by Frank Sherry
With such enterprising privateers to contend with and fearing the French capacity to invade England even with a badly wounded fleet, the Admiralty kept the Royal Navy concentrated in European waters. With English losses in the war having already amounted to an estimated four thousand commercial and naval ships, the Admiralty had no intention of detaching a squadron of warships to Madagascar for the benefit of the East India Company.
The East India Company, therefore, had no choice but to carry on, to fight the pirate war as best it could, and to hope that it could hold out until the Royal Navy was finally able to come to its rescue.
For the foreseeable future, however, the nabobs of the East India Company, whether in Surat or in London, could only regard the pirate nation—secure in its Madagascar bastions—with the rage of rich men balked by circumstances beyond their power to alter.
For the pirates of Madagascar on the other hand, the future seemed to promise only continued success. With each passing month their confederacy grew stronger as new recruits to the outlaw brotherhood sailed into the eastern seas and took up the pirate life.
What was that life like?
Above all, it was a free life.
7
On the Account:1 A Pirate’s Life
In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, there was only one true democracy on earth: the pirate brotherhood forged in Madagascar.
Incongruous as it might appear, the cutthroats, who brutalized captives and who scoffed at the rules of society, were passionately democratic. They had a high regard for individual rights—and a burning hatred for the tyranny that had oppressed them in their days of “honest service.”
Unlike privateer crews, who were still only hired hands despite the fact that they received fair shares of their ship’s plunder, pirates regarded themselves as self-employed, collective owners of their own ships. They believed that since the crew of a pirate ship had acquired their vessel by their common effort, all should participate equally in making decisions aboard her. For this reason, pirates evolved a system that called for virtually all matters regarding life aboard their ship—whether to fight, where and when to anchor, division of spoils, even courses to be followed—to be subjected to a referendum, with each man, regardless of his rank, race, religion, or previous employment, entitled to an equal vote in the decision, as well as an equal right to voice his opinion. Only during battle did the pirates abandon this referendum system.
So pervasive was this insistence on individual rights—and so fearful were pirates of placing too much authority in the hands of any one man—that they even elected their captains and other high-ranking officers, retaining the right to depose them by vote whenever they wished. Occasionally, if the vote of a ship’s crew was too close to allow a clear-cut choice for captain, the crew would split into two different crews, and each go its own way. On one pirate ship, according to Defoe, a total of thirteen captains were elected during a cruise of only a few months.
The pirate system of democracy, bordering on anarchy, also required the elimination of all marks of distinction aboard ship. Officers wore no special uniforms and had no special privileges. Pirates regarded such perquisites, common aboard “honest” ships, as hateful reminders of the upper-class despotism most of them had had to endure in their previous employment. They would permit none of it aboard their own ships.
For example, even though the captain was usually permitted a cabin of his own as a mark of his crew’s esteem, he could not claim exclusive use of it. Crewmen could enter anytime they wished, and they could make use of any of the captain’s furnishings as well, including dishes and cutlery.
As Defoe says of a pirate captain’s “privileges”: “They only permit him to be captain, on condition that they may be captain over him.”
While the chance to win a treasure usually supplied the initial and immediate lure that attracted honest seamen to piracy, an objective examination of the lives actually led by pirates makes it clear that the real lure, implicit in the outlaw nation’s values, rules, and style of life, was the chance that piracy offered to ordinary sailors to live as free men. In a world that permitted personal liberty only to the well-born and the wealthy—and tyrannized cruelly over the poor—the pirate brotherhood offered the common seaman a passage to liberty and self-respect, provided he possessed the courage to defy the law that would punish him severely if it caught him.2 Most pirates, though simple men, realized full well that the key to the free life they wanted was their system of democratic decision making.
To ensure that democracy would prevail among them, almost all pirate crews subscribed to specific rules of behavior, which they embodied in “ship’s articles,” covenants that were, in effect, rough constitutions that spelled out the rights, duties, and powers of a ship’s officers and crew. Every officer and crew member aboard a ship had to swear to abide by the articles.
Although the articles might differ in various particulars from ship to ship, their general aim was always to safeguard individual liberties, especially the right of each crew member to a trial by his peers and an equal voice in the ship’s affairs.
The articles aboard Bartholomew Roberts’s ship, as reported by Defoe, were typical:
I. Every man shall have an equal vote in affairs of moment. He shall have an equal title to the fresh provisions or strong liquors at any time seized, and shall use them at pleasure unless a scarcity may make it necessary for the common good that a retrenchment may be voted.
II. Every man shall be called fairly in turn by the list on board of prizes, because over and above their proper share, they are allowed a shift of clothes. But if they defraud the company to the value of even one dollar in plate, jewels or money, they shall be marooned. If any man rob another he shall have his nose and ears slit, and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships.
III. None shall game for money either with dice or cards.
IV. The lights and candles should be put out at eight at night, and if any of the crew desire to drink after that hour they shall sit upon the open deck without lights.
