Raiders and Rebels

by Frank Sherry

  Now Captain Macrae, convinced the battle was lost, decided on a desperate action to save his men if not his ship. He would run Cassandra onto the beach and attempt to escape into the jungle. Without hesitation he gave the necessary orders. Suddenly Cassandra sheared off from the fight and headed toward the shallows. Fancy followed.

  Although Cassandra drew more water than the pirate ship, Fancy ran aground first, apparently on a sandbar. Cassandra ran onto the beach as her captain had intended.

  Now, with Fancy aground, the pirates were unable to come alongside Cassandra to board her. In fury they kept up a steady fire at Cassandra. Macrae returned the fire fiercely.

  (Still standing offshore, Captain Kirby in the Greenwich must have seen that the grounded pirate would now have been an easy mark if he had come in to add his fire to that of Cassandra. But still he refused to join the battle.)

  Now, while the grounded Fancy and Cassandra continued to blast away at each other, Taylor in Victory saw his chance. He sent three small boats, full of fresh men, into the shallows, with the idea of boarding the grounded Cassandra.

  (Inexplicably, the Greenwich chose this moment—about five o’clock in the afternoon—to sail away from the scene of battle, leaving Cassandra and her crew “struggling in the very jaws of death,” as Captain Macrae put it.)

  Captain Taylor aboard Victory no longer had to worry that the other East Indiaman would enter the battle. He joined fully in the attack on Cassandra. He maneuvered to come under the larger ship’s stern in order to board her.

  Captain Macrae realized that the game was up. He implemented his plan to escape into the jungle.

  “I ordered all that could to get into the longboat under cover of the smoke from the guns,” Macrae reported later. “So that, what with some did in the boats, and others by swimming, most that were able got ashore by seven o’clock. When the Pirates came aboard they cut three of our wounded men to pieces. I with a few of my people, made what haste I could to the African King’s house some 20 miles from us and there arrived next day almost dead with fatigue and loss of blood, having a musket ball wound in the head.”

  Macrae had lost thirteen men killed and twenty-four wounded in the battle. The pirates had sustained more than ninety casualties, including at least two dozen killed.

  When England and Taylor’s men finally boarded the abandoned Cassandra, they discovered that she carried a cargo worth some £75,000. But according to one account “no part of the cargo was so much valued by the robbers as the doctor’s chest, for they were all poxed to a great degree.”

  The loot from the Cassandra did not, however, allay the pirates’ rage against Captain Macrae for having killed and wounded so many of their fellows. So wrought up were England’s and Taylor’s crewmen against Macrae that they offered a reward of £2,000 to anyone who would bring the Cassandra’s captain to them for punishment.

  For ten days Macrae and his surviving men lay hidden in the jungle. During this time the pirates refloated and repaired the Cassandra and the Fancy. They also used the respite to treat their wounded and to sift through their booty. Then, with astonishing boldness, Captain Macrae emerged from hiding and presented himself to the pirate captains England and Taylor. His purpose, he told the pirates, was to negotiate a ransom for his ship and her cargo. Macrae, who certainly knew that the outlaws had offered a princely reward for his capture, must have had remarkable confidence in his powers of persuasion to risk his life in this way—or else he was supremely sure that the ransom he planned to offer them would quickly dampen the pirates’ rage against him.

  In the event, the pirates were deeply divided over how to treat Macrae and his offer. One faction, led by Captain England, was much impressed by Macrae’s audacity and favored negotiating with him. A second faction, led by Captain Taylor, wanted to cut Macrae down on the spot.

  As the outlaws argued over the captain’s fate, several of the pirates revealed that they had served with Macrae in the past—and still had great respect for him. This lucky coincidence proved a weighty factor in Macrae’s favor, for these former crewmen of his took full advantage of their democratic rights under pirate law to speak up lustily in Macrae’s behalf. One ferocious-looking old seafarer, according to a contemporary account, took Macrae by the hand and bawled at his colleagues: “Show me the man that offers to hurt Captain Macrae, and I’ll stand to him [fight him], for an honester fellow, I never sailed with.”

