Pirates: A History

by Travers, Tim

  20. Gosse, The History of Piracy, pp.248–249.

  21. Ibid, pp.250–252.

  22. Nicholas Tarling, Piracy and Politics in the Malay World: A Study of British Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century South-East Asia, F.W. Cheshire, Melbourne and Canberra, 1963, Introduction and passim. G.S. Graham, Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, a study in maritime enterprise 1810–1850, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967, chapters 3 and 6.

  23. Harry Miller, Pirates of the Far East, Hale and Co., London, 1970, p.26. Possibly these were Balanini pirates.

  24. Dampier, cited in Tarling, Piracy and Politics, p.10, as absolving the Malays from desiring robbery or piracy in 1689, but for the opposite case, see Diana and Michael Preston, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind, Explorer, Naturalist, and Buccaneer: the Life of William Dampier, Walker and Company, New York, 2004, pp.161–162.

  25. Abdullah bin Abdul Kadir, Raffles’s Malay teacher, cited in Harry Miller, Pirates of the Far East, p.36.

  26. Harriette McDougall, Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak, SPCK, London, and E. and J.B. Young, New York,1882, chapter IV. Although McDougall obviously had a Christian missionary perspective, the details of Malay activities are valuable.

  27. Tarling, Piracy and Politics, pp.23–26, 65, 111.

  28. Cordingly and Falconer, Pirates: Fact and Fiction, pp.120–121.

  29. Harriette McDougall, Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak, chapter XVI: ‘Ilanun Pirates’.

  30. Ibid, pp.211–212.

  31. Ibid, p.214.

  32. Ibid, pp.34–35.

  33. Henry Keppel, The Expedition to Borneo of HMS Dido for the Suppression of Piracy, 1st edition 1846, 3rd edition 1847, new impression of 3rd edition, Frank Cass, 2 vols., London, 1968, vol 2, p.251.

  34. Ibid, vol. 2, pp.48–53.

  35. Ibid, pp.54–63. Keppel also gives a macabre account of how the Dyaks extracted the brains of the heads they had taken, not unlike the ancient Egyptian practice, pp.63–64.

  36. McDougall, Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak, pp.37–39.

  37. Cordingly and Falconer, Pirates: Fact and Fiction, pp.120–121; Tarling, Piracy and Politics, pp.135, 144. On Belcher, W. Senior, ‘An Early Victorian Windfall’, in Sea Sequel, Nonesuch and Random House, London and New York, 1935, p.327. It seems that Belcher’s ship was only engaged with the pirates for 24 hours.

  38. Charles Davies, The Blood Red Arab Flag: An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797–1820, Exeter University Press, Exeter, 1997, p.105.

  39. Ibid, pp.228–230.

  40. Ibid, pp.112–113.

  41. Ibid, pp.268–269.

  CHAPTER 10: THE ROAD TO MODERN PIRACY

  1. Conditions leading to piracy in the Mediterranean are explained in Lt. Commander C.G. Pitcairn Jones, ed., Piracy in the Levant, 1827–1828: selected from the papers of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, KCB, Navy Records Society, London, 1934, pp.vii–xxxiii.

  2. J.S. Buckingham, ‘Pirates in the Adriatic’, 1812, in Sea Sequel, Nonesuch Press and Random House, London and New York, 1935, pp.322–325.

  3. Pitcairn Jones, ed., Piracy in the Levant, pp.99–100.

  4. Ibid, pp.141–146.

  5. Information on the Laffites from William C. Davis, The Pirates Laffite: the Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf, Harcourt Brace, Orlando, 2005., passim.

  6. Ibid, pp.233 ff., 325 ff., 397 ff., 437, 445 ff.

  7. Ibid, p.445 ff.

  8. Douglas Botting, The Pirates, Time Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1978, pp.178–181; Robert Downie, The Way of the Pirate, (1998), ibooks inc., New York, 2005, pp.99–100.

  9. Peter Earle, The Pirate Wars, Methuen, London, 2004, p.245; Botting, The Pirates, p.184; Rogozinski, Dictionary of Pirates, entry for de Soto.

  10. Narrative of John Battis, from Ralph D. Paine, Ships and Sailors of Old Salem, Lauriat and Co., Boston, 1923, cited in Gosse, The History of Piracy, pp.217 ff.

  11. Ibid, pp.219 ff.

  12. Ibid, pp.221–223.

  13. A.G. Course, Pirates of the Eastern Seas, Muller, London, 1966, pp.173–178.

  14. Ibid, pp.200–204.

  15. Ibid, pp.219–227.

  16. Aleko Lillius, I Sailed With Chinese Pirates, Arrowsmith, London, 1930, pp.38–57. See also ‘Bok’, Corsairs of the China Seas, Herbert Jenkins, London, 1936, Foreword.

