Villains of All Nations

by Marcus Rediker

  Pirates also affirmed their unity symbolically. Evidence suggests that sea robbers may have had a sense of belonging to a separate, in some manner exclusive, speech community. Philip Ashton, who in 1722–23 spent sixteen months among pirates, noted that “according to the Pirates usual Custom, and in their proper Dialect, asked me, If I would sign their Articles.”39 Many sources suggest that cursing, swearing, and blaspheming may have been defining traits of this style of speech, to an even greater extent than among the larger population of seafaring men. For example, near the Sierra Leone River a British official named Plunkett pretended to cooperate with, but then attacked, the pirates with Bartholomew Roberts. Plunkett was captured, and Roberts,

  upon the first sight of Plunkett[,] swore at him like any Devil, for his Irish Impudence in daring to resist him. Old Plunkett, finding he had got into bad Company, fell a swearing and cursing as fast or faster than Roberts; which made the rest of the Pirates laugh heartily, desiring Roberts to sit down and hold his Peace, for he had no Share in the Pallaver with Plunkett at all. So that by meer Dint of Cursing and Damning, Old Plunkett .. . sav’d his life.

  The pirates with George Lowther apparently engaged in similar palavers. During their Christmas celebrations, they played the dozens, “striving who should outdo one another in new invented Oaths and Execrations.” It may not be surprising that Cotton Mather was shocked by the language that William Fly employed, but it surely must be so that Captain Snelgrave, who had spent a lifetime around foul-mouthed sailors, was nonetheless taken aback by the speech of the freebooters with Thomas Cocklyn. It appears that the symbolic connectedness among pirates extended into the domain of language.40

  The best-known symbol of piracy, the Jolly Roger, also illustrates the strong sense of community among the pirates. Of first importance is that the flag was very widely used; no fewer, and probably a great many more, than twenty-five hundred men sailed under it. So general an adoption indicates an advanced state of group identification.41 The flag itself was a “black Ensign, in the Middle of which is a large white Skeleton with a Dart in one hand striking a bleeding Heart, and in the other an Hour Glass.” The flag varied from ship to ship, but almost all were black, adorned with white representational figures, sometimes an isolated human skull, or “death’s head,” but more frequently an entire skeleton, or “anatomy.” Other recurring items were a weapon—cutlass, sword, or dart—and an hourglass. The main purpose of the flag was to terrify the pirates’ prey, but its triad of interlocking symbols—death, violence, limited time—simultaneously pointed to meaningful parts of the seaman’s experience. Seamen who became pirates escaped from a deadly work situation to the freer, more hopeful world symbolized by the Jolly Roger. Under the somber colors of “King Death,” they fought back against captains, merchants, and officials who waved banners of authority.42

  Pirates thus regarded certain social groups as their enemies, but they got support and material assistance from people at all levels of society, as they had done for decades. Piracy had long served as an informal arm of English state policy against Spain in the New World. Some of the more spectacular raids carried out by the buccaneers in the seventeenth century had been organized with the assistance of the colonial government of Jamaica. Sea robbers had also served vital economic functions, providing, for example, gold and silver to specie-starved colonial economies. In 1704 the pirate John Quelch made the point, in astonishment, as he stood on the gallows of Boston. He warned those assembled not to bring hard currency into New England because they would be hanged for it! Colonial officials had long connived at such purposes. Governor John Hope of Bermuda recalled this legacy in his letters of 1723 and 1724 to royal officials in London, explaining how piracy was as popular in his colony as smuggling was in Britain. When he engaged an “honest man” in discussion about how to stop the concourse with pirates, he was told, “Sr. (sayd he) you’l have business enough upon your hands if you go about to rectifie that, for, there is not a man that sails from hence but will trade with a pyrate etc.” Hope added later that “Pyrates in former days were here made very welcome, & Governours have gain’d Estates by them.” The same was true in Jamaica, New York, North Carolina, and other places, although such attitudes among officials began to change with a broad reorganization of the empire in the 1670s and with a crackdown against piracy in the 1690s.43

  Yet many people, a few of them among the wealthier sectors of society, continued to cooperate with pirates. Spotswood put his finger on the reason: “People are easily led to favour these Pests of Mankind when they have hopes of Sharing in their ill-gotten Wealth.” In 1718, when he organized an expedition against Edward Teach and his gang, it required, Spotswood wrote, “such Secresy that I did not so much as communicate to his Maj’ty’s Council here, nor to any other Person but those who were necessarily to be employed in the Execution, least among the many favourers of Pyrates we have here in these Parts some of them might send intelligence to Tach.” Pirates themselves explained in 1718 that without merchants in Rhode Island, New York, and Pennsylvania who sold them ammunition and provisions, “they could never have become so formidable, nor arriv’d to that degree that they have.” At the trial of Stede Bonnet and his gang in 1718, Attorney General Richard Allen noted that some in Charleston had spoken in favor of the pirates, and he expressed his hope that there were no such people among the property-owning jurors.44

