though litigation consumed most of it. He then proposed a solution to piracy in the Bahamas, where several thousand pirates operated from New Providence beyond any government. He was appointed governor and arrived in 1718 carrying a royal pardon. His method was to offer the pardon to all who would take it, and to hang those who would not. Several hundred accepted; eight were executed in December 1718. He fortified the harbour against Spanish attack. He was bankrupted and imprisoned for debt, reappointed in 1728, and died at Nassau in 1732.
- Lived: 1679 CE – 1732 CE
- Nationality: English
- Roles: naval_commander, colonial_governor, privateer
