Under the Black Flag

by David Cordingly

  Brief but equally graphic descriptions of each of the eight men executed were included at the end of Governor Rogers’ report. We learn that John Augur was about forty years old, and was a well-known master of vessels at Jamaica before he commanded pirate ships. He appeared very penitent and did not wash or shave or change out of his old clothes before the execution. He had a glass of wine given him on the ramparts of the fort, and when he drank it he wished the Governor and the Bahama Islands good success. William Cunningham, aged forty-five, who had been a gunner with Blackbeard, was also very penitent and conscious of his guilt.

  Dennis McKarthy behaved very differently. Aged twenty-eight and a former ensign in the militia, he put on clean clothes adorned with long blue ribbons at the neck, the wrists, knees, and cap. He mounted the ramparts cheerfully and said he could remember the time when there were many brave fellows on the island who would not suffer him to die like a dog. He pulled off his shoes and kicked them over the ramparts, saying that he had promised not to die with his shoes on. He leaped on the stage with as much agility as if he was about to take part in a prizefight, an illusion enhanced by the prizefighter’s ribbons fluttering in the breeze.

  William Dowling, aged twenty-four, was described as a hardened pirate who had lived a wicked life. William Lewis, aged about thirty-four, was also a hardy pirate and a former prizefighter. He refused to show any fear of death and demanded liquor to drink with his fellow prisoners on the stage and with the bystanders. Thomas Morris, aged twenty-two, was thought to be an incorrigible youth and pirate. He had frequently smiled during the trial, and he arrived on the ramparts dressed in a manner similar to McKarthy but with red ribbons instead of blue. Immediately before he was hanged he defiantly declared that he might have been a greater plague to these islands and now wished he had been so. George Bendall was aged eighteen and said he had never been a pirate before. He behaved in a sullen manner, and, according to the report, he had “villainous inclinations the most profligate youth could be infected with.” William Ling, aged thirty, had little to say for himself, except that when Lewis demanded wine to drink, he answered that water was more suitable for them at a time like this.

  The execution of the pirates at Nassau marked the end of New Providence as a pirate haven, but it did not mean the end of piracy in the Bahamas. Woodes Rogers had ambitious plans to strengthen the defenses of the island. He appointed three companies of militia to prevent surprise attacks. He had gun carriages made for unmounted guns, built a palisade around the fort, and cleared the streets, which had become overgrown with tropical vegetation. Unfortunately he had only a tiny force at his disposal, and many of the soldiers and sailors who had come out with him fell victim to fevers and diseases. Worse still, he felt that he had been abandoned by the authorities who had appointed him. He got no answers to his requests for aid from England, and felt increasingly isolated.

  In February 1720 he wrote an angry letter to the Council of Trade and Plantations complaining that he had been “left in the utmost distress by HM. ships,” who had abandoned him on the island with a few sick men to combat five hundred pirates.28 The Governor of South Carolina confirmed Rogers’ precarious position and warned the authorities in London that unless warships were stationed in the harbor at Nassau the pirates or the Spaniards would move in and make themselves master of the island. “The pirates yet accounted to be out are near 2,000 men and of those Vane and Thatch, and others promise themselves to be repossessed of Providence in a short time.”29 Rogers pressed on with plans to increase the island’s defenses, but met with apathy and indifference from the inhabitants and continued silence from England. He wore himself out with his efforts, and after two years was forced by ill health to return to England. He was replaced as Governor by George Phenney, who lacked Rogers’ indomitable spirit and fell victim to the corruption which was rife in the colony.

  Dismayed by the reports from Nassau, Rogers petitioned the King to be reinstated as Governor. His petition was supported by twenty-nine influential names, including Sir Hans Sloane, Lord Montague, and the governors and former governors of several American colonies, including Alexander Spotswood of Virginia and Samuel Shute of Massachusetts. Phenney was recalled, and in the summer of 1729 Woodes Rogers sailed for New Providence accompanied by his son and daughter. He had increased powers, and was to receive a salary of £400 a year as Captain General and Governor-in-Chief. Once again he threw himself into schemes to improve the defense and welfare of the colony, including a scheme to encourage the planting of cotton and sugarcane. The main problem was the tiny population of the island, which consisted of 446 white men and women, 489 white children, 275 able blacks, and 178 black children.30 He encountered opposition to his plans in the island’s Assembly, but he did succeed in building a new barracks for the garrison of the fort. Again he was laid low by ill health, and in spite of a visit to South Carolina for a change of air he never recovered his old strength. He died at Nassau on July 15, 1732.

  Before he left England for the last time in 1729, Rogers had commissioned a family portrait from William Hogarth, who was then a young man in his early thirties. The painting, which is now in the collections of the National Maritime Museum in London, is small but charming. The newly appointed Governor is shown seated outside the fort at Nassau, which he had repaired and which was the scene of the pirate trial and execution. He has a pair of dividers in his hand to symbolize his skills as a navigator, and by his side is a globe to represent his voyage around the world. His son William holds up a map showing part of the island of Providence. His daughter Sarah is seated with a spaniel beside her. Standing in the background is a maid with a bowl of fruit in her hands. On the castle walls above Woodes Rogers is a cartouche bearing the appropriately resolute and optimistic motto “Dum spiro, spero” (“While I breathe, I hope”), and in the harbor beyond is a ship firing a salute. The painting is a modest memorial to the man who drove the pirates from their headquarters in the Bahamas, and played a key role in bringing the reign of the pirates in the Caribbean to an end.

