Under the Black Flag

by David Cordingly

  The test of this particular measure was whether the pardoned pirates abandoned piracy for good, and whether the number of pirate attacks was significantly reduced. The records suggest that the royal proclamation may have helped in certain areas such as the Bahamas, but had little effect elsewhere. Governor Shute reported from Boston that the King’s proclamation had not produced the hoped-for effects and the pirates were still out in force. Governor Johnson, who had recently been humiliated by Blackbeard’s blockade of Charleston, declared, “I don’t perceive H.M. gracious proclamation of pardon works any good effect upon them, some few indeed surrender and take a certificate of there so doing and then several of them return to the sport again.…”28

  Further evidence of the British authorities’ determination to wipe out piracy was the announcement of substantial rewards for seamen who captured pirates. In 1717 a royal proclamation was issued which offered a reward of £100 for the apprehending of a pirate commander, £40 for a pirate officer, £30 for “an inferior officer,” and £20 for a private seaman.29 Alexander Spotswood’s 1718 offer of a reward for the capture of Blackbeard was clearly drawn from this earlier proclamation. But what the merchants, the councils, and the governors in the colonies wanted most was more warships. The response from Britain was limited, but warships were eventually sent out, and the subsequent battle between the Royal Navy and the pirates provides one of the most exciting episodes in the history of piracy.

  In the year 1718 the Royal Navy had on its books sixty-seven ships of the line, fifty fifth-rate and sixth-rate warships, seven sloops, and some thirteen thousand seamen.30 This was a formidable fighting machine and was the British authorities’ most effective weapon against the elusive pirates. Even the smallest of the ships of the line had fifty guns and was equal in force to Blackbeard’s Queen Anne’s Revenge, the largest of the pirate ships. As described in the previous chapter, most pirate ships were sloops often to twenty guns, and in an encounter with a third-rate ship of seventy guns they would have been blown out of the water.

  The navy was capable of sending a squadron of ships anywhere in the world, and frequently did so. In 1702, for instance, Admiral Benbow was in the West Indies in command of six ships of the line, which included his flagship, the Breda, of seventy guns, and the Ruby of forty-eight guns. Sailing off the coast of South America near Cartagena, they encountered a smaller French squadron. The resulting action, which became known as the Battle of Santa Marta, was indecisive and chiefly memorable for the heroic conduct of Benbow. His right leg was smashed by chain shot, but he refused to leave the quarterdeck. He later died of his wounds. Stevenson immortalized him by giving his name to the inn kept by Jim Hawkins’ father in Treasure Island.

  Six years later Commodore Charles Wager was cruising the same waters when he intercepted the Spanish treasure fleet off Cartagena. Wager had four ships under his command: the Expedition of seventy guns, the Kingston of sixty guns, the Portland of fifty guns, and a fire ship. The Spanish convoy consisted of two sixty-four-gun ships, two fifth-rates, and eight smaller vessels. After a ninety-minute action, the San Joseph, the largest of the Spanish ships, blew up and sank, taking nearly six hundred men down with her and a vast quantity of treasure. Another Spanish ship was captured, and a third ran ashore.

  The pirates were no match for naval squadrons of this strength, and one of the reasons that they got away with murder and plunder for so many years was that the Admiralty never mobilized this sort of force against them. The policy was to station a guardship at certain strategic locations, and to provide warships to protect convoys of merchant ships crossing the Atlantic. In 1715 there was one sixth-rate ship of twenty-four guns at New York, one on the Virginia station to guard the Chesapeake, one on the New England station, and one for Maryland; To patrol the West Indies there was one twenty-gun ship for the Leeward Isles, two ships on the Barbados station, and one forty-two-gun ship and two small fourteen-gun sloops for Jamaica.31 This was totally inadequate, and a glance at a map of the pirate hunting grounds shows why.

