September 5 – King
George I of Great Britain issues the "
Proclamation for Suppressing of Pirates in the West Indies", an offer of
amnesty to
pirates, declaring that any pirates who surrender themselves to the government of Britain or one of its overseas territories, on or before September 5, 1718, "shall have Our Gracious Pardon of and for his or their Piracy or Piracies" committed before January 5, 1718. The amnesty is later extended to July 1, 1719.[5]
October 18 – Trial begins in
Boston for six
pirates who had survived the April 26 wreck of
Samuel Bellamy's ships Whydah and the Mary Anne. Five of them (John Brown, Hendrick Quintor, Thomas Baker, Peter Cornelius Hoof and John Shuan) are convicted on October 22 of piracy and robbery and hanged on November 15.[7]
November 28 – Pirates led by
Edward Teach, more popularly referred to as "
Blackbeard", and
Benjamin Hornigold capture the French slave transport Concorde near island of
Saint Vincent the West Indies.[9] Blackbeard renames the vessel Queen Anne's Revenge, adds to its armaments, and makes it his flagship.[10] Hornigold soon accepts a British amnesty for all pirates, and Blackbeard teams up with
Stede Bonnet and begins plundering ships approaching North American ports.
François-Marie Arouet is sentenced to imprisonment in the
Bastille for eleven months, because of a satirical verse against the Régent of France and his infamous daughter
Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, who is hiding an illegitimate pregnancy and soon to give birth;[11] Arouet will emerge with the pseudonym
Voltaire and the completed text of his first play, Œdipe.
January 13 –
Maria Sibylla Merian, German-born Swiss naturalist and scientific illustrator, who studied plants and insects and made detailed paintings of them (b.
1647)
March 8 –
Abraham Darby I, English ironmaster, first of that name of three generations of a Quaker family that was key to the development of the Industrial Revolution (b.
1678)
^Walter Prichard, The Negotiations of the Old Pretender Looking Forward to His Succession to the English Throne, 1713-1720 (Indiana University, 1915) p. 107, quoting James Breck Perkins, France Under the Regency, with a Review of the Administration of Louis XIV (Houghton Mifflin, 1892) p. 390
^Starkie, Andrew (2007). The Church of England and the Bangorian controversy, 1716–1721. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
ISBN978-1-84383-288-1.
^Mark U. Wilde-Ramsing and Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton, Blackbeard's Sunken Prize: The 300-Year Voyage of Queen Anne's Revenge (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) p. 25
^Raynaud, Jean-Michel (1983). Voltaire soi-disant. Vol. 1. Presses Universitaires de Lille. p. 289.
ISBN2859392157.
September 5 – King
George I of Great Britain issues the "
Proclamation for Suppressing of Pirates in the West Indies", an offer of
amnesty to
pirates, declaring that any pirates who surrender themselves to the government of Britain or one of its overseas territories, on or before September 5, 1718, "shall have Our Gracious Pardon of and for his or their Piracy or Piracies" committed before January 5, 1718. The amnesty is later extended to July 1, 1719.[5]
October 18 – Trial begins in
Boston for six
pirates who had survived the April 26 wreck of
Samuel Bellamy's ships Whydah and the Mary Anne. Five of them (John Brown, Hendrick Quintor, Thomas Baker, Peter Cornelius Hoof and John Shuan) are convicted on October 22 of piracy and robbery and hanged on November 15.[7]
November 28 – Pirates led by
Edward Teach, more popularly referred to as "
Blackbeard", and
Benjamin Hornigold capture the French slave transport Concorde near island of
Saint Vincent the West Indies.[9] Blackbeard renames the vessel Queen Anne's Revenge, adds to its armaments, and makes it his flagship.[10] Hornigold soon accepts a British amnesty for all pirates, and Blackbeard teams up with
Stede Bonnet and begins plundering ships approaching North American ports.
François-Marie Arouet is sentenced to imprisonment in the
Bastille for eleven months, because of a satirical verse against the Régent of France and his infamous daughter
Marie Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, who is hiding an illegitimate pregnancy and soon to give birth;[11] Arouet will emerge with the pseudonym
Voltaire and the completed text of his first play, Œdipe.
January 13 –
Maria Sibylla Merian, German-born Swiss naturalist and scientific illustrator, who studied plants and insects and made detailed paintings of them (b.
1647)
March 8 –
Abraham Darby I, English ironmaster, first of that name of three generations of a Quaker family that was key to the development of the Industrial Revolution (b.
1678)
^Walter Prichard, The Negotiations of the Old Pretender Looking Forward to His Succession to the English Throne, 1713-1720 (Indiana University, 1915) p. 107, quoting James Breck Perkins, France Under the Regency, with a Review of the Administration of Louis XIV (Houghton Mifflin, 1892) p. 390
^Starkie, Andrew (2007). The Church of England and the Bangorian controversy, 1716–1721. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.
ISBN978-1-84383-288-1.
^Mark U. Wilde-Ramsing and Linda F. Carnes-McNaughton, Blackbeard's Sunken Prize: The 300-Year Voyage of Queen Anne's Revenge (University of North Carolina Press, 2018) p. 25
^Raynaud, Jean-Michel (1983). Voltaire soi-disant. Vol. 1. Presses Universitaires de Lille. p. 289.
ISBN2859392157.