John Bowen (died 1704) was a Bermudian creole pirate who was active in the Indian Ocean and Red Sea from 1700 to 1704 during the Golden Age of Piracy.
Biography[]
John Bowen was born in Bermuda, and he later joined the crew of a Royal Navy ship in the Thirteen Colonies before the ship was attacked and captured by French pirates. The pirates sailed to Madagascar with Bowen and the other prisoners, and the prisoners mutinied and took over a longboat. Bowen and the crew turned to piracy, and he joined George Booth's crew, capturing a 450-gun slave ship, the Speaker, in April 1699. After Booth was killed in Zanzibar in 1700, Bowen took over his ship, and attacked a 13-strong Muslim fleet, capturing 100,000 guineas. In November 1701, he captured a British East Indiaman off Malabar, India, but he was allowed to use trading ports as his bases. He carried out numerous attacks from his base in Rajapura, and he died of a disease in the Mascarene Islands of Madagascar in 1704.