Jennings, Ashworth, and Carnegie all went ashore to the bawdy town of Nassau, leaving their vessels left in the hands of trusted subordinates. After two or three days, the quartermaster of the St. Marie, the sickly Allen Bernard, rowed to town and interrupted Jennings's debauchery. Apart from four or five men, the entire complement of the Barsheba was aboard the St. Marie looting her remaining cargo. "This must not be,"Jennings is said to have exclaimed. He told Bernard to "go on board and dissuade them" by claiming that none of them could afford to delay departure for the wrecks. "Between you and I," he confided, "if I can get her out to sea again with ye goods in her, I will run her up to Jamaica and secure her, for these fellows have drawn me into this [mess] and will doubtless, when they have shared ye goods, leave me to answer all."
Bernard, suffering from a stomachache, begged the captain to go himself, to lend the weight of his authority. With both his authority and a large quantity of valuables at stake, it would have seemed a prudent measure. But Jennings refused, telling his quartermaster "he would not be concerned with such rogues." Apparently the captain had more important things to do between the taverns and whorehouses.
On his way to the shore, Bernard came across Carnegie and Ashworth and apprised them of the situation. The two captains took the situation more seriously than their commodore, each volunteering to help Bernard restore order on the St. Marie. Ashworth immediately rowed out to the Mary to make sure his crew hadn't joined the riot, while Carnegie and Bernard made their way to the St. Marie.
The French ship was a scene of chaos. A hundred men poured over her, hauling European goods and supplies from her holds, piling them in boats, and rowing them over to the desolate shore of Hog Island, not far from the rotting bones of Henry Avery's Fancy. None of them had the slightest interest in what Carnegie and Bernard had to say. Flummoxed, Bernard returned to shore to try to raise Jennings to action. The captain was once again unmoved and told Bernard to watch over them and to not take any of the cargo by force.
Bernard spent the rest of the day observing the men's actions on the Hog Island shore. They had divided the plunder into three lots, and contrary to the practice of privateers, had allocated two lots for themselves and one for the owners, rather than the other way around. They should have taken all the plunder back to Jamaica, to be distributed and taxed by the Vice-Admiralty Court. Instead, they immediately divided their portion among themselves. Only the owner's lot was to be sent to Jamaica. Not wanting to entrust the owners' share to Jennings, the crew contracted the services of a local sloop, the Dolphin. This ten-ton vessel, curiously enough, belonged to one of Thomas Walker's sons, Neal.
Before the Dolphin's departure, Jennings, Ashworth, and Carnegie decided their best course of action was to inform their vessels' owners of their taking the French ship and the insubordination of the men. They drew up a manifest of the Dolphin's contents and wrote detailed letters to their owners and business partners and entrusted them with Allen Bernard and the Mary's quartermaster, Joseph Eels. Bernard and Eels boarded the Dolphin, letters in hand, and began the journey home.
After the Dolphin's departure, Jennings managed to secure control of the St. Marie and mustered a crew for her, the Barsheba, and the Mary to sail for the Spanish wrecks. They arrived a few days later, their considerable firepower presumably scaring off the Spanish guard ships. A passing English merchantman later reported that the St. Marie was presiding over a total of twenty-four English vessels on the wrecks, half Jamaican, half Bermudan, which would "not permit either French or Spaniards to come there." According to the Barshebas youthful doctor, John Cockrane, divers managed to take "some money out of ye water" before sailing back to Nassau. Not long thereafter, Jennings, still considering himself an honorable privateer, led the Barsheba and St. Marie back to Jamaica.
It's likely that Charles Vane did not return to Jamaica with the Barsheba. Nothing was there for him, except the possibility of legal proceedings. On the other hand, on New Providence he had his share of treasure, a good harbor at his disposal, and a town filled with brothers-in-arms. Given his personality, Vane was likely a ringleader of the looting of the St. Marie, in which case the owners would not have been pleased with him. It was better to stay in Nassau and enjoy a merry life until the money ran out.
