Blackbeard- The Birth of America

by Samuel Marquis

  “I agree. But mark my words, they’ll clean this place up and come for us eventually. The Crown always does when its commerce is at risk.”

  “That may be, but I wager that day is a long ways off. For now, we’ve found our lair for raiding prizes coming in and out of the Caribbean—and for trading on the black market. And its right here in the Bahamas.”

  It’s true, Thache thought. Not only New Providence, but Eleuthera was being increasingly used as a remote outpost beyond the reach of the British Admiralty for fencing pirated goods. The freebooters were supported by the patronage of a growing network of resourceful Bahamian merchant-smugglers. Two of those were Hornigold’s old pirate mate John Cockram and Cockram’s influential father-in-law, Richard Thompson, the owners of the Richard & John, a fourteen-ton sloop with a shallow draught used to smuggle piratically-plundered goods. Cockram and his brothers, Joseph and Philip, were running a successful trading operation out of Harbor Island, shipping illicit cargoes to Charles Town and sugar and provisions back to Nassau. They competed with Benjamin Sims, a forty-year veteran of New Providence, and Neal Walker, owner of the sloop Dolphin which had been used to sell Henry Jennings’s plunder. Through these savvy merchant-smugglers, the Bahamian pirates were able to sell their plunder and acquire in return much-needed ammunition and hard-to-get provisions to outfit their pirate fleets—all taking place along the margins of an overextended British Empire.

  A bar maid with a hideous wart on her nose but a friendly smile came by their table and they ordered two more ales, which were promptly delivered. A moment later, the black sailor Caesar whom Thache had recently taken aboard his ship came by his table with a passel of white seamen. He recognized several of them as Caesar’s old shipmates from the Flying Horse, which had limped into Nassau Harbor only this morning. His fingers inched towards his sling over his shoulders that held his holstered Queen Anne pistols. But from the men’s earnest and friendly looking faces, he realized that they weren’t here to cause him trouble for making their black friend part of his crew.

  “Captain Thache,” said Caesar. “These North Carolina men would like to have a word with you, if we not be interrupting. In fact, they would like to sign on with you. Or at least that’s what they tell me.”

  He looked the men over, puffing on his pipe. “Is that so, gentlemen? I may have some openings, if you are indeed skilled mariners. What are your names?”

  The tall one with the lantern jaw stepped forward. “I’m William Howard, quartermaster of the Flying Horse. We’ve left the company and want to sail with you, Captain Thache. Like Caesar, we were sent down to Florida to fish the wrecks by the order of Governor Eden of North Carolina and his customs inspector Tobias Knight. As you know, Master Knight is…or perhaps was the proper owner of our friend Caesar here. But now we want to sail with you, Captain. We’ve talked it over with Caesar and we want to join your crew.”

  “And just what kind of sea captain do you think I be?”

  “Why you’re a pirate captain, sir—a master of the sweet trade. Or that’s what our mate Caesar led us to believe.”

  “Caesar told you that, eh?”

  “Aye, Captain, he did.”

  “Well then, Caesar here is a sound judge of character. It is plain beyond disputing that you have come to the right place at the right time. I do happen to captain a vessel that proudly hoists the black flag, or will soon enough anyway, and am looking for able-bodied seamen to sign on as I will be going on the account soon, very soon.”

  Benjamin Hornigold, who had been watching the exchange with amusement, now spoke up. “Now wait just a minute, Edward,” he protested. “I get at least one of these scallywags.” He frowned at them. “Do you know who I am?”

  “No, sir, not a clue,” said Howard.

  “Why I’m Ben Hornigold himself, the chief of the Flying Gang. Gut me for a preacher if ye haven’t heard the name bandied about.”

  Howard removed his weather-beaten tricorn, stiffened ramrod straight, and looked at him deferentially. “Begging your pardon, Captain. Indeed, we all know of ye and your exploits,” he said. The other men nodded vigorously.

  Hornigold gave a curmudgeonly smile. “Thank the Lord up high for that. Now I want you to know that while you’re in Nassau, you’re under my personal protection. Were you also aware of that?”

  Thache couldn’t suppress a grin. “He’s just putting on airs with you fellows. Now tell us who the rest of ye be?”

  A second man stepped forward. “I’m John Martin, bosun.”

  “Garret Gibbons, helmsman,” said the next man.

