Even by eighteenth-century standards, Newgate was a nightmarish place in which to be confined. Situated on the corner of Holborn and Newgate Street, it was a forbidding stone building designed to house the criminal underworld of London while they awaited trial and death by hanging at Tyburn. Petty thieves and prostitutes rubbed shoulders with cutthroats and highwaymen. Wives and children were allowed to visit, and there was a relaxed attitude toward gambling, drinking, sex, and the keeping of pets and poultry, but this was offset by the severe overcrowding, the stinking smells, and the shrieks and shouts of the inmates. In 1719 Captain Alexander Smith described Newgate as a habitation of misery, “a bottomless pit of violence, a Tower of Babel where all are speakers and no hearers.”13
On March 27, 1701, Kidd was allowed a brief respite from this hellhole. He was marched through the streets to Whitehall in order to be examined at the bar of the House of Commons, the first and only pirate in British history to have to explain his actions before the assembled Members of Parliament. He was hardly in a fit state to do so. Depressed, disheveled, and suffering the ill effects of more than two years of imprisonment in horrendous conditions, he must have been a pathetic sight. No records of the session have survived, and all we know is that an attempt to use the occasion to impeach Lord Somers and Lord Orford failed. A second examination by Members of Parliament followed on March 31, and Kidd was returned once again to Newgate.
By this time the lawyers had prepared their case. Henry Bolton, who had bought the Quedah Merchant from Kidd in Hispaniola, had been tracked down and brought to England for questioning. Coji Babba, an Armenian merchant who had been on board the Quedah Merchant during Kidd’s attack and had lost all his goods, was sent from India by the East India Company so that he could give evidence for the prosecution. Kidd’s two slaves Dundee and Ventura had been questioned, and piles of papers had been assembled from Lord Bellomont and everyone connected with the case. All that remained was the trial, which was scheduled to take place on May 8 and 9 at the Old Bailey.
Kidd had two weeks to prepare his defense. He asked for his papers to be sent to him, and in particular requested his two privateering commissions, his original orders from the Admiralty, and the two French passes he had been given by the captains of the Quedah Merchant and one of the other ships he had taken. Some documents were brought to him, but mysteriously missing were the French passes.
When the trial began before Lord Chief Baron Ward and four other judges, Kidd found himself facing a formidable list of charges. He was accused of the murder of William Moore, the man he had killed with the iron-hooped bucket; of piracy and robbery of the Quedah Merchant; and of piratically attacking and taking four other vessels and stealing their cargoes. On the matter of the murder charge, Kidd maintained that his crew was on the verge of mutiny at the time, that he was provoked by Moore, and that he had never intended to kill him. On the piracy charges, Kidd argued that he had a commission to take French ships, and insisted that if the French passes could be found, his innocence would be proved. However, the evidence assembled by the prosecution was formidable, and the witnesses for the prosecution were well briefed. Kidd blustered his way through the proceedings, but the verdict was inevitable. The jury found him guilty on all the charges, and the judge sentenced him to death by hanging. When he heard the sentence, Kidd said, “My lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part, I am the innocentest person of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.”14
But what of Kidd’s plunder and the rumors of buried treasure? Kidd traded some of his cargo at a port in the Indian Ocean, and much of the rest he sold to Henry Bolton in Hispaniola. He bought the Saint Antonio for 3,000 pieces of eight, and acquired 4,200 pieces of eight in bills of exchange and 4,000 in gold bars and gold dust. He therefore sailed north with 8,200 pieces of eight in portable form, along with an unknown amount of goods and treasure loaded on his newly acquired sloop. When he arrived in New York, he may have handed some of his fortune to Mrs. Kidd and his friend Emott.