  In the end, England’s faction carried the day over the hardliners led by Taylor. They not only spared Macrae’s life, they allowed him and his men to sail away in the damaged Fancy, and to take with them half the Cassandra’s cargo. However, they kept the powerful Cassandra, as well as the other half of her cargo, for themselves.

  Macrae and his men eventually managed to sail the crippled Fancy back to India. It was a horrendous journey that took forty-eight days under the broiling sun. Macrae and his men suffered terribly from thirst and starvation. When he reached India, however, Macrae was hailed as a hero. For his valor he received several important promotions in the service of the East India Company. (Eventually he rose to become governor of Madras and retired from that post after eight years of service with a fortune of £800,000—although the stated salary for the appointment was only £500 per year.)

  For Edward England, whose faction had prevailed in the voting to spare the indomitable East India captain, the Macrae affair proved an albatross that finally led to his undoing. His partner, Taylor, and others in the pirate company continued to complain about what they considered England’s unwarranted clemency toward Macrae. So effectively and so often did Taylor and his cohorts take England to task for his “softness” that they finally convinced the majority of the company that England was unfit to command. In a vote taken upon Taylor’s insistence, England was deposed as captain—and Taylor elected in his place. With a few men who chose to remain with him, England was put aboard a small boat to fend for himself.

  Taylor now sailed off as captain of the Cassandra, with Victory as his consort. (Over the next few months Taylor would range widely over the Indian Ocean, taking a number of prizes, until he made his great coup with the capture of the Cabo.)

  England and his few companions managed to sail their small boat to St. Augustine’s Bay in Madagascar where England knew a number of ex-pirates were living in retirement.

  But deprived of his command and virtually penniless, Edward England would soon go into decline. For the rest of his life, England would live on handouts from ships that called at St. Augustine’s Bay, and on charity from old companions. Drifting from place to place, cadging drinks, and telling stories of his days as the daring captain of the Fancy, England would degenerate into a half-comic waterfront “character” in the pirate hangouts of the great island.

  But one of England’s crewmen, who had chosen to accompany his old captain after his deposition, would flourish even as England fell further and further into decay.

  This was a young sailor named John Plantain. And he would one day become the virtual king of Madagascar.

  Plantain was born of English parents, in Jamaica, some time about 1700. At thirteen he went to sea as a cabin boy and served aboard a privateer. Later he fell into small-time piracy, serving aboard a number of pirate vessels that preyed on loggers off the Campeche coast of Mexico.

  Jumping from ship to ship, Plantain found himself ashore in Rhode Island, and dead broke, sometime around 1718. Here he fell in with a certain Captain John Williams, master of the sloop Terrible, and sailed with Williams for West Africa, possibly on a slave-trading mission.

  Off the coast of West Africa the Terrible was taken by Captain England, who had just entered those waters after departing the Caribbean. Plantain volunteered for England’s crew and sailed with him during all his subsequent adventures—until England was replaced by Taylor.

  When Plantain chose to accompany England into exile on Madagascar, he took with him the considerable booty that he had gained during his years of pirati
ng. He also persuaded two comrades to accompany him. These were a Scot named James Adair, and a Dane named Hans Burgen.

  Adair, the son of a good Presbyterian family, was unusual for a common sailor in that he could read and write. He had run away to sea as a boy. Captured by pirates, he had joined voluntarily with them, eventually finding himself in England’s crew. He was generally considered good-natured, but “a young man of very hard countenance” when crossed.

  The Dane, Hans Burgen, was a native of Copenhagen, and a skilled cooper. He had become a member of England’s crew when his ship, the Coward, was taken by England off the coast of Africa.

  Both Adair and Burgen deferred to John Plantain. For despite Plantain’s youth, there was about him a sort of jaunty self-assurance, as well as a hardness of will that made him a leader. More easygoing men sensed that John Plantain was a young man who knew exactly what he wanted—and how to get it. They followed him, as Adair and Burgen did, because he was able to give shape to their lives.

