Under the Black Flag

by David Cordingly

  There were two principal charges against the defendants. The first was that they had wickedly united together against His Majesty’s trading subjects: “Ye have twice been down this coast of Africa; once in the beginning of August, and a second time in January last, sinking, burning and destroying such goods, and vessels as then happened in your way.”17 The second charge was that they had attacked His Majesty’s ship Swallow and were thus “Traitors, Robbers, Pyrates and Common Enemies of Mankind.”

  After the Register of the Court had read out the charges, the eighty men captured from the Ranger were asked how they pleaded. All pleaded not guilty. Three members of HMS Swallow’s crew, Lieutenant Isaac Sun, Ralph Baldrick, the boatswain, and Daniel McLaughlen, then described the events of February 5, when their ship was attacked by the Ranger. The prisoners agreed that they were on board the Ranger when she assaulted the King’s ship and that they had all signed the pirate articles. Most of them claimed that they were forced men, and had never fired a gun during the action, and that any assistance they had given was through terror of death. At this point in the proceedings the court came to the “merciful resolution” that further evidence should be brought against each person singly.

  Similar charges were brought against eighty men from the Royal Fortune, and they too pleaded not guilty. The court then examined each man in turn and listened to the statements of witnesses such as Captain Traherne, whose ship, the King Solomon, had been taken by the pirates. After the evidence for each of the accused was heard, the verdict was given: he would be pronounced guilty, or sentenced to the Marshalsea, or acquitted. It is revealing to see on what grounds some men were found guilty and some innocent of the charges.

  The majority of those found guilty and subsequently hanged were condemned for being “active and forward” or “brisk and lively,” which in most cases meant that they had been with the pirates for a year or more and took an active part in working the ship. All those who were seen to be armed with pistols or cutlasses during an attack were found guilty, and so were those who fired the ship’s guns or were observed looting and plundering. Four men were found guilty because they were seen carousing and drinking with the pirates. Three men were condemned because they had joined the pirates voluntarily. James Skyrm, who was the captain of the Ranger, and the men who had been elected quartermaster, boatswain, and boatswain’s mate were found guilty. Given the reputation of pirates and the previous record of Roberts’ crews, it is surprising that only four men were condemned for acting cruelly or threatening violence. The guilty men were sentenced by the President of the Court in the following words:

  Ye and each of you are adjudged and sentenced to be carried back to the place from whence you came, from thence to the place of execution without the gates of this castle, and there within the flood marks to be hanged by the neck, till you are dead, dead, dead. And the Lord have mercy upon your souls. After this ye, and each of you shall be taken down and your bodies hung in chains.18

  The fifty-two men condemned to death were hanged in batches at intervals throughout the month of April: six on the third; six on the ninth; fourteen on the eleventh; four on the thirteenth; eight on the sixteenth; and fourteen on the twentieth.

  Imprisonment in the Marshalsea was reserved for those who were so constantly drunk that they were not fit for duty; for “a half-witted fellow … ever in some monkey-like foolish action,” and for a prisoner who was accused by Elizabeth Trengrove, a passenger in the Swallow, of being “very rude, swearing and cursing and forcing her hooped petticoat off.”19

  The court acquitted all those who could prove that they had been forced to join the pirates. The most interesting of these was Henry Glasby, who had been chief mate of the ship Samuel of London, commanded by Captain Cary. He had been captured during the attack and abused and wounded when he refused to sign the pirate articles. When the pirates called in at Hispaniola, he had run away, using a pocket compass to find his way through the woods. However, he was so daunted by the barbarity of the island that he decided to make his way back to the pirate ship. Roberts subsequently forced him to become master of the Royal Fortune, but several witnesses gave evidence of his good character and swore that he never fired the guns and that he restrained the pirates from cruel actions.

  The admiralty courts ensured that all present at a pirate trial were aware of the wickedness of piracy and the evil nature of those who practiced it. The job of the clergy was to extract confessions of guilt from the condemned men, and to persuade them to repent and to see the error of their ways. This was not always easy. Many pirates had no time for religion and even less for the clergy; this is nowhere better illustrated than in the case of Captain Alexander Dolzell, who was convicted of piracy at the Old Bailey in December 1715.

  While held in the dungeon at Newgate Prison, Dolzell and two men convicted with him were visited constantly by the Reverend Paul Lorrain, who was the “Ordinary,” or prison chaplain. He instructed them in the Christian religion, “which they little knew, and had less practised.” On the three Sundays before the execution he preached to them in the morning and afternoon, concentrating his attention on the universal use of prayer. Captain Dolzell was a hardened criminal. He had been convicted of high treason while a privateer a few years before and had spent some time in Newgate under sentence of death. He had then obtained a free pardon and been released. In November 1720 he had attacked the crew of a French vessel anchored off Le Havre. The crew were tied up, and one of them was thrown overboard and drowned. Dolzell, a forty-two-year-old Scotsman described by the Ordinary as pernicious and dangerous, refused to look at the Bible and threatened to tear it up, and on one occasion he said he would kick the Ordinary down the stairs:

  He was so brutish and so obstinate that he would not be satisfied with anything I offered to him in this matter, saying, he hated to see my face, and would not attend in the Chapel (where I performed Divine Service) nor receive any public or private admonition from me, but with his dying breath declared that I was the cause of his death, and he would do me some mischief or other before he died, or haunt me afterwards.20

  In the last moments of his life Dolzell had a change of heart. As Lorrain offered up final prayers on the scaffold, Dolzell said he repented and apologized for his rude and unjust behavior. The Ordinary was not impressed: “whether that repentence was sincere, and not too late, is much to be doubted.”