  Much of the support took the form of conveying what Spotswood and others called intelligence to pirates—especially information about the comings and goings of merchant ships and the deployment of naval vessels. An official from Saint Kitts wrote that Roberts and his crew had “intelligence of this Island in particular that I am surprised at.” Governor Hope hinted at the same practice when he wrote to his superiors, “I am sorry to say it; but those People [of Bermuda] do not look upon those Monsters with that Abhorrence which they ought to do: And I find that when we do fall into those Villains hands, Our treatment is not so rough as that which other people meet with.” Admiral Edward Vernon complained that pirates had “daily intelligence” from supporters in Jamaica, which made it impossible to catch them. The intelligence was provided by small merchants and ship captains who fenced the pirates’ goods, but, more important, it was passed along by working sailors, some of whom joined up, some of whom were sympathetic, and others of whom used the information as bargaining chips in the hope that, when captured, the pirates would treat them better.45

  Some of the “poorer sort” in the port cities supported pirates in their own ways. According to historian Shirley Carter Hughson, Charleston churned with tension in the period leading up to the trial of Bonnet and others in 1718: “There had been rioting by night, threats of burning the town, and intimidation of the officers of the law, and the government was almost powerless to preserve the safety of the citizens of the province.” Some of the solidarity was practical as Bonnet and another man escaped from prison. Other mobs demonstrated in favor of pirates in Port Royal, Jamaica, and Providence in the Bahama Islands, showing that the law does not a criminal make. Pirates, according to Barnaby Slush, were “Princes” to the common sailor. And they would remain so long after the propertied elements of society turned against pirates as soon as their cooperation was criminalized by the death penalty in 1721.46

  Pirates perceived themselves and their social relations through a collectivistic ethos that had been forged in their struggle for survival, first as seamen, then as outlaws. They had reasons for what they did, and they expressed them clearly, consistently, confidently, and even, on occasion, with a degree of self-righteousness. In and through their social rules, their egalitarian social organization, and their notions of revenge and fairness, they tried to establish a world in which people “were justly dealt with.” And although what they did could be described as revolutionary, it was hardly “traditionalist.” By walking “to the Gallows without a Tear,” by calling themselves “Honest Men” and “Gentlemen,” and by speaking self-servingly but
proudly of their “Conscience” and “Honor,” pirates flaunted their certitude.47

  Bartholomew Roberts clearly expressed this lofty self-conception, all within the idiom of revenge, in one of the very few documents we have that was written by a pirate’s hand. Roberts had apparently requested a meeting with Lieutenant General William Mathew, presumably to discuss the recent hanging—“barbarous usage”—of two pirates in Nevis. When Mathew did not appear, Roberts and his crew sailed into Basseterre, Saint Kitts, and burned several ships; he then sent a letter chastising Mathew for his rudeness, and, by implication, his cowardice: “This comes expressly from me to lett you know that had you come off as you ought to a done and drank a glass of wine with me and my company I should not [have] harmed the least vessell in your harbour.” Roberts had apparently planned to come ashore and wanted the general to know that “it is not your gunns you fired yt. affrighted me or hindred our coming on shore but the wind not proving to our expectation that hindred it.” He explained that the pirates had a new ship, and “for revenge you may assure yourselves here and here after not to expect anything from our hands but what belongs to a pirate as farther Gentlemen.” For good measure, he added a threat: “that poor fellow you now have in prison at Sandy point is entirely ignorant and what he hath was gave him and so pray make conscience for once let me begg you and use tht man as an honest man and not as a C[riminal?] if we hear any otherwise you may expect not to have quarters to any of your Island.” The letter was signed “yours,” “Bathll. Roberts.”48

  When, in 1720, ruling groups concluded that “nothing but force will subdue them,” many pirates responded by intensifying their commitment.49 This was the moment at which the preservation of the pirate way of life, with all of its freedoms, comforts, and supposed moral superiority, began to take precedence over all other motivations among maritime brigands. In 1724 Edward Low’s crew swore, “with the most direful Imprecations, that if ever they should find themselves overpower’d they would immediately blow their ship up rather than suffer themselves to be hang’d like Dogs.” These sea robbers would not “do Jolly Roger the Disgrace to be struck.” Their attitude of death before dishonor was one more example of their own vaunted self-conception.50

  6. The Women Pirates: Anne Bonny and Mary Read

  JAMAICA’S MEN OF POWER gathered at a Court of Admiralty in Saint Jago de la Vega in late 1720 and early 1721 for a series of show trials. Governor Nicholas Lawes, members of his Executive Council, the chief justice of the Grand Court, and a throng of minor officials and ship captains trumpeted the gravity of the occasion by their concentrated presence. Such officials and traders had recently complained of “our Coasts being infested by those Hell-hounds the Pirates.” In this, Jamaica’s coasts were not alone; pirates had plagued nearly every colonial ruling class as they made their marauding attacks on mercantile property across the British Empire and beyond. The great men had come to see a gang of pirates “swing to the four winds” upon the gallows. They would not be disappointed.