  17. I am indebted for the information in this paragraph to a paper by Robert Forsyth, ‘Modern Piracy’, University of Victoria, December 2006, citing articles from various newspapers and journals, especially Agence France-Presse.

  18. Ibid.

  19. John S. Burnett, Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas, Dutton, New York and London, 2002, p.182.

  20. Ibid, pp 226–233.

  21. Ibid, pp.224–225.

  22. Forsyth, op cit.; Burnett, Dangerous Waters, pp.167, 275–280.

  23. Burnett, Dangerous Waters, p.6.

  24. This web site, ‘Yacht Piracy’, is maintained by Klaus Hympendahl, in Germany. The International Maritime Bureau (IMB) web site reports pirate attacks weekly. As pointed out, the IMB only tracks attacks on commercial vessels, but even here it is likely that some commercial ship owners do not report pirate attacks for various reasons, including insurance premiums.

  EPILOGUE

  1. Clement Downing, A History of the Indian Wars, (1737), edited and introduction by William Foster, Oxford University Press, London, 1924, p.87. The pirate redistribution argument is stressed by Peregrine Horden and Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History, Blackwell, Oxford, 2000, pp.156 ff.

  2. David Starkey, ‘Pirates and Markets’, in C.R. Pennell, ed., Bandits at Sea: A Pirates Reader, New York University Press, New York and London, 2001, pp.113–114.

  3. This general argument derives from Kai Erickson, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance, Wiley, New York, 1969.

  Bibliography

  PRIMARY SOURCES, MANUSCRIPT

  British Library, London

  ‘Account of the capture of an English crew by the natives of Magadoxa … [in] 1700’, Ms. 2992.

  Anonymous, ‘Journal of our Intended Voyage’, Ms, 2752.

  Carmarthen, ‘Duke of Leeds Papers’, Add: Ms. 28041.

  Cowley, William, ‘Journal of the Voyage of W.A. Cowley from Cape Virginia to the Cape de Verd Isles, to China, Java, Cape of Good Hope, and Holland, 1683–1686’, Ms. 54 or 1050.

  Cox, John, ‘John Cox his Travills over the Land into the So. Seas: from thence Round the South parte of America to Berbados and Antegos, 1680–1681’, Ms. 49.

  Hack, William, ‘Sharp’s South Sea Waggoner’, Ms. 47.

  ‘Journal of a Voyage from Santo Domingo to wreck of Spanish vessel off Porto Plato’, 1686–1687, Ms. 50 or 1070.

  ‘Miscellaneous Papers relating to the affairs of Tangier, from May 1671 to May 1674’, Ms. 3511.

  Penticost, George, and Butler, John, ‘A true relation of an Escape made out of Algier the fourth day of July 1640 out of the hands of the cruell Turks …’ Ms. 3317.

  Sharp, Bartholomew,’A Journal kept by Bartholomew Sharp of passages in going over land to the South Seas from the island called the Golden Island in April 1680 as followeth’, 1680–1682, Ms. 46 A and 46 B.

  Sharp, Bartholomew, ‘Voyage from Jamaica to Porto Bello’, Ms, 2752.

  Strong, John, ‘Journal of his Voyage to the Straits of Magellan and the South Seas on the Welfare’, 1689–1690, Ms. 3295.

  Whitehead, John, ‘His relation of Barbary, 1691’, Ms. 90.

  National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London

  Philip Gosse Papers.

  Public Record Office, London:

  Admiralty Files

  Colonial Office Files

  High Court of Admiralty Files

  PRIMARY SOURCES, PRINTED

  Arrian, The Campaigns of Alexander, translated by Aubrey de Selincourt (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1971).

  Atkins, John, A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil and the West Indies, (1735) (Cass, London, 1970).
/>
  Barker, Andrew, Newes from Sea, Of two notorious Pyrates Ward the Englishman and Danseker the Dutchman. With a true relation of the most piracies by them committed unto the sixt of Aprill (N. Butter, London, 1609).

  Boccaccio, Giovanni, The Decameron, (1351–1353) (Dell Publishing, New York, 1962).

  Codrington, Admiral Sir Edward, in Lt. Commander C.G. Pitcairn Jones, ed., Piracy in the Levant 1827–1828: selected from the papers of Admiral Sir Edward Codrington, KCB (Navy Records Society, London, 1934).

  Defoe, Daniel, The King of Pirates: being an account of the Famous Enterprises of Captain Avery, the Mock King of Madagascar (London, 1720).

  Diodorus, History of Diodorus of Sicily, translated by Russell Geer (William Heinemann, London, and Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1933).