  “John Giles, seaman,” said a fourth.

  “Richard Greensail, seaman,” said a skinny black African, who made friendly eye contact with Caesar, which told Thache that they were mates.

  Six more men stepped forward and gave their names and positions aboard the Flying Horse. When they were finished, Hornigold said, “William Howard, I want you aboard my ship as my new quartermaster. But of course it will have to be voted on by my crew.”

  “Might I inquire, Captain, what happened to your previous quartermaster?”

  “He got so drunk last night that he cracked his skull and is in a very bad way. He won’t be able to sail with us, I’m afraid. Now the rest of you can sign on with Captain Thache as you like, but I want Mr. Howard here.” He looked back at him. “You look to me to be a man who brooks no opposition and can lead a boarding party. Would I be right in assuming that, Mr. Howard?”

  “Curse me for a lubber, Captain Hornigold, if I’m not your man. And if I am to serve as your quartermaster, providing the crew accepts me once we set sail, would it be for that fine eight-gun sloop in the middle of the channel called the Benjamin?”

  “That would be correct, Mr. Howard. What do you think of the name?”

  “The name?”

  “The name Benjamin. I named the ship after myself. You don’t find issue with that, do you?”

  “Why should I? All it means is you take pride in your skill as a sea captain.”

  “No, he’s in love with himself just like Narcissus—and that’s God’s truth,” quipped Thache. “But he can take a prize as good as anyone. Which is why we’ll be sailing together, gentlemen, in the coming days. Mr. Martin, Mr. Gibbons, Mr. Greensail, and the rest of you—welcome aboard the Margaret. But first you have to agree to the articles.”

  “Yes, yes, the articles,” said John Martin. “I’ve heard it’s the way of the sweet trade, but I haven’t seen it for meself. How does it work for your ship?”

  “They’re the rules we live by. Every man gets a fair share of plunder, has a vote in councils, and gets taken care of when he’s disabled from sickness or battle. It’s an oath we swear by, and I’ll expect you to sign your name or make your mark to prove that you’ve agreed to follow the articles, as your mate Caesar here did three days ago in the Straits. You can sign once you’re on board, and when you do, it’ll be for yourselves and not no king, parliament, merchant man, or cruel navy captain. Mr. Howard will do the same for Captain Hornigold here. What do you say, men? Shall we drink on it?”

  The men let out a hearty rumble of concurrence and John Martin smiled and raised his tankard. “We’ll drink with you and Captain Hornigold, all right! We’ll curse all Spanishers and King George too, and we’ll drink to the health of the rightful heir to the throne, King James, who ain’t no pretender! But first can you tell us where we’re headed?”

  Thache stroked his growing black beard, which now ran a full hand below his chin. “The Windward Passage and Hispaniola—to take Spanish and French prizes.”

  “Aye, Captain, we’re your men,” said Martin with a gleam in his eyes. “I suppose then that we be the Bath County pirates.”

  “Oh no you’re not, lads,” cried Hornigold. “We are—all of us—part of something much grander than that. We’re the bloody Flying Gang—and don’t you ever forget it!”

  CHAPTER 8

  BAHIA HONDA, NORTHWEST CUBA

  APR
IL 9, 1716

  SINCE THEY HAD SET COURSE from New Providence and began their campaign of plunder along the northern edge of the Spanish Main, what Caesar had enjoyed most of all was the feeling of freedom. By getting an equal vote and an equal share of the prizes with the other sailors in the Flying Gang, he inhabited a new world where ability, not color, determined his status. It made him feel somehow whole again. He was a real person in control of his own life, someone of value in the world instead of a slave to another man’s dreams, a determiner of his own fate.

  Every day was a new and exciting adventure, and he was grateful to Thache for giving him the opportunity to be free again, something he had not been since his capture from his West African village as a small boy. Caesar was born of the Ibo people in the northeastern corner of the slave-trading province of Benin, and his father had been an important tribal sub-chief. Unbeknownst to him, his fellow Ibo tribesmen had predominated among those enslaved in the Chesapeake region during the past thirty years, specifically those in Virginia and the Low Country plantations of colonial South Carolina. Though as an equal-wage-earning seaman he was not truly one-hundred-percent equal—the quartermaster tended to assign him and the other Africans, West Indians, and mulattoes more than their fair share of the strenuous labor like moving cannons and cleaning the scuppers—he knew he was as free as any black man outside of Africa. Given his harsh treatment during his transport from Africa to Barbados, and during his enslavement in South Carolina prior to being sold to the kindly Tobias Knight in Bath Town, that was freedom enough.