V. Each man shall keep his piece, cutlass and pistols at all times clean and ready for action.
VI. No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man shall be found seducing any of the latter sex and carrying her to sea in disguise he shall suffer death.
VII. He that shall desert the ship or his quarters in time of battle shall be punished by death or marooning.
VIII. None shall strike another on board the ship, but every man’s quarrel shall be ended on shore by sword or pistol in this manner. At the word of command from the quartermaster, each man being previously placed back to back, shall turn and fire immediately. If any man do not, the quartermaster shall knock the piece out of his hand. If both miss their aim they shall take to their cutlasses, and he that draweth first blood shall be declared the victor.
IX. No man shall talk of breaking up their way of living till each has a share of £1,000. Every man who shall become a cripple or lose a limb in the service shall have 800 pieces of eight from the common stock and for lesser hurts proportionately.
X. The captain and the quartermaster shall each receive two shares of a prize, the master gunner and boatswain, one and one-half shares, all other officers one and one quarter, and private gentlemen of fortune one share each.
XI. The musicians shall have rest on the Sabbath Day only by right. On all other days by favour only.
Whenever a man joined the pirate crew he had to take an oath on a Bible or an ax that he would obey the ship’s articles.
Although the idea of pirate articles probably originated with privateering agreements covering division of spoils, the rules aboard pirate ships usually differed markedly from those aboard privateers, especially when it came to circumscribing the powers of various officers, and deciding policy by vote of the crew.
No privateer captain would ever have allowed the crew to restrict his power over his own ship. Nor would most priv
ateer captains set up a system of dueling to settle quarrels.
One other important aspect of pirate life, covered only sketchily in most ship’s articles but crucial to good order aboard ship, was the pirate judicial system. This rested on the concept of public trial—and upon the indelible pirate principle of majority decision.
As rough-edged as it was, the pirate judicial procedure was far more just than that of honest society where well-fed judges condemned defendants to hang for stealing a loaf of bread or a bit of cheese.
In general it was the quartermaster aboard pirate ships who had responsibility for enforcing the laws. Although serious offenses were always tried before a pirate jury, the quartermaster could order punishment without trial for minor offenses such as quarreling, mistreatment of equipment, or neglect of duties. The quartermaster even had the power to inflict a flogging on a miscreant, providing a majority of the crew approved. If there was a fight between two crewmen, the quartermaster had the duty of trying to reconcile the disputants. If he failed to attain reconciliation, it was the quartermaster’s duty—as stipulated in most ship’s articles—to take the quarreling men ashore and let them settle it among themselves with “sword and pistol”, until one or the other drew blood.
Defoe reports one lively, flavorful example of how pirates conducted their trials. The incident also illustrates how free ordinary crewmen were to participate in the proceedings.
The trial took place aboard the ship of Captain Bartholomew Roberts, and involved one Henry Glasby, a skilled “sailing master” and navigator whom Roberts had impressed into service aboard his ship because he was in dire need of Glasby’s skill. After a fair length of service with Roberts, Glasby had jumped ship in the West Indies—a capital offense. Caught later, he was tried for his life by his shipmates.
Glasby’s trial was held belowdecks with all members of the crew crowded around, drinking rum and smoking. There was both a “prosecutor” and a “defense attorney.”
In Glasby’s case, the evidence was overwhelmingly against him. He had jumped ship, and there was no denying it. But before the pirate judges could pass sentence, one of them—a tough old salt who called himself Valentine Ashplant—declared that he wished to say something on behalf of Glasby. Allowed to speak, Ashplant declared: “By God, Glasby shall not die. Damn me, if he shall!”
This declaration, passionate as it was, did not sway the other judges, and so Ashplant spoke up again, this time at greater length: “God damn ye, gentlemen! I am as good a man as the best of you. Damn my soul, if ever I turned my back on any man in my life or ever will, by God! Glasby is an honest fellow, notwithstanding this misfortune, and I love him, Devil damn me if I don’t! I hope he will live and repent of what he has done; but damn me, if he must die, I will die along with him!”
To drive home his point, Ashplant then took out a pair of loaded pistols and leveled them at his fellow jurists. Glasby was acquitted.
Other members of Roberts’s crew, who had apparently accompanied Glasby in his attempt to escape the ship and who had also been recaptured, were less lucky than the sailing master. They had no Valentine Ashplant to argue for them behind a pair of cocked pistols. They were convicted. Their execution by firing squad followed within minutes.
Such punishments, while not rare aboard pirate vessels, were always reserved for the most serious offenses. For the most part, the punishments that pirates employed depended on the ship, and the nature of the crime.
For example, most ship’s companies regarded it as a serious felony to smoke a pipe without a cap, or to carry a lighted candle without a lantern in the hold, especially because the feared calamity of fire at sea was one that could almost always be avoided with the prudent use of open flame. Yet as serious as it was to endanger the ship by careless use of fire, most ship’s companies did not make it a capital offense but prescribed what was called the “punishment of Moses” for the crime—“40 stripes, less one, on the bare back.”