  After his arrival on Madagascar, Plantain immediately set in motion a plan he had long had in mind. He made his way to Ranter Bay on the northeast coast. Here, using his store of pirate loot to purchase native labor, he had a stockade fortress built—and went into business as a trader. Plantain’s enterprise was soon thriving. He became friendly with a local native chief known as Mulatto Tom, who claimed to be the son of the Arch-Pirate, Henry Every. Plantain’s fort, much frequented by Mulatto Tom and his people, became the center of political and social life for the surrounding area.

  It was not long before Plantain and his companions—Adair and Burgen—were able to expand their initial establishment to include well-appointed living quarters for themselves—and for the numerous wives and servant-girls they soon added to the household. Plantain was the lord of this household. His harem included the most beautiful of the local women—to whom he gave such homely English names as Moll, Kate, Sue, and Peg. He decked his harem favorites in the silks and jewels that he had won in his piratical career. He took to calling himself the King of Ranter Bay.

  Despite his success, however, John Plantain was not content. There was a woman he wanted—and could not get.

  She was Holy Eleanora, the lovely half-caste granddaughter of a nearby native chieftain named King Dick. Called “Holy” Eleanora because she had been taught to recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, the girl was the daughter of a long-dead English pirate and King Dick’s own beloved daughter. The object of many men’s desire, Holy Eleanora must have been a magnificent beauty, perhaps a dusky rose with large dark eyes, a fall of black hair over her shoulders, and a natural sensuality in her movements.

  John Plantain yearned to possess her. But her grandfather adamantly refused to allow Holy Eleanora to join John Plantain’s harem.

  Plantain was not a man to endure frustration for long. The lovesick king of Ranter Bay decided that if King Dick would not give him Holy Eleanora, he would take her by force. With the help of Mulatto Tom and other chieftains in the area, Plantain recruited three large companies of tribesmen. He armed many of them with muskets and pistols, purchased with his pirate plunder.

  With Adair and Burgen each leading a company, and himself leading the third, Plantain marched on King Dick. But the native chieftain was not cowed. He had his own well-armed militia, which included in its ranks a number of retired European pirates. King Dick’s forces went out to meet the invader.

  In a bloody battle, Plantain defeated—but did not destroy—King Dick’s army. The wily native monarch, realizing that the battle was going against him, fled from the field with as many men as he could take with him. Unfortunately for King Dick, many of the ex-pirates who were the “officer corps” of his army had been killed in the battle—and were sorely missed in subsequent actions.

  Plantain, furious at King Dick’s escape, pursued his defeated antagonist. There was a second battle. Again Plantain won. King Dick did not escape this time. Taken prisoner by Plantain, he had to watch as Plantain burned down his village—and at last took Holy Eleanora as his own.

  But even now Plantain had to endure frustration. He discovered that his coveted bride was already pregnant by an English pirate killed in one of the battles. Furious, Plantain blamed King Dick for Holy Eleanora’s condition. He had King Dick put to death in revenge. His love for Holy Eleanora, however, remained unabated. He took her back to Ranter Bay with him. She became his favorite wife and the mother of several of his numerous progeny.

  Plantain was now, in fact as well as in name, the king of Ranter Bay. But still he was not content. Although his success against King Dick had made him the most powerful figure in the northern half of Madagascar, it had also ignited within him even larger ambitions. He now yearned to make himself king of all Madagascar. To accomplish this, however, Plantain knew he would have to conquer Port Dauphin—a dominant enclave on the southwest coast ruled by a native prince whose name has not been recorded but whose power eclipsed that of King Dick.

  With singleminded purpose Plantain began to prepare his forces for war against Port Dauphin. Victory in this struggle, he was sure, would make him truly king of Madagascar.1

  Meanwhile, the East India Company, smarting from the depredations of such pirate captains as Condent, England, Taylor, and La Bouche—and fearing a revival of the near-ruinous commerce raiding of the 1690s—had appealed to London for help against the new pirates of the Indian Ocean.

