Pirate Career
Charles Vane's history is not well documented, but he most likely started his career aboard one of Lord Archibald Hamilton's privateers. He turned to piracy in 1716 while raiding Spanish salvage ships, sent to retrieve silver from the sunken Spanish treasure fleet off the coast of Florida. Vane successfully raided the Spanish ships and landed crews, stealing a great deal of goods and riches.
Vane was infamous for his cruelty toward the crews of captured vessels. After his first act as a pirate he was reported to the governor of Bermuda for torturing men on rival vessels while on a salvage mission. He also showed scant respect for the pirate code, cheating his own crews out of their fair share of plunder and killing surrendered sailors after promising them mercy.
Vane subsequently traded up ships by capturing first a Barbados sloop and then a large 12-gun brigantine, which he renamed the Ranger. His brutal attacks became well known, and Captain Vane was cornered in February 1718 by Vincent Pearse, commander of the HMS Phoenix. Word had recently spread of the Royal Pardon offered to pirates in exchange for a guarantee they would quit plundering, so Vane claimed he'd actually been en route to surrender to Pearse and accepted the pardon on the spot, gaining his freedom though losing his captured ship "the Lark". As soon as he was free of Pearse he ignored the pardon and resumed his depredations.
In August 1718, the new Governor of New Providence, Woodes Rogers, and two men-of-war arrived in Nassau to oversee the pardon, and more importantly for Vane, capture those who violated it. While most pirates accepted the enforced pardon, Vane resisted it and any who attempted to honestly reform, driving Woodes' men-of-war back with a captured French fireship. Vane then escaped in his fast six-gun sloop, the Ranger, defiantly firing at the governor as he passed and threatening to return. He evaded the few Royal Navy vessels in the area and sailed north.
Vane continued practising piracy on the open seas, amassing a large crew and three ships. He was so successful, in fact, that Governor Rogers decided to send out Colonel William Rhett to hunt Vane down. Meanwhile, he had given command of one of his ships to a fellow pirate by the name of Yeats, and the two pillaged and looted vessels that were entering and leaving the port at Charleston, looking to emulate Blackbeard's success. However, Vane created division among his crew by refusing to capture several promising vessels, leading Yeats to abscond in the night with a large portion of treasure and one of the captured brigs.
In October 1718 Vane met up with Edward Thatch and enjoyed a week-long celebration at Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, with their crews. Vane then turned north toward New York, only for his crew to vote him out of his captaincy for cowardice after failing to engage a larger French warship in the Windward Passage. Replaced by his quartermaster Calico Jack Rackham, he was cast adrift in a small sloop with Robert Deal and 15 other men. Sailing south again, he set about clawing his way back up the pirate ranks by seizing ever larger ships.
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