Raiders and Rebels

by Frank Sherry

  In Jamaica, however, the enterprising ex-privateers were shocked to discover that they were not welcomed with open arms. The Spanish had complained to the governor of Jamaica, pointing out that there was a peace treaty in force. They demanded the return of their silver.

  Since the war was long over, the English governor of Jamaica, according to Defoe, let the freebooters know that he would not let them go unpunished.

  Says Defoe: “Therefore they saw a Necessity of shifting for themselves; so to make bad worse, they went to Sea again, tho without disposing of their Cargo to good Advantage, and furnishing themselves with Ammunition, Provisions, etc., and being thus made desperate, they turned Pyrates.”

  Eventually each of the captains involved in the raid on the Spanish Silver made his way to Nassau. Some of them became major figures in the roguish republic.

  Although Spanish treasure was the favorite prey of the New Providence raiders, galleons overflowing with gold and silver were relatively rare. As a result, the largest number of Nassau brigands concentrated on the trade between England and her American colonies.

  So heavy were the concentrations of pirates who preyed on this commerce that James Logan, colonial secretary of Pennsylvania, wrote in 1717 that he estimated that there were at least fifteen hundred pirates cruising at any one time off the coast of North America and that no one could travel safely by ship.

  The governor of Antigua wrote in 1718: “I do not think it advisable to go from hence except upon an extraordinary occasion, not knowing but that I may be intercepted by the pirates.”

  Commented Defoe: “The Pyrates in the West-Indies have been so formidable and numerous, that they have interrupted the Trade of Europe into those Parts; and our English Merchants in particular, have suffered more by their Depredations, than by the united Force of France and Spain in the late War.”

  One peculiar effect of the pirate presence in the Caribbean—often complained of by planters and merchants—was the unrest it spread among the black slaves who worked in the cane fields of the sugar islands. These slaves, hearing that they would be welcomed in the pirate republic, began to run away in ever-increasing numbers, bent on becoming pirates.

  One of the former colonists on New Providence, who had fled from the pirate invasion of his island, reported that slaves in the islands had become “very impudent and insulting,” and that many planters feared an insurrection.

  The largest recorded mass escape of black slaves at this time took place in Martinique, where fifty blacks, supposedly stirred up by a white man, had risen against their French master and had fled the island “to seek a career in piracy.”

  Many runaway slaves did eventually find their way to Nassau. And blacks formed a substantial minority in a number of pirate crews based on New Providence. In fact, blacks, who usually feared a return to slavery even more than they feared death, were often far more willing than white pirates to fight and die in defense of their ships and their freedom.

  Inevitably, as the pirate republic flourished, powerful personalities and dominant figures emerged from the ranks of the brigands who flocked to the free life in Nassau.

  Among those who, around 1715, began to use Nassau as their home port was the fierce giant, Edward Thatch, or Teach, who was soon to become better known as “Blackbeard,” and who would be wanted by the authorities from Honduras to Nova Scotia. Bloody and cruel, Blackbeard was a terror not only to his victims but even to fellow pirates who consorted with him in taverns and brothels.

  Another pirate captain who made his headquarters in Nassau and who later became infamous was Edward England. An effective privateer in the War of the Spanish Succession, England was unusual among the pirates of Nassau in that he did not believe in mistreating captives. Described as a somber and gentlemanly man, England had been one of those involved in raiding the Spanish Silver in the Gulf of Florida. A man of unquestioned bravery, England would eventually forsake New Providence, lead his crew in an epic battle with two merchant vessels in the Indian Ocean, and end his days in poverty.

  Another captain who came to Nassau around this time was Christopher Condent, who was destined to make one of the greatest scores in the history of piracy. A clever manipulator of men, Condent had been only an ordinary seamen aboard a privateer during the war, but he soon rose to a position of leadership among the men of New Providence.

  Other captains who rose to prominence in the Republic of Rogues were Ben Hornigold, captain of the sloop Mary, who was to end his career on the side of the law—and Charles Vane, who became one of the most successful and active of the Nassau pirates.

