Note 9 — Chapter XIII · IN THE TRACK OF PLATE-FLEETS AND BUCCANEERS

The cradle of the extraordinary “Order of Pyrates,” of which Esquemeling was to be the most distinguished chronicler, was Tortuga, a small, rocky island off the northwest corner of Haiti. It was visited by Columbus during his first voyage, and, from the number of turtles found there, was called Tortuga—the Spanish for turtle—the name it still retains. But small as it was, it was destined to become “the common refuge of all sorts of wickedness, and the seminary, as it were of pyrates and thieves.”9