***
Hornigold and Thatch sailed into Nassau in early June. They had been gone two months, and the pirate society on New Providence had grown in their absence. Dozens of periaguas, launches, and sloops sheltered inside Hog Island, their lines indicating a mix of origins: Spanish, French, English, and Dutch. Along the shore, the pirates had beached a couple of unwanted prize sloops, their looted hulls baking in the sun.
Amid the palms, palmettos, and tropical scrub, smoke rose from the cooking fires of a hundred huts, tents, and hovels. Most of these were made from whatever was handy: driftwood, old spars, decking, and worm-eaten hulls covered over with palmetto thatch or bits of old sailcloth. The ruder sort was home to groups of logwood cutters driven from Campeche, or black and Indian slaves on the run from their masters in Cuba, Hispaniola, or Jamaica. Slightly better were the hovels of the wreckers and former mariners. Nassau looked like an encampment of castaways, with sailors singing, dancing, drinking, and fornicating. Increasing numbers of wives and prostitutes were settling on the island, tending alehouses, mending clothes, cooking meals, and keeping the men company at night. One young sailor, James Bonny, had recently arrived from South Carolina with his sixteen-year-old wife, Anne; the latter quickly earned a reputation for libertine behavior. For most of the mariners it was a dream come true: ample food, drink, women, and leisure time. And when the money ran out, there was always another ship to capture, a plantation to loot, a treasure wreck to dive on.
The better homes—simple frame houses—belonged to the merchant-smugglers who bought the pirates' plunder with cheap rum, tobacco, and ammunition, and to the settlements' leading figures. Once these homes had belonged to New Providence's law-abiding colonists, but most had been forced to flee the town "for fear of being murdered." Thomas Barrow, the leader of the wreckers, had harassed them without mercy, shaking them down for drinking money and whipping anyone who refused him.
Even the merchants who came to trade with the pirates were not necessarily safe. In the harbor, Barrow robbed a brigantine from New England and beat up the master of a Bermuda sloop. Some vessels were apparently off-limits, including the Richard & John, the fourteen-ton sloop owned by Hornigold and Thatch's old pirate buddy John Cockram and Cockram's influential father-in-law, Richard Thompson. Cockram and his brothers, Joseph and Phillip, were running a successful trading syndicate out of Harbour Island, shipping pirate goods to Charleston and sugar and provisions back to Nassau. They competed with Benjamin Sims, a forty-year veteran of New Providence, and Neal Walker, whose sloop Dolphin was said to be in Jamaica at that very time, bearing a load of Henry Jennings's plunder. Together these merchant-smugglers provided vital logistical support to the Bahamian pirates. "The pirates themselves have often told me that if they had not been supported by the traders [bringing them] ammunition and provisions according to their directions," a colonial official would report in 1718,"they could never have become so formidable, nor arrived to that degree [of strength] that they have."
***
While Hornigold looked for someone to sell the Benjamin to, the others bought and sold goods and personal items, and exchanged news and stories with the wreckers and logwood cutters. Along the way they learned that Jennings's own men had turned on him to loot the St. Marie. They ate fresh fish and pineapples, and pork and chicken that had never seen the inside of a barrel, and drank Madeira wine and Barbados rum. Bellamy may have felt he'd found paradise: a republic of sailors, freed from those who would exploit them, free to live the merry life as long as the agents of empire could be kept away.
Hornigold found a buyer for the Benjamin, a Virginian merchant by the name of Perrin, who also happily purchased most of his plunder. With the proceeds, the pirat
e commodore purchased another sloop, transferred his guns aboard, and christened her the Adventure. The Adventure was considerably smaller and less threatening than the Benjamin, probably only twenty tons or so. The trade, Thomas Walker reported, had weakened Hornigold and "in some measure has disabled him from doing such damages upon the high seas as he would have done if he had continued his command" of the Benjamin. The trade made, Hornigold oversaw the fitting out of his third pirate sloop-of-war.
He was also concerned about the future of the pirate republic. All it would take to do them in, he knew, was for the English, French, or Spanish to send three or four men-of-war to Nassau. But if the town could be better fortified, authority might be kept at bay. He looked at the assorted cannons poking from the sloops in the harbor, then up at the ruined shape of Fort Nassau. Yes, he realized, the time had come to arm the island, not just its vessels. He organized Thatch and others to obtain cannon, pulleys, shot, and powder, and began rearming the old fortress.
