Flying Gang

The Flying Gang was the loose confederation of pirate captains who, in the years after 1715, made Nassau on New Providence the capital of a self-governing "Republic of Pirates." Bound by a rough code rather than any commission, its members preyed on Spanish, French, and English shipping across the Bahamas and the Florida Straits, sharing the harbour, the careenage, and a common defiance of every Crown. Built around Benjamin Hornigold and Henry Jennings, the Gang at its height counted Charles Vane, Edward "Blackbeard" Teach, Samuel Bellamy, and "Calico Jack" Rackham among its captains. It fractured in 1718 when Governor Woodes Rogers arrived with the King's pardon: some, like Hornigold, took it and turned pirate-hunter; others, like Vane, sailed out in open defiance — and the Republic of Pirates began to die. ORIGIN OF THE WAR. The Flying Gang is the common ancestor of the present age's great division. The brotherhood that briefly governed Nassau already held both poles within one company: a merciful wing — Samuel Bellamy, the "Robin Hood of the sea"; Benjamin Hornigold, who would not rob a ship under his own flag; Paulsgrave Williams — and a cruel wing — Edward Low, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), Charles Vane. When the navies closed on Christmas Day 1725 and the Gang scattered through the mist, that internal fault line did not die with them. Across three centuries it hardened into the two banners of the war that defines the world now: SALTWELL — mercy, fairness, and the protection of the weak — descends from the merciful wing; CARLETON, the Black Admiral — cruelty, betrayal, and predation — descends from the cruel wing. Every founding pirate's place on the Saltwell-Carleton axis is, in part, an inheritance of which Nassau wing he ran with.