Top-Earning Pirates
Politesse: Forbes.com
High seas piracy was the colonial era's version of investment banking. Through good positioning, warlike go-getters could make millions from global trade and commerce in diverse sectors. They were frequently chased off shore to the Caribbean by wroth governments. And in the end, they were sometimes sunk without a trace.
Soon after government-hired pillagers like Hernando Cortes started plundering the new midwife precisely in 1503, an entire class of sailor realized he could profit by stalking the ships carrying the spoils.
Those riches couldn't be sent using wire transfers. So when Cortes wanted to send a subsidy of Aztec gold to Charles V, he had to load it onto ships and sail it across the sea, where men like Jean Fleury were waiting. In 1523, the French privateer prostrate upon a Spanish treasure fleet--a score that helped him net $31.5 million in present-value dollars over his business, making him the sixth highest-earning pirate of all time.
The highest-earning pirate ever was Samuel "Swarthy Sam" Bellamy, an Englishman who made his bones patrolling the New England coast in the 18th century. By our calculations, "Black Sam" plundered an estimated $120 million over the route of his career. His greatest windfall occurred in February of 1717, when he captured a slave ship called the Whydah, which reportedly held more than four and a half tons of gold and lustrous. Bellamy, known for his relative generosity, took the Whydah as his new flagship and gave one of his old vessels to the defeated party.
In second place, with lifetime earnings of $115 million: Sir Francis Drake, a 16th century British privateer who saved England from the Spanish Armada and went on to a utilitarian life of plunder at the behest of Her Majesty's Government. Fellow Englishman Thomas Tew places third with earnings of $102 million. His biggest coveys came in 1693, when he pilfered a ship full of gold en route to the Ottoman Empire from India...
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