  A veteran of the war like most of the other Nassau pirates, Vane too had participated in the raid on the Spanish Silver. A stubborn and daring—but prudent—man, Vane specialized in preying on shipping bound for North American ports and was among the first of the New Providence captains to cruise off the coast of the Carolinas. Vane often sailed with other captains in a flotilla, regarding this as the most effective way to ensure numerical superiority in battle. Although he was a close friend of the explosive Blackbeard, he knew better than to sail in company with the black-visaged giant whose enormous appetites and erratic behavior made him a less-than-reliable ally.

  A man who never allowed rage, drink, or lust for women to cloud his judgment, Vane enjoyed years of success as a Nassau captain because he knew when to fight and when to run—a trait that eventually caused some of his crew to question his leadership qualities. But in the early days of the pirate republic Vane was one of the best known—and most successful—of the New Providence captains.

  Still another ex-privateer who came to Nassau during this era and later became notorious was “Calico Jack” Rackam. A brash figure fond of splashy waistcoats, bright ribbons, and colorful breeches, the handsome Rackam was nicknamed by his fellow pirates Calico Jack because of his taste for loud garments made of that material.

  Rackam’s rise in the piratical ranks began some time around 1717 when he was elected quartermaster aboard Vane’s ship. But his real fame and reputation was to come later when he met and wooed a flamboyantly beautiful Irish lass named Anne Bonny—and took her pirating with him.

  Anne, described as a girl of “fierce and courageous temper,” also came to New Providence around 1715 or 1716, as the wife of a poor young sailor. Although she was only sixteen at the time, this future mistress of Calico Jack yearned for the free life of adventure at sea, and despite her married state, she often sought out the company of pirate captains like Vane, Blackbeard, and Hornigold, among others, drinking with them and soaking up their way of life.

  When Anne Bonny eventually met and fell in love with the swaggering Calico Jack, she fought at his side as fiercely as any male pirate.

  Not all the pirates who operated in the waters around New Providence were as romantic as Anne Bonny or as colorful as Calico Jack Rackam or as prudent as Charles Vane—or as fierce as the terrible Blackbeard.

  A few were not even competent. There was, for example, the case of the bumptious Stede Bonnet, who turned pirate to escape an unhappy marriage.

  When Bonnet, a paunchy retired army major, decided to go pirating, he began by purchasing a ship instead of stealing one—a most unpiratical thing to do.

  Bonnet was of good English family and owned a successful sugar plantation on the island of Barbados, where, according to Defoe, he was regarded as “a gentleman that has had the Advantage of a liberal Education, and being generally esteemed a Man of Letters.”

  Middle-aged, married, and deemed one of the leading men of Bridgetown, the capital of Barbados, Bonnet had suddenly announced his intention of becoming a pirate. He had then gone into the taverns of Bridgetown and had signed up some seventy hands to serve aboard a little sloop he had just bought for his pirating venture.

  Defoe says, with his usual insight, that the major’s decision to go a-pirating was due to a “Disorder of the mind.”

  In any case, after signing up his seventy crewmen, Bonnet had christened
his ship the Revenge, apparently believing this to be a fashionable pirate name. He had then ordered his men to lash ten cannon to the ship’s single gun deck. He was ready to sail—as soon as his crew signed the articles he had drawn up. These articles were as unorthodox and unpiratical as the major himself. They called for Bonnet to pay his crew wages rather than shares of plunder. It may be that Bonnet thought that in this way he could—despite his lack of experience at sea—maintain some kind of ascendancy over the roughnecks who crewed his little sloop. Whatever he thought, his crew signed on cheerfully enough—and Major Bonnet, to the horror of his wife and neighbors, set off in his little Revenge from Bridgetown harbor, bent on joining the pirates of Nassau in the sweet trade.

  Despite his less-than-perfect knowledge of the sea, Bonnet had some immediate success preying on small ships off the North American coast.

