Raiders and Rebels

by Frank Sherry

  But it was all in vain. There was no riot. The pirates of Nassau only grumbled and shuffled their feet while the ropes went around the necks of the convicted men.

  Now, as the fatal moment neared, each man confronted his fate in his own fashion.

  John Augur, forty, haggard, unwashed, and dressed in rags, expressed sorrow for his misdeeds. His last request was for a glass of wine, which he drank, toasting “the good success of the Bahama Islands and the Governor.”

  Will Cunningham, forty-five, who had once served as a gunner in Blackbeard’s crew, also expressed remorse for his life of crime.

  Dennis Macarthy, twenty-eight, who had once served as an ensign in Rogers’s militia, was jaunty. Wearing a new suit of clothes “adorned at neck, wrist, knees, and calf, with long blue ribbons,” he kicked his shoes over the parapet of Rogers’s fortress, saying he had “promised not to die with his shoes on.”

  Another, Thomas Morris, twenty-two, wearing bright red ribbons, when asked whether he repented of his wickedness, replied: “Yes, I do heartily repent. I repent I have not done more mischief, and that we did not cut the throats of them that took us, and I am extremely sorry that you aren’t all hanged, as well as we.”

  William Dowling, twenty-four, an Irishman whose past crimes included the murder of his own mother, also refused to repent, as did George Bendall, eighteen, who insisted that he was not a pirate.

  One of the condemned, William Lewis, thirty-four, an ex-boxer, said he had always wished to die drunk and he bellowed for a drink to ease him into Hell.

  At this, another of the condemned, William Ling, thirty, who was one of those who had expressed remorse for his crimes, said he thought “water was more suitable to them at that time.”

  When all the speeches of defiance and contrition and bravado were finished, the gallows stage fell—and each of the eight men danced at the end of his rope, until he died. They had paid the full penalty for breaking the law and their word to Woodes Rogers.

  Instead of rising in revolt, the pirates who had watched the hangings slunk away to get drunk in the dives of Nassau. Rogers had once again demonstrated his ascendancy over his colony.

  But his authority, as he soon discovered, was still to be challenged. Only two weeks after the execution of the eight backsliders, a small group of Nassau pirates, together with some of the soldiers whom Rogers had brought with him from England, hatched a plot to assassinate the governor. Their object was to restore pirate rule to New Providence. But an informer warned Rogers of the plot, and he seized the three ringleaders. After having the trio flogged for conspiring against the king’s government, he released them, as if to underscore the contempt with which he regarded such amateur assassins, and as if to illustrate the ease with which he could always foil such simpleminded conspiracies.1

  As the New Year of 1719 began, Rogers, despite the considerable success he had achieved in establishing his authority in Nassau, regarded his labors as a failure. The plague had put an end to his hopes for planting a self-sufficient colony on New Providence. His naval escorts had deserted him. The fort, key to the island’s defense and perhaps to his continued ascendancy over the Nassau pirates, was still far from finished. The soldiers he had brought with him from England were beginning to prove as unreliable as his ex-pirate militia. In addition to the hundreds of pirates who grumbled against him in Nassau, there were hundreds more still at large, preying on the commerce of the Caribbean and the American coast—and one of the worst of them, Charles Vane, had not been heard from for months and might, at any time, appear off the bar at Nassau to lead a rebellion against Rogers’s hard-won authority.

  It was an uneasy New Year for Governor Rogers.

  In point of fact, however, Rogers need not have worried about Vane. That canny old brigand had fallen on evil times.

  After his celebrated orgy with Blackbeard and his crew at Ocracoke Island back in October, Vane and his men had resumed operations off the American coast. At first they had enjoyed considerable success. Vane had even dared to cruise off the coast of Virginia, despite Governor Spotswood’s widespread reputation as an implacable hunter of pirates. Then matters had quickly soured for Charles Vane.

  His troubles had begun one day when Vane, still cruising off the American coast, had sighted what looked like a fat, slow merchant flying the French flag—a perfect target. He gave chase. But as his ship neared the supposed merchant, she suddenly let go a powerful broadside, revealing herself to be a heavily armed man-of-war.

