by Travers, Tim
Cover illustrations: (front) Captain Kent – the romantic image of a pirate aptain, as imagined by Howard Pyle, the American illustrator, who did more than any other individual to imprint on the modern mind what a pirate looked like. Author’s collection; (spine) skull and cross bones taken from a Howard Pyle illustration. Author’s collection; (back) a version of the Jolly Roger flag, c. 1704. Courtesy of Joel Baer.
Contents
Acknowledgments
1 The Pirate World
2 From Classical Piracy to the Medieval Mediterranean
3 Piracy in the Northern World
4 The Elizabethan Sea Rovers and the Jacobean Pirates
5 Buccaneers of the Caribbean
6 The Madagascar Men
7 Death to the Pirates
8 The Barbary Corsairs of North Africa
9 Pirates of the Eastern Seas
10 The Road to Modern Piracy
Epilogue
Abbreviations
Definitions
List of Illustrations
Maps
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Any attempt to write a history of piracy must gratefully rely on numerous authors and selected archives. These are listed in the bibliography, but special thanks are due to the librarians and archivists of the British Library, London; the Public Record Office, Kew; and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. Valuable, too, was the inter library loan office at the University of Victoria, as were the students of my pirate history seminar at the University of Victoria. Many thanks are also due to those who generously supplied lodging and hospitality in England, especially Patricia Rogers, and Jo and Charles Cumberlege. Others who kindly helped along the way with information and encouragement include Chris Archer, Peter Fothergill-Payne, Richard Unger, and Patrick Wright. Thanks also to Jonathan Reeve, publisher, for his patience as the manuscript went over the time limit. Most of all, Heather gave up much of her time to solve all computer problems, and thanks to her, the manuscript and the author both survived. Of course, all errors are due to the author alone.
1
The Pirate World
The ‘golden age’ of piracy in the West lasted from the 1680s to the 1720s, and during this time some 5,000 pirates roamed the seas. Who were these pirates? A great many were sailors who became unemployed after major European wars ended. Others came from the hard grind and exploitation of the Newfoundland fishery. Still other pirate recruits came from ships that pirates captured, and whose crews either volunteered or were forced to join. This was especially the case with captured slave ships, where conditions for the crew, let alone the miserable slaves, were brutal. And many African slaves also joined as willing or unwilling pirates. Then there were indentured servants from the colonies who found their lives unendurable and were happy to try piracy. Many individuals went ‘on account’ as pirates simply to improve their lot in life, and others were attracted by the promise of wealth that could not be obtained in any other way. Some perhaps joined pirate crews for political or ideological reasons, and democracy did generally rule on pirate ships. Merchant and navy ships were notorious for poor conditions and bad treatment, and so sailors from these ships often decided to try their luck with pirate ships. In fact, mutinies on merchant ships in particular were often caused by lack of provisions and tardiness in paying their crews, so that most of the crew would turn pirate. Altogether there were many reasons to become a pirate at this time, and there was always the lure of treasure to attract men unhappy with low wages and poverty stricken lives.
How then to enter the world of the pirates of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries? One way is to listen to what they said about themselves. A good start is an early eighteenth-century mock trial, in which a group of pirates pretended to put themselves in court in order to both criticize and make fun of the judicial system of the day:
Attorn. Gen: An’t please your Lordship, and you Gentlemen of the Jury, here is a Fellow before you that is a sad Dog, a sad sad Dog; & I humbly hope your Lordship will order him to be hanged out of the Way immediately. He has committed Pyracy upon the High Seas, and we shall prove, an’t please your Lordship, that this Fellow, this sad Dog before you, has escaped a thousand Storms, nay, has got safe ashore when the Ship has been cast away, which was a certain Sign he was not born to be drown’d; yet not having the Fear of hanging before his Eyes, he went on robbing & ravishing, Man, Woman and Child, plundering Ships Cargoes fore and aft, burning and sinking Ship, Bark and Boat, as if the Devil had been in him. But that is not all, my Lord, he has committed worse Villanies than all these, for we shall prove, that he has been guilty of drinking Small-Beer; and your Lordship knows, there never was a sober Fellow but what was a Rogue. My Lord, I should have spoken much finer than I do now, but that, as your Lordship knows our Rum is all out, and how should a Man speak good Law that has not drunk a Dram. However, I hope your Lordship will order the Fellow to be hang’d.
