Pirates: A History

by Travers, Tim

  Keppel’s next move was to continue even further up the left hand fork of the river, which was defended with a barrier by the Dyaks. Keppel therefore decided it was the correct branch of the river to follow. A small well armed force of about ninety men in the pinnace headed up the river, although there were supposed to be around 6,000 Dyaks and 500 Malays to oppose them. There was a sharp fight, and an uncomfortable night for Keppel’s force in the heavy rain, as Dyak spear throwing attacks continued through the darkness. It seems that signal rockets and Congreve rockets were discomforting to the Dyaks, as well as the accurate fire of the cannon and the rapid musket fire of Keppel’s party. Moreover, the Dyaks’ main weapon in this encounter was the spear, so there was an obvious technical imbalance in the conflict. When Keppel’s force showed every intention of carrying on even further up the river, where the Dyaks had hidden their families and possessions, the Dyaks decided to bargain. Rajah Brooke conducted negotiations, and the Dyaks agreed to renounce their attacks. The campaign was not over, however, for Keppel’s force then attacked other Dyak forts at a place called Pakoo, where the Dyaks were well fortified but had not had time to set up their cannon. A salvo from Keppel’s force was enough to send these Dyaks into retreat, and Keppel’s allies – a Dyak tribe called Singe – were active in taking the heads of Pakoo’s defenders, ‘I saw one body afterwards without its head, in which each passing [Singe] Dyak had thought proper to stick a spear, so that it had all the appearance of a huge porcupine.’ As was customary, Pakoo was put to the torch, and so was the next Dyak fort at Rembas. In this fashion, the campaign of pacification continued, with one Dyak group after another being subdued.35

  Yet the Dyaks were not to be so easily defeated, and in 1849 a major effort against them was launched by a number of Royal Navy vessels, by Rajah Brooke’s ships, and by allied Dyaks. On 31 July 1849, this combined fleet cut off a major group of 150 Sarebas and Sakarran Dyak bangkongs returning from a raid. When the Dyaks saw they were cut off from their river retreat, they called a hasty council of war by the sounding of three strokes of a gong. According to Harriette McDougall, a subsequent yell of defiance showed that the Dyaks had decided to fight:

  The pirates fought bravely, but could not withstand the forces of their enemies. Their boats were upset by the paddles of the steamer; they were hemmed in on every side, and five hundred men were killed, sword in hand; while two thousand five hundred escaped into the jungle … The English officers on that night offered prizes to all who should bring in captives alive: but the pirates would take no quarter, in the water they still fought without surrender.36

  The going rate offered by the British Admiralty for Dyak pirates captured or killed was £20, and Captain Farquhar of HMS Albatross successfully claimed £20,700 for his part in this action – an extraordinary fortune. The Dyaks who escaped into the jungle must have annoyed those who hoped for more prize money. (Similarly, Captain Sir Edward Belcher, on HMS Samarang, claimed 350 pirates killed in the Moluccas in 1844, at £20 each, which amounted to £7,000, but he also claimed for 980 pirates who escaped, at £5 each, for the sum of £4,900, the total being £11,900. Strangely enough, the total claim was accepted.) Returning to Farquhar, his action did much to put an end to Dyak raids, although the perspective of history shows that many of these Dyak raids were the result of local rivalries, and the piracy that did take place was usually local.37

  The same can be said for almost all of the piracy of South-East Asia and the Pacific – what was piracy to Western imperial governments was traditional practice and local rivalry to the groups and tribes of the area.

  Arab Piracy: The Qasimi

  By the seventh century, the Muscat Arab raiders had already gained a reputation for piracy, and in the twefth century, they raided the coasts of India and Africa. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Arabs were formidable rivals to the Portuguese. Then, in the late eighteenth century and into the early nineteenth century, a confederation of tribes called the Qasimi attacked vessels of foreigners and other Arab ships from Muscat and Oman. The Qasimi (plural Qawasim) largely converted to Wahhabism, a stricter form of Islam, and in the period from the 1790s to the 1820s, raided a large number of ships from their base at Ras al Khaima (now in modern Oman). Some of the attacked ships were from the East India Company, some were merchant ships of other flags, some were local Arab boats, and many came from Surat in India. One particular capture by the Qasimi was of the merchant ship Minerva, taken in 1809. A passenger onboard, one Alimanjee, wrote that about fifty-five Qasimi boats, large and small, with 5,000 Qawasim onboard, attacked the Minerva, and over a period of two days succeeded in taking the ship. Alimanjee perhaps exaggerated the number of Qasimi boats and pirates, but in any case, of the seventy-seven strong Minerva crew and passengers, forty-five were killed. The rest were taken to the Qasimi capital Ras al-Khaima, where the Qasimi demanded ransom. Most were too poor to pay but the young Armenian wife of Lieutenant Taylor, her infant son, and her servants, were ransomed for $1,400. The handful of Christian males who survived were persuaded to become Muslims, and were forcibly circumcised.38

