by Travers, Tim
However, Taylor was far from finished, and with the Cassandra and the Victory raided the coast of India, and then spent some time at the Dutch port of Cochin, enjoying a large amount of arrack (alcohol distilled from rice) and other necessities. This pleased the pirates so much that they gave the supplier three cheers, an eleven gun salute from each ship, £6,000 or £7000, and handfuls of ducats. In this good frame of mind, the pirates headed for Madagascar, but stopped on the way at the island of Reunion, now in company with the French pirate, Olivier La Buze or La Bouche. The pirates were fortunate because in the harbour was a large Portuguese ship, dismasted by a storm, that contained a very great treasure of diamonds, rubies, and other valuables, and also the Viceroy of Goa, who could be ransomed, all to the value of around £875,000. This was one of the greatest hauls of treasure ever taken by any pirate crew, and so each pirate received 42 diamonds as his part of the booty, plus other treasure. One jesting pirate complained that his large diamond, which had been judged equal to 42 smaller diamonds, was not as big as claimed, and so he broke his diamond into 43 smaller diamonds, boasting that ‘he had a better share than any of them, for he had beat it, he said, into 43 sparks.’26
Now the question was what to do next, and hearing the guns of what was assumed to be a Royal Navy squadron come to hunt them, Taylor and the Cassandra sailed from St Mary’s and called in at St Augustine on the west side of Madagascar. There the local natives brought onboard a letter left by Captain Matthews of the Royal Navy for another English man of war commanded by Captain Cockburn. According to a shipmate of Taylor’s, the latter read out the letter to his crew, saying, ‘Damne my Blood God forgive me for swearing heres a Squadron of Men of War sent to look after us but they don’t much care for the seeing of us they are more upon the trading account but however lets stand one by another and take care of ourselves.’27 Taylor was referring to the much deplored practice of Royal Navy captains trading on their own private account rather than chasing pirates, and ironically Captain Matthews was himself later court-martialled for private trading. Further evidence for this practice came when the Duke of Portland complained in a letter in 1723 that arrogant naval captains traded free of charge and so forced honest traders who could not compete, into piracy. A particular case was that of certain naval officers who stole a cargo of indigo off the trading ship Nassau, and then sold the indigo, but restored the ship back to its owners. On behalf of his officers, the naval captain unsuccessfully tried to justify the affair by saying that the indigo was condemned as French, and so a legitimate target.28
Returning to Taylor and the Cassandra, the crew decided to hide out on the east coast of Africa. Then the pirates split into two groups, one half sailing to Madagascar in a captured Portuguese prize with the idea of continuing their piratical life, and the other half (112 pirates and forty Africans) sailing in the Cassandra for the West Indies under Taylor with the idea of obtaining a pardon. The petition for a pardon was written from the Cassandra, anchored at the Isle of Pines, where Drake used to hide out, and addressed to the Governor of Jamaica. The petition, dated 10 April 1723, stated that the pirates now wanted to serve their King and Country, had only been led astray by evil associates from the island of Providence, and had not committed piracy for a year. It was signed by Richard Taylor, William Fox, and William Bates, and was agreed to by seventy English pirates and thirty-seven foreigners. The forty Africans apparently did not come into the matter. However, the Duke of Portland, on behalf of the Crown, refused a pardon for the pirates, causing Taylor’s crew to send a second petition, saying that either they got the pardon or they were willing to stay and live amongst the Indians of Central America. The matter of the second petition was in the hands of Captain Laws of HMS Mermaid, who had sent a lieutenant with a letter to the pirates urging them to surrender. But as he told the Duke of Portland, the pirates were now in too strong a position to attack, their ship lying in a secure lagoon five leagues west of the Isle of Pines. According to Taylor, Laws asked the pirates whether this petition should go to Jamaica or not, which ‘put us into a strange amusement…’, either because the pirates had already made a deal with the Spanish, or because Laws was unable to decide where to send the petition. Nevertheless, Captain Laws sent his brother as a hostage to the pirates, while Taylor came onboard the Mermaid, to try to work out a pardon.29
