In April 1722, eight bodies hung in chains on the hills surrounding Cape Coast Castle, the British Royal African Company's chief fortification on the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) in West Central Africa. The hanged men were members of Bartholomew Roberts’ pirate crew who had plundered numerous ships throughout the Atlantic Ocean before being captured off the West African coast, tried and sentenced to death. The bodies of eight of the fifty-two men executed were then displayed in locations visible to ships passing by the coast in order to serve as a “terror to future depredators of the same class”. The defeat and capture of Roberts’ crew by Royal Navy Captain Chaloner Ogle was one of the most substantial victories against pirates during the surge of Atlantic piracy that occurred between 1716 and 1726. On his return in 1723, Ogle was knighted for his conduct, becoming the first naval captain to receive a title for triumph over pirates.

Ogle's victory is often retold as evidence of British maritime power overcoming Atlantic piracy in the early eighteenth century. As the opening quotation suggests, however, Roberts’ defeat was one of only a handful of naval victories over pirates during the ten-year surge that occurred after 1716. In 1722, it was the only direct success by the British Royal Navy over Atlantic pirates despite the fact that there was an average of twenty-four naval vessels assigned to protect trading vessels against pirates in the Caribbean, North America, West Africa and the Indian Ocean. That same year also witnessed the furnishing of two local vessels from Rhode Island to chase pirates preying on regional trade, while a small sloop was hired by Jamaican planters as a guardship to protect the island's coastal regions from piratical attacks. These activities in distant waters coincided with new anti-piracy legislation in London as the British Parliament attempted to effect change by introducing further regulations on Atlantic maritime activity.