Villains of All Nations
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16. Boyer, ed., Political State, 28:153; Examination of John Brown (1717), in Privateering and Piracy, ed. Jameson, 294; History of Pyrates, 139, 67; George Francis Dow and John Henry Edmonds, The Pirates of the New England Coast, 1630–1730 (Salem, Mass.: Marine Research Society, 1923), 217; Trials of Eight Persons, 23; Richard B. Morris, “The Ghost of Captain Kidd,” New York History 19 (1938): 282. [back]
17. Snelgrave, New Account, 199; Burg, “Legitimacy and Authority,” 44–48. [back]
18. Hayward, ed., Remarkable Criminals, 37; History of Pyrates, 42, 296, 337. [back]
19. History of Pyrates, 423, 591; Boyer, ed., Political State, 28:151, 153; Snelgrave, New Account, 200, 272; Lloyd Haynes Williams, Pirates of Colonial Virginia (Richmond, Va.: Dietz Press, 1937), 19; History of Pyrates, 138–39, 312. Ralph Davis, in The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1962), discusses the quite different role of the quartermaster in the merchant service (113). [back]
20. Roberts, Four Years Voyages, 37, 80; Snelgrave, New Account, 199–200, 238–39; History of Pyrates, 213–25; Trials of Eight Persons, 24, 25; Tryals of Thirty Six Persons for Piracy (Boston, 1723), 9; Boston News-Letter, July 15, 1717; Downing, Compendious History, 99. [back]
21. Trials of Eight Persons, 24; “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA 1/99, ff. 35, 40, 90, 163. [back]
22. Trials of Eight Persons, 24, 25; “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA 1/99, f. 90; Captain Peter Solgard to Lords of Admiralty, June 12, 1723 Admiralty Papers (ADM) 1/2452, Public Record Office, London; Information of Thompson, HCA 1/55, f. 23. [back]
23. Boyer, ed., Political State, 28:151; Snelgrave, New Account, 272; History of Pyrates, 138–39, 312; The Tryals of Major Stede Bonnet and Other Pirates (London, 1719), 37. [back]
24. History of Pyrates, 88–89, 117, 145, 167, 222–25, 292, 595; Trials of Eight Persons, 24; Downing, Compendious History, 44, 103; HCA 24/132; Hill, “Episodes of Piracy,” 41–42, 59; Roberts, Four Years Voyages, 55, 86; Boyer, ed., Political State, 28:153. The quotation is from Betagh’s Voyage, 148. [back]
25. “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA 1/99, f. 159; Hill, “Episodes of Piracy,” 42; Boston News-Letter, April 29, 1717; Deposition of John King (1719), HCA 24/132; Boyer, ed., Political State, 28:152; “Trial of Thomas Davis” (1717), in Privateering and Piracy, ed. Jameson, 307. [back]
26. Information of Henry Treehill (1723), HCA 1/18, f. 38; History of Pyrates, 139, 67; “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA 1/99, ff. 36, 62; An Account of the Conduct and Proceedings of the Late John Gow, alias Smith, Captain of the Late Pirates (London, 1725; reprint, Edinburgh: Gordon Wright Publishing, 1978), introduction; Orme, quoted in The Pirate Wars, by Peter Earle (London: Methuen, 2003), 164. [back]
27. History of Pyrates, 211–12, 307–8, 342–43; Dow and Edmonds, Pirates of New England, 146–47; Hayward, ed., Remarkable Criminals, 37; Tryals of Bonnet, 22; Morris, “Ghost of Captain Kidd,” 283. [back]
28. Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (New York: Tudor, 1932), 103; John Biddulph, The Pirates of Malabar; and, An Englishwoman ... in India (London: Smith, Elder, 1907), x, 155; [John Fillmore], “A Narrative of the Singular Sufferings of John Fillmore and Others on Board the Noted Pirate Vessel Commanded by Captain Phillips,” Buffalo Historical Society, Publications 10 (1907): 32; History of Pyrates, 212, 308, 343; Dow and Edmonds, Pirates of New England, 147; Pirate Jeremiah Huggins, quoted in “Ghost of Captain Kidd,” by Morris, 292; Hill, “Episodes of Piracy,” 57. [back]
29. An Account of ... the Late John Gow, 3. Immediately after the mutiny, the pirates sought a prize vessel “with Wine, if possible, for that they wanted Extreamly” (13). See also History of Pyrates, 307, 319. [back]
30. History of Pyrates, 129, 135, 167, 222, 211, 280, 205, 209, 312, 353, 620; “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA 1/99, f. 151; American Weekly Mercury, March 17, 1720; Snelgrave, New Account, 233–38. [back]
31. History of Pyrates, 244, 224; Snelgrave, New Account, 233; Hill, “Episodes of Piracy,” 59; Trial of Simon Van Vorst and Others (1717), in Privateering and Piracy, ed. Jameson, 303, 314. [back]
32. Tryals of Bonnet, 13; Boyer, ed., Political State, 28:153; History of Pyrates, 353–54. [back]
