Woodes Rogers who had not yet accepted it, and started to rebuild the island's fortifications, which had fallen into decrepitude under pirate domination. Less than a month into his residence on New Providence, Rogers was faced with a double threat: Vane wrote, threatening to join with Edward Teach (better known as Blackbeard) to retake the island, and Rogers learned that the Spanish also planned to drive the British out of the Bahamas. Rogers' expedition suffered further setbacks. An unidentified disease killed almost a hundred of his expedition members, while leaving the long-term residents nearly untouched. Two of the three navy vessels, having
Pirate Round and attacked ships loaded with the exotic products of India. . . . which came to be known as the Pirate Round.". Jenifer G. Marx writes that "Ambitious sea outlaws began to leave for the East on what became known as the Pirate Round: a route that, for some thirty years beginning in 1690, linked ports in the Caribbean and the North American colonies with Madagascar." English piracy in the Indian Ocean goes back at least to King James I, but for most of the 17th century the Spanish Empire was the principal target of English pirates. The Pirate Round