Pirate Hunter of the Caribbean

by David Cordingly

  In Port Royal the captain of HMS Diamond reported that sailors were deserting his ship at the rate of five a day. He was concerned that if he stayed a week longer in harbour he would not have enough crew to sail the ship home. In a report to the Admiralty he observed that the mariners in the vicinity were ‘all mad to go a wrecking, as they term it, for the generality of the island think they have [the] right to fish upon the wrecks, though the Spaniards have not quitted them’.20 Lord Hamilton, the Governor of Jamaica, was determined to benefit from the gold rush and, after failing to persuade the commanders of the naval ships at Port Royal to head for Florida, he decided to send privateers to loot the wrecks. He had for some time been assembling a small fleet of armed merchantmen as a defence against raids by Spanish privateers and pirates, and he had no difficulty in persuading the captains of two of these local vessels to ‘go a wrecking’. Their privateering commissions officially directed them ‘by force of arms to seize, take and apprehend all pyratical ships and vessels’ but this was used as a cover for what amounted to an unofficial treasure-hunting expedition.

  The leader of this expedition was Henry Jennings, ‘a man of good understanding, and a good estate’, who was the commander of the forty-ton ship Barsheba, which was armed with 8 carriage guns and carried a crew of eighty men. He was accompanied by the thirty-five-ton sloop Eagle, with 12 guns and eighty men under the command of John Wills.21

  Near the entrance of the Florida Straits the privateers intercepted a Spanish mail boat. Her commander, Pedro de la Vega, not only knew where the main camp for the Spanish salvage operations was situated but he was persuaded to lead them to the spot. As the three ships sailed north along the coast they passed the remnants of two of the ships wrecked in the storm as well as the remains of camp fires and wooden crosses marking the graves of victims of the disaster. By the evening of 26 December 1715 they were in the vicinity of the Spanish camp, a fortified enclosure guarded by some sixty soldiers.

  Jennings treated the raid like a military operation. He anchored the ships offshore and waited till the early hours of the morning to make his attack. One hundred and fifty armed men were selected for the raid and were divided into three companies. Armed with muskets and cutlasses, they rowed ashore in three boats and landed at daybreak. With a drummer and a flag bearer at the head of each company they marched towards the camp, causing such panic that many of the Spaniards fled. Admiral Don Francisco de Salmon realised he stood no chance against such a force and surrendered. He asked Jennings whether war had been declared but was told that the privateers had simply come to fish on the wrecks and claim the mountain of wealth. The Spanish admiral declared that the treasure belonged to His Catholic Majesty the King of Spain. He offered them 25,000 pieces of eight if they would leave peacefully but the offer was refused. He had no alternative but to reveal the whereabouts of the chests of silver which had been buried within his camp. The privateers sailed away with treasure valued at 120,000 pieces of eight as well as four bronze swivel guns.

  The Barsheba and Eagle headed first for the Bahamas, the nearest islands under nominal British control. After a brief stay in the harbour of Nassau they sailed on to Jamaica and arrived at Port Royal on 26 January 1716. It was evident to Lord Hamilton that the very large amount of treasure brought back in such a short time could not have been salvaged by fishing on the wrecks but must have been stolen from the Spanish ashore. He would later declare that he took no share of the treasure himself ‘for that I heard it was taken from the shore’, but he made no move to arrest Jennings and White for exceeding their commission and committing piracy.

  Two months later Jennings headed off on another cruise to the Spanish treasure wrecks, this time accompanied by the fifty-ton sloop Mary, and the smaller sloops Discovery and Coco Nut. Off the north-eastern coast of Cuba he encountered Sam Bellamy and Paul Williams, two pirates in command of a band of men who had been attacking small merchant ships using piraguas. The privateers and the pirates joined forces to capture a handsome French merchant ship, the St Marie, which was commanded and part-owned by Captain D’Escoubet of La Rochelle.22 The ship was cut out from her anchorage in naval fashion by Bellamy’s pirates, who came alongside in their native canoes and let loose a fusillade of musket shot. Most of the crew of the St Marie were ashore and D’Escoubet surrendered without firing a shot. The pirates found themselves in possession of a ship of 16 guns, which they later increased to 32 guns, as well as a valuable cargo and 30,000 pieces of eight. To maintain the now shaky pretence that he was still a legitimate privateer Jennings forced D’Escoubet to write a letter to Lord Hamilton which assured him that ‘those gentlemen treated me very civilly’ and explaining that the privateers ‘took my vessel because she was fit for the expedition they were going on’.23