The Duke of Portland was not impressed by Captain Laws’ actions. He wrote that it was very strange that Captain Laws’ ship stationed off Panama changed stations just as the Cassandra left Panama, implying that Laws had let the Cassandra escape. Another complaint was that the person negotiating with the pirates was actually Captain Laws’ brother, who told the pirates that only Captain Laws could show mercy to them. Laws replied to Portland acknowledging that his letter to the pirates had been too kind, but argued that although his ship had left station just as a Royal Navy sloop arrived, still the combination of the sloop and Laws’ ship could not have done anything against the pirates because onboard the Cassandra were ninety odd French pirates, seventy Indians, and a hundred English pirates. On the other hand, Taylor did tell Captain Laws that if the sloop had not arrived as Laws’ ship left, his crew might have gone ‘we know not whither…’30 The end of the Taylor affair was that Taylor and his crew accepted a pardon from the Governor of Panama, either because Taylor threatened to kill everyone in the town of Porto Bello if a pardon was not forthcoming, or because Taylor and his crew had bribed the Governor of Panama, or because the Governor of Panama granted a free pardon to Taylor and his crew because he wanted the Cassandra to help defend against English ships. In fact, Captain Johnson claimed that Taylor later attacked English logwood cutters in the Bay of Honduras. Subsequently, the Duke of Portland complained to the Governor of Panama over the acceptance of Taylor and his ship into Spanish service, and received an amusing reply from the Governor of Panama, who declared that he had taken the Cassandra into his protection in order to make commerce safe. Still, the Spanish Governor suggested Portland might like to appeal to the Court in Spain, and ended with a flourish, ‘Kiss your hands and am your most obliged Servant…’31
The Traders of St Mary’s: Baldridge to Plantain
Finally, in this story of Madagascar and St Mary’s, what happened to the traders who spent more time on the island of St Mary’s than any pirate? Adam Baldridge, who left the ship Fortune in order to live on the island in 1691, was not only a trader but also a despot at St Mary’s. He dispensed justice, kept a harem, and lived in very high style. However, his last exploit, when he invited a few dozen loyal Madagascar supporters onboard his ship for a party, and then sold them as slaves to the French on nearby Reunion, was one too many for the local tribes who rose against Baldridge in July 1697. They attacked his fort and warehouse, killing some thirty Europeans, including many pirates. Baldridge himself managed to escape and wound up living happily enough in New York, a far cry from St Mary’s. Baldridge was followed by a certain Edward Welch, nicknamed ‘Little King’, because of his short stature. Welch ran the same compound, fort, and trading business as Baldridge, and included a whore house in his business activities. Welch was seriously wounded in a skirmish, and was eventually replaced by the most colourful of the Madagascar traders, John or James Plantain, who arrived in 1720. Plantain had been raised in Jamaica by parents who gave him the best education they could, which allegedly was ‘to curse, swear, and blaspheme, from the time of his first learning to speak.’ Plantain then learnt the sailor’s trade aboard a small Jamaican sloop, and subsequently applied himself to the task of logwood cutting at Campeche. Later, he wandered to Rhode Island, and joined pirates who sailed to the coast of Africa. After this he served as a pirate on Edward England’s ship, the Fancy, and then joined Richard Taylor on the Cassandra, but was one of those who decided to stay on in Madagascar. Subsequently, Plantain served on the pirate ship Dragon, commanded by Edmund Conden. The Dragon seized a very rich Muslim ship from Jeddah at Bab el Mandeb in 1720, enabling Conden and his crew to rake in
about £150,000. As a result each pirate received a share of some £2,000 each at St Mary’s. It seems that Plantain and his two partners, James Adair and Hans Burgen, who had also very likely been on the Dragon, decided to settle down on Madagascar, and make use of their ill gotten gains to continue the trading business.32
