Piracy was, however, in those days a
semi-legitimate offense, winked at by the authorities all through
the colonial period; and respectable people and governors and
officials of New York and North Carolina, it is said, secretly
furnished funds for such expeditions and were interested in the
profits.
Chapter XII. Little Delaware
Delaware was the first colony to be established on the river that
bears this name. It went through half a century of experiences
under the Dutch and Swedes from 1609 to 1664, and then eighteen
years under the English rule of the Duke of York, from whom it
passed into the hands of William Penn, the Quaker. The Dutch got
into it by an accident and were regarded by the English as
interlopers. And the Swedes who followed had no better title.
The whole North Atlantic seaboard was claimed by England by
virtue of the discoveries of the Cabots, father and son; but
nearly a hundred years elapsed before England took advantage of
this claim by starting the Virginia colony near the mouth of the
Chesapeake Bay in 1607.
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