33. Colonel Stede Bonnet to Council of Trade and Plantations, July 30, 1717, CO37/10, f. 15; History of Pyrates, 243, 279; John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies (London, 1735; reprint, London: Frank Cass, 1970), 192. [back]
34. History of Pyrates, 127, 212, 295, 308, 343; Morris, “Ghost of Captain Kidd,” 292. [back]
35. History of Pyrates, 74–75. [back]
36. Ibid., 212, 343; B.R. Burg, Sodomy and the Perception of Evil: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (New York: New York University Press, 1983), 128, 76, 41, xv, 124; Hans Turley, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash: Piracy, Sexuality, and Masculine Identity (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 2, 96; Tryals of Thirty-Six Persons, 9; Cotton Mather, An Essay upon Remarkables in the Way of Wicked Men (New London, 1723), 32–33. [back]
37. History of Pyrates, 307, 212. [back]
38. Ibid., 157–58; Examination of William Terrill (1716), HCA 1/17, 67. [back]
39. Tryals of Bonnet, 30; History of Pyrates, 211, 212, 343; Biddulph, Pirates of Malabar, 163–64; Rankin, Golden Age, 37. [back]
40. History of Pyrates, 212, 343; Snelgrave, New Account, 256; American Weekly Mercury (Philadelphia), May 30, 1723. The discussion of discipline takes into account not only the articles themselves but also observations on actual punishments from other sources. See also Stanley Richards, Black Bart (Llandybie, Wales: Christopher Davies, 1966), 47; “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA 1/99, ff. 45, 50; Boyer, ed., Political State, 28:152. [back]
41. Snelgrave, New Account, 257; Boyer, ed., Political State, 28:153. [back]
42. Trial of Van Vorst, 304; Trials of Eight Persons, 19, 21; R.A. Brock, ed., The Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood (Virginia Historical Society, Collections, n.s., 2 [Richmond, 1882]), 2:249; History of Pyrates, 260. [back]
43. Trials of Eight Persons, 21; Deposition of Samuel Cooper, 1718, CO 37/10, f. 35; History of Pyrates, 116, 196, 216, 228; Boyer, ed., Political State, 28, 148; Governor of Bermuda, quoted in Jolly Roger, by Patrick Pringle (New York: Norton, 1953), 181; Deposition of Richard Symes, 1721, CO 152/14, f. 33; American Weekly Mercury, March 17, 1720; New-England Courant (Boston), June 25, 1722. [back]
44. History of Pyrates, 167–68. [back]
45. Ibid., 298, 307, 352; Information of Thompson, HCA 1/55, f. 23. [back]
46. Information of John Stephenson (1721), HCA 1/55, f. 5; Snelgrave, New Account, 261; Information of Richard Capper (1718), HCA 1/54, f. 90; “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA 1/99, ff. 74, 152. [back]
47. “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA 1/99, ff. 153, 85, 23; Trials of Eight Persons, 8, 24; Examination of Richard Moor (1724), HCA 1/55, f. 96; History of Pyrates, 346. [back]
48. Dow and Edmonds, Pirates of New England, 278; Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Bennett to Mr. Popple, March 31, 1720, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1574–1739, CD-ROM, consultant editors Karen Ordahl Kupperman, John C. Appleby, and Mandy Banton (London: Routledge, published in association with the Public Record Office, 2000), item 33, vol. 32 (1720–21), 18–19; Hayward, ed., Remarkable Criminals, 37; History of Pyrates, 225, 313, 226, 342. [back]
49. The total of 3,600 is reached by multiplying the number of ship captains shown in the diagram by the average crew size of 79.5. See History of Pyrates, 41–42, 72, 121, 137, 138, 174, 210, 225, 277, 281, 296, 312, 352, 355, 671; New-England Courant, June 11, 1722; American Weekly Mercury, July 6, 1721, January 5 and September 16, 1725; Pringle, Jolly Roger, 181, 190, 244; Biddulph, Pirates of Malabar, 135, 187; Snelgrave, New Account, 196–97, 199, 272, 280; Shirley Carter Hughson, The Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce, 1670–1740, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 12 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univers
ity Press, 1894), 70; Boston News-Letter August 12–19, 1717, October 13–20 and November 10–17, 1718, February 4–11, 1725, June 30, 1726; Downing, Compendious History, 51, 101; Morris, “Ghost of Captain Kidd,” 282, 283, 296; Tryals of Bonnet, iii, 44–45; Dow and Edmonds, Pirates of New England, 117, 135, 201, 283, 287; Trials of Eight Persons, 23; Trial of Van Vorst (1717), Case of John Rose Archer and Others (1724), in Privateering and Piracy, ed. Jameson, 304, 341; Boyer, ed., Political State, 25:198–99; S. Charles Hill, “Notes on Piracy in Eastern Waters,” Indian Antiquary 52 (1923): 148, 150; Captain Mathew Musson to the Council of Trade and Plantations, July 5, 1717, CSPC, item 635, vol. 29 (1716–17), 338; Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Bennett to the Council of Trade and Plantations, June 8, 1719, CSPC, item 227, vol. 31 (1719–20), 118; John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1844), 2:227; Boston Gazette, April 27–May 4, 1724. [back]
