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ENGLAND, THEIR MOTHER, has bled. She stands on the brink. Her last war was hard-won and nearly crippled her. Overwhelmed by her debts, England faces total collapse, she finds her teats run dry, and can no longer provide for her children. And so, she casts them all out. Soldiers, sailors, explorers, traders—all spurned, all once very useful, all told to find lives and livelihoods elsewhere. These people become wanderers, become vagrants, they linger on public roads in stinking masses and beg with hands out. Parliament passes the Vagabond Act to combat the scourge of homelessness, making it illegal to simply sleep on the road or in public woods. It is illegal to be homeless. There is nowhere for these men and women to go.

Nowhere in England for them to go.

Betrayed, her children fan out across the seas. They have heard stories about opportunities in the New World.

These are England’s orphans.

Privateers and sailors left unemployed after a long war with Spain must scrounge a living out of the sea. These orphans turn en masse towards the Caribbean, their hopeful eyes set on the riches promised on the sugar-producing islands of Barbados, Nevis, Antigua and Jamaica, the colonies there worked by slaves that England has pulled up from Africa and placed in chains.

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The sugar fields expand. More slaves are needed. England empties her dungeons to send prisoners off to work the fields in the faraway Caribbean. The population of the Caribbean is now teeming with “undesirables.” Hundreds of slaves break free of their chains and revolt. These become orphans, too, children without direction, and with much venom in their hearts for the empire that robbed them of their dignity.

Fueled by hate, greed, lust, revenge and enmity, these orphans become the blood of a new civilization. They amass fleets of their own, become self-sufficient, and develop roving empires at sea that raid whomever they want, whenever they want. They fund their lifestyles by smuggling, taking control of the sugar fields, raiding towns and attacking vessels at sea. It is beautiful chaos.

England at first utilizes these undesirables to attack Spanish ships and colonies, and these men and women do so with great relish, and develop their own bonds, forge their own leagues and formulate their own strategies. They begin to attack Spanish ships without England’s authority, and England grows to hate this new streak of independence. She tries calling her children back to her, singing to them old promises of devotion. She needs them. She needs their strength, their ships, their manpower, and, above all, their obedience. She requires their help to build upon the New World and fight once more against Spain and France who are ascendant. But the children do not listen. They no longer heed their mother’s words. Her song grows less sonorous with each passing year. The Caribbean becomes the rising sun to England’s dusk.

Angry they have found a new mother in the open sea, England grows jealous, and aims to make them remember her. Wrathful, in the summer of 1716, the old mother sends forth her Royal Navy, the strongest naval force the world has ever known.

Never have waters been this dangerous…