  Sailing in consort with Hornigold, Thache had piloted the Margaret from Nassau to the sporadically settled coast of northwestern Cuba, which straddled the shipping lanes connecting Havana and the Spanish Main, New Orleans, and France. Passing through the Straits of Florida and giving Havana a wide berth, they scoured the scantily patrolled coastal waters ringing the island’s northern shore until they found a prize. Making landfall on April 8, they found the Mary of Rochelle, a large merchant sloop flying French colors, near the secluded harbor of Mariel. Undercrewed and lightly armed, the French vessel was no match for Hornigold in his Benjamin or Thache in his Margaret and the captain surrendered without a fight. In his first boarding action, Caesar joined the rowdy prize crew and helped transfer half the cargo to the Benjamin, while Thache kept the rest aboard the Mary of Rochelle, had the Margaret’s stores moved onboard, and converted the captured vessel into an eight-gun sloop-of-war with a total crew size of more than eighty men. The nearly empty Margaret was then handed over to the vanquished French captain along with food, water, and navigational instruments.

  With the new prize Mary rigged for piratical action, the two sloops continued west along the coast. They were making fourteen knots now, and Caesar liked the feel of the wind on his face, watching the flocks of seabirds and schools of dolphins racing the boat, and the warmth of the tropical sun on his bare chest. Under questioning, the captured French captain had told them that they would find a large French merchant sloop called the Marianne of Santo Domingo further west at Bahia Hondo—the Bay of Hounds. The secluded bay in Northwestern Cuba was a favorite rendezvous for English forces to obtain fresh fish and careen their vessels between Jamaica and points northward. The merchant ship was said to be en route from Hispaniola to the swampy French port of New Orleans under the command of a French naval officer, Ensign Le Gardew. It was also said to possess a very rich cargo consisting of European goods for the Spanish trade.

  Two hours later Thache and Hornigold reached the Bay of Hounds.

  “Four sail!” Caesar heard Garret Gibbons, the masthead lookout, shout down to the captain when they reached the bay entrance outside the fringing reef. Since they had taken the new ship, Caesar had been acting as the captain’s steward on the quarterdeck.

  Squinting into the sun, Thache called up to him. “How stand they, Mr. Gibbons?”

  “To the southward, two points upon the larboard bow.”

  “Colors?”

  Now that Gibbons had identified the number of the ships with the naked eye, he proceeded to peer through his brass telescope. “Three British, one French.”

  “What class?”

  The lookout spied for several seconds through his glass. “Frenchie’s a merchantman. The King’s vessels…I cannot tell. Two appear to be sloops-of-war, though they fly no black flag. The other, to the east of the French vessel and privateers, is a small merchantman with British colors.”

  “Are the sloops plundering the Frenchie?”

  “Looks that way, Captain. There also appears to be a periagua tied up with the fleet. Aye, they’ve joined, too, in plundering the merchantman.”

  “Is the French vessel the Marianne, Mr. Gibbons? Can you make out her stern through the glass?”

  From the quarterdeck, Caesar watched with eager anticipation as the lookout studied the ship closely. “Can’t tell, Captain. No clear view. But she be big enough and well-armed.”

  Thache nodded. “All right, stand by.” He turned to Israel Hands, the ship’s navigator and first mate. “I need you to climb aloft to be certain, Master Hands. You have the best eyes of all of us and we need to be sure what the bloody hell we’ve got here before we sail into that bay. Take me glass, man.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  While Hands quickly scaled the rigging to the maintop, Thache was hailed by Hornigold from the quarterdeck of the Benjamin. Caesar handed Thache his speaking trumpet and the two sea captains conversed for several minutes as Israel Hands and Hornigold’s masthead lookout closely scrutinized the flotilla anchored inside the Bay of Hounds. The anxious seconds ticked off. As the drama built up with still no resolution, Caesar felt a ripple of nervous excitement. Who were these interlopers taking the French prize in the bay? Were they pirates? But then why would they fly British colors if they were common freebooters?