While preliminary negotiations were taking place with Lord Bellomont, Kidd moved his ship from New York harbor to the eastern end of Long Island, where he sailed back and forth near Gardiners Island. For some weeks the ship lingered between Gardiners Island and Block Island, and during this time three sloops came alongside to take off some of Kidd’s crew, together with their sea chests and their share of the cargo. We know that Kidd sent Lady Bellomont an enameled box with four jewels in it. We also know that Mrs. Kidd sent a six-pound bag of pieces of eight to Thomas Way, and that Kidd sent several pounds of gold, believed to be worth £10,000, to Major Selleck in Connecticut. But the greatest amount came into the hands of John Gardiner, the proprietor of Gardiners Island, and it was this which was to lead to the legend of Kidd’s buried treasure. On two occasions Kidd landed on the island; he bought food from Gardiner, and left: behind five bales of cloth, a chest of fine goods, and a box containing fifty-two pounds of gold. This was probably his security in case things went wrong.
As soon as Kidd was safely locked up in Boston jail, Lord Bellomont made strenuous efforts to locate and retrieve the treasure, which was now scattered in various locations around New York, Boston, and the West Indies. Mr. Campbell’s house in Boston was searched, and 463 ounces of gold and 203 ounces of silver were removed. John Gardiner sent Bellomont eleven bags of gold and silver. In the end 1,111 ounces of gold, 2,353 ounces of silver, forty-one bales of goods, bags of silver pieces, and various jewels were collected and sent on board HMS Advice for dispatch to England.15 The total value of this was reckoned to be £14,000, a handsome sum, but nothing like the £40,000 Kidd had led Bellomont to expect, and a tiny fraction of the £400,000 Kidd was rumored to have plundered in the Indian Ocean. Although Henry Bolton had been arrested by the captain of HMS Fowey, there was no sign of the goods he had acquired from Kidd in the West Indies. The Quedah Merchant, abandoned in Hispaniola, was set on fire, and the burned-out hulk was left to rot on the shore of the river estuary. Over the years people have tried to find the remnants of Kidd’s treasure and have carried out searches on Gardiners Island and many other locations, but without success.
We know more about Kidd’s treasure than about any of the other pirates of his day simply because of the public interest surrounding his capture and trial. Other pirates of his day may have amassed more plunder than he did, but the evidence is fragmentary. Bartholomew Roberts’ biggest haul was probably the cargo of the Portuguese ship he looted in his first year of piracy. Blackbeard plundered around twenty ships during his two years as a pirate, but none of his prizes were spectacular in terms of treasure. After the battle at Ocracoke Inlet the loot recovered from his vessels and ashore in a tent was “25 hogsheads of sugar, 11 tierces, and 145 bags of cocoa, a barrel of indigo and a bale of cotton.”16 This, together with the sale of Blackbeard’s sloop, came to £2,500—not a very impressive sum to have amassed during such a famous piratical career.
Captain England captured a number of rich prizes in the Indian Ocean. In 1720 he came across a Portuguese ship of seventy guns at anchor among the Mascarene Islands to the east of Madagascar. She had been badly damaged in a storm and put up no resistance when attacked by the pirates. Among the passengers on board was the Viceroy of Goa. According to Johnson’s General History of the Pirates, the value of the diamonds on the ship was between $3 million and $4 million. He tells how the pirates sailed on to Madagascar, where they careened their ship and shared out the plunder, which worked out at forty-two diamonds a man. Henry Avery’s capture of the Ganj-i-Sawai was in a similar league, and the treasure looted from her was variously estimated at between £200,000 and £350,000. Most pirates had to be content with very much more modest plunder.
Apart from Kidd’s treasure, the best-documented booty from the great age of piracy is that looted by Sam Bellamy. Excavations on Bellamy’s ship the Whydah have brought up from the seabed an impressive quantity of coins, gold bars, and African jewelry. There are 8,397 coins of var
ious denominations, including 8,357 Spanish silver coins and 9 Spanish gold coins, which together add up to 4,131 pieces of eight. There are 17 gold bars, 14 gold nuggets, and 6,174 bits of gold, and a quantity of gold dust.17 The African gold includes nearly four hundred items of Akan jewelry, mostly gold beads, pendants, and ornaments. No one will put a precise value on this and the press reports that the Whydah treasure is worth $400 million are wildly speculative, but the excavations have shown beyond doubt that some pirates really did lay their hands on large quantities of gold and silver.