  In time Bonnet would fall in with the formidable Blackbeard himself, who, contemptuous of the chubby ex-major, would take over command of Bonnet’s ship and forcibly join Bonnet’s forces to his own in a fateful cruise off the Carolinas.

  But in 1716 that event was still far off and Bonnet was free to try to emulate the many competent captains of Nassau who were already ravaging shipping from Honduras to Nova Scotia.

  Although, except for the occasional Spanish treasure ship, the Caribbean and the American coast offered no rich quarry comparable to the ships of the Great Mogul or the East India Company, the New Providence pirates made up for this lack of quality by taking enormous quantities of booty.

  By the end of 1717 the Nassau pirates had so savaged Caribbean shipping that the governor of Jamaica bitterly bemoaned the economic toll that the pirates were taking on his island’s trade: “There is hardly one ship or vessel coming in or going out of this island, that is not plundered.”

  Nor did the Royal Navy seem interested in driving the pirates out of their Nassau stronghold. But this time the London government was not at fault for the Royal Navy’s inaction.

  Unlike the situation that had obtained two decades earlier when King William had refused to send warships against Madagascar because they were needed for the war in Europe, the Admiralty in the second decade of the eighteenth century was extraordinarily responsive to the cries of colonial governors for help against pirates. Since there was no war or even threat of war to keep warships in home waters, the Admiralty regularly dispatched Royal Navy men-of-war to Caribbean and North American coastal waters when requested. These vessels were often given specific orders to patrol the sea-lanes and intercept pirates. But in spite of the good intentions of the Admiralty, the Royal Navy proved peculiarly ineffectual against the pirate enemy. The reasons for this were twofold. First, the proud Royal Navy commanders as a general rule refused to accept orders from colonials who were invariably far more knowledgeable about pirates and their operations than the navy was. As a consequence of this stiff-necked attitude, the navy missed many opportunities to strike blows at the Nassau freebooters. Second, and far more important, many Royal Navy commanders had learned to profit from the existence of the pirates—and from the merchants’ fear of piracy.

  Some naval commanders hired out their warships for convoy duty, charging as much as 12.5 percent of the value of a merchant’s cargo as a fee for a naval escort. Although this was legal under the accepted usage of the times, the profit to be made from such convoy duty made many Royal Navy captains less than zealous to destroy the pirates who were the indirect source of their profits.

  Other naval commanders engaged in profitable activities that were flagrantly illegal. For example, when, because of the threat of piracy, the cost of sending cargo in an ordinary merchant ship became exorbitant, some unscrupulous navy captains offered to transport cargoes in their warships for a flat fee that, while still hefty, was far less than that charged by cargo vessels. Traders leaped at the chance to transport their goods in navy ships. Not only were the rates, however illegal, actually cheaper than the rates charged by cargo vessels, the chances of a naval ship’s being attacked by pirates were practically nil. Some merchants and naval captains became virtual partners in the business—and hoped the pirates would fatten on their competitors.

  Some Royal Navy captains even went into the freight business for themselves. They would charter sloops, fill them with purchased cargo, and then, after manning them with naval personnel and arming them with naval cannon, operate them as civilian cargo carriers.

  Because of such scams, naval commanders had little real interest in suppressing the piracy from which they profited, and Admiralty attempts to relieve the pressure on Caribbean and North American trade had so far failed.

  Even when, in response to complaints from local governors, the Admiralty replaced profit-taking captains with new commanders, the situation did not improve. The new men soon learned the ropes, and cut themselves in for a piece of the action.

  As the situation in the Caribbean continued to worsen—and as it became apparent that the Royal Navy would not, or could not, suppress the Nassau pirates, a syndicate of English merchants joined together for the purpose of dealing with the problem—and turning a profit while doing so.

  As a first step in their project, the merchants leased the Bahamas from the Crown, explaining that they intended to colonize the islands with honest settlers, farmers, and artisans who would be grateful for the chance at a new life in the New World.