  Vane, always careful to avoid unequal encounters, immediately came about to flee from the French warship. Now it was the Frenchman who gave chase. At this point Vane’s quartermaster, Calico Jack Rackam, with the support of the majority of the crew, vociferously urged the captain to engage the Frenchman. According to Defoe, Rackam acknowledged that the French man-of-war “had more Guns and a greater weight of Mettal,” but even so, he was certain that “if they could board the Frenchman, the best Boys would carry the day.”

  But Vane refused. He pointed out to Calico Jack that the man-of-war, twice their size, could sink them long before they could ever get close enough to board her.

  As captain, Vane had the right to make decisions during combat, and thus he won the argument. But after Vane and his men had eluded pursuit, the disgruntled faction of the crew, led by Calico Jack, called a council of war and accused their captain of cowardice. In a vote of the crew, Vane was deposed as captain. He was then set adrift in a small boat with fifteen members of the crew who had voted with him in the matter of boarding the French man-of-war. Rackam was elected captain in Vane’s place.

  Because their old captain had led them so successfully in the past, Rackam furnished Vane and his loyal followers with supplies of food, water, and ammunition, so that they might have the means to begin a new piratical career. Rackam then sailed off in his new command.

  Vane in his open boat had made his way south toward the Caribbean. Off the northwest coast of Jamaica he succeeded in capturing three boats—probably fishing boats only a little larger than the boat he had received from Rackam. Nevertheless, after looting these three small craft of their supplies and anything else that might be useful, he recruited several members of their crews into his ranks. Then, keeping one of the boats with him, Vane made his way westward to the Bay of Honduras. Here, during the first two months of 1719, while Woodes Rogers worried about him in Nassau, Vane operated in obscurity. Sailing with only two small boats under his command, he was able to take only a few prizes, none of them of any great worth. Vane was barely able to keep his crews together. (It is likely that given his reduced circumstances, Vane had not even heard of the demise of his old friend Blackbeard or of Rogers’s execution of the eight turncoat pirates in Nassau.)

  But as if matters were not bad enough, Vane’s luck took another bad turn in March 1719. The two small boats with which he was operating ran into a fierce tropical storm. Both were wrecked and most of Vane’s crew were drowned. He himself was cast away on an uninhabited island. Here he lived for some weeks, in rags, begging for food from Indians who came to the island to fish and catch turtles.

  Then, after he had with difficulty kept himself alive for several weeks, a ship from Jamaica captained by an ex-pirate and a onetime friend of Vane’s, a Captain Holford, arrived to take on water. Vane pleaded with Holford to rescue him.

  But the wary ex-pirate, recalling Vane’s reputation as a crafty schemer, feared that his old friend would organize a mutiny against him and seize his vessel. He refused Vane’s plea, saying, “Charles, I shan’t trust you aboard my ship, unless I carry you a prisoner; for I shall have you caballing with my men, knock me on the head, and run away with my ship a-pirating.”

  Vane protested vigorously that he had no such intention. Holford then assured Vane that if, when he returned to the island the following month, Vane was still there, he would take him off—and carry him to Jamaica to be hanged. Holford sailed off.

  A few days later, however, a second ves
sel put into the island, bound for Jamaica. Again Vane pleaded for rescue. But he now gave a false name, and claimed he was only a poor shipwrecked sailor who would prove his honesty and worth in return for a passage off the island. The captain of this vessel, who had never met Vane, took the pirate captain aboard and continued on his way. Vane was saved.

  But in fact, fate had now set its face permanently against Charles Vane.

  The ship that had rescued him was hailed one hot day by a passing vessel. After exchanging news and pleasantries, as was the custom, the captain who had rescued Vane invited the master of the other ship to come aboard.

  The visiting master turned out to be none other than Captain Holford, who had earlier refused Vane passage on his ship. Holford spotted Vane among the hands and revealed his identity.

  Vane, despite his protestations, was placed in irons. Holford then volunteered to take Vane to Jamaica in his own ship, apparently reasoning that since he had more experience with pirates, Vane would be less likely to cause problems aboard Holford’s ship.

  Brought safely to Jamaica, Vane was tried at Port Royal and found guilty. He was hanged in the late spring of 1719.