For Thomas Walker, this was the final straw. For nearly a year, he, his wife, and his children had been threatened and abused by these rogues. He had begged the outside world to quash the pirates before they grew too strong, but to no avail. He knew that he would be killed if he tried to stop them from fortifying the harbor. If they succeeded, it would be far harder to root them out. He gathered his family and fled to Charleston, leaving Nassau to the pirates.
***
Back in Jamaica, Lord Archibald Hamilton's life was going from bad to worse. With each passing week, the news from Britain grew bleaker. By mid-March he knew that the main Jacobite army had suffered a devastating defeat near the English town of Preston and at least 4,000 had been taken prisoner. James Stuart and his entourage had reportedly landed in Scotland but "not finding things according to their expectation" had fled back to France four days later.* By the end of April, Lord Hamilton found his nephew Basil's name on a list of nobles captured at Preston and imprisoned in London. The uprising had failed before the colonies had even had a chance to join in.
Lord Hamilton's Jacobite activities were catching up with him. In March, Samuel Page, the secretary of Jamaica's governing council, had sailed for England carrying a sheaf of damning documents, letters, and depositions that he intended to present to King George. The Assembly of Jamaica and the former commodore of the local naval detachment were submitting evidence against him. Peter Heywood, a member of the governing council, was maneuvering to replace Hamilton as governor, by professing his support of "King George's sacred person and family."
Hamilton's privateers were causing him further trouble. The activities of Jennings, Willis, Fernando, Ashworth, and others had generated a flurry of hostile letters from the governors of Cuba and French Hispaniola. Governor Torres y Ayala of Havana wrote that "several gentlemen of Jamaica" had told him that Hamilton "was part owner of all the vessels which have been sent to our camp" at Palmar de Ayz; all the treasure had to be returned and the perpetrators seized and punished. The Cuban governor's ambassador in Jamaica had traced some of the stolen money to Hamilton's own house. Recently there was the matter of the Dolphin, a little Bahamian sloop that had shown up filled with goods Jennings and his gang had recently plundered from a French ship. Then came Henry Jennings himself, the St. Marie in tow, though minus the coins and valuables she once carried. To top it off, an official French delegation arrived bearing a letter from the governor of Hispaniola, demanding the return of this ship and another French sloop supposedly captured by Jennings. "I believe, my Lord, all these actions must occasion horror," the governor had written Hamilton. "I know several of [the privateers] have estates in Jamaica. It is but just they should be sold, and the money employed to repair the wrong they have done. I demand it of your Excellency, in point of justice." The entourage included Captain Escoubet, who was extremely angry to see his ship, the St. Marie, anchored in Port Royal awaiting Hamilton's condemnation.
Alas, if the Jacobite uprising had succeeded, Hamilton could have used the privateers to fund his administration and secure the surrounding colonies for the rightful kings of England and Scotland. Instead, they had become a liability. They would have to be rounded up and sacrificed for the cause. He put out orders that Jennings and the other captains not be allowed to leave the island.
Shortly thereafter, in late July, there was a knock at Hamilton's door.
HMS Adventure had arrived from Britain bearing orders from King George. Lord Hamilton was to be arrested and delivered to England in chains. Peter Heywood, the leader of Hamilton's opponents on the governing council, had been appointed governor and he immediately launched a full investigation of Hamilton's privateers. Jennings's commission had been seized and he went into hiding.
A good thing, too, for in late August another ship arrived from London bearing an official proclamation from King George. It was printed and posted around the island on August 30, and distributed across the British Americas in the weeks that followed. The king had declared Jennings, Carnegie, Ashworth, Wills, and others to be pirates.
By then, Jennings and his men were already halfway to their sanctuary, beyond the reach of the law: the Bahamas.
CHAPTER SIX
BRETHREN OF THE COAST
June 1716–March 1717
IN LATE JUNE or early July 1716, the pirates regrouped at their Hispaniola hideaway: Bellamy and Williams in the Marianne, Hornigold and Thatch in the newly acquired sloop Adventure, and La Buse aboard the Postillion. All should have been well. The three sloops were freshly cleaned, and had plenty of fresh water, wine, ammunition, and powder stowed away below decks. There were nearly 200 men between them and a safe haven from which to sally forth and strike merchantmen as they passed through the Windward Passage.