  There were three qualities required in a pirate ship: she had to be fast, seaworthy, and well armed. A fast ship enabled the pirates to catch their prey and to make a quick getaway, “a light pair of heels being of great use either to take or to escape being taken” in the words of Captain Johnson. For this reason, many of the pirates in the West Indies used the single-masted sloops built in Bermuda and Jamaica which had a well-deserved reputation for speed. The pirates kept them in good order, careening them regularly to keep the hulls smooth and clear of seaweed, and they could usually outsail any craft sent after them. When Vane’s pirate sloops attacked shipping in the harbor of New Providence in the Bahamas in 1718, the authorities sent vessels to catch him, “but when they came out to sea, our sloops gave over the chase, finding he out-sailed them two foot for their one.”1

  The Barbary corsairs of the Mediterranean used oar-powered galleys rowed by slaves. These were long, slender craft which were renowned for their speed, and sailing ships becalmed in the light airs of the Mediterranean were at their mercy. Their oars acted like engines, enabling them to maneuver easily and to come racing alongside a victim. When the wind came up, the corsairs hoisted a large lateen sail on the single mast amidships. The galleys were armed with one or more big guns in the bows, and swivel guns mounted along the rails, but their principal armament was the complement of one hundred fighting men who swarmed aboard the victim and swept aside all opposition.

  A pirate ship also had to be seaworthy—capable of riding out local storms, and able to make sea passages and, in some cases, ocean crossings. One of the most impressive aspects of the early-eighteenth-century pirates is the enormous voyages which they made in search of plunder. They cruised the North American coast from Newfoundland to the Caribbean. They crossed the Atlantic to the Guinea coast of Africa. And they rounded the Cape of Good Hope to Madagascar in order to plunder ships in the Indian Ocean.

  The armament of the selected vessel was
less important than speed and seaworthiness because guns could always be added later. Since this fitting out was carried out in a secluded location out of reach of the authorities, there are no accounts in official records, but a close reading of Johnson’s General History of the Pirates suggests that it was normal practice for pirates to take over a ship and set the carpenter and gunners to work. Captain Edward England captured a ship called Pearl, “fitted her up for the piratical account,” renamed her the Royal James, and set off to the Azores to plunder ships.2 When Edward Lowther and his fellow mutineers seized the Gambia Castle in 1721, they “knocked down the cabins, made the ship flush fore and aft, prepared black colours, new named her the Delivery” and sailed off to “seek their fortune upon the seas.”3

  The best account of alterations is in Johnson’s chapter on Bartholomew Roberts. When Roberts and his men captured the Onslow in 1721, they decided to keep her for their own use. She was a handsome frigate-built ship, owned and operated by the Royal Africa Company. They set about “making such alterations as might fit her for a Sea Rover, pulling down her bulkheads, and making her flush, so that she became, in all respects, as complete a ship for their purpose as any they could have found; they continued to her the name of the Royal Fortune and mounted her with 40 guns.”4 As with Lowther’s ship, the pirates removed the bulkheads or internal walls belowdecks, which were installed to hold the cargo. This created a clear space for working the guns, as in a man-of-war. The description of “making her flush” suggests that the pirates also removed the forecastle and lowered the quarterdeck. A flush-decked ship was one without a break or step in the weather deck. It would have provided the pirates with an unobstructed fighting platform. Basil Ringrose describes the buccaneers carrying out similar alterations to their ship in April 1681.5

  Having cleared the decks, Roberts’ men would have transferred guns from the first Royal Fortune and fitted them alongside the guns with which the Onslow was already equipped. It would have been necessary to cut some additional gunports, but this would not have been a problem for the ship’s carpenters. The result was a formidable warship which would have been a match for the largest East Indiaman and would have made mincemeat of the average merchantman plying her trade across the Atlantic. It was Roberts’ misfortune to encounter a naval ship manned by a determined commander within a few weeks of taking over the Onslow.

  In addition to speed, seaworthiness, and armament, the size of the pirate ship was significant. Other things being equal, a large ship was faster and better able to ride out a storm than a small ship. A large ship could also provide a platform for more guns. But for a pirate there were some advantages in having a small ship. It was much easier to beach a small vessel, and to heel her over so that she could be careened. A vessel with a shallow draft could also hide among sandbanks and in creeks and estuaries which could not be navigated by a warship. Writing from New York in 1712, Governor Hunter noted, “This coast has been very much annoyed by a number of small privateers, who by the advantage of their oars and shoal water keep out of the reach of H.M. ships of war.”6

  Unlike the Royal Navy or the East India Company or the merchants of London or Boston, the pirates could not build a ship to order. They could only acquire vessels which came their way and, moreover, vessels which they were strong enough to overcome and capture. Since all their ships were stolen, they had to be opportunists. The majority of pirate ships were prizes, ships captured by force. Operating outside the law, the pirates could not, of course, go along to the prize courts to get their captured vessels valued and sold, which was the usual practice of privateer captains. Having looted a ship, the pirates would burn the vessel or set her adrift. However, if the pirate captain liked the look of the ship, he would either take her over for his own use or employ her as a consort.

