THE BAHAMA ISLANDS 433 



Spanish were now thoroughly angered. To their minds there were two reasons 

 why Englislimen might be preyed upon : first, they were despised as heretics, 

 and second, they had no rights in these seas and territories granted to Spain 

 by the Pope. 



Under such conditions trading became hazardous in the Bahamas and no 

 Englishman could venture near them without a convoy. Protests were of no 

 avail. The Spanish Governor-General at Havana only sent back defiant mes- 

 sages when appeals were made to him to put an end to the depredations. But 

 the Spanish were not long to enjoy the possession of New Providence. The 

 English Governor was soon restored, and, with his return to Nassau, a new 

 period of piracy was ushered in. 



Buccaneering was indulged in freely by the inhabitants of the place. 

 For brief periods, to be sure, during the next thirty years attempts were 

 made to preserve law and order, but without avail, as so large a number of 

 tlie population was engaged in piracy or at least in sympathy with it, that it 

 was not possible for the government with the force at its comuiand to stamp 

 it out. A law-and-order governor was intolerable to the rovers. If he would 

 not join in, or at least connive at, their conduct, he would be taken prisoner 

 and held by the pirates. In 1703-4, when a combined French and Spanish 

 expedition took the settlement by surprise and carried away the principal 

 inliabitants to Havana, the pirates reigned with a freer hand than ever before." 



Piracy with this settlement as a base became such a menace to the com- 

 merce passing through these waters that merchants in Great Britain pressed 

 upon George I to put a stop to it. The Lords Proprietors, who had so poorly 

 succeeded in their enterprise, surrendered their control of the civil government 

 to the Crown, and in 1718 Captain Woodes Eogers, a hardy and fearless sea- 

 man, became Governor of Nassau. He restored order, punished or drove out 

 the buccaneers and made the place a respectable one in which to live. He was 

 supported with forces sufficient to establish his control, and with funds to make 

 fortifications for security against invaders. The Colony prospered from tiiis 

 time, attracting numerous settlers, among whom was a company of German 

 Protestants from the Palatinate. More extensive fortifications were undertaken 

 in 1738 under the direction of Peter Henry Bruce, of the engineer corps of 

 the Eoyal Navy. He has left an interesting account of his work here in his 

 memoirs.' 



^Northcroft, Sketches of Summerland, pp. 274-282. 

 ^ Memoirs of Peter Henry Bruce. 