Unlike previous traders, though, Plantain had political ambitions, and decided to become king of Madagascar. At the same time, Plantain was apparently homesick, saying in 1722 that he would give half of what he was worth in order to be in a Christian country.33 But before Plantain tried to become king of Madagascar, he made himself a fort and compound in Ranter Bay, in the north of St Mary’s, where he also established a harem containing a number of local girls bearing names such as Moll, Kate, Sue and Pegg. These ladies were outfitted in the best dresses, and some had diamond necklaces. Part of Plantain’s wealth came from trading with the Royal Navy itself. It seems that Captains Thomas Matthews and Cockburn arrived at St Mary’s in 1722 on the Easter and the Lyon and Salisbury respectively, and that Plantain came aboard with his private army of some thirty to forty armed natives. The captains agreed to trade spirits and goods (including spats, shoes, and stockings) for gold and diamonds. Plantain boasted to the sailors of the Royal Navy that if they would stay with him, he would build ships, and in a little while ‘they should all be rich enough to buy Estates and that he had planted Sugar Canes and distilled as good Rum as any could be in the West Indies…’ Meanwhile, in exchange for the spirits, Plantain bargained hard with his diamonds, taking them out of his pocket and saying to Matthews ‘I’ll give you all these for the Liquor if you’l take em but if you wont take them at the first word Ile put them into my pocket and they shall never come out again…’ Matthews seized the chance to trade and accepted the diamonds in exchange for the spirits, which Plantain took from Matthews and hid under guard. It seems the transaction involved five bars of gold as well as the diamonds, but at this point there was a native attack on Ranter Bay, and Plantain had to leave in a hurry, without taking away the spirits. The navy was able to recover the spirits through the advice of a native, who knew where the spirits were hidden, although he had to be taken onboard to protect him from Plantain. So the spirits were taken back onto the Royal Navy ships, yet this was only a partial victory because the alcohol could not be touched by the crew for fear that the spirits had been poisoned.34
Captain Matthews would appear to have got the best of Plantain, but since Matthews was subsequently court martialled for using his ship for private trading, perhaps Plantain had the last laugh after all. Returning to Plantain’s idea of becoming king of Madagascar, he launched a campaign, with his private army of natives and some pirates, against a local chief called Long Dick or King Dick. This fight started because Plantain was enamoured of the grand daughter of the king, by name Holy Eleonora Brown. She was called Holy because she knew the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Ten Commandments, and Christian precepts, and was named Brown because that was the name of her pirate father. King Dick refused to part with Eleonora, so Plantain’s army attacked and defeated King Dick, and the latter was put to death in painful ways. Plantain took Eleonora back with him to Ranter Bay, where she advised him seriously on religious matters, and said her prayers morning and night. For his part, Plantain sent away most of his other wives, gave Eleonora twenty local girls as slaves, and dressed her in silks, diamonds and jewels. Plantain later launched an attack on another local king at Port Dauphin, where after an eighteen month siege, Plantain succeeded in taking the town. He then proclaimed himself King of Madagascar, but he and his compatriots were forced to leave Madagascar because of pending trouble with the local natives. Plantain sailed away in a small sloop taking Eleonora and his several children with him, and reportedly wound up on the Malabar Coast of India, serving with the Indian pirate Angrey. With this departure, the Red Sea pirates came close to ending their relationship with St Mary’s and Madagascar – a pattern that had only lasted from the early 1690s to the late 1720s. Yet in this short time, St Mary’s had seen significant piracy and the taking of vast amounts of Red Sea treasure. It is reported that some pirates still survived until 1730 on Madagascar, but these were the last of the breed.35
The end of the Madagascar pirates also paralleled the temporary end of the Western pirates, as the next chapter relates.