  The vessels used by the Qasimi for their piracy were built for operation in narrow waters, and the main boat used was the baghla. This boat had a crew of about 150 to 200 onboard, with a high poop, and a very large sail. An even larger boat was the dow, distinguished from the baghla by having a long gallery projecting from the stern. The dow was capable of carrying 300 to 500 men, and from five to ten guns. The Qasimi mode of attack was as follows:

  They surround a ship, keeping clear of the broadside if she has cannon, and begin the battle with matchlocks, guns and spears … When a favourable opportunity offers, they run their prows over the deck of the vessel they attack … over the heads of the defendants who are completely exposed; and as soon as the dow swings alongside, the men from the fighting stage board, while multitudes of men in fast sailing boats … rush in and overpower the unhappy people they assail.39

  A typical Qasimi attack was the capture of the Ahmadi, sailing from Surat in India in February 1816. This merchant ship possessed a British pass, and hoisted British colours, but this was of little interest to the four baghlas, two dows and two other Qasimi boats lying in wait near Bab el Mandeb, the old ambush location of the Red Sea pirates. Around forty to fifty Qasimi boarded the Ahmadi and proceeded to immediately slaughter ten or twelve of those who were on deck. Others of the Ahmadi crew escaped to cabins or below decks, or speedily clambered up the masts. One sailor who went up a mast found a Qasimi climbing up after him, and was just about to throw himself into the water when a call went out to stop the slaughter. When this sailor came down from the mast, he saw ‘about ten or twelve dead bodies, some of them with their heads severed off … lying about the deck … the remainder had been thrown overboard’. It seems that fifty-six of the people onboard the Ahmadi were killed. The Ahmadi was one of three Indian ships carrying British colours, and these ships produced about £100,000 in booty to the Qasimi.40

  The piracy of the Qawasim was widespread, and perhaps employed as many as 25,000 men. Many of the ships taken were from the East India Company, and so the British navy attempted to rein in the piracy with a major attack on Ras al Khaima in November 1809. The navy bombarded the town and then landed troops which sacked the town. This turned out to be a temporary setback to the Qawasim, so in December 1819 the British returned to Ras al Khaima with a battleship, ten other warships, and 3,400 troops, and began a six day siege. In the end, all the boats at Ras al Khamai were destroyed, and the Qasimi fort razed to the ground. This time, the Qawasim recognised the right of the East India Company to sail unhindered, and signed a Treaty or Truce in January 1820, which truce led to the southern shores of the Persian Gulf being known later as the Trucial coast. As it happened, some Qawasim continued to raid, but they were forced to reimburse their victims. Looking at Qawasim piracy overall, it seems that local conditions influenced this piracy to a considerable extent. The Qawasim engaged in piracy partly be
cause they thought it was their right, and partly because it was expected of them by regional politics. Social pressure to maintain the honour of the Qawasim encouraged such piracy, which might be thought of as the kind of traditional raiding normally practiced in the region. Hence, culture, politics, and religion in the shape of Wahhabism, which encouraged maritime plunder, all led to Qawasim piracy. Thus what was tradition in the region of the Gulf became piracy when the East Indian Company and the British became involved.41

  Piracy in the Eastern seas showed many differences from Western piracy in the size and composition of pirate fleets, in the tactics employed, in the political ambitions of the pirates, and in the complicated rivalry between local rulers as they faced European imperialism and European economic desires. And like Chinese, Indian and South East Asian piracy, pirates in the Arabian Gulf had operated for centuries. Yet Arab Gulf piracy was similar to Chinese, Indian and South East Asian pirates in that during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, these pirates pursued their activities in the same context of local rivalries and European ambitions. But while Asian piracy continued to flourish well into the twentieth century, there was an earlier nineteenth century outburst of piracy in the Mediterranean and in the traditional areas of the West Indies and the Americas, as the next chapter illustrates.