  The American coast from Boston to Charleston, South Carolina, is a network of river estuaries, bays, inlets, and islands. It was impossible for four ships to provide anything more than a token protection for such a vast and complex shoreline. The Caribbean posed an even greater problem. Not only were there hundreds of undefended islands, but many were uninhabited and poorly charted. These provided innumerable hiding places for ships. Lieutenant General Hamilton spelled out the difficulties in a report from Antigua to the Council of Trade and Plantations. He pointed out that it was impossible for one man-of-war to guard an area with “the islands lying separate and at so great a distance from each other.” Pirates and privateers were able to play hide-and-seek with the navy: “They narrowly watch the motion of the man of war, that when she is to windward, they are commonly to leeward and appear even at the mouths of our very harbours.”32

  The coast of Africa had fewer hiding places, but like the West Indies, it frequently proved a death trap for European seamen. Malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and other diseases lay in wait for the crews of ships who spent time in the tropics. The horrors of the slave trade are well known, but what is not so well known is that white seamen died in the same proportion as black slaves. According to one estimate, one white man in three died in his first four months in Africa.33 Within a few weeks of their arrival on the African coast in 1721 the crew of HMS Weymouth were so stricken by illness that the warship could not put to sea, and was unable to take part in the search for the pirate ships of Bartholomew Roberts. The West Indies was no better. In 1716 HMS Scarborough buried twenty men and had forty sick while stationed at Barbados, so that she was “but in ill state to go to sea.”34 In 1726 a Caribbean expedition led by Admiral Hosier suffered losses which were to cause future generations of seamen to regard a West Indian posting with horror. Over the course of two years Hosier’s squadron of 4,750 men lost more than 4,000 dead from fever.35

  Apart from the size of the area which had to be protected and the ravages of sickness in tropical locations, the navy also had the problem which has always faced the forces of law and order when confronted by well-armed rebels, guerrillas, or terrorists: knowing where and when the next attack might take place. One solution was to increase the number of warships and to order their commanders to give top priority to the tracking down of pirates. In September 1717 Mr. Secretary Addison wrote from his office in Whitehall to the Council of Trade and Plantations that in view of the reports of piracy in the West Indies, “H.M. has signified his pleasure to the Lords of the Admiralty that one fourth-rate and two fifth-rate men of war be ordered to those seas to suppress the pirates, and protect the trade.”36

  The lists drawn up by the Admiralty showing “The present Disposal of all His Majesties Ships & Vessels in Sea Pay” clearly indicate their Lordships’ recognition that the pirates must be taken seriously. As already stated, in 1715 there were four ships stationed on the east coast of America and five in the Caribbean. In 1719 there was still only one ship for New York, and one for New England; but Virginia, which had been plagued by Blackbeard and his consorts, was allotted two ships instead of one. Two forty-gun ships and a sloop were allotted to Jamaica with instructions “to correspond and act in concert against the pirates” with the two warships on the stations at Barbados and the Leeward Isles; and an additional three warships were sent “to suppress the Pirates in the West Indies, particularly about the island of Jamaica.”37

  In November 1717 the Boston News Letter was able to report that HMS Phoenix and HMS Pearl had arrived at New York, and in August the following year HMS Pearl and HMS Lyme were convoying merchantmen off the coast of Delaware. The stage was set for a series of dramatic battles against the pirates.

  The first of these battles was the action at Ocracoke Inlet which put an end to the activities of Blackbeard and his men. This was a major victory for the authorities in the propaganda war, but it did not have a significant effect on the operations of the other pir
ates, which continued unabated. The greatest blow to the pirate community was the capture of the crew of Bartholomew Roberts on the west coast of Africa.

  On February 6, 1721, HMS Swallow weighed anchor at Spithead and set sail for Africa. She was accompanied by HMS Weymouth, and was responsible for a convoy of six merchantmen: the Whydah, the Martha, the Cape Coast, and three sloops.38 The Swallow was a powerful two-decker of fifty guns built at Chatham Dockyard and launched two years previously. She was commanded by Captain Chaloner Ogle, an experienced and resourceful officer “from an ancient and respectable family”39 who was soon to receive a knighthood for his successful actions against the pirates.

