No one can say when the buccaneers first selected St. John as a refuge, but no doubt it was long before the Danes or the Dutch first settled there. Pirates haunted the Virgin Islands previous to 1687, and it would not be surprising if honor for the first buildings erected on St. John and for the first settlements should be accorded them. Many of its bays and coves bear names which associate them with the corsairs,—as, for instance, Rendezvouz Bay and Privateers’ Bay,—and undoubtedly these names were already in use when the first Dutch and Danes arrived on St. John. There are also ruins of forts and buildings covered with brush and jungle which unquestionably antedate the first peaceful settlement; but history took no cognizance of the freebooters, and the story of their occupancy of St. John probably will never be known. At any rate, for many a year, the Virgin Isles were notorious as a resort of buccaneers, and in Coral Bay, Privateers’ Bay, and Rendezvouz Bay they beached and careened their ships and romped and skylarked on the coral sands, while the woods and cliffs rang to the echoes of their lusty songs and shouts and the smoke of barbecue fires rose in blue wisps against the greenery, just as a column of lilac smoke from a negro hut was rising upward in the clear morning air as the Vigilant’s anchor splashed overboard and the big sails came rattling down within the sheltered bay that had harbored many a pirate craft. We know too, from historical records, that the Danish authorities were friendly to the pirates and buccaneers before St. John was settled, for in 1682 Jean Hamlin made his headquarters in St. Thomas and was well received by the governor, who no doubt shared the corsair’s loot in return for the refuge accorded. In the year mentioned, Hamlin made a prize of the French ship La Trompeuse and, finding her a better craft than his own, fitted her out with guns, shipped a pirate crew, and proceeded to ravage the Caribbean, making Charlotte Amalie his headquarters. Hamlin was by no means an ideal buccaneer. He attacked any merchantman he sighted, regardless of flag or nationality, and in 1683 a number of British ships fell to his cannon. Not content with the pickings to be had among the islands, he sailed for the African coast and there had a joyous and profitable time, taking seventeen Dutch and English vessels. But the fever-ridden, jungle-covered coasts of the Dark Continent did not appeal to the romantic soul of the merry sea-rover; and so, feeling he had accomplished quite enough to have earned a vacation, he hoisted sail and headed westward for St. Thomas.