  Before returning to Jamaica with his prize, Jennings again called in at Nassau to stock up on water and provisions and divide up the loot. The harbour and the town which stretched along the waterfront had become home to an ever-increasing number of pirates and was rapidly gaining a reputation as a den of iniquity. While Jennings was ashore his crew ransacked the cargo of his French prize. By the time he returned and managed to restore order much of the loose coin and some of the cargo was missing. He decided to cut his losses and headed back to the Spanish treasure wrecks. His arrival in the Barsheba with the St Marie and another Jamaica privateer apparently frightened off the Spanish guardships because an observer later reported that twenty-four English vessels, some from Jamaica and some from Bermuda, were fishing on the wrecks, presided over by the St Marie, which would ‘not permit either French or Spaniards to come here’. When Jennings eventually returned to Jamaica he received a hostile reception. The Spanish Governor of Havana had learnt that Lord Hamilton was part-owner of the ships which had raided the treasure camp on the Florida coast. He demanded the return of the treasure and the punishment of the perpetrators. And the French Governor of Hispaniola had sent a delegation to Jamaica which included Captain D’Escoubet, demanding that the St Marie and her cargo, and another stolen French vessel, be restored to their rightful owners.

  In addition to his involvement in the looting of the treasure wrecks Lord Hamilton was suspected, with good reason, of supporting the Jacobite plot of 1715 to dethrone King George I and replace him with James Stuart, the son of the deposed King James II. Hamilton was related to many of the Scottish leaders of the rebellion and his enemies believed that he had intended to use his flotilla of privateers to further the Jacobite cause in Jamaica and other West Indian colonies. In July 1716 the British warship Adventure sailed into Port Royal bearing an arrest warrant for Hamilton. He was to be sent back to England and replaced as Governor of Jamaica by Peter Heywood. A few weeks later another ship brought a proclamation which declared that Henry Jennings and his associates were henceforth to be regarded as pirates. By this time the former privateers were back in the Bahamas, their ships and their crews swelling the numbers of vessels and disaffected men who would pose a serious threat to the trade of the West Indies.

  Meanwhile the Spanish had decided to seek revenge for the attacks on the treasure wrecks by sending a force to root out the mainly English logwood cutters from the coastal jungles of the Bay of Campeche and the Bay of Honduras. Dampier had spent a year as a young man working alongside these men who toiled in the most difficult conditions imaginable. On the banks of creeks infested with alligators and mosquitoes they were subject to intense heat and tropical storms. ‘During the wet season, the land where the logwood grows is so overflowed, that they step from their beds into the water perhaps two feet deep, and continue standing in the wet all day, till they go to bed again.’ Dampier described the logwood cutters as strong and sturdy and able to carry burdens of three or four hundredweight. Most of them were former sailors and when they were not earning a hard living from felling trees they would spend days on end getting blind drunk on rum. Unable to continue this work, not surprisingly they turned to piracy. In the words of Captain Johnson, ‘being made
desperate by their misfortunes, and meeting with the Pyrates, they took on with them’. And Johnson neatly summed up the circumstances which created the pirate community at Nassau: ‘The rovers being now pretty strong, they consulted together about getting some place of retreat, where they might lodge their wealth, clean and repair their ships, and make themselves a kind of abode. They were not long in resolving, but fixed upon the Island of Providence, the most considerable of the Bahama Islands …’24