  The convoy reached the mouth of the Sierra Leone River on April 9 and on June 18 anchored off Cape Coast Castle, where they were given a salute of fifteen guns. Leaving the merchantmen to unload their cargoes and take on board slaves, the two warships sailed south to the Isle of Princes, where there was a small fort and a good harbor 200 miles from the fever-ridden coast. After seven weeks here they sailed to the island of St. Thomas, and then spent the next four months patrolling the coast.40

  On January 7 the Swallow was back at Cape Coast Castle, where Captain Ogle learned from the Governor that two pirate ships were operating in the area. By this time the crew of the Weymouth were so stricken by tropical diseases that she was scarcely fit to put to sea, so the Swallow set off on her own in search of the pirates. On January 15 she called in at Whydah, a busy trading post and center for the slave trade some two hundred miles along the coast. Here, her crew saw the results of the pirates’ raids at first hand, for the place was still reeling from an attack by Bartholomew Roberts three days before.

  Roberts had left the West Indies six or seven months earlier and headed for the African coast in command of the Royal Fortune, the forty-two-gun French warship he had captured in 1720, and the brigantine Good Fortune. In spite of (or perhaps because of) a successful season of plunder, the pirates had become increasingly unmanageable: “being almost always mad or drunk, their behaviour produced infinite disorders, every man being in his own imagination a captain, a prince or a king.”41 It is easy to see how the round of looting, casual violence, and incessant drinking broke down any semblance of discipline and produced what Johnson describes as “a company of wild ungovernable brutes.” When they were some four hundred leagues off the African coast, the crew of the brigantine, commanded by Captain Anstis, voted unanimously to leave Roberts, and departed in the middle of the night.

  Roberts put a brave face on this flagrant threat to his authority and sailed on in the Royal Fortune till he reached the Senegal River on a part of the African coast in the hands of the French. There he was challenged by two French ships patrolling the area to prevent foreign interlopers attempting to trade. When Roberts hoisted the black flag and ran out his guns, the ships surrendered without a fight. Roberts took his two prizes down the coast to Sierra Leone, where he adapted them for his own use. The larger vessel of sixteen guns was christened the Ranger, and the other ship, which was armed with ten guns, was named the Little Ranger and put to use as a store ship.

  The Royal Fortune anchored in the Sierra Leone River in June 1721, and from the trading post on the banks of the river Roberts learned that HMS Swallow and HMS Weymouth had paid a visit there a month before but were not due back till the end of the year. The pirates mistakenly believed that this gave them a clear run, so after careening and refitting their ships, they sailed southeast along the African coast, plundering as they went. At Sestos they exchanged the Royal Fortune for a fine frigate-built vessel called the Onslow. She was the property of the Royal Africa Company and had been captured while her captain and most of her crew were ashore. Roberts adapted her for his own use and renamed her the Royal Fortune. It was in this ship, accompanied by the Ranger, that Roberts attacked the shipping at Whydah on January 12, 1722.

  There were eleven or twelve ships at anchor when he sailed in with black pirate flags and pennants flying. All of the ships surrendered, and their commanders agreed to ransom their vessels, except Captain Fletcher, the commander of the English slave ship Porcupine, who refused. This so enraged the pirates that they decided to burn his ship. One of the pirates covered the deck of the Porcupine with tar to make her burn more easily, and they set her alight. What horrified the onlookers, and made a considerable impression on the officers of the Swallow when they later heard what happened, was the cruel fate of the blacks on board. The pirates were in too much of a hurry to release the eighty slaves on the ship who were chained together in pairs. The wretched captives were “under the miserable choice of perishing by fire or water: those who jumped over-board were seized by sharks, a voracious fish in plenty in this Road, and in their sight, torn limb from limb alive.”42 Before leaving the anchorage at Whydah, Roberts seized the finest of the French ships for his own use. She was known as a fast sailer and had previously operated out of St. Malo as a privateer.