  Eighteen members of Calico Jack Rackam’s crew had already been convicted and sentenced to hang, three of them, including Rackam himself, afterward to dangle and decay in chains at Plumb Point, Bush Key, and Gun Key as moral instruction to the seamen who passed that way. Once shipmates, now gallows mates, they were meant to be “a Publick Example, and to terrify others from such-like evil Practices.”1

  Two other pirates were also convicted, brought before the judge, and “asked if either of them had any Thing to say why Sentence of Death should not pass upon them, in like manner as had been done to all the rest.” These two pirates, in response, “pleaded their Bellies, being Quick with Child, and pray’d that Execution might be staid.” The court then “passed Sentence, as in Cases of Pyracy, but ordered them back, till a proper Jury should be appointed to enquire into the Matter.”2 The jury inquired into the matter, discovered that they were indeed women, pregnant ones at that, and gave respite to these two particular “Hell-hounds,” whose names were Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

  Figure 5. Anne Bonny and Mary Read; Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (London, 1724).

  This chapter explores some of the meanings of the lives of the two women pirates, both during their own times and after. It surveys the contexts in which Bonny and Read lived and discusses how these women made a place for themselves in the rugged, overwhelmingly male worlds of seafaring and piracy. It concludes by considering their many-sided and long-lasting legacy. Any historical account of the lives of Anne Bonny and Mary Read must in the end be as picaresque as its subjects, ranging far and wide across the interrelated and international histories of women, seafaring, piracy, labor, literature, drama, and art. To an even greater extent than their male counterparts, theirs was ultimately a story about liberty, whose history they helped to make.3

  Much of what is known about the lives of these extraordinary women appeared originally in A General History of the Pyrates, written by Captain Charles Johnson and published in two volumes in 1724 and 1728. Captain Johnson recognized a good story when he saw one. He gave Bonny and Read leading parts in his account, boasting on the title page that the first volume contained “The remarkable Actions and Adventures of the two female Pyrates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny.” A General History proved a huge success; it was immediately translated into Dutch, French, and German, published and republished in London, Dublin, Amsterdam, Paris, Utrecht, and elsewhere, by which means the tales of the women pirates circulated to readers around the world. Their stories had doubtless already been told and retold in the holds and on the decks of ships, on the docks, and in the bars and brothels of the sailor towns of the Atlantic by the maritime men and women of whose world Bonny and Read had been a part.4

  According to Johnson, Mary Read was born an illegitimate child outside London; her father was not her mother’s husband. To obtain support from the husband’s family, Read’s mother dressed her to resemble the recently deceased son she had by her husband, who had died at sea. Read apparently liked her male identity and eventually decided to become a sailor, enlisting aboard a man-of-war, and then a soldier, fighting with distinction in both infantry and cavalry units in Flanders. She fell in love with a fellow soldier, allowed him to discover her secret, and soon married him. But he proved less hardy than she, and before long he died. Read once again picked up the soldier’s gun, this time serving in the Netherlands. At war’s end she sailed in a Dutch ship for the West Indies, but her fate was to be captured by pirates, whom she joined, thereafter plundering ships, fighting duels, and beginning a new romance. One day her new lover fell afoul of a pirate who was much more rugged than himself and was challenged to go ashore and fight a duel in the pirates’ customary way, “at sword and pistol.” Read saved the situation by picking a fight with the same rugged pirate, scheduling her own duel two hours before the one that would involve her lover, and promptly killing the fearsome pirate “upon the spot.” Her martial skills were impressive, but they alone were no match for the well-armed vessel that captured and imprisoned her and her comrades in 1720.

  Figure 6. Anne Bonny; Captain Charles Johnson, Historie der Engelsche Zee-Roovers (Amsterdam, 1725).

  Anne Bonny was also born an illegitimate child (in Ireland), and she too was raised in disguise, her father pretending that she was the child of a relative entrusted to his care. Her father eventually took the lively lass with him to Charleston, South Carolina, where he became a merchant and planter of considerable wealth and standing. Bonny grew into a woman of “fierce and couragious temper.” Once, “when a young Fellow would have lain with her against her Will, she beat him so, that he lay ill of it a considerable time.” Ever the rebel, Bonny soon forsook her father and his fortune to marry “a young Fellow, who belong’d to the Sea, and was not worth a Groat.” She ran away with him to the Caribbean, where she dressed “in Men’s Cloaths” and joined a band of pirates that included Mary Read and, more important, Calico Jack R
ackam, who was soon the object of Bonny’s affections. Their romance too came to a sudden end, when one day in 1720 she and her mates fell into battle with a vessel sent to capture them. When they came to close quarters, “none [of the pirates] kept the Deck except Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and one more”; the rest of the pirates scuttled down into the hold in cowardice. Exasperated and disgusted, Read fired a pistol at them, “killing one, and wounding others.” Later, as Rackam was to be hanged, Bonny answered his imploring look by saying, “she was sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a Man, he need not have been hang’d like a Dog.” Bonny, who had “fought like a Man,” was forced to plead her belly to prolong her days among the living.

  Figure 7. Mary Read; Captain Charles Johnson, Historie der Engelsche Zee-Roovers (Amsterdam, 1725).