50. Alexander Spotswood to the Board of Trade, June 16, 1724, Colonial Office (CO) 5/1319, Public Record Office, London. [back]
Chapter 5: “To Do Justice to Sailors”
1. This and the following three paragraphs are based on Captain Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn (1724, 1728; reprint, Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1972), 118–21 (hereafter cited as History of Pyrates), especially the “Letter from Captain Mackra, at Bombay,” dated November 16, 1720. Other important sources include Clement Downing, A Compendious History of the Indian Wars (1737; reprint, London: Oxford University Press, 1924), 44 ; “Narrative of Richard Lazenby of London” (1720), in “Episodes of Piracy in Eastern Waters,” by S. Charles Hill, Indian Antiquary 49 (1920): 57. [back]
2. Macrae returned to London in 1722 and was immediately rewarded by the East India Company for his courage. He was made deputy governor of the trading post on the Coromandel Coast of India and, soon after, governor of Madras. He returned to Britain with a fortune, which he used to buy several estates in Scotland. See Schonhorn’s notes in History of Pyrates, 671–72. [back]
3. Testimony of Thomas Checkley (1717), in Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents, ed. John Franklin Jameson (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 304; Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy (Boston, 1718), 11. [back]
4. E.J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movements in the l9th and 20th Centuries (New York: Praeger, 1959), 5, 17, 18, 27, 28; see also his Bandits (New York: Delacorte, 1969), 24–29. [back]
5. Alexander Spotswood to the Board of Trade, June 16, 1724, Colonial Office (CO) 5/1319, Public Record Office, London. [back]
6. The Tryals of Sixteen Persons for Piracy (Boston, 1726), 5; The Tryals of Major Stede Bonnet and Other Pirates (London, 1719), iii, iv; G.T. Crook, ed., The Complete Newgate Calendar (London: Navarre Society, 1926), 3:61; Shirley Carter Hughson, The Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce, 1670–1740, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science 12 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1894), 121; Hugh F. Rankin, The Golden Age of Piracy (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969), 28; History of Pyrates, 116, 342; Downing, Compendious History, 98. An analysis of the names of 44 pirate ships reveals the following patterns: 8 (18.2 percent) made reference to revenge; 7 (15.9 percent) were named Ranger or Rover, suggesting mobility and perhaps, as discussed later, a watchfulness over the way captains treated their sailors; and 5 (11.4 percent) referred to royalty. It is noteworthy that only 2 names referred to wealth. Other names indicated that places (Lancaster), unidentifiable people (Mary Anne), and animals (Black Robin) constituted less significant themes. Two names, Batchelor’s Delight and Batchelor’s Adventure, tend to support the probability (see chapter 3) that most pirates were unmarried. See History of Pyrates, 220, 313; William P. Palmer, ed., Calendar of Virginia State Papers (Richmond, 1875), 1:194. [back]
7. William Betagh, A Voyage round the World (London, 1728), 41. [back]
8. Petition of Randolph, Cane, and Halladay (1722), in Virginia State Papers, ed. Palmer, 202. [back]
9. “Proceedings of the Court held on the Coast of Africa” (1722), High Court of Admiralty (HCA) 1/99, f. 101; History of Pyrates, 338, 582; William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London, 1734), 212, 225; George Francis Dow and John Henry Edmonds, The Pirates of the New England Coast, 1630–1730 (Salem, Mass.: Marine Research Society, 1923), 301; Nathaniel Uring, The Voyages and Travels of Captain Nathaniel Uring, ed. Alfred Dewar (1726; reprint, London: Cassell, 1928), xxviii. [back]
