How did Bart Roberts come to Power

The Dread Pirate Roberts was a pirate but his real name was Bartholomew Roberts or Bart Roberts…almost everybody has heard something about the famous Roberts, but there are very few people how really know anything about the real pirate and his life which was very real also; the stuff that they do know is many times fiction, stories made up to impress the masses and to bring money into Hollywood and all that big mess. I am writing this article, not only for my own education but also to maybe help my readers understand the fearsome person who lived a life, being despised and feared by the civilized, but at the same time, respected and awed for his amazing bravery.

Bartholomew Roberts was born on May 17, 1682, the name he was born with was actually John Roberts, another name that people know him by is Bart Roberts and still another (given to him after his death) is Black Bart…although there are other pirates that lived in the same basic time period, Bart Roberts was by far the most successful…it is said that he captured over 450 ships in his time.

Bart Roberts was in Wales in the village of Casnewydd-Bach, Roberts started working in ships at the age of thirteen and it is then that he drops off the map until several years later in 1718, at that time he was on the sloop Barbados as mate, one year later he became third mate on a slave ship, in June of that year, the slave ship was in anchorage, off the coast of West Africa, when it was taken over by pirates.

These pirates had two ships which were called the Royal Rover and the Royal James, the commander of these two ships was a pirate named Howell Davis (who was also a Welshman). It is said that Bart Roberts was at first reluctant to become a pirate, but the call of a new life was just too tempting for him.

Soon after that, Roberts commented that in an honest service there is very little money to be had, poor conditions and a lot of hard work, on the other hand, in piracy there is power, freedom and plenty of everything…the only downside is getting a rope around your neck eventually, the cost of having a good life even if it is a short one.

Six weeks after being forced to be a pirate, Captain Howell Davis decided that that he was going to kidnap the governor of a Portuguese town and demand ransom for him. On the way to the Island of Princes, Captain Davis put up flags of a British man-of-war; being under such a disguise, he was allowed to come into the harbor. Howell then invited the governor to come aboard his ship so that he could have lunch, that way Howell could go through with the kidnapping. When boats were sent to get the governor, Howell received a message inviting him to the governors place for a glass of wine first…to keep everything going smoothly and to not create suspicion Howell agreed to go along…what he did not know was that the governor had found out about the plan and he was going to do something about it. In the end, Captain Howell Davis was shot and killed, while his ship and crew managed to get away to safety.

Now that ship did not have a captain and that means that one had to be elected; most unusual was the fact that Bart Roberts was elected, he was openly against everything that was going on and he had only been on the ship for six weeks, but in the end none of that mattered. What man in his right mind would turn down the occasion to become captain of a ship, even if it was a pirate ship?!

Roberts did not hang around to contemplate his victory, the first thing that he did was to go back to the place where Davis was killed and avenge his death; they killed most of the men in the town and stole anything that had any value. Soon after that, Roberts took over two ships, in doing so he permanently cemented his place as captain; he had won the loyalty of his crew in one bold sweep.

Many things have been said about Roberts, but the two that stand out the most are the ones that say that he was a brave man and he loved to drink tea.