  A few pirate ships were taken by members of the crew plotting together and overcoming the captain and any men loyal to him. The most conspicuous example of this was Henry Avery, who was first mate of the merchant ship Charles. While she was anchored off Corunna with her captain asleep in a drunken stupor, Avery organized a mutiny and seized the ship. He renamed her the Fancy and sailed off to Madagascar to embark on an orgy of plunder that was to make him the most famous pirate of his day. The deposed captain of the ship was put ashore on the coast of Africa. There were forty-eight mutinies between 1715 and 1737, one third of which moved into piracy.7 This would suggest that during that period no more than nineteen or twenty pirate ships were acquired through seizure by their own crews.

  While most pirates remained faithful to one ship during their usually brief careers, some of the more successful pirates changed ships several times. Captain Vane, who was attacking shipping in the West Indies in 1718, began with the sloop Ranger of six guns and sixty men, but moved his command to a brigantine of twelve guns and ninety men. Captain Bellamy started his pirate career by taking over Hornigold’s sloop Mary Anne, of eight guns, and died in a storm off Cape Cod while in command of the former slave ship Whydah, a hefty three-masted ship of 300 tons and twenty-eight guns.

  Over the course of three years Bartholomew Roberts moved his command six times. His first command was the thirty-gun ship Rover, which he took over when the crew deposed Howell Davis from his post as captain. A few weeks later half the crew sailed away with the Rover while Roberts was on an expedition up an African river in a small sloop. Roberts crossed the Atlantic in the sloop and raided a harbor on the Newfoundland coast. He captured and took over a Bristol galley on which he mounted sixteen guns. With her, he managed to take a French ship of twenty-six guns which he named the Fortune. In 1720 he captured a French warship of forty-two guns which became the Royal Fortune, and in this formidable vessel he proceeded to wreak havoc among the shipping in the western Atlantic. He did not stop there, however: while cruising off the African coast in 1721, he captured the Royal Africa Company’s ship Onslow, which as described, he adapted for his own use and also renamed the Royal Fortune.

  An examination of the written evidence for the pirate attacks which took place in the Caribbean and along the North American seaboard between 1710 and 1730 shows that 55 percent of the attacks were made by pirates in sloops, 45 percent were carried out in ships, 10 percent in brigs or brigantines, 5 percent in schooners, 3 percent in open boats, and 2 percent in snows.8 The typical pirate ship, then, was one denoted by that baffling word “sloop.”

  Nowadays the word “sloop” is a precise description for a sailing vessel with a fore-and-aft rig and one mast, on which is set a mainsail and a single foresail or jib. In the early eighteenth century the term was used more loosely and described a range of craft with a variety of rigs. In recent years maritime historians have traced the evolution of the sloop in America and northern Europe, and although some details remain hazy, there is enough evidence to be able to build up a reasonably accurate picture of the various types of sloop which would have been used by the pirates.

  The sloops employed by the Royal Navy are a useful starting point because the Admiralty records include details of the measurements, tonnage, guns, and crew numbers for the sloops on the naval establishment.9 A sloop first appears on the Navy List of 1656, and was a captured vessel named Dunkirk after her port of origin. She was forty feet on the keel with a beam of twelve feet and six inches, and she had two guns. Eighteen sloops were built in the Royal Dockyards during the Third Dutch War in the 1670s. Most of them carried four carriage guns and two swivel guns and were thirty-five to sixty feet on the keel and between 38 and 68 tons. The majority of them had two masts, with a large square mainsail and a square topsail on the mainmast, and a small foresail, with a bowsprit on which a spritsail was sometimes set. Several of these sloops appear in the drawings and paintings of the Willem van de Veldes.

  By 1711 there were seven sloops on the establishment. The original Admiralty draft of HMS Ferret of 1711 has survived; this is the earliest-known plan of a British sloop and it provides a clear picture of her graceful lines. Her gundeck was sixty
-five feet and seven inches in length, her keel length was fifty feet; the breadth inside her planking was twenty feet and ten inches, and she had a depth of hold of nine feet. Her burden was variously listed as 113 tons and 117 tons. She had eight oarports so that she could be rowed by sweeps in calms, and carried twelve guns. There is some difference of opinion about her rig. Howard Chapelle, the great American authority on ships, drew a reconstruction of the vessel with a single mast, presumably because the Admiralty plans only show chain plates and deadeyes for one mast. In a well-documented chapter on the sloop of war, corvette, and brig in The Line of Battle: The Sailing Warship, Robert Gardiner maintains that she would have had two masts and points out that the records show that she certainly had two masts by 1716.10