  London, by now convinced of the importance of the eastern trade to Britain’s economy and political status, responded with alacrity. The Admiralty, late in 1721, dispatched a squadron of four men-of-war, under the command of Commodore Thomas Mathews, to eastern waters.

  Mathews had actually been given a dual mission: to make sure that the eastern pirates did not reestablish themselves on Madagascar, and to aid the East India Company in one of its interminable local struggles with the Portuguese for control of trading posts on the Indian mainland.

  Commodore Mathews, in his fast flagship, reached Madagascar before the other ships of his squadron. But he found no pirates. Unwilling to waste time in a search for pirates, Mathews decided to get on with the other part of his mission: He would proceed to Bombay and do what was necessary against the irritating Portuguese—and return later to take care of the pirates. With this in mind, Mathews left a letter at St. Augustine’s Bay for his other captains, explaining his decision and instructing them to follow him to India. He then sailed off.

  Although Commodore Mathews had failed to detect them, there were pirates operating in the area around St. Augustine’s Bay—and the commodore’s letter to his captains fell into their hands. Thanks to Mathews’s letter, the pirates learned the Royal Navy’s mission—and that the men-of-war would be returning to waters around Madagascar, probably within a few weeks. Many of the eastern pirates—including Taylor and La Bouche, who had already made their big score against the Cabo—now decided to leave the Indian Ocean to the Royal Navy and to seek prey elsewhere.

  In the spring of 1722 the East India Company’s hostilities with the Portuguese in India were suspended by an armistice. Commodore Mathews and his squadron made for Madagascar, as planned, to hunt for pirates.

  On April 22, 1722, Mathews anchored off the once-notorious pirate haven of St. Mary’s. Prudently he sent a boat ahead to scout the island. The scouting party found the place deserted and the beach strewn with discarded booty: drugs, spices, porcelains, silks, and other goods that the pirates of St. Mary’s had rejected as unsalable. The scouting party also found that sunken wrecks littered the harbor, blocking the entrance. One of the wrecks was Taylor’s old ship, the Victory.

  The pirates of St. Mary’s had gone.

  But John Plantain had not. He was still flourishing in nearby Ranter Bay.

  Although he was, at this time, in the midst of his struggle with King Dick for possession of Holy Eleanora, Plantain heard that Commodore Mathews and his squadron had arrived at St. Mary’s. He therefore took time out from his bus
y affairs to go and greet the Royal Navy.

  According to one eye witness, Plantain and his two confederates, Adair and Burgen, simply emerged from the jungle one day—and introduced themselves to Commodore Mathews and his officers while they were ashore at St. Mary’s. It was clear, according to the witness, that Plantain, who cockily carried two pistols in his sash, was the dominant figure of the trio. Plantain jauntily admitted that he had been a pirate. He had served with England’s crew, he told the commodore and his officers, and he had even helped take the Cassandra.

  At this point one of Commodore Mathews’s officers apparently gave orders to arrest Plantain. But before the navy men could lay hands on the self-assured ex-pirate, an armed guard of approximately twenty natives materialized out of the jungle and threw a protective cordon around Plantain. Plantain then explained, apparently with some good-humored satisfaction, that he was not merely a retired pirate, he was a self-made sovereign. In fact he was the king of Ranter Bay.

  During his visit with Commodore Mathews, Plantain cheerfully discussed his own history, from his lowly birth in Jamaica to his elevation to royal status in Madagascar. In the course of this conversation, he also informed Mathews that most of the pirates he was seeking had already left the East with the idea of sailing back to the Spanish-controlled areas of the Caribbean, where they hoped to purchase Spanish pardons. Plantain also invited Commodore Mathews and his officers to visit him at Ranter Bay after they had satisfied themselves that Captains Taylor, La Bouche, and others they might be seeking had indeed departed Madagascar.

  In the event, Commodore Mathews and his officers did pay a visit to Plantain’s establishment at Ranter Bay.

  Plantain, in honor of his guests, ran up the flag of St. George over his fort and laid on a sumptuous entertainment that included great quantities of food and drink, as well as—very probably—the attentions of the sovereign’s women.