Under the Black Flag

by David Cordingly

  brigantine A two-masted vessel having a fully square-rigged foremast and a fore-and-aft rigged mainmast with square sails on the main topmast.

  broadside The simultaneous firing of all the guns on one side of a ship.

  buccaneer The term originally applied to the hunters of wild oxen and pigs on the island of Hispaniola, but was later used to describe the pirates and privateers who plundered shipping and coastal towns in the West Indies and on the coasts of South and Central America in the second half of the seventeenth century.

  bulkhead A vertical partition inside a ship.

  careen To heel over a ship and clean the seaweed and barnacles from her bottom.

  caulk To seal the gaps between the planks with oakum and pitch.

  colors The flags worn by a vessel to show her nationality.

  consort A vessel sailing in company with a pirate ship; a companion vessel.

  corsair A pirate or privateer operating in the Mediterranean. The most famous corsairs were those based on the Barbary Coast of North Africa who were authorized by their governments to attack the merchant shipping of Christian countries.

  cutter A small one-masted vessel rigged with a fore-and-aft mainsail, foresail, and jib. In the eighteenth century a cutter usually had a square topsail as well.

  deadeyes A round wooden block with three holes for extending the shrouds.

  fathom A measure of six feet, used to describe the depth of water.

  flagship A ship commanded by an admiral and flying the admiral’s distinguishing flag.

  fore Situated in front; the front part of a vessel at the bow.

  fore-and-aft At bow and stern; backward and forward or along the length of the ship.

  fore-and-aft rig Having mainly fore-and-aft sails, i.e., sails set lengthwise and not at right angles to the ship’s hull, as is the case with square-rigged sails.

  foremast The mast at the front of the vessel.

  gunwale The upper planking along the sides of a vessel.

  heave to To check the course of a vessel and bring her to a standstill by heading her into the wind and backing some of her sails.

  helm The tiller or wheel which controls the rudder and enables a vessel to be steered.

  lee The side or direction away from the wind, or downwind.

  lee shore The shore onto which the wind is blowing; a hazardous shore for a sailing vessel particularly in strong or gale force winds.

  letter of marque A commission or license to fit out an armed vessel and employ her to capture an enemy’s merchant shipping. In Britain and her colonies the letter of marque was issued by the sovereign, the Lord High Admiral, or a colonial governor.

  mainsheet The rope at the lower corner of the mainsail for regulating its position.

  mizzenmast The mast at the stern or back of a vessel; in a three-masted ship the mast at the front is the foremast, the mast in the middle is the mainmast, and the mast at the stern is the mizzenmast.

  mounted guns Guns or cannon mounted on wooden carriages.

  pink A merchant vessel with a relatively shallow draft and a very narrow stern, variously rigged as a brig, a sloop, or a ship. Some pinks were used by the navy as armed transports. The term also applied to a type of Dutch fishing boat with a square mainsail and sometimes a square foresail launched off the beaches near Scheveningen.

  port The left side of a vessel facing forward.

  privateer An armed vessel (or the commander and crew of that vessel) which was authorized by a commission or “letter of marque” from the government to capture the merchant vessels of an enemy nation.

  quarterdeck A deck above the main deck which stretched from the stern to about halfway along the length of the ship. It was from this deck that the captain and officers controlled the ship.

  rail Timber plank on top of the gunwale along the sides of the vessel.

  rate (as in first-rate, second-rate, etc.) Warships were grouped into six different categories according to the number of guns they carried. In the early eighteenth century a first-rate ship had 100 guns, a second-rate ship had 90 guns, a third-rate had between 80 and 70 guns, a fourth-rate had between 64 and 50 guns, a fifth-rate had between 40 and 28 guns, and a sixth-rate had between 24 and 12 guns.

  schooner A two-masted vessel, fore-and-aft rigged on both masts. Some vessels had square topsails on the foremast or on both topmasts.

  sheet A rope made fast to the lower corner or corners of a sail to control its position.

