1718 in piracy

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See also 1717 in piracy, 1719 in piracy, and Timeline of piracy.

• Lars Gathenhielm dies and his wife Ingela Gathenhielm succeeds him as the head of the Privateer and Pirate fleet of the Baltic Sea.

• March 28 – One of Blackbeard's lieutenants, captain Richard and his sloop Revenge, attack the 400-ton Protestant Caesar in the Bay of Honduras.
• March–April – Charles Vane and 12 pirates capture a Jamaica sloop in the Bahamas, retaining her for his own use.
• April – Vane captures the sloop Lark in the Bahamas and transfers his crew to her.^[1]
• April 5 – Blackbeard captures the logwood cutting sloop Land of Promise captained by Thomas Newton
• April 9 – Blackbeard's flotilla, including the Queen Anne's Revenge, Adventure and Revenge, loot and burn the Protestant Caesar out of Boston.
• April–July 4 – Vane robs seven French and English vessels in the Bahamas.
• Summer – Howell Davis is turned in as a pirate by the Cadogan's crew and is imprisoned on Barbados. He is eventually released for lack of evidence.
• July 24–25 – Woodes Rogers arrives at Nassau, Bahamas with two warships to assume his post as governor. Most of the pirates welcome him, except Vane, who sails away shooting at Rogers' vessels.
• July 27 – Vane captures a sloop from Barbados and incorporates it in his fleet.
• July 29 – Vane captures the John and Elizabeth, looting some pieces of eight.
• Autumn
  • Howell Davis leads a mutiny on Rogers' sloop Buck and turns back to piracy. He captures two French ships and a Spanish sloop off Hispaniola.
  • Vane plunders the inhabitants of Isleatherer (Eleuthera?).
• October – Richard Worley's pirates seize a sloop and a brigantine in the Bahamas.
• Late November – Vane attacks a French vessel in the Windward Passage, but flees upon discovering it is a warship. The incident causes bad blood between Vane and his quartermaster, Calico Jack Rackham, who favored continuing the attack.
• December – Vane captures a sloop and two periaguas off northwest Jamaica.
• December 9–10 – John Auger and eight of his pirates are convicted and sentenced to death for piracy at Nassau, Bahamas
• December 16 – Vane captures the sloop Pearl in the Bay of Honduras.

• May 22 – Blackbeard blockades Charleston, South Carolina with a flotilla of four ships. Five vessels are captured, all merchant traffic is stopped, and several Charleston citizens are held hostage until a ransom of medicines is paid.
• June 10 – Blackbeard runs his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge and sloop Adventure, aground and maroons half his pirate crew.
• Early June – Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet surrender to North Carolina governor Charles Eden and are pardoned under the Act of Grace, but both soon return to piracy.
• Late June – Blackbeard captures five ships between Bermuda and North Carolina.
• June–July – Bonnet in the sloop Royal James (ex-Revenge)^[2] captures 13 vessels between North Carolina and Delaware Bay.
• August 12 – Bonnet captures a shallop in the Cape Fear River.
• August 30 – Vane takes and ransacks the ships Neptune and Emperor off the Carolinas.
• Early September – Vane attacks the shipping off Charleston, capturing five vessels. Vane's subordinate, Yeats, defects to the Charleston governor with a sloop, surrendering and accepting a pardon under the Act of Grace.
• September – Pirates led by Richard Worley, in an open boat, rob a shallop and commandeer two sloops in the Delaware River.
• September 27 – Bonnet and his men are captured by Colonel William Rhett with two sloops in the battle of Cape Fear River.
• October 23 – Vane sacks a brigantine and a sloop off Long Island, New York.
• October 24 – November 5–33 men captured from Bonnet's sloop Royal James are put on trial before Sir Nicholas Trott in Charleston. 29 are convicted and sentenced to death.
• Late October – Pirate captain Richard Worley is killed and his two vessels captured in a battle with a squadron of four South Carolinian vessels in Charleston harbor.
• November 8–22 pirates of Stede Bonnet's crew are hanged in Charleston.
• November 10–12 – Stede Bonnet is tried for piracy, convicted, and sentenced to death by Sir Nicholas Trott in Charleston.
• November 22 – Blackbeard is killed and his crew captured by Robert Maynard's men in a battle at Ocracoke Inlet.
• December 10 – Bonnet is hanged in Charleston.

• Summer-Autumn – Edward England prowls off Sierra Leone, capturing several vessels including the snow Cadogan, whose commanding officer, Captain Skinner, is murdered. England then gives the Cadogan to his mate, Howell Davis.

• Late October – Richard Worley, American pirate captain (birthdate unknown).
• November 22 – Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard, killed in battle (born c. 1680).^[3]
• December 10 – Stede Bonnet, the so-called Gentleman Pirate, hanged (born c. 1688).
• April 25 – Lars Gathenhielm