  Captain Ogle reckoned that Roberts’ next move would be to find a suitable place in the Bight of Benin to convert the captured ship for his own use: “Therefore I judged they must go to some place in the Bight to clean and fit the French ship before they would think of cruising again, which occasioned me to steer away into the Bight and look into those places which I knew had depth of water sufficient.…”43

  The Swallow headed south, and after three weeks’ search she located the pirates at daybreak on February 5. Three of Roberts’ vessels were anchored in the lee of Cape Lopez. There was a strong wind blowing from the southeast, and before she could get within gunshot of the pirates, the Swallow was forced to bear away to the northwest to avoid running onto a sandbank called the Frenchmans Bank. The pirates, seeing a ship approach and then veer away, assumed she was alarmed by their presence. Roberts ordered his thirty-two-gun consort the Ranger to give chase.

  Realizing that the pirates had not recognized the Swallow as a British warship, Captain Ogle deliberately slowed her progress to enable the pirates to catch up. He maintained the same course but spilled the wind from his sails by bracing the yards, leading the mainsheets aft, and bringing the tacks of the mainsail and foresail on board. By 10:30 A.M. the Ranger was close enough to fire her chase guns. The crew of the Swallow saw that the pirates had rigged their spritsail yard under the bowsprit ready for boarding; they also noted that she was flying an English ensign as well as a Dutch pennant and the pirate black flag.

  At 11:00 A.M. the pirates were within range of musket shot, and Captain Ogle ordered the helmsman of the Swallow to starboard her helm. The warship swung across the path of the Ranger, opened her gunports, and ran out her lower guns. The deafening boom of the Swallow’s broadside was the first warning the pirates had that their supposed victim was heavily armed and prepared to fight. The Ranger swept across the bows of the warship, and it was some time before the Swallow’s gunners could bring their guns to bear again. When they did so, the outcome was inevitable. An hour and a half after the first shots had been fired, the pirates surrendered. The main topmast of their ship had been brought down, and twenty-six of her crew were killed or wounded, including her commander, Captain Skyrm, who had one leg shot off during the action. According to the Swallow’s logbooks, the pirate ship “hauled down his black flag the moment he made us to be a Kings ship but it was hoisted again afterwards.”44 Johnson notes that at the end of the action the pirates threw their flag overboard so it could not be displayed in triumph over them.

  That night there was a tropical storm with thunder and lightning and heavy rain. The British sailors worked through the night and all the next day, repairing the damage to the pirate ship, securing the prisoners, and dealing with the dead and wounded.

  At two in the morning of February 7 the Ranger, with a prize crew on board, set sail for the Isle of Princes, while the Swallow headed back to Cape Lopez. They arrived during the evening of the ninth and could see in the distance two ships at anchor. There was not enough daylight to attack, so Captain Ogle was for
ced to stand off. The weather deteriorated, and they had to contend with fresh gales and rain while they beat to windward.

  At first light on the morning of February 10 the Swallow bore away for Cape Lopez, and her crew prepared for the final confrontation with the pirates. As they drew closer, they could see three ships at anchor: Roberts’ ship the Royal Fortune, the Little Ranger, and a pink. According to Johnson, the pink was the Neptune of London, commanded by Captain Hill. Roberts had invited Hill on board his pirate ship, and when the warship was sighted, they were having breakfast together in the great cabin of the Royal Fortune. The identity of Captain Hill is a mystery. He does not appear to have been a pirate, and Captain Ogle’s report suggests that his ship was in the employment of the Royal Africa Company. He played no part in the subsequent action, but took the opportunity to plunder the cargo of the Little Ranger while the Royal Fortune was at sea. The pirates who survived the battle were furious because all their sea chests were broken open and looted of any valuables. “The pirates informed me,” wrote Captain Ogle, “that they had left in their chests aboard considerable quantities of gold.”45

  As the warship approached the anchorage, Captain Ogle hoisted a French ensign, which confused the pirates, who debated whether she was the Ranger returning, a Portuguese ship, or a French slave ship. A seaman called Robert Armstrong, who was a deserter from the Swallow, identified her correctly, but the pirates continued to have doubts until the warship ran out her guns and hoisted the King’s colors. Bartholomew Roberts must have realized that the situation was desperate, but he put on a crimson waistcoat and breeches, a hat with a red feather, slung a pair of pistols on a silk sling over his shoulders, and issued orders with a bold unconcern for the likely outcome.