Name: Exquemelin’s Bucaniers of America
Author: John Exquemelin

Bucaniers of America was often issued with maps and engraved plates showing battles, harbours, and scenes of plunder, which became as influential as the text itself in fixing the iconography of piracy. This example, held in the Ex Carta collection, features seveteen engraved maps and plans.

These illustrations were widely copied and adapted in subsequent editions and translations, ensuring that Exquemelin’s vision of the Caribbean – half eyewitness testimony, half legend – continued to inform the popular imagination long after his own experiences had ended. This edition includes maps of Panama, the Gulf of Nicoya, and other hotbeds of pirate activity, as well as illustrations of battles and fearsome-looking portraits of notorious figures such as Captain Morgan and Bartolomew Portugues (1623–1670), creator of the first ‘pirate code’. 

Ex Carta

Maps in Exquemelin’s Bucaniers of America documented the conflicts, intrigues, and piratical locations of the Caribbean, turning firsthand reportage into the geography of legend. The book’s atmospheric engravings fixed the visual language of piracy that still endures in popular culture.

Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin’s (c.1645–1707) Bucaniers of America first appeared in Dutch in 1678 as 

. A French edition followed in 1686, and the first English translation was published in London in 1684 under the full title 

Bucaniers of America: Or, a True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of late Years upon the Coast of the West Indies by the Bucaniers of Jamaica and Tortuga, Both English and French

. Exquemelin (c.1645–c.1707), a French-born surgeon who spent several years in the Caribbean attached to buccaneer crews, offered one of the earliest eyewitness accounts of piracy in the region. (Beeching, 1969)

The book is a lively mixture of memoir and reportage, combining adventure, ethnographic detail, and graphic descriptions of cruelty and excess. Among its most memorable episodes is the 1671 raid on Panama City led by Sir Henry Morgan (1635–1688, the ‘Captain Morgan’ of the popular rum brand), whose later knighthood by Charles II sits awkwardly beside the brutality described here. While some of Exquemelin’s tales are undoubtedly coloured by exaggeration or hearsay, his vivid account of the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ profoundly shaped the European image of the buccaneer, providing both the raw material and much of the mythology for later literary and popular representations of piracy that persist to this day. The

Frontispiece with portrait of famous Welsh privateer and buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan

Description of Hispaniola with engraved plate showing the daily lives of privateers

Portrait of Bartolomeu Português, who established pirate codes

Portrait of Rock the Brazilian (Rock Brasiliano), a fearless privateer captain.

Portrait of François l’Olonnais, a notorious captain shown with a sword in hand.

Engraved plate showing a battle scene titled 'The Cruelty of Lolonois' showing buccaneer violence

Portrait of Sir Henry Morgan

An engraved scene showing the sacking of Puerto Rico

Pull out engraving showing a Spanish Fleet being destroyed by Capt. Sir Henry Morgan and his fellow pirates

Double-page map of the Country and City of Panama.

Double-page engraving showing the famous battle between the Spanish and the Buccaniers in Panama

Map of the Gulf of Ballona (now known as the Bay of San Miguel in Panama) which was famously charted by seventeenth century buccaneers

Overview map of the Bay of Panama

Maps of the Isle of Gorgona off the coast of Colombia. It is also known as Captain Sharp's Isle after the English buccaneer Bartholomew Sharp took over the island in 1679.

Map of Isla de la Plata, often called 'Drake's Isle', a small, rugged island off the coast of Ecuador.

Pull out map of Ilo - often anglicized as Hilo - along the Peruvian coast.

Map of La Serena and Coquimbo Bay on the coast of Chile

Map of the Isle of Juan Fernandez, off the coast of central Chile

Map of Arica in Chile

Map of the port of Guasco in the Atacama Region of Chile and profiles of the coastline

Map of the Gulf of Nicoya on the Coast of Costa Rica, and a profile of Capo Blanco

Map of Gulfo Dulce in Costa Rica

Map of the Port of Paita in northern Peru

Map of the English Reach, the westernmost section of the Strait of Magellan in southern Chile

Large fold-out map of Central and South America showing the route of Captain Sharp and his fellow bucaniers between 1680-1681

Second title page for Ringrose's second volume, or the 1685 continuation of the work

 was often issued with maps and engraved plates showing battles, harbours, and scenes of plunder, which became as influential as the text itself in fixing the iconography of piracy. This example, held in the Ex Carta collection, features seventeen engraved maps and plans.

These illustrations were widely copied and adapted in subsequent editions and translations, ensuring that Exquemelin’s vision of the Caribbean – half eyewitness testimony, half legend – continued to inform the popular imagination long after his own experiences had ended. This edition includes maps of Panama, the Gulf of Nicoya, and other hotbeds of pirate activity, as well as illustrations of battles and fearsome-looking portraits of notorious figures such as Captain Morgan and Bartolomew Portugues (1623–1670), creator of the first ‘pirate code’.

Bucaniers of America

Exquemelin’s Bucaniers of America

 Or, a True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of late Years upon the Coast of the West Indies by the Bucaniers of Jamaica and Tortuga, Both English and French