The Map of Famous Pirates Buccaneers and Freebooters is Darby Harbold’s exuberant 1938 homage to the Golden Age of piracy, published by the Le Baron-Bonney Company. Across its borders, legendary figures—Long Benn Avery, Jean Lafitte, Sir Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, and Dixey Bull—are boldly named like a rogues’ gallery framing the seas they once haunted. At center, an ornate title cartouche sets the tone, pairing a swaggering “Buccaneer” with a peg‑legged “Pirate‑Chief,” while a crisply flown Jolly Roger in the corner announces the map’s gleefully lawless theme. The composition teems with vignettes where pirates traded, buried treasure, and launched expeditions, and the waters are enlivened by the very ships they favored—sleek, fast, and menacing—transforming the world’s oceans into a theatrical backdrop of plunder and pursuit.

Harbold, renowned for vibrant thematic maps that fuse art with information, delivers a master class in narrative cartography. He distills seventeenth‑ and eighteenth‑century maritime history into an accessible, image‑rich atlas of intrigue, punctuated by text boxes that supply pithy anecdotes and historical asides. The effect is both didactic and playful: a confident mingling of fact and folklore that mirrors the pirates’ own celebrity, shaped as much by legend as by logbook. Harbold’s keen sense of pacing—clusters of images, emphatic captions, and emblematic devices—guides the eye, encouraging slow looking and discovery, while rewarding the historically curious with context that elevates the map beyond mere decoration.

Geographically, the map orchestrates a sweeping stage: the Caribbean islands, the Atlantic and Pacific, North America’s coasts, and the storied shorelines of Europe and Africa. This broad vista reflects how piracy’s drama unfolded across interconnected theaters—colonial ports, narrow straits, and open oceans where opportunity and danger converged. Harbold anchors the narrative in the Caribbean and the Americas, yet gestures outward to Old World littorals, underscoring the transoceanic currents of commerce and conflict. Vignettes mark trading haunts, supposed troves of buried treasure, and embarkation points, while the seas are animated by period ships, giving viewers a tactile sense of movement as they trace imagined arcs from cove to cape.

The map’s decorative program is deliberately sumptuous. Rich coloration, meticulously rendered ships, and emphatic titling transform geopolitical space into spectacle. The title cartouche operates as an emblem of the whole enterprise—pageantry with purpose—while the Jolly Roger functions like a heraldic device, a visual shorthand for outlaw sovereignty. Border portraits and labels supply a rhythm of recognition: Morgan’s audacity, Blackbeard’s menace, Lafitte’s cunning, Avery’s myth, and Dixey Bull’s New England notoriety. The synthesis of imagery and inscription turns the sheet into a cabinet of curiosities in two dimensions, where each pictorial flourish doubles as a clue to the era’s tactics, geographies, and personalities.

As both artwork and historical capsule, this map captures the enduring magnetism of piracy—its blend of hard fact, hardtack, and hard‑won myth. Created in 1938, it reflects an interwar appetite for romantic maritime storytelling even as it assembles a credible primer on seventeenth‑ and eighteenth‑century freebooting. For educators, it’s a lively point of entry to colonial trade, privateering, and coastal geography; for collectors, it epitomizes the golden age of American pictorial mapping, where scholarship wears a theatrical smile. Harbold and the Le Baron‑Bonney Company have fashioned a conversation piece that invites repeated readings, each pass revealing fresh legends stitched across the world’s blue expanse.

Countries and regions on this map

• Caribbean Islands
• Atlantic Ocean
• Pacific Ocean
• North America
• Various coastal regions of Europe and Africa

Notable Features & Landmarks

• Pirates such as Long Benn Avery, Jean Lafitte, Sir Henry Morgan, Blackbeard, and Dixey Bull are labeled.
• A decorative title cartouche with images of pirates.
• Illustrations of ships associated with piracy.
• The Jolly Roger flag is prominently displayed.
• Vignettes that detail significant pirate activities and locales.
• Text boxes providing historical insights and anecdotes related to piracy.

Historical and design context

• Made in 1938.
• Created by Darby Harbold and published by Le Baron-Bonney Company.
• Harbold was known for vibrant thematic maps blending artistic elements with informative content.
• Depicts seventeenth- and eighteenth-century piracy, mixing historical facts with whimsical imagery.
• Highly decorative design, rich in color, with illustrative elements and a central cartouche.
• Serves as both an artistic piece and a historical reference, valuable for education and collections.

Looking for a particular place? Review the detailed images to confirm that the town, landmark or feature you have in mind appears on the map. If you are unsure, ask our workshop to check before you order.

Detailed maps are especially rewarding at larger sizes, where names, boundaries and decorative features have more room to be appreciated. Use the close-up preview and size guide to choose the right scale for your wall.

This map looks amazing at sizes all the way up to 100in (250cm). If you are looking for a larger map, please get in touch.

The model in the listing images is holding the 18x24in (45x60cm) version of this map.

Where personalisation is available, you can add a short title or dedication, mark one meaningful place, or request one considered visual detail. See personalised map examples.

Every piece is printed to museum-grade archival standards using fade-resistant pigment inks on acid-free matte paper. Choose an unframed map print, framed map or canvas using the finish options above. Framed maps use crystal-clear optical acrylic and arrive ready to hang.

With its rich detail and strong sense of place, this map makes a considered gift for a new home, anniversary, retirement or anyone with a personal connection to the area shown. Still deciding? Explore our collection of rare old and vintage maps to discover another place, period or style.

This map is also available as a float framed canvas, sometimes known as a shadow gap framed canvas or canvas floater. The map is printed on artist's cotton canvas and then stretched over a handmade box frame. We then "float" the canvas inside a wooden frame, which is available in a range of colours (black, dark brown, oak, antique gold and white). This is a wonderful way to present a map without glazing in front. See some examples of float framed canvas maps and explore the differences between my different finishes.

For something truly unique, this map is also available in "Unique 3D", our trademarked process that dramatically transforms the map so that it has a wonderful sense of depth. We combine the original map with detailed topography and elevation data, so that mountains and the terrain really "pop". For more info and examples of 3D maps, check my Unique 3D page.