  ship A vessel with three or more masts and fully square-rigged throughout. The term is also used to describe any large seagoing vessel.

  ship of the line A warship large enough to take her place in the line of battle; in the early eighteenth century this ranged from fourth-rate ships of 50 guns up to first-rate ships of 100 guns.

  shrouds The set of ropes forming part of the standing rigging and supporting the mast or topmast.

  sloop A vessel having one fore-and-aft rigged mast with mainsail and a single foresail. In the eighteenth century the term also applied to a small vessel armed with four to twelve guns on her upper deck and rigged with one, two or three masts. For a description of the West India sloops see chapter 9.

  snow A vessel similar to a brig with two masts, fully square-rigged on both masts, but with her spanker (the gaff sail at the stern, also called a driver or main-trysail) set on a separate pole or trysail mast just aft of the mainmast.

  spar A stout wooden pole used for the mast or yard of a sailing vessel.

  square-rigged The principal sails set at right angles to the length of the ship and extended by horizontal yards slung to the mast (as opposed to fore-and-aft rigged).

  starboard The right side of a vessel facing forward.

  sweep A long oar used by a large vessel.

  swivel gun A small gun or cannon mounted on a swivel and set on the rail or side of a vessel.

  tack To change the direction of a sailing vessel’s course by turning her bows into the wind until the wind blows on her other side.

  topsail A sail set on the topmast.

  waggoner A sea atlas or volume of sea charts (derived from the name of the Dutch pilot, Lucas Waghenaer, who published a comprehensive volume of charts and sailing directions in 1584).

  weigh To pull up the anchor.

  yard A long spar suspended from the mast of a vessel to extend the sails.

  yardarm Either end of a yard.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  There are more than four hundred books and pamphlets on piracy and privateering in the Library of the National Maritime Museum in London. The Library of Congress in Washington has an equally large selection. The printed volumes of the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies contain relevant correspondence between the colonial governors and the Office of Trade and Plantations in London. Reports of pirate attacks and trials appear in contemporary newspapers, and microfilm copies of many of these are held in the Library of Congress, and the British Library’s outstation at Colindale. Further details of pirate activities may be found in ships’ logbooks, captains’ letters, trial documents, and the depositions of seamen and pirate victims which are held in the collections of the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane and Kew. References to the books and documents which I have consulted are given in the notes to each chapter. The following is a selected list of books for further reading.

  The Pirates of Fiction

  Backschreider, Paula R. Daniel Defoe, His Life (Baltimore and London, 1989).

  Ballantyne, R. M. The Coral Island (London, 1858).

  Barrie, J. M. Peter Pan (first performance of the play, 1904); Peter and Wendy (Barrie’s original title for the book version)(London, 1911).

  Bell, Ian. Robert Louis Stevenson: Dreams of Exile (London, 1992).

  Birkin, Andrew. J. M. Barrie and the Lost Boys (London, 1979).

  Brogan, Hugh. The Life of Arthur Ransome (London, 1984).

  Byron, Lord. The Corsair (London, 1814).

  Calder, Jenni.
RLS, a Life Study (London, 1980).

  Colvin, Sydney (ed.). The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson (London, 1895).

  Defoe, Daniel. The Life, Adventures, and Pyracies of the Famous Captain Singleton (London, 1720).

  Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, of York, Mariner (London, 1719).

  du Maurier, Daphne. Frenchman’s Creek (London, 1941).

  Flynn, Errol. My Wicked, Wicked Ways (London, 1960).

  Gilbert, W. S., and Sullivan, Arthur. The Pirates of Penzance, or the Slave of Duty (copyright performances at Paignton, Devon, and in New York in 1879; London premiere in 1880).

  Green, Roger Lancelyn. Fifty Years of Peter Pan (London, 1954).

  Haill, Catharine. Dear Peter Pan (London, 1983).

  Johnson, Charles. The Successful Pirate (London, 1713).