7
Death to the Pirates
In the western world of the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and along the coasts of the Americas, government forces were engaged in a concentrated campaign of suppression against the pirates in the period from roughly 1700 to the mid 1720s. Traders, merchants, slavers, and colonial governors combined to put pressure on governments to try to put an end to piracy in the West Indies and the Caribbean in this period, and an improved Royal Navy made this possible. It is too much to say that ‘Piracy would come to an end by 1726’, since there were occasional pirate attacks throughout the eighteenth century, and a very considerable resurgence of piracy in the early 1820s in the West Indies, to say nothing of what was happening in eastern seas. But certainly most of the well known western pirates of the early 1700s would come to an unfortunate end – with perhaps 500–600 Anglo-American pirates being executed between 1716 and 1726. Some 2,000 pirates were operating at any one time during the ‘golden age’ of piracy from the 1680s to the mid 1720s, and it is estimated that altogether around 5,000 pirates went ‘on account’ over this time frame. Rather than try to follow all their stories, it will be useful to focus on just three of the best known pirates of this time – Blackbeard, or Edward Teach, who was killed in 1718; ‘Calico’ Jack Rackam, who was hanged in 1720; and Bartholomew Roberts, who was killed in 1722.1
Blackbeard (Active 1714/1715–1718)
Blackbeard gained more fame and notoriety from legends of his appearance and bravado than from his actual piracy. Charles Johnson’s description of Blackbeard went a very long way to cementing the pirate’s reputation with his extravagant description of the pirate’s ‘… large quantity of hair, which like a frightful meteor covered his whole face and frightened America more than any comet that has appeared there a long time.’ Johnson continued:
This beard was black, which he suffered to grow of an extravagant length; as to breadth it came up to his eyes. He was accustomed to twist it with ribbons, in small tails, after the manner of our ramilies wigs [named for the battle of Ramillies in 1706, the type of wig being one in which there is a long plait or tail behind, which is tied with a bow at the top and bottom of the plait], and turn them about his ears. [Blackbeard actually seems to have produced several plaits instead of one.] In time of action, he wore a sling over his shoulders with three brace of pistols hanging in holsters like bandaliers [a common system to offset the slow and unreliable method of reloading the flintlock pistol], and stuck lighted matches under his hat, which appearing on each side of his face, his eyes looking naturally fierce and wild, made him altogether such a figure, that imagination cannot form an idea of a fury, from hell, to look more frightful.2
Johnson went on to describe three or four incidents, which also raised the profile and sinister image of Blackbeard, although it is noteworthy that these incidents do not involve piracy. In one incident, Blackbeard was supposed to have married a sixteen-year-old girl while at Bath Town in North Carolina, supposedly his fourteenth wife, and he allegedly invited five or six of his companions to his house, where he forced her to prostitute herself to them while Blackbeard watched. This seems just possible, but very unlikely. In another incident, Blackbeard was drinking one night in his cabin with Israel Hands, the captain of the sloop that sailed in consort with Blackbeard. Another pirate was also present, when Blackbeard blew out the candle, crossed his hands under the table, where he had two pistols, and shot Israel Hands in the knee. The second pistol shot missed, or presumably the other man would have been badly injured also. The first shot disabled Israel Hands for life, and when questioned as to the reason for this, Blackbeard simply said that if he did not kill one
of his crew, they would forget who he was. There may be some validity to this story, since Johnson reported that Israel Hands, after being pardoned, could be found later begging for bread in London, which might have been the only way Hands could survive, if he was crippled and unable to work.3 In addition, if Johnson did come across Hands in London, he would have learnt many valuable details of Blackbeard’s life.
Still another story related by Johnson has Blackbeard challenging his men to a contest, in which he and two or three others went down into the hold of their ship, and set fire to brimstone, to see how long they could stand the fumes. At length, some of the others cried out for air, so the hatches were opened, while Blackbeard was pleased that he had held out the longest. Again, this story is possible, although it relates to the image of fire and smoke that Johnson liked to emphasize with Blackbeard. Yet another fable, which stresses the diabolical image of Blackbeard, has the crew of his ship finding out that they had one more man onboard than was supposed to be there:
