VIEW OF THE HARBOR AND TOWN OF BOSTON IN 1723
From an engraving in the British Museum after a drawing by William Burgis
THE
PIRATES
OF THE
NEW ENGLAND
COAST
1630–1730
By
GEORGE FRANCIS DOW
Curator of the Society for the Preservation of
New England Antiquities
and
JOHN HENRY EDMONDS
Massachusetts State Archivist
Introduction by
CAPT. ERNEST H. PENTECOST, R.N.R.
MARINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS
1923
PUBLICATION NUMBER TWO
OF THE
MARINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
SALEM, MASS.
COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY
THE MARINE RESEARCH SOCIETY
PRINTED IN
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
BY THE JORDAN & MORE PRESS
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
THIS VOLUME
IS DEDICATED TO THE
MARINERS AND MERCHANTS OF
NEW ENGLAND WHO SUFFERED
LOSS OF LIFE OR PROPERTY
AT THE HANDS OF
PIRATES
PREFACE
There is scarcely a sandy beach on New England’s long and deeply indented coastline that has not connected with it some traditionary tale of the landing of pirates or their buried treasure. Many of these half-forgotten tales may have had an origin in the operations of early smugglers or in the evasion of the British Navigation Acts, but it is undoubtedly true that pirates did frequent this coast, beginning with the early days of its settlement, and during their periodical appearances, robbed and destroyed shipping almost at will. In gathering material relating to this subject no attempt has been made to include the traditionary lore. The public records of the time supply an astonishing amount of detailed information, but the principal source for first-hand information on the operations of pirate vessels during the first twenty-five years of the eighteenth century, the period when piracy was most frequent and least controlled, is the “History of the Pirates” by Capt. Charles Johnson. It has been claimed that the author at one time sailed in a pirate ship and therefore wrote from a personal knowledge of many of the events described. It seems impossible that anyone could have obtained such a circumstantial narrative of illicit life on the open sea unless he had lived in intimate personal acquaintance with a number of those who took part in the stirring actions recounted. Some of his tales are so extraordinary that they seem improbable—impossible of belief. And yet, the portion of his history relating to the North Atlantic coast has been verified by original records and items of current news in the newspapers and found to be a truthful relation in all essential details. With so much corroborative evidence at hand it is only fair to concede the probability that other portions of his “History,” not verified at this time, are also based upon fact.
The account of piracy to be found in the following chapters is based upon original documents in the Massachusetts State Archives, in the records of the Vice-Admiralty Courts, the Courts of Assistants and the Quarterly Courts. Printed accounts of trials have supplied valuable information and many details that have greatly enriched the narrative have been gleaned from newspapers published at the time. Intermingled are personal anecdotes and details recorded by Captain Johnson, of captures, murders and injuries inflicted upon the officers and crews of plundered merchant vessels.
Many friends have aided in the preparation of this volume. Capt. Ernest H. Pentecost, R.N.R., of Topsfield, has freely placed at our disposal his collection of voyages and books on piracy and related subjects. He also has critically examined the manuscript and given it the benefit of his technical knowledge of things nautical. Mr. John W. Farwell of Boston has generously permitted the reproduction of portions of several rare maps in his fine collection of early charts and maps. Mr. Julius H. Tuttle, Librarian of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Mr. George Parker Winship, Librarian of the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College Library, have kindly allowed the reproduction of early engravings and title pages of rare books. Cordial thanks also are due to Mr. Howard M. Chapin, Librarian of the George L. Shepley Library, Providence; Mr. Charles H. Taylor, Mr. William W. Cordingley, the Bostonian Society and the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, all of Boston; the Peabody Museum of Salem; and to all others who in any way have furthered the production of this volume.
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
[ Boston harbor from the survey in the “English Pilot,” Part IV. London, 1707] Front end-paper
From an original in the Harvard College Library.
[View of the harbor and town of Boston in 1723] Frontispiece
From an engraving in the British Museum after a drawing by William Burgis.
[ Fac-simile of the title-page of Capt. Charles Johnson’s “History of the Pirates,” London, 1724] 1
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Map of the West Indies about 1720, showing “the tracts of the Spanish Gallions”] 10
From Herman Moll’s “Atlas Minor,” London, 1732, in the Harvard College Library.
[ Capt. Henry Morgan, the buccaneer, before Panama] 14
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Pyrates,” etc., London, 1734, in the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College Library.
From an original in the Harvard College Library.
