If A Pirate I Must Be...

by Richard Sanders

  Around 12 February Governor Robert Lowther summoned Captain Smart of HMS Squirrel and Captain Whorwood of HMS Rye to see him. When they arrived he arrested them both and slung them into jail. A few days before they had seized a vessel called the Pearl that had previously been in use as a pirate ship under the command of Edward England. Lowther insisted that, since it had been taken in his jurisdiction, it should be handed over to him. Whorwood and Smart refused. These tugs-of-war over prizes was common. Captain Smart had been involved in a similar dispute with the governor of New England a year before - a dispute which also ended in his being thrown in jail after he fought a duel with the governor’s secretary. Captain Whorwood of HMS Rye had also quarrelled repeatedly with Governor Spotswood in Virginia.

  Whatever the rights or wrongs of this particular case, Governor Lowther was cutting off his nose to spite his face. He was not one of the more able governors in the region and was removed from his post later in the year, in part because of his actions at this time. Captain Smart managed to break out of jail after just a few hours, returned to his ship and immediately left the island. But Whorwood remained in prison for twenty-two days. During this time a procession of merchant captains arrived with tales of being robbed in their passage to the island by Anstis and his men. The merchants of Barbados begged Lowther to release Whorwood and offered to pay his bail, but Lowther was adamant.

  Eventually, in desperation, the merchants decided to mount their own expedition against the Good Fortune. Governor Lowther agreed to grant them a twenty-day commission and they fitted out two vessels - the Somerset Galley, from Bristol, under the twenty-eight-year-old Captain Owen Rogers, and the Phillipa, the same sloop that had been captured by the pirates at Tobago a month previously, under the gouty Captain Daniel Graves. The Somerset Galley alone, with 16 guns and 130 men, was more than a match for the pirates, and the Phillipa carried an additional six guns and 60 men.

  The two ships set sail from Bridgetown on Sunday 21 February 1720. The crews were recruited locally and the Barbados council saw fit to record pen portraits of each of the men - a precaution in case they absconded and turned pirate themselves, which wasn’t unknown in these situations. Most of the descriptions were fairly simple - ‘a tall thin man’, ‘a short thick man’, ‘a young fair man’, ‘a short, pox-broken man’. But forty-year-old John July from Cornwall, we are told, was a ‘lusty jolly man’, and twenty-four-year-old George Tucker from England was a ‘pretty well set seaman, brown complexion’. Captain Rogers was ‘short and thick’. Many were described as ‘black’ or ‘brown’, although for the most part, as with Captain Johnson’s description of Roberts as a ‘black man’, this simply meant they had a dark, swarthy complexion rather than that they were Africans. The majority were in their twenties, like the pirates they were being sent to hunt.

  After four days at sea they encountered a small French trader. The French captain informed them he’d been seized by the Good Fortune a few days before and that they had cut down his mizzen (rear) mast and a third of his main mast for their own use. The pirates had taken a small sloop from Virginia shortly before, he told them, and were now using it as a consort. He estimated they numbered about eighty, of whom twenty were in the new sloop. They had ten guns, all in their main sloop, and were now slightly to the north, in the latitude of Antigua, cruising ‘up and down for a ship’.

  The following morning, 26 February, Rogers and Graves spotted the Good Fortune and its consort, bearing down fast on them from the east with the wind behind them. ‘The biggest sloop fired a shot at us, and then another, and when she came in musket shot she fired another,’ wrote Captain Rogers in his log. Both of the pirate sloops then hoisted black flags ‘with death’s head & co.’ and, drawing close, ordered Rogers to surrender. When he failed to respond they poured a broadside into the Somerset Galley accompanied by ‘a continual fire of small arms’. Rogers and his men ‘lay still in expectation they would board us’, presumably hoping to surprise them with their superior numbers (Captain Maynard had defeated Blackbeard using a similar ruse). But instead, perhaps sensing a trick, the pirates veered away. Rogers now ordered his men to open fire and cannon balls and grapeshot tore through the Good Fortune. Rogers saw three men, including the pirate drummer, killed instantly. Two others, who were in the long boat being towed behind the Good Fortune, were also killed and the remaining three men in the boat were cut adrift. A cannon ball ripped a gaping hole in the Good Fortune’s hull and the pirates’ carpenter was forced to lower himself over the side in the midst of the battle to repair it, ‘hundreds of bullets flying round him’. He succeeded in stopping the leak but two men who went with him were washed away.

