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An old engraving of Capt. Rogers, armed with a boarding pike.

Woodes Rogers (ca. 1679 Bristol – July 16, 1732, Nassau, Bahamas), was an English privateer and later the first royal governor of the Bahamas.

While at Cabo San Lucas in Baja California Sur, Mexico, between November 1709 and January 1710, he succeeded in capturing the rich prize of a Manila galleon. Accounts by Rogers himself and by Rogers' fellow-captain Edward Cooke, written after the return to England, provided valuable ethnographic information on cape's Pericú Indians.

Rogers was officially appointed "Captain - General and Governor in Chief in and over the Bahama Islands" by King George I of Great Britain on February 6, 1718. He played a major role in suppressing pirates in the Caribbean when he killed or drove out the pirates of the Bahamas and ousted Edward Teach (Blackbeard) from position as Magistrate of the "Privateers Republic". After he became governor in 1717, he offered the "King's Pardon", which gave amnesty to most of the pirates in the isles. The most notorious and powerful pirates were not granted the amnesty, and were hunted down and killed.

It was Woodes Rogers who found Alexander Selkirk, inspiration for the novel "Robinson Crusoe", (Little, Brian c1960).

• Andrews, Thomas F. (editor). 1979. English Privateers at Cabo San Lucas: The Descriptive Accounts of Puerto Seguro by Edward Cooke (1712) and Woodes Rogers (1712), with Added Comments by George Shelvocke (1726) and William Betagh (1728). Dawson's Book Shop, Los Angeles.
• Little, Brian. c.1960. Crusoe's Captain: Being the Life of Woodes Rogers, Seaman, ader, Colonial Governor. Odhams Press, London
• Rogers, Woodes. 1712. A Cruising Voyage Round the World. Andrew Bell, London.
• Cooke, Edward. 1712. A Voyage to the South Sea and Round the World. 3 vols. Lintot, London