[ Richard Coote, Earl of Bellomont, Governor of Massachusetts, 1699-1700] 42
From a rare engraving in the Harvard College Library.
[ View of Castle William, Boston harbor, about 1729, and a man-of-war of the period] 54
From the only known copy of an engraving probably by John Harris, after a drawing by William Burgis.
[ An armed sloop near Boston lighthouse in 1729] 62
From the only known copy of a mezzotint by William Burgis, published Aug. 11, 1729, and now in the possession of the United States Lighthouse Board.
[ Samuel Sewall, Chief Justice of the Superior Court in Massachusetts, 1718-1728] 66
From an original painting in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Joseph Dudley, Governor of Massachusetts, who presided at the trial of Captain Quelch] 102
From an original painting in possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Fac-simile of the title-page of “The Trial of Capt. John Quelch for Piracy,” London, 1704] 106
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Rev. Cotton Mather, pastor of the Second (North) Church, Boston, 1685-1728] 114
From a mezzotint by Peter Pelham after a portrait painted in 1728.
[ Fac-simile of the title-page of “The Trial of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy,” Boston, 1717] 116
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
From the original gold coin, found on the beach at Wellfleet, Mass., where Bellamy’s pirate ship was wrecked in 1717 and now in the possession of Charles H. Taylor.
From the original eight real piece in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Capt. George Lowther at Port Mayo] 138
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Pyrates,” etc., London, 1734, in the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College Library.
[ The Idle Apprentice sent to Sea] 142
From an engraving by William Hogarth in the “Industry and Idleness” series, published in 1747. The young reprobate is being rowed past Cuckold’s Point on the Thames where may be seen a pirate hanging from a gibbet.
[ A barque in the West Indies about 1720] 146
From an engraving in Lobat’s “Nouveau Voyage,” Vol. II, Paris, 1722, in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ A brigantine in the West Indies about 1720] 146
From an engraving in Lobat’s “Nouveau Voyage,” Vol. II, Paris, 1722, in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Capt. Edward Low in a hurricane] 152
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Pyrates,” etc., London, 1734, in the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College Library.
[ One of Low’s crew killing a wounded Spaniard] 204
From an engraving in Johnson’s “Historie der Engelsche Zee-roovers,” Amsterdam, 1725, in the Harvard College Library.
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Pirates boarding a Spanish vessel in the West Indies] 238
From an engraving in “The History and Lives of the most Notorious Pirates,” by an old Seaman, London, n.d., in possession of Capt. Ernest H. Pentecost, R.N.R.
[ Map of the Bay of Honduras showing Rattan Island and Port Mayo] 242
From the map in “Voyages and Travels of Capt. Nathaniel Uring,” London, 1726, in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Map showing Ruatan Island in the Bay of Honduras where Philip Ashton escaped from pirates] 256
From a map in the “American Atlas,” by Thomas Jefferys, London, 1776, in the possession of John W. Farwell.
[ “Sweating” on Captain Sprigg’s pirate vessel] 278
From an engraving in “The History and Lives of the most Notorious Pirates,” by an old Seaman, London, n.d., in possession of Capt. Ernest H. Pentecost, R.N.R.
[ Pirates killing a captured man] 284
From an engraving in “The History and Lives of the Most Notorious Pirates,” by an old Seaman, London, n.d., in possession of Capt. Ernest H. Pentecost, R.N.R.
From an engraving in “The History and Lives of the Most Notorious Pirates,” by an old Seaman, London, n.d., in possession of Capt. Ernest H. Pentecost, R.N.R.
From the portrait by Robert Feke in possession of the Trustees of Dummer Academy.
The original painting really represents the town at a somewhat later date. Reproduced from a lithograph copy made in 1864, now in the George L. Shepley Library, Providence, R. I.
[ Fishing ship and station on the Newfoundland coast about 1710] 314
From an insert in Herman Moll’s “Map of North America,” London [1710-1715], in the possession of John W. Farwell.
From an original in the library of the American Antiquarian Society.
[ Fac-simile of the title-page of “The Tryals of Sixteen Persons for Piracy,” Boston, 1726] 328
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Fac-simile of the title-page of Rev. Cotton Mather’s “Vial poured out upon the Sea,” Boston, 1726] 336
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Capt. Bartholomew Roberts] 340
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Pirates,” London, 1725, in the possession of George Francis Dow.
[ Capt. John Avery taking the Great Mogul’s ship] 346
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Pyrates,” etc., London, 1734, in the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College Library.