  Now was the moment to move in for the kill. The pirates’ smaller consort had sped away to the south the moment the Somerset Galley opened fire, never to be heard of again. The Good Fortune was at their mercy. Rogers’ men crowded to the edge of the ship with their pistols and cutlasses ready to board. But as they closed the Phillipa, which until now had played no part in the battle, suddenly came between the two vessels. It was all Rogers could do to stop his men firing across the decks of the Phillipa into the pirate vessel. Rogers called out to Captain Graves ‘begging and praying that he would board the pirate, but he never made any assault, or fired a gun until the pirate was out of gunshot’.

  The pirates sped away and were observed throwing bread chests overboard and even sawing down their gunwales (the upper planking along the sides of the ship) to lighten the load. The Somerset Galley was able to make little progress in pursuit of them - ‘our running rigging &c being all shot about our ears’, wrote Rogers. He screamed at Captain Graves in the Phillipa, which had not suffered damage, to give chase. But Graves was slow to set his sails and never pulled in his long boat which, towed behind, slowed him down. Around four in the afternoon he tarried to allow the Somerset Galley to draw level and asked how long they should continue the pursuit. ‘Till night,’ bellowed the exasperated Captain Rogers, but around 7 p.m. they were forced to give up the chase. Six days later, on 3 March, they limped back into Barbados amid bitter recriminations.

  Captain Graves claimed his helmsman had made a mistake, which was why he’d ended up between the Somerset Galley and the pirate sloop, and that he’d been unable to catch the pirate because he didn’t have enough sails on board. It’s impossible to know whether he deliberately sabotaged the mission. He’d spent time, of course, with this very pirate crew a month before and it’s possible he’d developed some sort of relationship with them. But he may simply have been incompetent.

  The pirates gave three cheers and fired ‘a volley and a broadside’ in celebration as they watched their pursuers turn away. It had been a close call and would have been far worse if it had been HMS Rye and HMS Squirrel pursuing them. But this was the lowest point yet for them. Rogers claimed he’d killed around thirty-five of the pirates. This was probably an exaggeration. Even so, the Good Fortune was badly damaged and the crew had suffered a number of casualties. And they’d lost their consort. The slow recovery of the last couple of months had been undone and they were now in a worse position than when they left Devil’s Islands. At this moment it looked as if the Good Fortune would be little more than a footnote in pirate history, part of the broader story of the break up of Howel Davis’s crew.

  Roberts saw it differently. He must have taken a grim satisfaction from the debacle. The near disaster had dented Anstis’s authority and he knew this was his chance to regain command. It may even have been Roberts, with his sharp eye for ‘the bulk and force of any ship’, who guessed the true strength of the Somerset Galley and warned them against boarding it at the last moment. Shortly afterwards he was reinstated as captain.

  The crew of the Good Fortune then disappeared from the radar of the authorities for the next three months, the only time this happened during the whole of Roberts’ pirate career. It was a time of rest and gradual recuperation spent skulking in the backwaters of the Caribbean. They were back down to aro
und forty men and lived from hand to mouth. But it was during this period that Roberts forged the core of what would soon, once more, be the most powerful pirate crew in the Atlantic. He restored their resolve and self-confidence. And from now on there would be no doubt that this was his crew, rather than the remnant of Howel Davis’s.

  They repaired the Good Fortune on some unrecorded beach or cay. Then they made their way to the island of Dominica - squeezed between the French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe, but officially ceded to the Carib Indians - to take in water and buy provisions from the small French community there. There they came across thirteen English smugglers, who had been dumped by a French coast guard vessel. One of them - Joseph Mansfield - was a former highwayman and a deserter from HMS Rose. All thirteen were happy to join the pirates and they were to prove enthusiastic recruits.

