The maritime history of the Knights Templar following the Church's attempt to expunge them in southern France * Shows that the pirates of legend originated with the Knights Templar's secret navy * Reveals the Templars' secret objective to establish a new universal order based on spirituality, wisdom, and individualism--the New Jerusalem * Examines the secret history of the Templars' influence in international politics When the Vatican condemned the Order of the Temple in 1312, many of those who escaped took to the sea. Their immediate objective was to take revenge on the Church. Recent discoveries confirm that ships of the Templar fleet that went missing at La Rochelle later reappeared--first in the Mediterranean and later in the Atlantic and Caribbean--to menace the Church's maritime commerce. These Templar vessels often flew the famed Jolly Roger, which took its name from King Roger II of Sicily, a famed Templar who, during a public spat with the Pope in 1127, was the first to fly this flag. Opportunistic buccaneers were quick to see that vast wealth could be gained in pursuing the Templars' harassment of the Pope's interests on the high seas, and they spread a reign of terror across the shipping lanes of the New World. Some unaffiliated pirates, in admiration of the Templar egalitarian ideals, even formed their own secret societies, and together with the Templars were part of the ferment that gave rise to independence movements in France and the New World and contributed to the growth of Freemasonry. The Templar Pirates is the story of the birth and actual conduct of piracy on the seas of the New World and of the influence the Templars had on their constituents, and, by their wealth, on the governments of nations old and new.