[ Capt. Edward Teach, commonly called “Black Beard”] 350
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Pyrates,” etc., London, 1734, in the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College Library.
From an original in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ The pirate ships “Royal Fortune” and “Ranger” in Whydah Road, Jan. 11, 1722] 360
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Pirates,” London, 1725, in possession of George Francis Dow.
[ Nix’s Mate, Boston Harbor, in 1775, where Captain Fly was gibbetted in 1726] 368
From an engraving in the “Atlantic Neptune,” Part III, London, 1781, in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
[ Monument on the shoal, formerly Nix’s Mate, in 1637 an island of more than ten acres] 368
From a photograph made about 1900.
[ Map of Cape Cod in 1717, showing the location of the pirate wreck] Back end-paper
From a chart surveyed and published by Capt. Cyprian Southack of Boston, now in possession of John W. Farwell.
INTRODUCTION
Why did men go a-pirating, or “on the account” as the pirates called it? The sailors said it was few ships and many men, hard work and small pay, long voyages, bad food and cruel commanders. “Hard ships make hard men.” “Many sailed but few returned.” “No kind words on deep water.” “No law off soundings.” “We live hard and die hard and go to Hell afterwards.” These are some of the sea sayings that have come down to us from long ago, and they go to prove that the narrow channel of sailor men was narrow indeed and full of rocks and shoals which could only be cleared by very careful steering.
The sea was ever a hard calling, especially in the days of which this work treats. The men before the mast were little better than slaves: “Growl you may but go you must” was the saying. Small pay (which they “earned like horses and spent like asses”), scanty food and often stinking water with generally hard usage turned many an honest sailorman into a desperate pirate.
Sea captains thought it good policy to keep their men as “busy as the Devil in a gale of wind” to prevent them doing a job o’ work for that Gentleman with the long tail, who, it was said, took especial interest in the doings of “those who go down to the sea in ships.” “Six days shalt thou labour as hard as thou art able, the seventh, holy-stone the main deck and chip the chain cable.” Capt. Thomas Phillips wrote in 1693, that “nothing grates upon the seamen more than pinching their bellies, or treating them with cruel or reproachful words.”
One can easily imagine a group of hard-bitten men sheltering under the lee of the long boat on a dirty night; wet, cold and tired; listening with hungry interest to the yarns of an “old stander” who had been “on the account,” telling of the time he sailed with Bart Sharp or “Long Ben” Avery; picturing with many a brave oath, that other channel, the broad one, straight, with smooth water, pieces-of-eight to port, dollars and doubloons to starboard, snug harbors in tropic isles, dusky maids, punch, tobacco and grub in plenty, laced coats and chains of gold.
There is another side to the picture, not so pleasant, to be sure, but easily dimmed by a noggin of rum or a swig or two of flip. ’Tis naught, after all, but the yard-arm of a man-of-war with a man on the end of a tricing line with his flippers seized to his sides; and on a seashore, a wooden erection with a something hanging—something that looks uncommonly like a sailorman, watching, with wry face, the ebbing and flowing of the tide. But there’s nothing in the picture to make one of the right sort go about ship. Better a short choking sensation than a long starving in merchants’ employ or scurvy rotting for a pay ticket on board a king’s ship.
Capt. Charles Johnson tells us in his book on pirates, that one “Mary Read, a female pirate, being asked by her captain, before he knew she was a woman, why she followed a life so full of danger and at last to the certainty of being hanged, replied: as to the hanging she thought it no great hardship, for were it not for that every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so infest the seas that men of courage would starve. That if it was put to her choice she would not have the punishment less than death, the fear of which kept dastardly rogues honest; that many of those who were now cheating the widows and orphans and oppressing their poor neighbors who had no money to obtain justice, would then rob at sea and the ocean would be as crowded with rogues as the land, so that no merchant would venture out and the trade in a little time would not be worth following.”
There is an old saying that “Peace makes pirates.” The lawless scamps—“sweepings of Hell and Hackney”—who manned the privateers were especially prone to go a-pirateering in times of peace. They could not or would not settle down to steady work and small pay or be bound by laws and conventions. They loved roving and loot too well. Better to hang a sun-drying than to live with “a southerly wind in the shot locker.” It was but a step, after all, and that a short one, if half be true that has been written of privateers by men of regular navies. But perhaps they were a little prejudiced. Many rich prizes were taken by the private ships of war, often robbing the regulars of the chance of filling their pockets. Those who manned the King’s ships, like all others that used the seas, suffered from loot hunger and to satisfy the same would often sail very close to the wind, so close, in fact, that several of the King’s captains were caught flat aback and made a stern board towards the rocks. Some cleared by discharging their golden ballast, others, by the wind of influence.