  They needed to careen but Roberts knew they were vulnerable at Dominica because of the proximity of the French islands. Instead, they headed south for the Grenadines, the string of tiny islets between St Vincent and Grenada in the southern Windward Islands. There was no formal colonial government here and the islands were inhabited mainly by Indians and the occasional community of ‘maroons’: escaped slaves, many of whom had made their way across from Barbados and lived in small, self-governing communities. A maze of sandbanks and narrow channels, the islands were accessible only to smaller vessels and to those who knew the waters well. The pirates made their way to the tiny island of Carriacou. There they hauled the Good Fortune into a lagoon and prepared to clean it.

  Travellers of the eighteenth century took little pleasure in tropical landscapes. The golden sands, the turquoise seas, the nodding palms - they held no appeal, perhaps because they were so associated with death and disease. But to modern eyes Bartholomew Roberts’ career consisted of a tour of tropical paradises, and Carriacou was as beautiful as any of the islands he visited. Just a few miles across, it was ringed with white, sandy beaches and the countryside was a riot of brightly coloured, tropical flowers. The name means ‘land surrounded by reefs’ in the Carib language and the warm waters teemed with fish. After the stress and fear of Pernambuco, Devil’s Islands and Barbados, Roberts’ men were able to relax in the shade of the palms. Many pirate crews at this time never grew beyond fifty men and never left the Caribbean, and it’s easy to see why. Freedom and an easy life, that was their motivation. But Roberts was different. He wanted to cut a figure in the world, to inspire awe and respect. He sought wealth, fame and power and, ultimately, a comfortable retirement. For all the disappointments of the last few months, he was still filled with restless energy and ambition. He knew they’d come close to disaster at Barbados and that they were vulnerable, not just to men-of-war, but to any large, armed sloop that local traders fitted out to hunt them down. He wanted more men, he wanted a larger ship, and he wanted them fast. There was a faction in the crew that also wanted to move on, if only for the want of wine and women on Carriacou. They careened unusually quickly, staying little more than a week. Their haste saved their lives.

  At Dominica the local French community had somehow discovered the pirates’ destination as they left. They informed the Governor of Martinique and he fitted out two sloops to pursue them. Navigating the narrow channels of the Grenadines they quickly closed in on the lagoon at Carriacou. But they arrived to find the island empty. They’d missed the Good Fortune by a matter of hours.

  6

  FISHERS OF MEN

  NEWFOUNDLAND AND THE ATLANTIC

  JUNE-SEPTEMBER 1720

  ‘THERE WAS NOTHING HEARD AMONG THE PIRATES ALL THE WHILE, BUT CURSING, SWEARING, DAMNING AND BLASPHEMING TO THE GREATEST DEGREE IMAGINABLE’

  On 21 JUNE 1720 THE Good Fortune, with Roberts in command, sailed into the fishing harbour of Trepassey on the southern shore of Newfoundland with its guns blazing, drums beating and trumpets blaring, a black flag with ‘death’s head and cutlass’ flying at the mast-head. There were twenty-two ships and somewhere between 150 and 250 small fishing boats, or shallops, in the bay. Between them they carried 1200 men and 40 guns but they surrendered without a shot fired, the men and their officers fleeing ashore for safety.

  The Good Fortune still carried just 12 guns and around 60 men. But with the harbour secure the pirates were able to embark on an orgy of destruction. Captain Johnson lamented:

  It is impossible to recount the ... havoc they made here, burning and sinking all the shipping ... destroying the fisheries and stages of the poor planters without remorse or compunction: for nothing is so deplorable as power in mean and ignorant hands. It makes men wanton and giddy, unconcerned at the misfortunes they are imposing on their fellow creatures, and keeps them smiling at the mischiefs that bring themselves no advantage. They are like mad men that cast firebrands, arrows and death and say, are we not in sport?

  Johnson was exaggerating slightly, relying on a sensationalist report in the Boston Newsletter. From eyewitness accounts we know just one ship was burned, none were sunk and no one was killed. The damage was nevertheless extensive and his description of the pirates being ‘giddy’ with their own power chimes with other accounts of this attack. Of no one was this more true than Roberts himself. ‘He made the masters all prisoners and beat some of them heartily for their cowardice in not making any resistance,’ one account recorded. He berated them for their ‘incivility in not waiting upon him to make him welcome at his entrance’, and threatened to hang one of them as punishment. He was particularly contemptuous of Captain Babidge of the Bideford Merchant, the admiral of the port, who had abandoned his ship ‘with Jack, ensign and pendant flying, the guns all loaden’. The pirates showed their contempt by boarding his vessel, striking his colours, raising their own and then firing his guns. They cut down his main-mast and did the same to several other ships and slashed the cables and rigging of the remaining vessels. Over the next few days, as his men plundered the port, Roberts fired a gun each morning ‘at which ... all the masters [were] obliged to go on board to receive their orders for the day. One [order] was that no house, chest or locker ... should be locked while he remained there, under pain of severe punishment.’