  In Nassau, Woodes Rogers must have given a private sigh of relief at the news of Vane’s execution. With Vane’s removal from the scene, the last of the old New Providence pirates capable of leading a seaborne attack on Nassau was gone. The threat of a pirate invasion of the Bahamas colony was over.

  But the feisty governor had little time to enjoy this fact before a new menace loomed, one that was far more formidable than any that Charles Vane had posed: a Spanish invasion.

  At long last the oft-rumored war with Spain had become a reality. A formidable Spanish fleet had been gathered in the Caribbean, together with thousands of well-armed soldiers. Their purpose was to overrun England’s island colonies, many of which had once belonged to Spain and which Spain was now determined to repossess.

  Governor Rogers, excruciatingly aware of the poor state of his colony’s defenses, begged London for more soldiers and warships. But none were forthcoming.

  If the Spanish struck, the Bahamas colony and its dauntless governor would—as usual—be on their own.

  15

  The End on New Providence

  Expecting a Spanish invasion at any time, Rogers threw himself into preparing a resistance.

  As it had been for months, his prime concern was still the main fort overlooking the harbor. Even after eight months of desultory work on its walls, gun emplacements, magazines, storage areas, and interior buildings, the fort was not yet ready to withstand a serious attack by well-trained soldiers and sailors.

  Although he had employed both cajolery and threat, Rogers had not been able to persuade the indolent residents of Nassau that finishing the fort was critical to their own well-being. As a result the project had languished for lack of labor.

  Now, playing on fears of a Spanish invasion—and liberally doling out liquor and food—Rogers managed to obtain more work than ever before from the boozy inhabitants of his capital. But progress was still painfully slow, and it looked as though it would be months before the fort would become the impregnable strong point that Rogers envisioned. In the meantime, he could only try his best to keep his men at their tasks—and hope that the Spanish would be slow to press the war north of Cuba. For Rogers knew that if the Spanish arrived at Nassau harbor before the fort was ready, the Bahamas colony would be theirs for the taking.

  If progress on the fort was painfully slow, Rogers had much better results putting together a fleet for the seaborne defense of his colony.

  In addition to the loyal Ben Hornigold, he commissioned two more ex-pirates as privateers in his service. These captains were men who, like Hornigold and Burgess, had proved their loyalty by carrying out assignments Rogers had given them.

  During this period of frenzied activity in anticipation of a Spanish invasion, Rogers received notice that the British government had issued a new royal proclamation extending the king’s pardon to all Carribbean pirates who would come in and surrender to colonial governors. The purpose of this act was to induce freebooters to enlist as privateers in the war against Spain, something that most of them were only too happy to do.

  Before long, pirates were turning themselves in to the governors of English colonies from Bermuda to Jamaica to New Providence—and receiving in exchange pardons for past crimes and immediate commissions to go right out again and attack the ships of Spain.

  One of those who came into Nassau harbor to surrender to Governor Woodes Rogers was Calico Jack Rackam, the man who had deposed Charles Vane from his command.

  Following Vane’s forced departure, Calico Jack and his crew had taken some good, if not spectacular, prizes. They had captured and ransomed a vessel loaded with convicts destined for labor in the West Indies. Operating off Bermuda, they had seized two ships homeward bound from Carolina and New England. They had also plundered some vessels off Cuba. But when they had heard of the war with Spain, and of the new pardons being offered, they had made for the Bahamas.

  Arriving in Nassau harbor in May or June of 1719, Rackam and his men were granted the king’s pardon as promised. But if Calico Jack had expected that it would be easy for him to obtain a privateering commission from Woodes Rogers, he was soon disappointed. Rogers seemed in no hurry to hand out a privateering license to a man like Calico Jack, who had been a trusted officer of the notorious Vane and a friend of the terrifying Blackbeard. To Rogers there were certainly more trustworthy candidates for privateering commissions than Calico Jack Rackam.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

  Rackam, however, remained in Nassau, probably convinced that sooner or later, Rogers would be forced to commission as many ex-pirates as he had available in order to meet the Spanish threat. For word had recently come to Nassau that the king of Spain had already named a new Spanish governor for the Bahamas, and that this grandee was even now preparing an invasion force in the harbor of Havana that consisted of two men-of-war, three galleys, and sixteen hundred soldiers—all destined for an early onslaught against Nassau and the Bahamas colony.