Coasters and fishermen were not so apt to turn pirates. Their work was hard and risky; but fresh food, “full and plenty,” and shore influence kept them steady. They were not as a rule of such an adventurous type as deep-water seamen. Occasionally, however, some lusty young fisherman or coaster would go a-roving. Perhaps some maid had been unkind or too kind.
Some sailed under the “Jolly Roger” because they thought that he who dared, toiled and ventured, deserved as great a percentage of the profits as he who sat at home in personal safety and comfort and handled the pen. It was their only chance of getting even with the merchants and that chance a good one. Governments had little to spend on pirate chasing; besides, who could better stand a little cash-letting than the money-fat merchants. But well as they might have been able to stand it they roared so during the operation that governments were forced at last, Acts of Grace having failed, to send men-of-war to cruise against “the gentlemen of fortune following the sea.” They effected little. After one pirate-hunting squadron had returned unsuccessful, sailors’ yarns floated around that told of the commodore’s ship springing a leak out Madagascar way, and of great store of powder, shot and rum being landed to lighten her. The leak stopped as suddenly as it began and when the boats’ crews landed to bring off the powder, shot and rum, all had disappeared. The yarns went on to tell that when the commodore was taking a walk on shore, he found several small kegs stowed under a palm tree down by the water’s edge, and how heavy they were, and how carefully they were kept in the after cabin of the Commodore’s ship, and that the officers said they had nothing in ’em but honey; but Barney Brown, the boatswain’s mate, swore his Bible oath that he heard the clink of coin when a-rolling them along the deck.
There’s no doubt that many were worthy, but only Kidd was hanged.
The news of Captain Avery’s rich prize, the Mogul’s ship, with her cargo of wealth and beautiful women, including, it was said, one of the Great Mogul’s daughters, made many an old tarpaulin hitch up his breeches and turn his quid. The fame of the beauty of the fair captives was such that the mariners lost all their admiration for the Boston Kates and Wapping Pegs of the ports where sea-faring men mostly took their ease. “No! damme, no! Might as well ask a man to thirst for a sup of sour beer when good rum’s to be had.” So off they’d go a-pirating, hoping to capture something of the Miss Mogul sort with something to keep her on.
The Peace of Ryswick forced hundreds of West India privateers or buccaneers who had preyed on the Spaniards, to seek for purchase under the black flag in all seas and from all nations.
Spain’s jealous policy regarding trade with her over-sea subjects, and monopolies such as enjoyed by the East India Company, were resented by all free merchants. Ships were fitted out and loaded with suitable cargoes for the illegal trade. These interlopers were fast and well manned and armed to enable them to wrong the guarda costas.
With a fair whack of luck great gains were made; but some failed to get their whack; found shore officials suffering from honesty, a very uncommon disorder among them in those days and easily cured by most anything of value. But some of the patients required such enormous doses, that rather than give the medicine and by so doing make a broken voyage, the interlopers would throw the bones with Davy Jones. They had the ship, they had the guns, and many a willing hand and if they lacked black bunting there was store of black tarpaulin with artists of sufficient skill to paint “the Skull and Bones.” Hurrah for the “Jolly Roger”! A “gold chain or a wooden leg”! We’ll take what we can’t make!
When a prize was taken the pirate quartermaster would seek for recruits from among the prisoners. Every lad of them of spirit, impressed by the sight of such a bold swaggering crew rapping out their first-rate oaths and well ballasted with punch, with their bravery of laced hats, ribbons and pistols, was ready enough to square away for the broad channel.
Although many were willing, few volunteered to sign the pirate articles. The many wanted the plea of force, to let go, in case of getting on a lee shore in a law storm. It was a very light anchor, more like to drag than hold, but “better a kedge than nothing at all.” Landsmen, the pirates despised, nor pricked they the halt, lame or feeble.
The pirate wind was an ill wind, but it blew wonderful luck to those merchants who loaded ships to their scuppers with fiery Jamaica, red-hot brandy, gunpowder, small arms and cannon balls, and sent them off to trade with some negro king, ’twas said. On the voyage they would call at a lonely isle for wood and water and there they would meet other ships manned by the most open-fisted merchants ever known. No wrangling over a bale or two. Such bargains, the like of which never could have been made even with the most unsophisticated of dusky potentates. It was true, these merchants lacked the gravity of their kind; tossed the bowl about a good deal; and swore,—well, like pirates! And so home with a rich cargo.