  8

  Governor of the Bahamas

  On 5 September 1716 an alarming sheaf of documents arrived on the desk of Mr Burchett at the Admiralty Office in Whitehall. Unlike the tedious complaints which were regularly received from governors and merchants in the Caribbean, these documents contained detailed information which could not be ignored. The documents came from Alexander Spotswood, the Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, and were characteristic of the man who would acquire a formidable reputation as the bane of the pirates and the nemesis of Blackbeard. He enclosed the sworn deposition of John Vickers, a former resident of the Bahamas who had fled to Virginia. Vickers described the recent raids of Jennings on the Spanish wrecks and shipping, and gave a disturbing account of the violent men who were terrorising the inhabitants of New Providence.1 Spotswood also enclosed his letter of instructions to Captain Beverley, commander of the sloop Virgin, which commissioned him to investigate the current situation in the Bahamas (the number of inhabitants and the state of the forts) and ordered him to see whether any of the wrecked treasure ships were near any coasts or islands belonging to Britain and, if they were, to recover and save as much as he could and ‘to assert the claim of His Majesty to the said wrecks by the Law of Nations as being within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty of Great Britain’.2

  In his covering letter Spotswood provided a masterly account of recent events in the Bahamas. He described the settlement of the pirates on New Providence, the robberies they had inflicted on the French and Spanish, and the likely consequences of allowing such a crew of robbers to establish themselves on the island. He mentioned the capture of a ship of 32 guns by the pirates: ‘What a vessel of this force, manned by a company of such desperadoes, may be able to attempt, is easy to imagine.’ He considered that all these matters should be brought to the attention of His Majesty and his ministers and concluded that it was in the interest of Great Britain ‘that some Government be speedily established in the Island of Providence and the place made defensible against the sudden attempt of pirates or the neighbouring Spaniards, who have so often obstructed the settlement thereof’.3

  Spotswood had also ordered Captain Howard, the commander of HMS Shoreham on the Virginia station, to sail down to St Augustin on the Florida coast. He was to deliver various letters and investigate and report on the Spanish wrecks. Captain Howard’s report was received by Mr Burchett at the Admiralty a few weeks after he had received Spotswood’s documents. Captain Howard described how a number of sloops, with commissions from the Governor of Jamaica, were fishing on the wrecks and had gone ashore and taken 20,000 pieces of eight from the Spaniards. He said that the crews of three of these sloops had subsequently become pirates. ‘One Hornigold, Jennings and Fernando who got two hundred men and are joined by a French man … they harbour at Providence where they re-victual and clean.’4 In his view two small frigates or sloops would be able to rout them out before they acquired more strength.

  The Lords of the Admiralty were so concerned about the letters from Governor Spotswood and Captain Howard that Mr Burchett was instructed to pass them on to the Council of Trade and Plantations and to George, Prince of Wales, who was acting as regent while his father, King George I, was paying an extended visit to Hanover. His Royal Highness ordered the Council of Trade and Plantations to consider what course the Government should take ‘to dislodge those profligate fellows or pirates that may have possessed themselves of the Island of Providence’.5

  Exactly how Woodes Rogers got to hear of these developments is not known, nor can we be sure whether it was his idea to put his name forward as Governor of the Bahamas or whether he was approached by some of the influential merchants of London and Bristol who traded with the West Indies. What we do know is that a key figure in the subsequent proposals for dealing with the problems of the Bahamas was a wealthy London merchant and shipowner called Samuel Buck. He had sent two of his ships, the Samuel and the Sarah, to New Providence in April 1716. They carried cargoes for trading but their captains were also instructed ‘to view the state of that place to consider what improvement could be made, and how the pirates might best be dislodged, and a trade settled’.6 The Sarah had been captured by pirates but when the Samuel returned Buck decided to set up a partnership with the aim of establishing a new settlement on Providence. He and five copartners would raise the money to send out ships, workmen and soldiers, and restore government to the islands, which had been sorely neglected in recent years.7 In 1670 King Charles II had handed responsibility for the Bahamas to six aristocrats, including the Duke of Albemarle, Lord Craven and Lord Berkeley. As ‘absolute Lords and Proprietors’ they were given authority to enact laws and to appoint governors or deputy governors of the islands.8 The governors whom they had appointed had failed to establish their authority or improve the defences, with the result that the islands had four times been attacked and plundered by the Spanish and were now without any form of government.