  McLynn, Frank. Robert Louis Stevenson (London, 1993).

  Marryat, Captain Frederick. The Pirate (London, 1836).

  Moore, John Robert. Daniel Defoe, Citizen of the Modern World (Chicago, 1958).

  Parish, James Robert, and Stanke, Don E. The Swashbucklers (New York, 1976).

  Ransome, Arthur. Swallows and Amazons (London, 1930).

  Richards, Jeffrey. Swordsmen of the Screen (London and Boston, 1977).

  Robertson, James C. The Casablanca Man: The Cinema of Michael Curtiz (London and New York, 1993).

  Rutherford, Andrew. Byron: The Critical Heritage (London, 1970).

  Sabatini, Rafael. The Sea Hawk (London, 1915).

  Sabatini, Rafael, Captain Blood (London, 1922), and The Fortunes of Captain Blood (London, 1936).

  Sabatini, Rafael. The Black Swan (London, 1932).

  Scott, Sir Walter. The Pirate (London, 1821).

  Stevenson, Robert Louis. Treasure Island (first published in serial form in Young Folks magazine, October 1881 to January 1882; first published in book form, London, 1883)

  Thomas, Tony. The Complete Films of Errol Flynn (New York, 1990).

  Wardale, Roger. Nancy Blackett: Under Sail with Arthur Ransome (London, 1991).

  The Pirates of History

  Andrews, Kenneth. The Spanish Caribbean: Trade and Plunder 1530–1630 (New Haven, 1978).

  Baker, William A. Sloops and Shallops (Barre, Mass., 1966).

  Barlow, Edward (ed. Basil Lubbock). Barlow’s Journal of His Life at Sea in King’s Ships, East and West Indiamen and Other Merchantmen from 1659–1703 (London, 1934).

  Black, Clinton V. Pirates of the West Indies (Cambridge and New York, 1989).

  Botting, Douglas. The Pirates (Amsterdam, 1978).

  Brooks, Graham. The Trial of Captain Kidd (London and Toronto, 1930).

  Burg, B. R. Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition: English Sea Rovers in the Seventeenth-Century Caribbean (New York and London, 1984).

  Chambers, Anne. Granuaille: The Life and Times of Grace O’Malley c1530–1603 (Dublin, 1979).

  Clifford, Barry, and Turchi, Peter. The Pirate Prince: Discovering the Priceless Treasures of the Sunken Ship Whydah (New York and London, 1993).

  Dampier, William (ed. John Masefield). Dampier’s Voyages (London, 1906).

  Davis, K. G. The Royal Africa Company (London and New York, 1970).

  Dow, George Francis, and Edmonds, John Henry. The Pirates of the New England Coast 1630–1730 (Salem, Mass., 1923).

  Drury, Robert (ed. Captain Pasfield Oliver). Madagascar; or Robert Drury’s Journal During Fifteen Years Captivity on That Island (London, 1897).

  Earle, Peter. The Sack of Panama (London, 1981).

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

  Ellen, Eric. Piracy at Sea (International Maritime Bureau: London, 1992).

  Exquemelin, A. O. De Americaensche Zee-Roovers (Amsterdam, 1678); Bucaniers of America (London, 1684); Histoire des Aventuriers (Paris, 1686). I have used and cited the edition published in London and New York in 1923, which was edited by W. S. Stallybrass and entitled Esquemeling, The Buccaneers of America.

  Gilkerson, William. Boarders Away II: The Small Arms and Combustibles of the Classical Age of Fighting Sail, 1626–1826 (Lincoln, R. I., 1993).

  Gosse, Philip. The History of Piracy (first published 1932; reprinted in paperback by the Rio Grande Press, New Mexico, 1990).

  Griffiths, Arthur. The Chronicles of Newgate (London, 1884).

  Harland, John. Seamanship in the Age of Sail: An Account of the Shiphandling of the Sailing Man-of-War 1600–1860 (London, 1984).