The lure of treasure was always one of the most powerful motives for becoming a pirate. With riches like those acquired by Henry Morgan, Henry Avery, Captain Kidd, or Sam Bellamy a man could escape from the harsh life of the sea. He could squander his money on whores or pass his days drinking in some convivial tavern. He need never more risk death from malaria or yellow fever on the coast of Africa while his ship waited for a consignment of slaves. He could feast on fresh meat and good wine instead of moldering ship biscuits, salt pork, and evil-smelling beer.
Sailors were attracted by the tales of pirate kingdoms in Madagascar and the West Indies, where all men were equal, where everyone had a vote in the affairs of the pirate company, and where the plunder was fairly shared out. And for the more adventurous, piracy offered the chance to leave the gray, cold waters of the North Sea or the Newfoundland Banks and explore the warm blue waters of the Caribbean.
Some men were driven to piracy from sheer necessity. Two of the most dramatic increases in pirate activity took place when peace was declared after long periods of naval warfare and large numbers of seamen were out of work. When fifty years of hostilities between England and Spain were finally ended in 1603, hundreds of seamen from the Royal Navy and from privateers were thrown on the streets. Their only skill was in handling a ship, and many turned to piracy. For the next thirty years, shipping in the English Channel, the Thames estuary, and the Mediterranean was ravaged by pirates.
The second surge in piracy took place in the years following the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which brought peace among England, France, and Spain. The size of the Royal Navy slumped from 53,785 in 1703 to 13,430 in 1715, putting 40,000 seamen out of work.18 There is no proof that these men joined the ranks of the pirates, and Marcus Rediker has pointed out that most pirates were drawn from the merchant navy, not the Royal Navy; but many contemporary observers believed that the rise in pirate attacks in the years after the Peace of Utrecht was due to the large numbers of unemployed seamen. They particularly blamed the Spanish for driving the logwood cutters out of the bays of Campeche and Honduras after the Treaty of Utrecht, and they also blamed the privateers. Many privateering commissions had been issued in the later years of the seventeenth century, particularly in the West Indies. Peace put an end to this, and the Governor of Jamaica warned London of the likely outcome: “Since the calling in of our privateers, I find already a considerable number of seafaring men at the towns of Port Royal and Kingston that can’t find employment, who I am very apprehensive, for want of occupation in their way, may in a short time desert us and turn pirates.”19
The speeches of condemned pirates awaiting execution provide a further insight into what induced men to take up piracy. Some blamed the cruelty of captains, but many blamed drink for leading them astray. Before he was hanged at Boston in 1724, William White said that drunkenness had been his ruin, and he had been drunk when he was enticed aboard a pirate ship. John Archer, who was hanged on the same day, admitted that strong drink had hardened him into committing crimes that were more bitter than death to him now. But it was the lure of plunder and riches which was the principal attraction of piracy, just as it has been for every bandit, brigand, and thief throughout history.