  Paul Lorrain was the chaplain to Newgate Prison for twenty-two years and had ministered to Captain Kidd in 1701. Kidd was an educated man and had no grudge against the church, but he proved almost as recalcitrant as Dolzell because he believed himself to be innocent of the charges of murder and piracy brought against him. Every day and sometimes twice a day Lorrain visited Kidd and the condemned men. On the Sunday after the trial Lorrain preached a sermon which would have given little comfort to the prisoners: his text was “And they shall go away into everlasting punishment.”

  In spite of all his efforts, Lorrain found that Kidd was not prepared to confess to the crimes of which he was convicted. On the day of the execution the Ordinary took Kidd along to the prison chapel for more prayers and exhortations, but “the hardness of Capt. Kidd’s heart was still unmelted.” However, Kidd did promise that he would make a full confession beneath the gallows. Lorrain preceded the pirates to Execution Dock and mounted the scaffold hoping to secure the wretched man’s confession at last. Kidd disappointed him: “I found to my unspeakable grief, when he was brought thither, that he was inflamed with drink, which had so discomposed his mind, that it was now in a very ill frame and very unfit for the great work, now or never to be performed by him.”21 Kidd made a long, and rambling speech to the crowd. He repeated that he had struck William Moore in a passion and had never intended to kill him. He expressed his sorrow at being unable to take his leave of his wife and children who lived in New York, and said he was more unhappy at the effect on his wife of the news of his shameful death than he was of his own misfortunes. He urged all seame
n and particularly captains to take warning from the events which had led to his miserable fate.

  When Kidd was turned off the scaffold, the rope broke and he fell to the ground still conscious. The indefatigable Lorrain seized the opportunity to make another attempt at extracting a confession from him: “When he was brought up and tied again to the tree, I desired leave to go to him again, which was granted. Then I showed him the great mercy of God to him in granting him (unexpectedly) this further respite that so he might improve the few moments now so mercifully allotted to him in perfecting his faith and repentance. Now I found him in much better temper than before.”22 The scaffold having collapsed, Kidd had to be launched the second time from the top of a ladder. Lorrain climbed halfway up the ladder so that he could continue with his prayers and exhortations. As Kidd swung off to his death, the Ordinary at last felt he had done his job and left the scene “with a greater satisfaction than I had before that he was penitent.”

  It would be hard to match the conscientious efforts of the Ordinary of Newgate, but there was an American preacher who was equally persistent in persuading uncouth pirates to show a suitable degree of penitence. The Reverend Cotton Mather was the clergyman in charge of the Second North Church in Boston from 1685 to 1722. He came from a family of distinguished Puritan leaders and statesmen and was inspired with religious fervor from a young age. He entered Harvard College at the age of twelve and preached his first sermon at the age of sixteen. Endowed with enormous energy, he set himself punishing goals. He read fifteen chapters of the Bible every day. He preached, fasted, prayed, cared for the poor and sick, and produced a constant stream of books and pamphlets. Living at a time and in a place where piracy was a serious threat to seamen and shipping, he was constantly warning his congregations of the wickedness of pirates, and he played a significant role in a number of pirate trials and executions.

  While Quelch and his crew were in jail following their trial, Mather was one of several ministers who endeavored to bring the pirates to repentance. “There were sermons preached in their hearing every day; and prayers daily made with them, and they were catechised; and they had many occasional exhortations.”23 He and another minister walked with them in the procession to the scaffold, and from a boat in the river opposite the place of execution, he gave the final prayers before the pirates were hanged.

  When the crew of Bellamy’s ship Whydah were rounded up and brought to Boston for trial it was Mather whom the pirates asked to see. He prayed with them and lectured them and reminded them that “All the riches which are not honestly gotten must be lost in a shipwreck of honest restitution, if ever men come into repentance and salvation.”24 As the eight condemned men walked in procession to the scaffold, Mather spoke to each of them in turn. Later he published his conversations in a pamphlet which included the text of one of his sermons.25 While Mather no doubt edited his recollections of the conversations, they clearly reveal his religious zeal, and provide some insight into the minds of the pirates as they walked to their death.

  “How do you find your heart now disposed?” Mather asked Thomas Baker, a twenty-nine-year-old Dutchman who was a tailor by trade.

  “Oh! I am in a dreadful condition! Lord Jesus, Dear Jesus, look upon me!”

  “You are sensible that you have been a very great sinner.”

  “Oh! Yes I am! And is it possible that such a sinner should ever find mercy with God? Oh God, wilt thou pardon such a sinner!”