But relations between the pirate companies were strained. Hornigold's rule over the little squadron was failing due to his reluctance to attack English and Dutch vessels. He thought himself a vigilante, settling old scores with the French and Spanish; friendly vessels were boarded only as a last resort to acquire vital supplies or skilled crewmen. Bellamy and Williams thought differently and La Buse and his largely French crew didn't see any reason to spare English shipping.
While Hornigold had been away in Nassau, Bellamy and La Buse had attacked several English vessels off the southern coast of Cuba, seizing men, provisions, and liquor. Hornigold was angry to learn of this upon returning. In the heat of August, tensions reached a breaking point. Bellamy and La Buse wished to plunder an English vessel; Hornigold again refused. Aboard the Adventure, many of Hornigold's men called for his impeachment. The commodore was overlooking valuable prizes, and he'd lost the Benjamin to boot; perhaps younger, more radical leadership was in order. The quartermaster likely called for a vote of the ship's company. Hornigold had lost the confidence of two-thirds of the crew. The majority was ready for no-holds-barred piracy and decided to join Bellamy and La Buse aboard their sloops. Hornigold, they decreed, could keep the Adventure, but was to leave the rendezvous immediately and not show his face there again. Humiliated, the deposed commodore headed back toward the Bahamas with twenty-six loyal men, including his protégé, Edward Thatch.
***
Even for a pirate, the speed of Samuel Bellamy's ascent to power was striking. Only a year after leaving New England as a penniless sailor he had become the commodore of a gang of 170 pirates. He and Williams had already captured prizes worth thousands of pounds, more money than he and his fellow sailors could ever have hoped to see in a lifetime of legitimate service. He was twenty-seven and his career was just beginning.
Most of the ninety men in his own sloop's crew were English and Irish, with a few Scots, Welsh, Spaniards, and Dutchmen, a Swede, and at least two men of African descent. Most were in their midtwenties or early thirties, former seamen and privateers who had willingly entered piracy. A few had been forced to serve, at least at first. John Fletcher, whom Hornigold had kidnapped off the Blackett in October 1715, had come to embrace the pirate life; the crew liked and trusted
him so much that they elected him to serve as the Marianne's quartermaster. Others were unwilling captives, like Richard Caverley, seized from an English sloop on account of his navigational skills, and Peter Hoff, the thirty-four-year-old Swede with extensive knowledge of the southern Caribbean. Bellamy would need their expertise in the months ahead.
After Hornigold's departure, Bellamy and La Buse detained several sailing canoes, dinghies, and cargo boats, which kept their galleys stocked. They seem to have taken it easy through the end of the summer, eating, drinking, and making merry. By September, Bellamy reckoned it was time to expand their horizons. He proposed to his crew that they sail eastward, down the curving spine of the Antilles to the Spanish Main, chasing any sail crossing their path. The men agreed, as did those under La Buse. At the height of hurricane season, they began their trek from Hispaniola.
They sailed against the prevailing winds, tacking their way along the mountainous shores of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. It was a quiet trip, punctuated only by whatever marine life passed their way: a curious pod of dolphins or a cascade of flying fish scattering fearfully before the sloop's hulls. But as they passed the far end of Puerto Rico and began the crossing to St. Thomas, a lookout spotted the telltale, triple-masted outline of a ship on the horizon. As they closed the distance, Bellamy could see it was quite large—a frigate, really—flying French colors. A long row of gun ports pierced her side, with a second, shorter row on her poop and forecastle. Forty guns all told, making her a smaller frigate similar to the St. Marie, the French ship they'd looted under Jennings's nose. Unlike the St. Marie, however, this ship was fully armed, and was not confined in a harbor, anchored to the seafloor. Her sails were up and her great guns were rolling out for action. A mighty prize, to be sure, one that could allow them to attack most anything in the West Indies, but not an easy one to capture. Bellamy consulted La Buse and his men and resolved to hazard a bold strike.
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