The story of Blackbeard and his grisly death has become so embroidered with legend that one is half inclined to put it all down to the fertile imagination of Captain Johnson. However, the salt-stained logbooks of the naval officers involved are a salutary reminder that Blackbeard was a real person. In the Public Record Office at Kew is the captain’s log of HMS Lyme, which describes the dispatching of the expedition “in quest of ye Pirate Teach in N Carolina,”1 and in the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich is the log which was kept by Robert Maynard, first lieutenant of HMS Pearl and the man who led the naval force which destroyed the most famous of all the pirates. Maynard’s entry for November 17, 1718, reads:
Mod gales & fair Weather, this day I recd from Capt Gordon, an Order to Command 60 Men out of his Majsties Ships Pearle & Lyme, on board two small Sloops, in Order to destroy Some pyrates, who resided in N Carolina, This day Weigh’d, & Sail’d hence with ye Sloops undr my Command, having on board Proviso of all species with Arms, & Ammunition Suitable for ye occasion.2
The man responsible for organizing the expedition in search of Blackbeard was Alexander Spotswood, the Governor of Virginia. Spotswood had received numerous complaints from the traders of North Carolina of the pirates’ activities. He believed that the government of that province was too weak to restrain them, and he was particularly concerned that the pirates planned to fortify an island at Ocracoke Inlet, making it into a general rendezvous for all the pirate ships in the region. He issued a proclamation on November 24,1718, offering rewards for the conviction or killing of the pirates:
… For Edward Teach, commonly called Captain Teach, or Black-Beard, one hundred Pounds, for every other Commander of a Pyrate Ship, Sloop, or Vessel, forty pounds; for every Lieutenant, Master, or Quarter-Master Boatswain, or Carpenter, twenty Pounds; for every other inferior Officer, fifteen Pounds, and for every private Man taken on Board such Ship, Sloop, or Vessel, ten Pounds;3
Spotswood approached the commanders of the two British warships on the Virginia station, Captain Gordon of HMS Pearl and Captain Brand of HMS Lyme and asked them whether they would be prepared “to extirpate this nest of vipers.” The captains pointed out that it was not possible for their ships to navigate the shallow and difficult channels around Ocracoke, and they had no orders to hire and pay for smaller vessels. Spotswood offered to put up the money for two sloops and to send for pilots from Carolina. At this the captains agreed to provide the men.4
Lieutenant Maynard, “an experienced officer and a gentleman of great bravery and resolution,”5 was appointed to lead the expedition. He had under his command thirty-five men from the Pearl, and a midshipman and twenty-five men from the Lyme. The hired sloops were the Ranger and the Jane. Maynard took command of the Jane and a Mr. Hyde was put in command of the Ranger. Neither of the sloops had guns, so Maynard had to rely on small arms, swords, and pistols.
Maynard found out from passing vessels that Blackbeard’s sloop Adventure was anchored on the inner side of Ocracoke Island, facing the sheltered waters of Pamlico Sound. It was an ideal refuge, protected by numerous shoals and sandbanks. Maynard’s sloops, guided by the local pilots, arrived in the area at dusk on Thursday, November 21 and the decision was made to wait for the tide and make the attack early the following morning.
At first light the sloops weighed anchor and crept toward the island. There was very little wind, and Maynard ordered some of his men to take a small boat and row ahead of the sloop, taking soundings as they went. As they approached the pirate ship, they were greeted by a volley of shot. The boat hastily retreated to the protection of the sloops.
At this stage the odds were still in Maynard’s favor. According to Captain Brand’s report to the Admiralty, the pirate ship only had nineteen men on board, “thirteen white and six Negros.”6 Moreover, Blackbeard and several of his crew had spent much of the night drinking. However, the pirate captain knew the shoals and channels, and his ship was armed with nine mounted guns. With the alarm raised, he cut his anchor cable and headed for a narrow channel among the submerged sandbanks. Maynard hoisted the King’s colors and set off in pursuit.
There was so little wind that the sloops had to use their oars to make any progress. At this point Maynard’s sloops ran aground,
and a shouted exchange took place between Maynard and Blackbeard. There are several versions of this. The briefest is Maynard’s own account which simply reads. “At our first salutation, he drank Damnation to me and my Men, whom he stil’d Cowardly Puppies, saying, He would neither give nor take Quarter.”7 Johnson’s version, which seems to have been based on the newspaper accounts, is more colorful:
Black-Beard hail’d him in this rude Manner: Damn you for Villains, who are you? And from whence came you? The Lieutenant make him Answer, You may see by our Colours we are no Pyrates. Blackbeard bid him send his Boat on Board, that he might see who he was but Mr Maynard reply’d thus; I cannot spare my Boat, but I will come aboard of you as soon as I can, with my Sloop. Upon this Black-beard took a Glass of Liquor, & drank to him with these Words: Damnation seize my Soul if I give you Quarters, or take any from you. In Answer to which, Mr Maynard told him, That he expected no Quarters from him, nor should he give him any.8
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