  10

  The Road to Modern Piracy

  The first half of the nineteenth century saw a considerable amount of piracy in the Mediterranean, in the Atlantic, off the West Indies, and in the Gulf of Mexico. In the Mediterranean (noted in Chapter 8) the Barbary corsairs did not fully cease operations until 1830, while the disorder created by the Napoleonic wars opened the area to a number of attacks. The end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 also turned a number of privateers into pirates. But it was the Greek war of independence against the Ottomans, commencing in 1821, which really opened up the Mediterranean to further considerable piracy. This piracy eventually came to an end by 1828 through the actions of the British, French and Russians, who intervened on behalf of the Greeks in 1827. Although both Greeks and Ottoman Turks were involved in piracy throughout this period, it was often Greek sailors who were involved. This was partly because the Greeks had already been outlaws before the war started, partly because they had no other means of survival, and partly because the Greek Provisional Government required Greek ships to stop and search neutrals in order to prevent supplies going to the Ottoman Turks, and these searches often led to outright piracy. Finally, even before the Greek war of independence, there was already some piracy in the Mediterranean, brought about by the conditions created by the Napoleonic wars. These earlier Greek pirates based themselves on the islands of Skiathos and Skopelos, on the islands around Smyrna, at the entrance to the Dardanelles, and on the southern coast of Crete, especially the port of Grabusa.1

  One such pirate assault, by two Greek ships on a merchant ship in the Mediterranean was recorded by the traveller J.S. Buckingham, in 1812. According to Buckingham, his ship learnt from a Maltese bound convoy that there were a host of pirates infesting the Greek islands, who took their prizes into obscure ports in the Adriatic, where the pirates sold the cargo, destroyed the ship’s papers, and then butchered the entire crew. Alert to this very serious problem, Buckingham observed a large lateen rigged pirate, equipped with sweeps, heading toward his ship. Buckingham was especially concerned because his wife and infant daughter were onboard with him, but his ship was unusually well armed, having ten carronades (a large anti-personnel gun), and a number of twelve pounders, although only a relatively small crew of twenty-five men. The pirate ship pulled alongside, intending to board, at which point:

  …we fired a broadside of round [shot], grape, and canister, right into his decks, with a volley of musketry at the same time. His mainmast instantly fell by the board, with a horrible crash, and killed and wounded in its fall perhaps as many as our broadside had done, – the screams and cries of the dying and wounded being most pitiable to hear.

  The pirate ship brought out the sweeps and came alongside again, and twice hooked on to the chains, but the ship’s carpenter cut away both grapnel hooks, although some pirates got onboard and were cut down. Then a second pirate ship appeared, obviously working in tandem with the first, and fired a twelve pound shot into Buckingham’s ship, nearly doing away with his wife and daughter. Next, the first pirate used her sweeps to come under the stern, intending to board at the most vulnerable point of the ship. However, Buckingham’s ship was also unusual in possessing two long nine pounder stern chasers, triple loaded with round, grape and chain shot, which, when fired, created very severe destruction in the first pirate ship and immediately sank her. When the second pirate ship saw this, she put out her sweeps and left ‘with the utmost speed’.

  Buckingham noted that none of his crew was killed, though half were wounded with sabre cuts, musketry, and the most dangerous element of all in naval battles of the time, wooden splinters. He described the scene on his ship afterwards:

  The decks were covered with blood, and the wreck of shattered bulwarks, stranded rigging, split sails, and general dilapidation was so great, that it was a matter of surprise to us how a single gun could have been worked efficiently amidst the darkness and confusion that prevailed.2

  Buckingham was lucky to escape, and if his ship had been overwhelmed, the end result would have been very unpleasant after the fight his ship put up. Not so lucky were merchant ships in various encounters with Greek pirates in 1827, of which two can be described.

