Black flags, blue waters

During American piracy's 'Golden Age' spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s, lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond. American colonists at first supported these outrageous pirates in an early display of solidarity against the Crown, and then violently opposed them. The author depicts the pirates of this period, among them towering Blackbeard, Captain Kidd, and Edward Low, and discusses how, once the colonies position strengthened, these pirates were eliminated, almost always violently, from the American Atlantic.