  To defend his colony, Woodes Rogers had only his half-finished fort, his half-trained militia, two score soldiers, his own Delicia, and a handful of ex-pirate privateers.

  It was a pitifully inadequate force. Rackam must have felt confident that Rogers would eventually come forward with the privateering commission he sought.

  Calico Jack, therefore, enjoyed a period of leisure in Nassau, drinking in the waterfront taverns, visiting old friends, spending the hot humid nights in the shantytown’s brothels. It was the classic way for men in the sweet trade to spend their intervals ashore. But for Calico Jack Rackam this shore leave brought an event that changed his life. He fell in love.

  The object of his passion was the beautiful, fiery Anne Bonny, the nineteen-year-old wife of a young sailor, James Bonny.

  Anne, who was far from a blushing bride, had already had a number of lovers among the pirate captains of Nassau, and was a familiar figure in the town’s harbor-side dives. When Calico Jack fell wildly in love with her, she soon let him know that the feeling was mutual. Anne was a woman who knew what she wanted.

  Born in Ireland, she was the illegitimate daughter of a prominent Cork attorney, William Cormac, and a maid in the family household, Peg Brennan. Cormac, whose wife had left him because of his “dissolute way of life,” lost so much of his practice because of the scandal of his affair with his housemaid—and the birth of his illegitimate daughter—that he decided to leave Ireland forever. Taking his mistress and their daughter, he set sail for a new life in Charleston, South Carolina.

  While continuing to practice law, Cormac also set himself up as a merchant. He soon became so successful that he was able to buy a large plantation in the countryside. When Anne’s mother died, the young girl, now a beautiful redheaded lass of thirteen or fourteen, became the the mistress of her father’s household.

  Within another year
or two there were numerous suitors for Anne’s hand—despite her growing reputation as a spitfire. It was said that in one of her monumental fits of rage, she had stabbed a serving girl with a knife. Another story told how one young man, burning with passion for the tempestuous Anne, tried to rape her. Infuriated, Anne turned the tables on her would-be rapist and assaulted him with such ferocity that he remained bedridden for weeks afterward.

  In time Anne met and married—against her father’s wishes—a penniless young sailor named James Bonny. With her passionate nature, Anne yearned to escape the staid life of Charleston—and to throw herself into a life of adventure. Anne must have seen young Bonny as the means to attain the free life she longed for. When Bonny took her off to the pirates’ nest of Nassau, on the island of New Providence, Anne became fascinated by the sweet trade—and especially by the men who practiced it. At the same time, she began to lose interest in her youthful husband. The young man seemed out of his element among the wild and wicked pirate captains. When Bonny, broke, desperate, and unable to find employment, became an informer for Woodes Rogers, Anne recoiled from him in revulsion.

  At this point the dashing, handsome Calico Jack Rackam came into Nassau to claim the king’s pardon in anticipation of a privateering commission. Perhaps she saw him first swaggering in the street, a brace of pistols in his belt and a cocky plume in his hat. Perhaps they met again later amid the raucous diversions of a tavern, the redheaded spitfire and the laughing, lusty pirate captain who must have seemed to Anne the very embodiment of the free and heroic life she hungered for.

  If Calico Jack fascinated Anne, the pirate captain was even more enthralled by the wild young vixen. She might have been the darling of many before, but he was determined that she would henceforth belong to him alone. He wooed her passionately, presenting her with extravagant gifts of jewelry from his booty. He even offered to buy her from her husband. This was a form of divorce that was fairly common in that age. It was accomplished, usually, by paying an agreed-upon sum of money to the offended party. But the young man refused Calico Jack’s generous offer for Anne. Instead, he complained to Governor Rogers that Rackam had seduced his wife from his bed. Rogers, always determined to uphold the law and family values, ordered Anne to return to her husband, warning that if she did not do so, he would have her whipped as an adulteress—according to the law of the day. (Rogers apparently made no such threat to Rackam, however.)