  Downing, Clement, A History of the Indian Wars, (1737), edited and introduction by William Foster (Oxford University Press, London, 1924).

  Drury, Robert, Madagascar; or Robert Drury’s Journal, during fifteen years’ captivity on that island, (1729) (ed. Captain Oliver, London, 1890).

  Esquemeling, The Buccaneers of America, (1678–1684), edited by William Stallybrass (Routledge, London, and E.P. Dutton, New York, 1923).

  Herodotus, The History: Herodotus, translated by David Grene (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1987).

  Johnson, Captain Charles, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, (1724) introduction by David Cordingly (Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, and Conway Maritime Press, London, 1998, 2002).

  Johnson, Captain Charles, The History of the Lives and Bloody Exploits of the Most Noted Pirates, (1724) (Lyons Press, Guilford, Connecticut, 2004).

  Johnson, Captain Charles, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pirates: from their first rise and settlement in the island of Providence to the present year, (1724) edited by Arthur Hayward, fourth edition, 1726 (Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1926).

  Keppel, Henry, The Expedition to Borneo of HMS Dido for the Suppression of Piracy, (1846), 2 vols., new impression of 3rd edition of 1847 (Frank Cass, London, 1968).

  Lithgow, William, The Rare Adventures and Painful Peregrinations of William Lithgow, (1632), edited by Gilbert Phelps (London, 1974).

  Lubbock, Basil, ed., [Edward] Barlow’s Journal of His Life at Sea in King’s Ships, East and West Indiamen, and other Merchantmen from 1659–1703, 2 vols., (Hurst and Blackett, London, 1934).

  McDougall, Harriette, Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak (SPCK, London, and E. and J.B. Young, New York, 1882).

  Mainwaring, Sir Henry, ‘Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates’, (1618), in G.E. Manwaring and W. G. Perrin, eds., The Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, vol. 2 (Navy Records Society, LVI, London, 1922).

  Onley, W., ‘The Famous Sea-Fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow’ (Ballad, London, 1680).

  Pelsaert, Francisco, The Unlucky Voyage of the Ship Batavia, (1647) (Amsterdam, 1994).

  Pennel, C.R., ed., Piracy and Diplomacy in Seventeenth Century North Africa: the Journal of Thomas Baker, English Consul in Tripoli, 1677–1685 (Associated University Presses, Cranbury, New Jersey, 1989).

  Quintus Curtius Rufus, The History of Alexander, translated by John Yardley (Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1984).

  Stevenson, Robert Louis, Treasure Island, 1883.

  Vitkus, Daniel J., Piracy, Slavery and Redemption: Barbary Captivity Narratives from Early Modern England (Columbia University Press, New York, 2001).

  Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, (1712) (Dover, New York, 1970).

  SECONDARY SOURCES, PRINTED

  Abulafia, David, ed., The Mediterranean in History (Thames and Hudson, London, 2003).

  Antony, Robert J., Pirates in the Age of Sail (W.W. Norton, New York and London, 2007).

  Baer, Joel, Pirates of the British Isles (Tempus Publishing, Stroud, 2005).

  Barnby, H.G., The Prisoners of Algiers: an account of the forgotten American-Algerian War, 1785–1797 (Oxford University Press, London, 1966).

  Bawlf, Samuel, The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577–1580, (2003) (Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver, 2004).

  Biddulph, John, The Pirates of Malabar (Smith Elder, London, 1907).

  Black, Clinton, Pirates of the West Indies (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989).

  ‘Bok’, Corsairs of the China Seas (Herbert Jenkins, London, 1936).

  Botting, Douglas, The Pirates (Time Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia, 1978).

  Burl, Aubrey, Black Barty: Bartholomew Roberts and his Pirate Crew, 1718–1723, (1997) (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2006).

  Bourne, Joel K., ‘Blackbeard Lives’, National Geographic, July 2006, pp. 146–161.

  Bradford, Ernle, Mediterranean: Portrait of a Sea (Hodder and Stoughton, London, 1971).

  Brand, Charles, Byzantium Confronts the West, 1180–1204 (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1968).

  Brondsted, Johannes, The Vikings, (1960), translated by K. Skov (Penguin, London, 1965).

  Browning, Andrew, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Duke of Leeds, 1632–1712, 3 vols. (Jackson, Son and Co, Glasgow, 1951).

  Brule, Pierre, La Piraterie Cretoise Hellenestique, Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1978.

  Burg, B.R., Sodomy and the Perception of Evil: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth Century Caribbean (New York University Press, New York, 1983).

  Burl, Aubrey, Black Barty: Bartholomew Roberts and his Pirate Crew, 1718–1723, (1997) (Sutton Publishing, Stroud, 2005).

