Back on the James, Druit alerts Captain Humphries about the ominous warning from the longboat. Humphries immediately commands Druit to “man the pinnace,” the longboat attached to the James, generally used to ferry crew and goods to and from the harbor. Eighteen-year-old William Bishop dutifully follows orders and climbs down into the longboat, preparing to rescue the Charles from its usurpers. But almost immediately he finds himself surrounded by fifteen men who have another plan in mind. The enigmatic question about the “drunken boatswain” has succeeded in transmitting its secret message. Before Druit can get back to the pinnace, twenty-five men have already boarded her, among them Edward Forsyth, James Lewis, and young Bishop. Druit orders them to return, but they ignore his command and row furiously toward the Charles.
With evidence of the mutiny beyond dispute, and the already troubled Spanish Expedition now in serious peril, Captain Humphries faces a terrible quandary: Should he let his own men go freely to capture the Charles, with potentially deadly consequences for his peer, Captain Gibson? Or should he take an equally devastating step and fire on his own crew?
Every’s supporters gather on the deck of the Charles as their fellow mutineers from the James row across the harbor toward them. The plan had originally been to confront Gibson while still anchored in A Coruña, once all the rebels had reunited on board, presenting him with an offer of a bloodless transfer of power.
Two shots across the bow from Humphries and the James scuttle that plan in a matter of seconds. Whatever negotiations are needed with Captain Gibson will have to happen on the open sea.
The mutineers on the pinnace are quickly hauled aboard. Joseph Gravet, a second mate of the Charles—presumed to be loyal to Captain Gibson—is seized, a “pistol clapt to his breast,” and put under armed guard belowdecks. Henry Every takes control of the Charles; the anchor lines are cut and sails unfurled. Every orders that the pinnace from the James be set adrift. Somehow Druit and Humphries are able to alert the A Coruña fort about the mutiny in progress, and the Charles sails out of the harbor chased by cannon fire from both sea and land. Not for the last time, the ship’s legendary speed in the water proves to be its salvation.
* * *
—
THE MUTINY ABOARD the Charles II is one of those rare moments from history where we can re-create an almost second-by-second account of the actions—down to the words the participants used with each other as the event was unfolding—despite the fact that the whole affair took place more than three hundred years ago, and hardly suggested that it would lead to world-shaking consequences at the time.
One of the ironies of the mutiny and its historical legacy is that the man who would become the single most influential and accomplished nautical author of his age was aboard the Dove as the events were happening, in the form of William Dampier. And yet none of our second-by-second account of the mutiny comes from his writing. Dampier never published a word about the events of May 7, 1694. The mutiny was preserved by a court reporter in London, years later, transcribing sworn testimony from the participants. By that point the historical significance of the mutiny would be plain to see.
* * *
—
LYING IN HIS HAMMOCK in the forecastle, Creagh springs up at the sound of the cannon fire. His punch-bowl suspicions have been confirmed: something out of the ordinary is clearly unfolding. He clambers his way up to the quarterdeck, where he finds Every at the helm, steering the ship out of the harbor. Beside him stands the ship’s carpenter, seemingly now playing the role of Every’s muscle.
Every grabs Creagh by the hand, and asks, “Will you go with me?”
As Every stares him down, Creagh equivocates, saying, “I do not know your design.”
After a tense and cryptic exchange, Every tells him, “You will all know by tomorrow morning, eight o’clock.”
The carpenter intervenes, pulling Creagh aside and pointing fiercely in Every’s direction. The carpenter’s words—preserved by Creagh’s testimony years later—have a bawdy, Shakespearean ring to them.
“Do you not see this Cock?” the carpenter demands.
Creagh nods. “I do.”
“This man—and old May and Knight—I can trust with anything. They are true cocks of the game, and old sports-men.” Then he delivers the threat: “If you do not go down I will knock you on the head.”
Fearing for his life, Creagh heads back belowdecks. As he descends, he finds William May near the hatch. According to Creagh, the old sea dog challenges him: “What do you do here?” Trying to stay out of the conflict erupting around him, Creagh ignores the question and continues on toward his cabin. May presses a pistol against his skull and offers a curse, one that would return to haunt the aging sailor years later at the trial: “God-damn you. You deserve to be shot through the head.”
* * *
—
CREAGH IS NOT the only one alarmed by the cannon fire. In the captain’s quarters, Gibson finally rouses from his fever dream. He can feel the ship fighting through the swell of the open Atlantic. Stumbling out onto the quarterdeck, he finds himself face-to-face with Every.
Gibson struggles to make sense of the situation. “Something is the matter with the ship. Does she drive? What weather is it?”
“No, no we’re at sea, with a fair wind and good weather.”
Even more confused, Gibson exclaims, “At sea! How can that be?”
Every lays out the situation. “I am captain of this ship now, and this is my cabin,” he says. “Therefore you must walk out. I am bound to Madagascar, with a design of making my own fortune, and that of all the brave fellows joined with me.”