  They explained that it was also part of their plan to drive the pirates of Nassau out of their newly leased colony—or to tame them—even if, to accomplish this aim, it became necessary to wage a military-naval war against them. For this reason the merchant syndicate petitioned the Crown to appoint as governor of the new colony one of the finest sea captains of the time. He was Woodes Rogers: a man whose personal bravery, steadfast leadership, and dogged determination would make him one of the great unsung heroes of British history.

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  Nemesis of Pirates: Woodes Rogers

  No one looked less like what he was—a genuine hero—than Woodes Rogers.

  Tall, more than a little paunchy, with soft auburn hair, Rogers had about him an almost preternatural tranquillity.

  His portrait shows a man with a near-cherubic face, a cordial but unsmiling mouth, and gentle dark eyes peering out from under elevated eyebrows. It is a picture of a man who has seen much of the world’s wickedness, who is still slightly surprised by it, but who will, of course, deal with it as required.

  Rogers, according to contemporaries, dressed well but soberly. He rarely raised his voice and was slow to anger. Though never familiar in his business with others, he was always fair and polite. He guarded his emotions, never showing fear when in danger or satisfaction when he had attained a goal. A man who respected the laws of man and God, Rogers kept his word and expected others to keep theirs. He took care of his own honor, and esteemed virtue in himself and others. He was also a devoted husband and father.

  NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM, GREENWICH, ENGLAND

  Yet this paragon was capable of the most draconian measures when necessary. He once hanged eight men who had betrayed their word to him, and he pistol-whipped a naval officer who had challenged his right to command.

  In fact, this pudgy man calmly observing the world under his perpetually arched eyebrows was, beneath his unprepossessing exterior, a man of steel, unflappable and indomitable.

  He was also a most effective leader of men. This was so not only because of his innate qualities but also because he had learned the secret of command: to give only the most necessary orders, to give them as if it were the most natural thing in the world to carry them out, and never to demand that men act against their own convictions, no matter how shallow or false those convictions might be.

  By 1718, when Woodes Rogers was appointed governor of the Bahamas, his character had already been formed by many years at sea—and by an early life spent among the bluff, honest, and self-sufficient people of the west of England.

  Rogers’s family came from Poole
, in Dorset, where an ancestor, John Rogers, had served as sheriff in Queen Elizabeth’s time—and had been knighted by her. Rogers’s sea captain father, however, had moved his family to the port town of Bristol. And it was there that Woodes Rogers was born in 1679.

  Rogers followed his father’s calling. He went to sea as a boy and learned his trade well. At twenty-six, an impressive and prosperous young man with an excellent future, he married Sarah Whetstone, daughter of Admiral Sir William Whetstone, Commander-in-Chief of England’s West Indian fleet.

  It was a happy marriage, and the couple were soon parents of three children: Sarah, born in 1706; William, born in 1707; and Mary, born in 1708. (Mary, however, died in childhood.)

  When Rogers’s father died, Rogers inherited sufficient property and funds to keep him and his little family in comfort.

  Although contented with family life, Rogers was also a man of the sea. He could not stay long ashore without experiencing a yearning to be under sail. For this reason Rogers expressed great interest when, in 1708, a syndicate of Bristol merchants asked him to lead a privateering expedition.

  It was approximately the midpoint in the War of the Spanish Succession—and England and her allies were sending privateers to all corners of the globe to attack the shipping of the French and Spanish enemy. The Bristol merchants who had approached Rogers had it in mind to send two ships on an expedition that would take them around the Horn of South America and into the Pacific where—they were sure—they would find rich pickings among the Spanish treasure ships. Rogers, already a veteran sea captain at twenty-nine, readily agreed to lead the enterprise.

  The expedition’s ships, referred to as “private men-of-war” and fitted out for a total of £15,000, were the Duke (320 tons, 80 feet long and 25 feet in the beam, mounting 30 guns and carrying a crew of 117), and the Duchess (260 tons, slightly less than her consort in length and beam, mounting 26 guns, and carrying a crew of 108). The Admiralty issued commissions that empowered the Duke and Duchess to take the shipping of both France and Spain wherever their vessels might be found.