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1680s in piracy

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionApr 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ4551820 ↗
Source-derived summary

This timeline of the history of piracy in the 1680s is a chronological list of key events involving pirates between 1680 and 1689.

Events

1680

Bartholomew Sharp embarks on the "Pacific Adventure", a raid on Spanish settlements on the South American west coast. One crewman, Basil Ringrose, writes an account of the expedition, later published by Alexandre Exquemelin.

James Misson, Signor Caraccioli and Thomas Tew discover Libertatia on the island of Madagascar.

John Williams captures James Kelley on a slave ship off the coast of West Africa, making him a crewmember.

April 15 – Landing on the Isthmus of Darien, John Coxen leads 331 buccaneers, including Bartholomew Sharp, William Dampier, Lionel Wafer, Basil Ringrose, William Dick and John Cox, divided into five groups consisting of Bartholomew Sharp, Richard Sawkins, Peter Harris, John Coxon and Edmund Cook. Marching towards the Spanish stronghold of Santa Maria the buccaneers first met with the Mosquito Indians who had reported it contained a large amount of gold dust. The Spaniards, however, had been warned of their approach and had sent the gold to Panama so by the time the buccaneers reached Santa Maria most of the party were in favour of stealing out on the Pacific Ocean in the Mosquito's canoes. While Coxon and his party were against the proposal, he was persuaded to stay and keep command of the expedition.

April 19–20 – Travelling in canoes into the Bay of Panama, the buccaneers capture a Spanish vessel of 30 tons as well as a small Spanish barque taken the following day.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1680s in piracy” as open-knowledge reference entry. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1680, 1689—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where 1680s, piracy and Open-knowledge can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as open-knowledge reference entry. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4551820. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1680 and 1689.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1680s in piracy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.