Battle of Cape Lopez
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| Battle of Cape Lopez | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Golden Age of Piracy | |||||||
.jpg) Illustration of the battle by Charles Dixon | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
| Great Britain | Pirates | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Chaloner Ogle | Bartholomew Roberts † | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 1 ship of the line |
1 frigate 1 brig | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| None |
3 killed 272 captured 1 frigate captured | ||||||
The Battle of Cape Lopez was fought in early 1722 during the Golden Age of Piracy. HMS Swallow, a British ship of the line under Captain Chaloner Ogle, defeated the pirate ship of Bartholomew Roberts off the coast of Gabon, West Africa.
Roberts was the most successful pirate of the Golden Age; he captured well over 400 vessels ranging from small fishing boats to large frigates. In April 1721, Roberts, later known as "Black Bart", was sailing the coast of Martinique when he came across a French frigate of fifty-two guns and captured her. Aboard the vessel was the governor of the French colony who was hanged by Roberts from the yardarm of his ship. This act proved to be his downfall as it was apparently the final straw. In retaliation for Black Bart's repeated attacks on fleets of merchant ships and his killing of the governor, the French Navy and the Royal Navy dispatched several warships to hunt the pirates. Roberts and his men captured the two French warships off the Senegal River's mouth, the sixteen-gun sloop-of-war Comte de Toulouse and a ten-gun brig. Comte de Toulouse was renamed the Ranger and the brig Little Ranger. After taking the two Frenchmen, the pirates sailed southeast for the present day Gabon.
While on the way, off the Pepper Coast Roberts sighted and captured the Royal Africa Company frigate Onslow which he renamed the Royal Fortune. The frigate mounted over forty guns and the crew consisted of about 250 men, black and white. Black Bart's luck was soon to run out though, as two Royal Navy men-of-war began patrolling the waters of West Africa, at about the same time, Roberts anchored in Cape Lopez for careening. The Royal Navy vessels on patrol were the fourth-rates HMS Swallow and HMS Weymouth, both mounting fifty guns or more but only the Swallow under Captain Chaloner Ogle encountered Black Bart. When Captain Ogle sailed around the cape he sighted four vessels, three of them pirates and one a merchant ship the Neptune belonging to a Captain Hill, which was illegally trading with the brigands. Ogle spotted a sandbar and quickly ordered his ship to turn out of the way, at the same time raising a Portuguese flag. By this time the pirates had spotted the Swallow so Roberts allowed Captain James Skyrme in the Ranger to capture what he thought was a fleeing merchant ship.
Sensing an opportunity, Captain Ogle chose to let the pirate chase him for several hours until they were far away from the cape and land was no longer in sight. Ogle then turned about, raised the White Ensign and engaged Captain Skyrme, who still did not realize the Swallow was a Royal Navy frigate. After a relatively short action, the sloop was captured, made a prize, and ten pirates were killed. Ogle then patiently sailed back to Cape Lopez where he arrived five days later on February 10, 1722.