Murder, however, was always a capital crime if it could be proved. Many ships prescribed, as the penalty for murder, that the murderer and his victim be roped together and thrown overboard. This was the punishment called for in the regulations of the Royal Navy as well.
Aboard the ships of Captain George Low the articles stipulated: “If any of the company shall adjure or speak anything tending to the separation, or breaking up of the company, or shall by any means offer or endeavor to desert or quit the company, that person shall be shot to death by the quartermaster’s order, without the sentence of a court martial.”
But the most common punishment by far was marooning.
The term itself comes from the Spanish word cimarrones, meaning “people who live in the mountains.” Eventually it came to mean “fugitives.” In time the name was corrupted to Maroons and applied to fugitive black slaves who had married Indian women—and had formed a Maroon community in the West Indies. (Only much later did the word maroon come to mean a specific color, presumably the fancied skin color of the black-Indian Maroons of the Caribbean.)
For pirates the punishment called marooning consisted of putting an offender ashore on some deserted island, in effect making him a Maroon or a fugitive—and leaving him to die. Usually the offender was provided with a pistol so that when hunger and thirst became unbearable, he could kill himself. It was a punishment that pirates usually applied only to traitors, and only after a majority vote.
Although there are a number of authenticated cases of men who survived marooning, or—more commonly—had the good luck to be rescued, most marooned men died alone and anonymously since the “islands” on which they were marooned were as a rule no more than tiny spits of sand, often under water at high tide.
Because of their predilection for this particular punishment, pirates themselves were sometimes called “marooners,” especially in the West Indies.
There were, of course, times when democratic procedure aboard a pirate ship had to give way to practicality—in battle action, for example.
When the ship was engaged in a fight—and only then—the captain became the absolute master aboard her. According to Defoe, his power was “uncontrollable in chase or in battle, drubbing, cutting or even shooting anyone who does deny his command.”
Once the fight was over, however, the captain had to revert once again to his usual position of “first among equals.” Yet there were exceptions even to this fundamental and general rule. Captains like Henry Every, Bartholomew Roberts, Thomas Tew, and several others achieved such dominance over their crews by virtue of superior courage, cunning, or leadership, that they received from their men not only the captain’s double share of booty but a measure of respect and privilege not granted to lesser pirate captains.
For the most part pirates chose their captains on the basis of merit. Because of the dangers inherent in their calling, they could not afford to apply any criterion other than ability to the selection of their leaders.
It is hardly surprising then, given the rough social Darwinism of a pirate ship, that outstanding leaders sometimes came to the fore—and claimed privileges not normally accorded to the common run of pirate captains.
Yet even these competent, charismatic few were ultimately under the rule of the majority. Every, for example, knew better than to interfere in his crew’s rape of the Gang-I-Sawai. Tew understood how important it was to gain the consent of his crew before striking out for the Indian Ocean. Despite their respect for him, Roberts’s men insisted on having free access to his cabin—and Roberts knew better than to forbid what he could not prevent.
As Roberts’s own lieutenant, Walter Kennedy, once remarked about the relationship between captain and crew: “They chose a captain from amongst themselves who held little more than that title.”
Pirates had still another custom designed to limit the power of captains. This was the elevation of the ship’s quartermaster to a position of virtual equality with the captain.
The quartermaster, who was usually a veteran sail
or and a skilled navigator, was also elected to his post and was expected to serve as a counterbalance to the captain. Toward that end, the crew assigned a number of critical duties to him—in addition to his role as chief judicial officer.
It was his duty to handle the helm when the ship was in action, and to lead the boarding party when a prize was taken. He had the responsibility for deciding what plunder—in addition to the obvious jewels, gold, and silver—was to be taken from the prize and transferred to the pirate vessel. (The quartermaster usually selected booty—silks, drugs, spices—that would fetch the best prices from pirate brokers in Madagascar or colonial ports.) It was also the quartermaster’s job to keep a record of the plunder taken and to see that every man received his fair share. On some vessels the quartermaster was so well respected that he was in command whenever the ship was not in action.
Other posts on board a pirate vessel usually paralleled those of the Royal Navy. Only a few of these lower-echelon officers were elected, however. Most of them were appointed by the captain or the quartermaster on the basis of their special skills. One of the most important was the sailing master who was responsible for navigating the ship and keeping the sails properly trimmed. The boatswain was charged with the maintenance of the vessel, including provisioning. The gunner was responsible for keeping both the cannon and the crews that served them in fighting condition. Other important figures in the hierarchy of the ship were the carpenter, the sailmaker, and the surgeon.
Although surgeons were always in short supply, and always in great demand, they were—like most physicians of the day—all but helpless against the diseases from which pirates suffered most: syphilis, yellow fever, and malaria. As for surgery, it usually consisted of the amputation of a limb, and was performed as often by the carpenter as by the surgeon.
By far the most popular members of any pirate crew were the musicians, men who could coax a song out of a pipe or a horn, and who were often excused from the most onerous duties in recognition of their tuneful talent.