10. Abel Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain (London, 1711–40), 28:149–50; History of Pyrates, 338, 352–53; Dow and Edmonds, Pirates of New England, 278; Betagh, Voyage round the World, 26. This torture may have exploited the meaning of the verb to sweat, which was “to drive hard, to overwork.” The construction of a literally vicious circle here seems hardly coincidental. See the Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. “sweat”; Tryals of Sixteen Persons, 14. Knowledge of this ritualized violence was evidently widespread. In 1722 Bristol merchants informed Parliament that pirates “study how to torture”; see Leo Francis Stock, ed., Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1930), 3:453. [back]
11. Crook, ed., Newgate Calendar, 59; Boyer, ed., Political State, 32, 272; Boston Gazette, October 24, 1720; Rankin, Golden Age, 35, 135, 148; [Cotton Mather], The Vial Poured Out upon the Sea: A Remarkable Relation of Certain Pirates (Boston, 1726), 21; John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1844), 2:227; the quotation is from the Boston Gazette, March 21, 1726. [back]
12. Snelgrave, New Account, 196, 199. This is a marvelous source written by an intelligent and perceptive man of long experience at sea. The book concerns mainly the slave trade, was addressed to the merchants of London, and apparently was not intended as popular reading. [back]
13. Ibid., 202–8. [back]
14. Ibid., 212, 225. Many perceived piracy as an activity akin to war. See also History of Pyrates, 168, 319. Francis R. Stark, in The Abolition of Privateering and the Declaration of Paris (New York, 1897), 14, 13, 22, claims that war in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries was understood more in terms of “individual enmity” than national struggle. Victors had “absolute right over (1) hostile persons and (2) hostile property.” This might partly explain pirates’ violence and destructiveness. [back]
15. Snelgrave, New Account, 241. For other examples of giving cargo to ship captains and treating them “civilly,” see Deposition of Robert Dunn, 1720, CO 152/13, f. 26; Deposition of Richard Symes, 1721, CO 152/14, f. 33; John Biddulph, The Pirates of Malabar; and, An Englishwoman ... in India (London: Smith, Elder, 1907), 139; R.A. Brock, ed., The Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood (Virginia Historical Society, Collections, n.s., 2 [Richmond, 1882]), 2:339–43; Boston Gazette, August 21, 1721; Hill, “Episodes of Piracy,” 57; Richard B. Morris, “The Ghost of Captain Kidd,” New York History 19 (1938): 283; Elizabeth Donnan, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave-Trade to America (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Institution, 1935), 4:96; Tryals of Bonnet, 13; Boyer, ed., Political State, 27:616; Deposition of Henry Bostock, December 9, 1717, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1574–1739, CD-ROM, consultant editors Karen Ordahl Kupperman, John C. Appleby, and Mandy Banton (London: Routledge, published in association with the Public Record Office, 2000), item 298 iii, vol. 30 (1717–18), 150–51 (hereafter CSPC); Boston News-Letter, November 14, 1720; and Spotswood to Craggs, May 20, 1720: “it is a common practice with those Rovers upon the pillageing of a Ship to make presents of other Commodity’s to such Masters as they take a fancy to in Lieu of that they have plundered them of” (CO 5/1319). [back]
16. Snelgrave, New Account, 241, 242, 243. [back]
17. William Snelgrave to Humphrey Morice, August 1, 1719, Humphrey Morice Papers from the Bank of England, Slave Trade Journals and Papers (Marlboro, Wiltshire,
England: Adam Mathew Publications, 1998), microfilm; Snelgrave, New Account, 275, 276, 284. [back]
18. History of Pyrates, 114, 115. [back]
19. Ibid. [back]
20. Stanley Richards, Black Bart (Llandybie, Wales: Christopher Davies, 1966), 77, based on “Proceedings of the Court,” HCA1/99, f. 101; CO137/14, f. 36. [back]
21. Information of Thomas Grant (1721), HCA 1/54, f. 120; HCA 1/30 (England); Snelgrave, New Account, 174. The question of the captain’s character helps to explain why pirates destroyed so many ships, as discussed in chapter 2. [back]
22. History of Pyrates, 338. [back]
23. Boston News-Letter, November 14, 1720; Boston Gazette, October 24, 1720; History of Pyrates, 607. [back]
24. History of Pyrates, 351; Jameson, ed., Privateering and Piracy, 341; Crook, ed., Newgate Calendar, 60; Benjamin Colman, It Is a Fearful Thing to Fall into the Hands of the Living God (Boston, 1726), 39. [back]
25. Deposition of Samuel Cooper, Mariner, of Bermuda (1718), CSPC, item 551 i, vol. 30 (1717–18), 263; Deposition of Edward North (1718), CO37/10, f. 37; History of Pyrates, 647; Tryals of Bonnet, 13; Snelgrave, New Account, 216–17; Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars (London: Methuen, 2003), 170. [back]