  And then suddenly, the voice of Hornigold’s lookout cut through the thick tropical air. “By thunder, it’s Jennings and the Barsheba! She and her consort have weighed anchor and are coming for us!”

  “They’re giving chase?” demanded Hornigold.

  “Aye, Captain! And the French vessel, it’s definitely the Marianne all right! I can make her out clearly now!”

  “He’s right!” confirmed Israel Hands from aloft to Thache and the Mary’s crew. “They’re hard on our bow! And they’ve got twenty guns betwixt them!”

  That’s a lot of firepower, thought Caesar. All the same, the Benjamin and Mary could match Jennings’s cannons pound for pound. A part of him wanted desperately to fight a pitched battle; the other, more pragmatic side of him, said that the best thing to do would be to unlimber the jib and make a run for it. But which one would Thache and Hornigold, the only ones with actual authority during an engagement, choose?

  Suddenly, Thache sounded the general alarm through his speaking trumpet as Hornigold did the same aboard the Benjamin.

  “Hands to quarters! Hands to quarters!”

  As the crew scurried about, Thache yelled up again to Israel Hands in the maintop. “What about the other vessels? What the devil are they doing?”

  “The Marianne is staying put with the periagua and British merchantman.”

  Now Thache looked at Hornigold and spoke again through his brass trumpet. “What do you want to do, Ben? It appears your nemesis is heading our way with the intention of taking your ship from you again. Tell me now, do you intend to hand it over to him like you did your Spanish sloop in Nassau, or put up a fight?”

  “Damn that foppish prig Jennings to hell—of course I’d like to fight him!” shouted back Hornigold. “But you know as well as I that a man who shows too much of the lion and not enough of the fox does not last long at sea. Unless my crew chooses to fight, I’m afraid I will have to hold back from an engagement.”

  “If you’re taking a vote, I wouldn’t be laggardly about it. As for me, I have no intention of crossing swords with Jennings and risk losing my ship. I’m taking my crew and continuing towa
rds the setting sun in search of prizes.”

  “Godspeed then, Edward! We’ll rendezvous near Cayo Buenavista!”

  “Good luck to you too, my friend! And keep a weather-eye over your shoulder! There’s worse scupperlouts out there than Jennings!”

  As the Mary dashed off with the wind hard on her starboard beam, Caesar noticed that the hour glass had turned. He flipped it over and the fine white sand began to filter down again, signifying the beginning of another hour. But to him, it was far more than that. It was another hour of excitement among a flotilla of pirates. Another hour of freedom from the drudgery of slavery as a gentleman of fortune in search of rich plunder. Another hour of sticking it to greedy ship owners, slavers, and merchant captains who thought they ruled the world and could order others about like chattel with no repercussions. He felt a powerful sense of subversive pride knowing he was bringing such men down, even if only a peg or two and for a brief moment in history.

  He looked at Thache standing next to his helmsman, whom he towered over by at least six inches. The man was indeed a wise captain with the best interests of his men at heart, which Caesar realized was why the crew stood steadfast by him. He would not risk their lives in a fight they were not guaranteed to win, or that might result in significant death or injuries. It was a code of honor for him, an unspoken pact between him and his men.

  And having seen Thache do it on two separate occasions—once in the Florida Straits and now here off the northern coast of Cuba—Caesar knew he had just learned an important lesson he would never forget.

  Don’t engage an enemy unless you can win at no cost to yourself—or are backed into a corner and have no choice.

  CHAPTER 9

  WESTERN CUBA AND ISLA DE LOS PIÑOS

  APRIL 12-MAY 26, 1716

  EDWARD THACHE FIRST MET “BLACK” SAM BELLAMY—the young, dark-haired Massachusetts mariner who would one day go on to command the Whydah, one of the most powerful pirate men-of-war ever—three days later on the west coast of Cuba. The two struck an instant chord of friendship. Both had served in the Royal Navy and knew firsthand the brutality and hypocrisy of that service, and they were equally suspicious of avaricious merchant men. Though Thache had grown up in relative wealth as the son of a Jamaica planter-mariner while Bellamy was born into a poor family in Devon, England, Thache never adopted the sneering contempt for the lower classes of his well-born contemporaries. That was one of the reasons, along with his inherent love of the sea, that he had never followed in his father’s footsteps and taken to being a sugar plantation owner.