Judge: Heark’ee me sirrah, you lousy, pitiful, ill-look’d Dog; what have you to say why you should not be tuck’d up immediately, and set a Sundrying like a Scare-crow? Are you guilty or not guilty?
Pris[oner]: Not guilty, an’t please your Worship.1
This mock trial gives an insight into the humour, as well as the fears, of the pirates. This skit was performed on an island off Cuba in 1722 by a pirate crew commanded by Captain Anstis, and recorded by Captain Charles Johnson, the eighteenth-century historian of piracy. The pirates well knew that they had committed or were about to commit crimes that would result in the hanging of many of them, or at the least produce an untimely death of some kind. So this mock trial was a way of getting over their fear of hanging by making fun of it, and at the same time showing a defiance of the law in pursuing their piratical ways regardless.
Captain Charles Johnson’s book is one of the key sources for Western piracy in the Golden Age of piracy from the 1680s to the 1720s. Entitled A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, it was first published in 1724, and subsequently in several further editions. Unfortunately, no one knows who Captain Charles Johnson was, since this name was a pseudonym, although some older authorities consider Johnson might have been the author Daniel Defoe. Some wonder if Johnson was the playwright Charles Johnson (1679–1748), who did write a play called The Successful Pirate, while still others consider that Johnson must have been a sailor or even a pirate, judging from his inside knowledge of the sea and his connections to many pirates. Whoever he was, Johnson’s book contains biographies of many of the most famous pirates of the day such as Avery (or Every), Blackbeard (or Teach), Rackam, Roberts, Kidd, and the two female pirates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny. By cross checking with documents from the English High Court of the Admiralty, Colonial Office records, trial reports, and other official sources, it seems that Johnson was generally quite accurate, although details were sometimes wrong, and speeches were probably mostly invented.2
The world of the pirates has been explored in a large number of books, but the present volume tries to extend the time and space of piracy by going back to classical and medieval piracy and forward to modern piracy, while also widening the search to include Asian and South Asian piracy. Yet the greatest volume of archival and other resources easily available relates to the period from about 1600 onward in regard to Caribbean, Atlantic and Pacific piracy, and so a number of chapters deal with this area. First hand accounts of this period are particularly useful, and some are to be found in the British Library, London. Yet our modern image of the pirate is very strongly formed not from archives or from modern books, but by one or two late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century children’s books, by the lurid illustrations of the American Howa
rd Pyle at the turn of the century, and by the cinema.