At this point Henry Every offers the captain a deal, the exact details of which are a matter of some dispute. By some accounts, Every proposes to swap rank, with Gibson serving as first mate under the newly appointed Captain Every. But according to Creagh’s version of the story, Every makes an even more generous proposition, saying, “If you will go in the ship, you shall still command her.”
Gibson rejects Every’s offer out of hand. “I never thought you should have served me so, who have been kind to all of you,” he stammers. “And to go on a design against my owner’s orders—I will not do it.”
Every nods. “Then you must go ashore.”
The historical record is clear on one thing: Every and his backers allow Gibson to make an honorable exit from the Charles. (Not all mutinies ended with such a civil separation.) After his session with Gibson, Every pays a visit to Second Mate Gravet, under house arrest in his cabin.
“I suppose you do not intend to go with us,” Every says.
When Gravet confirms Every’s hunch, the new captain of the Charles extends the same amnesty to the rest of the crew that he has just extended to Gibson: “You, and the rest that will not go with us, have the liberty to go ashore.” But their departure must be immediate. Gravet is to be led up to the longboat “carrying no more than the clothes on [his] back.”
Every’s apparently genuine desire to see the former captain and second mate ashore is complicated by one fact. By first light, when the newly constituted crew of the Charles—some mutineers, some still loyal to James Houblon and the Spanish Expedition—gather on deck to assess their conditions, the Charles is ten miles out to sea. Gibson and his supporters will have to row back to shore in the Charles’s pinnace.
In one of his final moments onboard the Charles, Gravet passes William May, who takes him by the hand and wishes him well. According to Gravet, May is “very merry and jocund” as they part. His final words to Gravet are: “Remember me to my wife.” At the last minute, Every has a few clothes brought up for the second mate: a coast and waistcoat, along with the letter of rank (otherwise known as a commission) that he had left behind belowdecks. Their parting words are amicable. There is no known account of Every’s last exchange with the deposed Captain Gibson.
Within minutes
seventeen men are in the longboat, preparing to row back to A Coruña, whose fortress has long ago disappeared beneath the horizon. As they push off, they notice that their lifeboat is taking on water at an alarming rate. As experienced seamen, they can do the calculations with the speed of instinct: a boat leaking this badly will not make it ten miles back to shore. Drifting away from the Charles, Gravet and his mates scream for a bucket to be tossed to them. For a moment it looks as though all the chivalry of the bloodless mutiny is about to be exposed as a fraud: instead of being shot in the head, they are to drown at sea. But the crew on board the Charles toss a bucket to the pinnace, and the seventeen faithful servants of the Spanish Expedition begin the long slog back to A Coruña.
Captain Gibson must have noticed, as he surveyed the sixteen men who had stayed loyal to him, that the pinnace of the Charles still had room for many more.
* * *
—
THOSE EMPTY SEATS on the pinnace would ultimately be invoked as clear evidence of criminal intent among the crew remaining on board the Charles. Two facts are undisputed: Every allowed a significant portion to leave in peace, and there was room for more on the longboat headed back to harbor. Viewed together, they made a damning case against the mutineers: the men had been offered a chance to leave, but they had chosen to stay of their own volition.
And yet despite the consensus around those two facts, and despite all the details that have survived about the events of May 7, 1694, there remains a Rashomon-like quality to the mutiny. The same events—even the same words—take on different meaning if you entertain the premise that some of the mutineers were forced to remain with Every against their will. In one telling of the story, William May comes across as a key ally of Every’s: merrily proposing a toast to their new mission; threatening to shoot Creagh through the head for not joining the revolt; parting happily with Gravet as the former second mate boards the longboat. But May would claim for the rest of his life that he had not been a willing participant in the mutiny, that his toast at the punch bowl had held no ulterior meaning, that his threat to shoot Creagh had been act of loyalty to Gibson, not Every.
In May’s own account of the mutiny, shortly after his confrontation with Creagh, he approaches Every at the helm of the Charles. Every senses that May is not likely to be loyal to him. “You, May, I believe you do not love this way,” he says. “Pray get down to your Cabin.” He descends back to his quarters and weighs his options. In his testimony, May described what happened next:
I was thinking: I must [not] leave me old Captain without seeing him; I begged them to give me leave to come to him; and there was two men stood with naked Cutlaces, and would not let me come to him. We had some confabulation together, and I begged the favor to come in, and at last they permitted me; and the Doctor was anointing the Commander’s temples. . . . When I came out again, they began to hurry the men away. Here was Mr. Gravet, the Second Mate . . . I told him he should remember me to my Wife, as I am not likely to see her, for none could go, but who they pleased.
None could go, but who they pleased. Rewrite the narrative along these lines, and May’s final words to Gravet take on an entirely different valence: a man asking mournfully to be remembered to his wife not because he is choosing to set sail with a band of mutineers, but rather because he has no choice, because he knows his odds of return have just become far less promising. In this version, May is not Every’s deputy and co-conspirator, but rather his prisoner.