  It may have been Samuel Buck who suggested that Rogers apply for the post of governor, or it may be that Rogers heard about the problems of the Bahamas and saw his opportunity. What is certain is that he abandoned his Madagascar project and by July 1717 was lobbying for the Bahamas post. He entered into partnership with the other sponsors and addressed a letter to the Lords Proprietors explaining that he and his partners had raised funds for an armed merchant ship and were proposing to take her to the Bahamas ‘with such smaller vessels as shall be necessary to carry all things fit for a new settlement’.9 The merchant ship would act as guardship to the settlement while fortifications were improved and barracks built for the garrison. He asked their lordships to grant him and his partners a twenty-one-year lease, on certain conditions – for instance, for the first seven years they would pay only a peppercorn rent.

  Rogers also approached King George. He sent a paper which set out the current problems of the Bahamas and his offer to proceed to New Providence with a ship and a garrison to restore order. He also sent the King a petition in which he pointed out that he was ‘conversant with remote undertakings’ and was therefore emboldened to request that His Majesty might be graciously pleased to appoint him governor of the islands.10 His proposals were accompanied by a petition signed by fifty-six merchants who traded with different parts of the King’s dominions in America and had suffered severe losses at the hands of the pirates. They stressed the need to restore order in the Bahamas, which had been so often plundered by the enemy during the late war and were now at the mercy of loose people and pirates ‘to the utter ruin of the industrious inhabitants and to the great prejudice of trade in general …’.11

  In July 1717 another group of merchants sent a memorial to Joseph Addison, the poet and essayist who had co-founded the Spectator. In addition to his work as a writer and journalist Addison was also a Member of Parliament and had recently been appointed as one of the commissioners of the Council of Trade and Plantations. The merchants informed Addison of the strategic importance of the Bahamas, ‘the key to the Gulf of Florida’, and of the danger from the French and Spanish as well as the pirates. They expressed their support for Rogers’ proposals for settling and securing the islands, and pointed out that he was a person of integrity and capacity. They recommended him ‘as a person every way qualified for such an undertaking’.12

  On 3 September Addison was able to report to the Council of Trade and Plantations that the King had agreed to a number of measures to deal with the situation in the West Indies. The Admiralty would be sending one fourth-rate and two fifth-rate men-of-war �
�to suppress the pirates and protect the trade’. A proclamation was to be prepared to announce the royal pardon to those pirates who surrendered themselves within a certain time. And, being very well satisfied with the character given of Captain Woodes Rogers ‘by the most considerable merchants of London and Bristol’, the King was pleased to appoint Captain Rogers to be Governor of the Bahama Islands ‘to drive the pirates from their lodgement at Harbour Island and Providence’.13

  The newspapers duly reported that some men-of-war were to be sent to the West Indies and gave details of the royal pardon being promised to the pirates who surrendered, but they made no mention at this stage of Rogers’ appointment. There had been a rash of robberies by highwaymen and others during that year and the details of these and the subsequent executions dominated the London news. The savage response of the authorities to these domestic crimes is worth noting because it puts in context the massed hangings of pirates which would take place in the colonies between 1718 and 1726.14 In January 1717 three highwaymen had robbed the Bristol Mail coach at Brentford. They were caught two days later and were sentenced to death following their trial at the Old Bailey. They were hanged at Tyburn on 20 May. Eight people were hanged for burglary three weeks later. In August four people were hanged at Maidstone and a week later seven were executed at Kingston-upon-Thames, including a husband and wife found guilty of coining. The woman was burnt to death. Fourteen men and a woman were sentenced to death and were executed on 17 October. On 18 October the Irish Mail coach was held up by five highwaymen on Finchley Common, north of London. They robbed all the passengers, including a lady ‘whom they stripped of her gold watch, rings, clothes, smock and all, leaving her naked, the coachman being obliged to wrap her in his greatcoat, and the lady forced to go home in that condition’.15 Four of the five highwaymen were caught and later hanged. Lesser punishments recorded by the London newspapers included burning malefactors in the hand, public whippings, the pillory, fines and imprisonment in Newgate or Marshalsea prisons.