Undoubtedly the most influential children’s book is by Robert Louis Stevenson, whose Treasure Island, published in 1883, introduced some memorable fictional pirate characters, such as Long John Silver, Blind Pew, Ben Gunn, and Israel Hands, the last being the name of a real pirate. Stevenson had read Charles Johnson and this accounts for the authentic pirate ‘feel’ to the book. Treasure Island continues to be read and republished, and introduces the strange concept that murderous pirates are especially suitable for children’s literature. This must be explained partly because we are no longer frightened of piracy, which has retreated to the periphery of the world. Thus piracy belongs to an imaginary world rather than a real world, and so pirate stories can safely be read by children. The children’s theme continued with the highly successful drama of Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, by another Scotsman, J.M. Barrie, which was produced in 1902. This play introduced Captain Hook, whose image is based partly on the pirate Blackbeard. Hook is the unpleasant leader of a group of pirates, who pursue a number of children. Once more, the situation is potentially frightening, but is resolved through magical means, and children can feel safe watching the play.3
Pirate books for children continue to be published, such as the Pirate Hunter series for teenagers, and it is the combination of exotic locations, daring adventures, and pirates who are on the social boundaries of society like outlaws and highwaymen, who are a suitable distance from real pirates, which make these stories popular.4 Some of these books are illustrated with the work of the American author and illustrator, Howard Pyle, who produced a very romantic image of the pirate, which has now become the standard of what a seventeenth- or eighteenth-century pirate really looked like. Pyle’s pirates are shown doing both imagined and genuine pirate activities, such as forcing captives to walk the plank, pirates being marooned, pirate craft sneaking up on ships, pirates torturing prisoners to force them to reveal where their wealth is, pirates fighting pirates, pirates burying treasure, and evil looking pirates like William Kidd.5 Meanwhile, there has been a surprising resurgence in scholarly pirate historiography in the last dozen years or so, some of which might have been stimulated by the emergence of modern piracy, and others perhaps by the creation of a new genre of pirate film.6
Pirate films generally fit into four overlapping categories. First, the ‘Swashbuckler’ style of film, starring actors such as Errol Flynn and Douglas Fairbanks, in films such as Captain Blood (1924, 1935), based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini, published in 1923; The Black Pirate (1926); and The Black Swan (1942), another film based on a Sabatini novel published in 1932. The theme in these films tends to be the misunderstood pirate who eventually turns out well, but the central image is the handsome, charismatic, bare-chested, cutlass swinging, dare devil of a pirate, carefree, and yet caring of his men and usually a woman. The second film category would be the ‘patriotic’ pirate film, in which the pirate hero wages war against an unpleasant enemy of his country. Examples include The Sea Hawk (1924, 1942), based on yet another early Sabatini novel published in 1915, with the enemy being nasty Spain, a frequent antagonist, as in The Spanish Main (1945). Then there is The Buccaneer (1938, 1958), about the American pirate Jean Laffite, who helps the Americans against the British at the Battle of New Orleans. The third film category relates to pirate parodies and comedies, which poke fun at the stock characters and themes of the swashbuckling and patriotic era. Needless to say, this genre requires an established set of pirate characters and films to parody, and also signals that the original pirate genre is now tired and seriously in need of new directions. The comedy genre started around the 1940s, with films such as The Princess and the Pirate (1944), starring Bob Hope, and continued with many more recent films such as Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (1952) and The Crimson Pirate (1952). These films often include an evil Spanish governor or similar unpleasant tyrant, and the required female interest. The newest example of this genre is The Pirates of the Caribbean series which is mainly a parody, but contains a certain amount of swashbuckling, and a love interest. Lastly, a fourth category is the children’s film. Following the previously mentioned connection between piracy and children’s literature, a number of children’s films have been released, starting with many versions of Treasure Island (1920, 1934, 1950, 1972, 1990). The children’s film Long John Silver appeared in 1954, and, as might be expected, Peter Pan was also turned into a film, in 1953, and again in 1991 under the title Hook. Peter Pan also became a musical in 1954 and a television adaptation in 1976. In some ways, The Pirates of the Caribbean films are also children’s films, while the Gilbert and Sullivan musical/opera, The Pirates of Penzance (1983), really also belongs to the parody genre.
Overall, in regard to film, the swashbuckling and patriotic style pirate films held sway from the 1920s to the 1950s, then these genres ran out of steam, and were replaced to a considerable extent by parodies and comedies. These too seemed to have run their course until The Pirates of the Caribbean series, which managed to breathe new life into the pirate film with a mixture of swashbuckling, comedy, science fiction, and a dash of children’s entertainment. One point is worth making before leaving the topic of the cinema, and this is that the handsome type of pirate portrayed by film stars such as Errol Flynn is rather far from reality. In contrast, for example, the real pirate John James is described in 1699 as ‘a man of middle Stature, Square-Shouldered, Large jointed, Lean, much disfigured with the small pox, broad Speech, thick Lipped, a blemish or Cast in his left Eye …’ A descriptive selection of a list of pirates, who ran away with the ship Adventure in September 1698, is described thus, so that they could be identified if captured:
John Lloyde: of Ordinary Stature, raw boned, very pale Complexion, darke hair, remarkably deformed by an Attraction of the Lower Eyelid.