  As so often, the pirates benefited from the fact the common men showed little enthusiasm for defending their masters’ property. Many were sympathetic. Roberts never left the Good Fortune but his men came on shore, forty or fifty at a time, and got ‘all hands drunk along with such fishermen as remain in the harbour’, according to one report. Around half a dozen men joined the pirate crew, while four or five others were forced.

  This was a very different Roberts from the clumsy, blundering commander of Devil’s Islands and the disgraced, demoted captain last seen scuttling away from Barbados. This was once again the Roberts of Pernambuco, in firm command of his vessel and his crew, defeating overwhelming odds through sheer daring, and clearly revelling in the power he had regained. He’d used the previous three months in the Caribbean well and his crew was once more a formidable fighting force. Even Governor Spotswood of Virginia was forced to comment on ‘the boldness of this fellow’.

  The summer migration northwards to the fishing grounds of Newfoundland was common among pirates. It was part of what was known as the ‘pirate round’ and was always followed by a return to the warmer waters of the Caribbean, West Africa or the Indian Ocean in the autumn. As in West Africa, pirates went to Newfoundland primarily in search of large, ocean-going vessels and men. They were rarely disappointed.

  The banks south and east of Newfoundland were the richest source of cod in the world. The Vikings and then the Basques had fished there long before Columbus discovered America and the English moved into the region in the Elizabethan era. Along with the expansion of the coal trade between Newcastle and London, the Newfoundland fishery was the main stimulus for the dramatic growth of the English merchant fleet in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In 1719 the fishery employed 119 ships along with 680 smaller boats. But conditions for the 3,000-4,000 men who worked
there each summer were harsh.

  The trade was dominated by the small West Country towns of Barnstaple, Bideford, Poole, Dartmouth and Topsham. The men were hired from the countryside around at spring fairs, contracts often signed at the Dartmouth Inn or Newfoundland Tavern in Newton Abbot, the deal lubricated with liberal helpings of cider, beer and Jamaica rum. Most bound themselves over to their masters for periods of between one and five years. The ships departed each spring, heading first to the Cape Verde Islands or the Caribbean to pick up salt to preserve their catch. They left Newfoundland in the autumn bound for Spain, Portugal and the Mediterranean, their principal markets, returning to England with cargoes of wine, oil and gold.

  The fishing was done with lines rather than nets and was tough, exhausting work. No sooner was the ship full than they’d return to harbours such as Trepassey and ‘pew’ the fish onto the landings using pitchforks - an operation similar to forking hay on to a rick. There, separate teams of ‘headers’, ‘splitters’ and ‘salters’ would take over while the fishing vessel headed straight back out to the banks. This continued all summer long. There had been a time when fishermen received a share of the catch - a last echo of the mediaeval tradition whereby sailors on all merchant vessels had a share in the cargo. But by 1720 this practice was dying out. More and more fishing was also being done in deeper waters far off-shore. This was unpopular with English fishermen and increasingly the West Country ships were stopping off in Ireland to recruit men there from the impoverished peasantry.

  By 1720 settlements were springing up along the coastline of south-east Newfoundland and local planters and master fishermen were starting to compete with the West Country merchants for control of the industry. It was a development the West Country men resisted, petitioning parliament for the settlers to be removed. Eventually a compromise was reached whereby settlements were permitted but were not granted full colonial status. The result was a series of forlorn, inhospitable outposts dotted along Newfoundland’s rocky coastline, of which Trepassey was just one. There were no connecting roads and behind them lay nothing but a barren hinterland, deforested to build huts and landing stages and inhabited only by dwindling bands of hostile, Beothuk Indians. There were no schools, the church had almost no presence and the only government was provided by the masters of the larger vessels and the captains of the two Royal Navy ships which were sent out each summer to convoy the fishing fleet.