  Hill, Charles. Notes on Piracy in Eastern Waters (Bombay, 1923).

  Howse, Derek, and Thrower, Norman. A Buccaneer’s Atlas, Basil Ringrose’s South Sea Waggoner (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992).

  Johnson, Captain Charles. A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (London, 1724). There are numerous editions of this book. I have used the comprehensive edition edited by Manuel Schonhorn. This is entitled A General History of the Pyrates, and the author is given as Daniel Defoe. It was published in London in 1972 and has extensive notes on the text.

  Lavery, Brian. The Ship of the Line, volume I. The Development of the Battle Fleet 1650–1850 (London, 1983).

  —–. The Arming and Fitting of English Ships of War, 1600–1815 (London, 1987).

  Lee, Robert E. Blackbeard the Pirate: A Reappraisal of His Life and Times (North Carolina, 1974).

  Linebaugh, Peter. The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1991).

  Lloyd, Christopher. English Corsairs on the Barbary Coast (London, 1981).

  Lucie-Smith, Edward. Outcasts of the Sea (London, 1978).

  Lyon, David. The Sailing Navy List. All the Ships of the Royal Navy—Built, Purchased and Captured—1688–1860 (London, 1993).

  Marley, David F. Pirates and Privateers of the Americas, (Santa Barbara, Calif., 1994).

  Middleton, Arthur. Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era (Baltimore, 1984).

  Mitchell, David. Pirates (London, 1976).

  Murray, Dian H. Pirates of the South China Coast 1790–1810 (Stanford, Calif., 1987).

  National Maritime Museum. Piracy and Privateering, volume IV of the Catalogue of the Library of the National Maritime Museum (London, 1972).

  Pawson, Michael, and Buisseret, David. Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, 1975).

  Pringle, Patrick. The Jolly Roger: The Story of the Great Age of Piracy (London, 1953).

  Pope, Dudley. Harry Morgan’s Way: The Biography of Sir Henry Morgan 1635–1684 (London, 1977).

  Rediker, Marcus. Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World (Cambridge and New York, 1987).

  Ritchie, Robert C. Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1986).

  Rodger, N. A. M. The Wooden World: An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy (London, 1986).

  Rogers, Woodes (ed. G. E., Manwaring). A Cruising Voyage Round the World (London, 1928).

  Senior, Clive. A Nation of Pirates: English Piracy in Its Heyday (Newton Abbot, London, and New York, 1976).

  Shomette, Don. Pirates on the Chesapeake: Being a True History of Pirates, Picaroons and Sea Raiders on Chesapeake Bay, 1610–1807 (Maryland, 1985).

  Uring, Nathaniel (ed. A. Dewar). The Voyages and Travels of Captain Nathaniel Uring (London, 1928).

  Vanderbilt, Arthur T. Treasure Wreck: The Fortunes and Fate of the Pirate Ship Whydah (Boston, 1986).

  Villar, Roger. Piracy Today (London, 1985).

  Wheelright, Julie. Amazons and Military Maids (London, 1989).

  Williams, Neville. The Sea Dogs: Privateers, Plunder and Piracy in the Elizabethan Age (London, 1975).

  —–. Captains Outrageous: Seven Centuries of Piracy (London, 1961). Wilson, Derek. The World Encompassed: Drake’s Great Voyage, 1577–1580 (London, 1977).

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  David Cordingly was on the staff of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, England, for twelve years. A gr
aduate of Oxford University, he subsequently worked as a graphic designer in London, taught in Jamaica, and was an exhibition designer at the British Museum. He has a doctorate from the University of Sussex, and while working at the National Maritime Museum, he organized such exhibitions as “Captain James Cook, Navigator,” “The Mutiny on the Bounty,” and the much-acclaimed “Pirates, Fact and Fiction,” which opened in 1992 and went on to become one of the most popular exhibitions ever mounted by the museum. He lives by the sea in Sussex with his wife and family.