They were just words, no more than five or six sentences: a drunken toast to a ship’s captain, a threat leveled in a hatchway, a message to be passed back to a spouse. But how you read those simple statements—the inflection you give them—turned out to be the difference between life and death for William May.
* * *
—
IF MAY—and others on board the Charles—were not willing participants in the mutiny, why then did they not fill those empty seats and join Gibson and Gravet on the journey back to the James? According to May, the issue was the seaworthiness of the longboat itself. “When those men were in the boat,” May would later testify, “they cried for a bucket or else they should sink, they having three leagues to go. And I did not know how they could go so far with more, when their boat was likely to sink with those that were in her.” In May’s account, he had been given a false choice: he could enter a life outside the law and become a mutineer, or he could drown with seventeen men on the open waters of the Atlantic. “If I should have denied to go with them, I might have been killed by them,” May would argue in the courtroom. “And I knew not whether it be better to be accessary to my own death, or to suffer by the Law of the Nation.”
In the end, roughly eighty men would set sail with the Charles, and renounce their ties to Spanish Expedition Shipping. As they gained speed, Every rechristened the vessel. The men were sailing on the Fancy now—an allusion both to the quality of the ship, and the treasure they hoped to secure with her. The men, too, had been given a new name. Whatever their original role had been in the mutiny—ringleader, henchman, captive—they were all pirates now.
10
THE FANCY
The Atlantic Ocean, west of Africa
May-June 1694
One of Henry Every’s first actions as captain of the Fancy—now that he and his crew had severed ties irrevocably with James Houblon and the Spanish Expedition—was to establish what we would now call a profit-sharing plan for their enterprise. While pirates have almost always lived outside the laws of nation-states, and while they have a sometimes deserved reputation for anarchic acts of violence, within their floating communities they usually created—and obeyed—surprisingly coherent codes that governed their behavior, including their financial interactions. Most pirate voyages began by establishing “articles of agreement,” the bylaws that would shape both the political and economic relations among captains, officers, and ordinary crew.
The most critical article involved the distribution of loot. Much like the investors in the East India Company, each pirate was considered a shareholder in the venture. If they were lucky enough to seize treasure during their voyage, the bounty would be distributed based on the shares held by each man. But unlike the East India Company—and indeed just about any modern corporation—the distribution of profit on almost all pirate ships was radically egalitarian. To give some frame of reference, the compensation for American corporate executives today is, on average, 271 times larger than the median worker compensation in the firm. On a Royal Navy ship during Every’s time, the captain and officer class might earn ten times the wages of the average able seaman. On a merchant vessel, or a privateering mission like the Spanish Expedition, the income ratio could be as low as five to one. Pirate distributions were even flatter. The articles on board eighteenth-century pirate Edward Low’s ship—named the Fancy in honor of Every—spelled out the economic terms as follows: “The Captain is to have two full shares; the Master is to have one Share and one half; The Doctor, Mate, Gunner and Boatswain, one Share and one Quarter.” The rest of the crew were granted one share a piece. Henry Every and his men adopted a simpler structure: two shares for Every, one share for everyone else.
If the other articles of agreement aboard the Fancy were written down at the time, they have not survived in the historical record. But we do have four complete articles of agreement from pirates doing business in the decades after Every’s voyage: Low, Bartholomew Roberts, John Phillips, and George Lowther. They are fascinating documents, in the glimpse they give of both the everyday pastimes on board a pirate ship, and the surprisingly nuanced political systems the pirates developed to maintain order and secure stable governance on their voyages. Of the four surviving articles, Roberts’s makes for the most vivid reading:
I. Every man shall have an equal vote in affairs of moment. He shall have an equal title to the fresh provisions or strong liquors at any time seized, and shall use them at pleasure unless a scarcity m
ay make it necessary for the common good that a retrenchment may be voted.
II. Every man shall be called fairly in turn by the list on board of prizes, because over and above their proper share, they are allowed a shift of clothes. But if they defraud the company to the value of even one dollar in plate, jewels or money, they shall be marooned. If any man rob another he shall have his nose and ears slit, and be put ashore where he shall be sure to encounter hardships.
III. None shall game for money either with dice or cards.
IV. The lights and candles should be put out at eight at night, and if any of the crew desire to drink after that hour they shall sit upon the open deck without lights.
V. Each man shall keep his piece, cutlass and pistols at all times clean and ready for action.
VI. No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man shall be found seducing any of the latter sex and carrying her to sea in disguise he shall suffer death.
VII. He that shall desert the ship or his quarters in time of battle shall be punished by death or marooning.
VIII. None shall strike another on board the ship, but every man’s quarrel shall be ended on shore by sword or pistol in this manner. At the word of command from the quartermaster, each man being previously placed back to back, shall turn and fire immediately. If any man do not, the quartermaster shall knock the piece out of his hand. If both miss their aim they shall take to their cutlasses, and he that draweth first blood shall be declared the victor.
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