  The Maltese merchant ship Superba was on a run from Alexandria to Istanbul and Odessa in the spring of 1827, with a French brig doing convoy duty. For some reason the French brig left the fleet, perhaps because of a gale, and the Superba then became separated from the fleet, and becalmed as the storm abated. She then noticed a mistico (a coastal vessel with two sails), and a lateen rigged ship with Greek colours approaching. Essentially, the crews of these two ships boarded the Superba:

  The men from both [ships] amounted to one hundred and thirty five; they proceeded to bind every person onboard the ship; they struck the captain and threatened him with a drawn sword to extort the money they suspected was onboard to purchase a cargo … They took the steward, beat him, and put him in the hold on the ballast, where several men committed an unnatural crime both upon him and a sailor … They beat the cook and the captain so severely, to make them confess where the money was hid, with sticks and ropes, that they were both much marked.

  The pirates then removed everything of value from the Superba, and departed for Grabusa on Crete, to sell the cargo, though the captains of the two pirate ships both came from the Greek island of Hydra.3

  A variation of the previous story comes from the captain of the Elizabeth, an English ship, in June 1827. The Elizabeth was contracted to sail from Barba Nichola or Tasso (Turkey), with a cargo of vallonia (acorns to be used in tanning, dyeing, and making ink), to Smyrna. On the way to Tasso, the Elizabeth was boarded by pirates, who took away all stores, furniture, and the clothes of the crew. Then the pirates ‘beat us so unmercifully with ropes, so much so we could scarcely crawl about the deck …’ The crew of the Elizabeth managed to get their ship into Tasso harbour, where other pirates boarded the Elizabeth and forced the captain and crew to abandon her. Then the pirates towed the Elizabeth about a mile offshore, where they continued to plunder the Elizabeth at their ease. After this, the pirates left the Elizabeth, and the captain managed to get the ship towed toward Symi harbour nearby. Once more, pirates in a mistico attacked as the Elizabeth approached Symi harbour, but the crew managed to get the ship into the harbour. This was not necessarily the end of the story, as the captain reported to the British consul at Smyrna that the Elizabeth was now surrounded by misticos at Symi, and the ship was nearly a wreck. The Royal Navy responded, and HMS Rifleman rescued the Elizabeth, and re-equipped the ship. Given the numerous Greek pirates around, the Rifleman was soon off chasing other pirates.4

  With the crushing Allied
victory of Navarino in 1827 over the Ottoman Turks and Egyptians, and the subsequent Allied demand to the Provisional Greek government that Greek piracy must cease now that there was no Turkish threat, such piracy did come to an end. Following this, the Cretan pirate haunt of Grabusa was destroyed in January 1828 by an Anglo-French fleet, and in 1829 the Ottoman Turks recognised an independent Greece. Thus, peace returned to the Levant, and the short lived Greek piracy crisis was over. However, in another part of the world, at much the same time, piracy was assuming an unusual revival.

  Pierre and Jean Laffite

  On the coast of Louisiana (which became a state in 1812), and in the Gulf of Mexico, two brothers by the name of Pierre and Jean Laffite operated as slave traders and smugglers in the early nineteenth century. Their headquarters, just south of New Orleans, was named Barataria, and from here goods were taken in, and then sold in New Orleans. These brothers stayed just on the side of legality between piracy and privateering, using letters of marque or commissions from emerging Latin American states and towns to justify their attacks on Spanish and English ships. Their favourite set of commissions came from Cartagena, Colombia, which was engaged in trying to separate itself from Spanish rule, and was happy to print out blank commissions for the Laffites. However, the American government decided to end this slave trading and smuggling ring, and attacked and demolished Barataria in 1814. Just at this juncture, the British, who were involved in a war against the United States between 1812 and 1814, mainly over blockades and the right to search ships, organised an attack on New Orleans. Both the British and the Americans tried to enlist the Baratarians, who decided to support the Americans. Hence, some fifty Baratarians served with the American forces, with the proviso they would later be given a general pardon. It seems that President Jackson especially needed gunflints for his American force of 5,000, and the Laffites possessed thousands of gunflints. Otherwise, the Baratarians had little influence on the Battle of New Orleans in January 1815 except that Pierre Laffite helped with his extensive knowledge of the rivers, swamps, and ground around the general area of the battlefield. Ironically, no one knew that the war had already officially ended on 24 December 1814.5