John Peirce: Short, well sett, swarthy, much pockfretten.
Andrew Martin: Short, thick great lipps, black bushey hair.
Tho Simpson: Short and Small, black, much squint eyed. 7
And so on. All of these pirates were quite young, in the fifteen to thirty-five age bracket. Many had eye problems, and some were marked by small pox or other diseases. However, as might be expected from their rough backgrounds and life styles, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century pirates were not quite like those portrayed in the modern cinema. What then was the real pirate world like?
Democracy
Among Western pirates in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a very significant aspect of their lives was the concept of democracy onboard a pirate ship. The pirates did not call it democracy, but they were well aware that the rules, written and unwritten, which they lived under as pirates, were very different from the regimented and hierarchical lives of sailors onboard merchant and naval vessels. Some pirate captains introduced specific rules for living onboard, such as the rules of Captain Bart Roberts, Captain Phillips and Captain Lowther. These rules laid out four basic areas of pirate conduct: the system of division of treasure among the officers and crew; the regulation of life aboard the ship; the reward system for those injured in engagements; and the punishments for infringements of the rules. Every man that came aboard a pirate ship where these rules were followed had to sign articles, usually on a bible, to show that he agreed to obey these rules. It is of interest that Roberts produced twelve rules, Lowther eight, and Phillips nine.
Roberts tended to be stricter, tougher and more of a disciplinarian than other captains, which perhaps accounts for the larger number of his rules. Thus Roberts had rules to forbid dicing and gambling for money, which was a frequent cause of trouble onboard pirate ships, a rule that candles and lights were to be out at eight o’clock at night, though drinking could carry on after this on the open deck, and a rule to prevent boys or women being brought onboard. Roberts also had rules that demanded the crew keep their pistols and cutlasses in good order, that musicians onboard should be able to rest on the Sabbath, but for the other six days
and nights be ready to play, and a rule that no crew member should talk of breaking up their way of living until each man was able to share £1,000. This last rule was designed to offset the perennial problem of pirate voyages, when some pirates wanted to end the voyage with what they had, and others wanted to continue. Other rules related to duels as a method of dealing with conflict onboard, and a rule outlining punishments both for pirates leaving their station in battle, and for deserting the ship, which last was a problem when a group might try to take over a ship and depart, or when an individual might desert and perhaps inform the authorities. Then there was the usual rule for distributing treasure, and for compensating those who were wounded in battle. Of significance is Roberts’ first rule, which spelled out the democratic intent of the pirate life:
Every Man has a Vote in Affairs of Moment; has equal Title to the fresh Provisions, or strong Liquors, at any Time seized, & use them at pleasure, unless a Scarcity make it necessary, for the good of all, to Vote a Retrenchment.8
In actual fact, not every one had a vote, since men who were forced to join a pirate crew were judged unreliable, and were narrowly watched by the old hands. Certain officers such as the surgeon were often compelled to join a pirate ship and were also thought to be less enthusiastic. Of course, rules were all very well, but enforcing them, and having pirates obey them, was not an easy matter in an equal democracy. In Roberts’ case, he was able to hold his crew together for four years. This was no mean feat, although some crew did desert him, and there was too much drinking, which in the end left Roberts’ ships vulnerable when the Royal Navy caught up with them. Captain Lowther’s eight rules were very much the same, except that there were fewer rules regarding conduct onboard, and the last two rules spelled out particulars. Lowther’s rule number seven stated, ‘Good Quarters be given when called for’, presumably to save the lives of those victims that wanted to surrender, and rule number eight stated that the first pirate to see a sail should have the best pistol or small arm onboard the victim. Lowther’s rules did not prevent much dissension onboard his ships, and he was also accused of cruelty. Lowther’s ship was eventually caught while the crew was careening it (cleaning the bottom of the hull of barnacles and weed), and Lowther either shot himself ashore, or was shot by a fellow pirate.9