  “My friend, this is the very first thing that I am to advise you of. There is a pardon to be had! Mark attentively every word that I speak unto you. I perceive you are in very great agony, but the strait gate must be entered with such an agony.”

  Cotton Mather left Baker and proceeded to question Simon Van Vorst, a young man of twenty-four who had been born in New York and later traveled out to the West Indian island of St. Thomas:

  “Of all your past sins, which are they, that now lie most heavy upon you?”

  “My undutifulness unto my parents; and my profanation of the Sabbath.”

  “Your sinning against a religious education is a fearful aggravation of all your sins. I pray you, to count it so.”

  “I do sire.”

  “But I wish that you, and all your miserable companions here, were more sensible of the crime for which you are presently to be chased from among the living. You are murderers! Their blood cries to Heaven against you. And so does the blood of the poor captives (fourteen score, I hear) that were drowned when the Whydah was lost in the storm which cast you on shore.”

  “We were forced men.”

  “Forced! No; there is no man who can say he is forced unto any sin against the glorious God. Forced! No; You had better have suffered any thing than to have sinned as you have done. Better have died a martyr by the cruel hands of your brethren than have become one of their brethren. Say now; what think you of the bad life, wherein you have wandered from God? Can you say nothing that your worthy parents (whom you have killed!) may take a little comfort from! Have some light in their darkness?”

  “I am heartily sorry for my very bad life. I die with hope that God Almighty will be merciful to me. And I had rather die this afternoon, I would choose death rather than return to such a life as I have lived; rather than repeat my crimes.”

  “ ’Tis a good and a great speech; but such as I have heard uttered by some, who after a reprieve, (which you cannot have) have returned unto their crimes. I must now leave you in the hands of Him who searches the heart; and beg of him, Oh! May there be such an heart in you!”

  The conversation with John Brown, a twenty-five-year-old Jamaican who had been taken by pirates off Cuba, went as follows:

  “Brown, in what state, in what frame, does thy death now within a few minutes of thee, find thee?”

  “Very bad! Very bad!”

  “You see yourself then a most miserable sinner?”

  “Oh! most miserable!”

  “You have had a heart wonderfully hardened.”

  “Ay, and it grows harder. I don’t know what is the matter with me. I can’t but wonder at my self!”

  “There is no help to be had, anywhere, but in the admirable Saviour, whom I am now to point you to.”

  “Oh! God be merciful to me a sinner!”

  “A sinner. Alas, what cause to say so! But I pray, What more special sins, lie now as a more heavy burden on you?”

  “Special sins! Why, I have been guilty of all the sins in the world! I know not where to begin. I may begin with gaming! No, whoring, that led on to gaming; and gaming led on to drinking; and drinking to lying, and swearing and cursing, and all that is bad; and so to thieving; and to this!”

  As in the case of Quelch and his men, Mather addressed his final prayers to Bellamy’s crew from a boat which was lying off the shore on which the gallows had been erected. The capture of William Fly and his men in 1726 provided another opportunity for the Reverend Cotton Mather to preach on the evils of piracy and to counsel the condemned men.26 As always, he recorded his conversations and sermons and had them printed. Fly was not cooperative. He refused to go the meetinghouse where Mather preached on the Sunday before the execution, and he showed a total lack of the penitence required of him. With brave defiance, Fly walked to the place of execution with a nosegay in his hand, calling out to people in the crowd as he went. He mounted the stage with a spring in his step, reproached the hangman for not understanding his trade, and showed him how to manage the ropes in the most effectual manner. His indomitable spirit in the face of the condemnation of the court and the admonitions of Cotton Mather is remarkable, but was not unusual. A surprising number of pirates showed defiance at the end and refused to die in the contrite and penitent manner expected of them. Governor Hart commented after the execution of eleven pirates at St. Kitts in 1724 that they “behaved themselves with greater marks of sorrow and contrition than is usually found amongst those wretched set of people.”27

  The dying speeches and confessions of criminals hang
ed in England and the colonies were usually printed and sold in considerable numbers in the days following the execution. The largest single source of such speeches is the eighteenth-century periodical which was entitled The Ordinary of Newgate, His Account of the Behaviour, Confession, and Dying Words of the Malefactors Who Were Executed at Tyburn. Most of these are biographies of thieves and murderers hanged at Tyburn, but the speeches of a number of pirates are included. In Boston, as already described, the Reverend Cotton Mather recorded and published the final words of the pirates who were hanged during his years as a minister there. Similar accounts were published in the other ports and harbors where pirates were hanged.

  Coached by the clergy during their last hours in prison, the condemned men spoke in heavily religious language full of regret for their sins. But in spite of the editing by priests and printers, some of the speeches provide a moving testament to those seamen who took to piracy to escape from the harsh life on the merchant ships, or signed the pirate articles while they were blind drunk and found themselves committed to a life from which there was no escape.

  Among the dying words of the pirates captured by Captain Solgard of HMS Greyhound is a poem. It was written by John Fitz-Gerald, a twenty-one-year-old Irishman from County Limerick who was hanged with his comrades at Charleston, South Carolina, on July 19, 1723.28 It is not a great poem, but it is as good an epitaph as any for the men who were hanged for piracy around the shores of the Atlantic.