  Burnett, John S., Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas (Dutton, New York and London, 2002).

  Burns, Robert, ‘Piracy as an Islamic-Christian Interface in the Thirteenth Century’, Viator, vol. 11, 1980, pp. 165–178.

  Cawthorne, Nigel, A History of Pirates: Blood and Thunder on the High Seas (Arcturus Publishing, Toronto, 2004).

  Clifford, Barry, The Lost Fleet: The Discovery of a Sunken Armada from the Golden Age of Piracy, (2002) (HarperCollins, New York, 2003).

  Clifford, Barry, Return to Treasure Island and the Search for Captain Kidd, (2003) (HarperCollins, New York, 2004).

  Clutton, E. and Kenny, A., Crete (David and Charles, Newton Abbot, 1976).

  Colley, Linda, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World, 1600–1850, (2002) (Pimlico, Random House, London, 2003).

  Cordingly, David, Under the Black Flag: The Romance And The Reality of Life Among The Pirates, (1996) (Random House, New York, 2006).

  Cordingly, David, and Falconer, John, Pirates: Fact and Fiction (Collins and Brown, London, 1992).

  Course, Captain A.G., Pirates of the Eastern Seas (Frederick Muller, London, 1966).

  Davies, Charles, The Blood Red Arab Flag: An Investigation into Qasimi Piracy, 1797–1820 (Exeter University Press, Exeter, 1997).

  Davis, Robert C., Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500–1800, (2003) (Palgrave, Macmillan, Basingstoke and New York, 2004).

  Davis, William C., The Pirates Laffite: The Treacherous World of the Corsairs of the Gulf (Harcourt Brace, Orlando, 2005).

  De Souza, Philip, Piracy in the Graeco-Roman World (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999).

  Dearden, Seton, A Nest of Corsairs: the Fighting Karamanlis of Tripoli (London, 1976).

  Dollinger, Phillipe, The German Hansa, translated and edited by D.S. Ault and S.H. Steinberg (Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1970).

  Downie, The Way of the Pirate, (1998) (ibooks, New York, 2005).

  Drake-Brockman, Henrietta, Voyage to Disaster: the Life of Francisco Pelsaert (Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1963).

  Earle, Peter, Corsairs of Malta and Barbary (London, 1970).

  Earle, Peter, The Sack of Panama (Bury St Edmunds Press, Suffolk, London, 1981).

  Earle, Peter, The Pirate Wars, (2003) (Methuen, London, 2004).

  Elting, John R., Swords Around A Throne: Napoleon’s Grande
Armée (Free Press, New York and London, 1988).

  Epstein, Steven, Genoa and the Genoese, 958–1528 (University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1996).

  Erickson, Kai, Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance, Wiley, New York, 1969.

  Fahmy, Aly Mohamed, Muslim Sea-Power in the Eastern Mediterranean from the Seventh to the Tenth Century ad (National Publication and Printing House, Cairo, 1966).

  Ford, David Nash, Royal Berkshire History (Nash Ford Publishing, Finchampstead, Berkshire, 2005).

  Forsyth, Robert, ‘Modern Piracy’, University of Victoria, 15 pp., December 2006.

  Fotheringham, J.K., ‘Genoa and the Fourth Crusade’, English Historical Review, vol. 25, pp. 26–57.

  Friedman, Ellen, Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1983).

  Gatrell, V.A.C., The Hanging Tree: execution and the English People, 1770–1868 (Oxford University Press, Oxford and New York, 1994).

  Glete, Jan, Warfare At Sea, 1500–1650: Maritime Conflicts and the Transformation of Europe (Routledge, London, 2000).

  Gosse, Philip, The History of Piracy, (1932) (Rio Grande Press, Glorieta, New Mexico, 1995).

  Graff, David A. and Higham, Robin, eds., A Military History of China (Westview Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2002).

  Graham, G.S., Great Britain in the Indian Ocean, a study in maritime enterprise, 1810–1850 (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967).

  Grey, Charles, Pirates of the Eastern Seas, 1618–1723, (1933), edited by Sir George MacMunn (Kennikat Press, Port Washington and London, 1971).

  Guilmartin, John Francis, Gunpowder and Galleys: Changing Technology and Mediterranean Warfare at Sea in the Sixteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1974).

  Haywood, John, Dark Age Naval Power: a re-assessment of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon seafaring activity (Routledge, London and New York, 1991).

  Hazlewood, Nick, The Queen’s Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls, (2004) (HarperCollins, New York, 2005).

  Heers, Jacques, The Barbary Corsairs: Warfare in the Mediterranean, 1480–1580, (2001), translated by Jonathan North (Greenhill Books, London, and Stackpole Books, Pennsylvania, 2003).