With such a reputation for reckless daring, why, it may be asked, were the pirates not more successful when engaging ships of war? John Atkins, surgeon on board the “Swallow,” man-of-war, that took three pirate ships on the Guinea coast in 1722, tells the reason. “Discipline,” says the Doctor, “is an excellent path to victory; and courage, like a trade, is gained by an apprenticeship, when strictly kept up to rules and exercise. The pirates though singly fellows of courage, yet wanting such a tie of order and some director to unite that force, were a contemptible enemy. They neither killed or wounded a man in the taking; which ever must be the fate of such rabble.”
From whatever source the pirates sprang, they were, taking them by and large, brisk, courageous men, who were for making hasty estates at the expense of the public and ever athirst for the juice of the sunny isle, that magic fluid which helped them to forget that last pilot of many a good pirate,—the Man with the Silver Oar.
Ernest H. Pentecost.
A GENERAL
HISTORY
OF THE
Robberies and Murders
Of the most notorious
PYRATES,
AND ALSO
Their Policies, Discipline and Government,
From their first Rise and Settlement in the Island
of Providence, in 1717, to the present Year 1724.
WITH
The remarkable Actions and Adventures of the two Female
Pyrates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny.
To which is prefix’d
An ACCOUNT of the famous Captain Avery, and his Companions;
with the Manner of his Death in England.
The Whole digested into the following CHAPTERS;
Chap. I. Of Captain Avery.
II. The Rise of Pyrates.
III. Of Captain Martel.
IV. Of Captain Bonnet.
V. Of Captain Thatch.
VI. Of Captain Vane.
VII. Of Captain Rackam.
VIII. Of Captain England.
IX. Of Captain Davis.
X. Of Captain Roberts.
XI. Of Captain Worley.
XII. Of Captain Lowther.
XIII. Of Captain Low.
XIV. Of Captain Evans.
And their several Crews.
To which is added,
A short ABSTRACT of the Statute and Civil Law, in
Relation to Pyracy.
By Captain Charles Johnson.
LONDON, Printed for Ch. Rivington at the Bible and Crown in St. Paul’s Church-Yard, J. Lacy at the Ship near the Temple-Gate, and J. Stone next the Crown Coffee-house the back of Greys-Inn, 1724.
CHAPTER I
The Beginnings of English Piracy
“As in all lands where there are many people, there are some theeves, so in all Seas much frequented, there are some Pyrats.” So wrote Capt. John Smith, the one-time Admiral of New England, when commenting in 1630 on the “bad life, qualities and conditions of Pyrats,”[1] and this characterization remained true for many years after his day. Piracy was as old as the art of transportation by water and until suppressed by force in comparatively recent times it was a favorite trade among seamen when times were hard or temptations great.
The reign of Queen Elizabeth (1558-1603) was characterized by a great development of the maritime power of England. This was the time when Drake and Hawkins and other great navigators fought with the ships of Spain and brought fame and fortune to English seamen. Much of the fighting at sea, however, was but little removed from freebooting and it is now difficult to judge what was legalized warfare and what was piratical capture. Notwithstanding the frequent opportunity for brave men to attack rich Spanish ships common piracy flourished and in 1563 there were over four hundred known pirates sailing the four seas.[2]
When James I (1603-1625) came to the throne he resolved to live at peace with all nations and so found little employment for a navy. In the first year of his reign he recalled all “letters of marque,” and two years later, by proclamation, forbade English seamen to seek employment in foreign ships. In consequence many poverty-stricken seamen became pirates, urged on by their necessities. “Some, because they became sleighted of those for whom they had got much wealth; some, for that they could not get their due; some, that had lived bravely, would not abase themselves to poverty; some vainly, only to get a name; others for revenge, covetousnesse, or as ill; and as they found themselves more and more oppressed, their passions increasing with discontent, made them turne Pirats.”[3]
By 1618, there were ten times as many pirates as there had been during the whole reign of Queen Bess. About the only voyage open to an English seaman at that time was the fishing venture of Newfoundland, which was toilsome in the extreme and full of exposure and hardship. The dirty carrying trade to Newcastle, for coals, while a good school for seamen, was despised and thought beneath the ability of an active man, and the long voyage to the East Indies was tedious and dangerous. As for the navy—berths were few and the food poor, the pay was small and the service a kind of slavery. Ordinary seamen received only ten shillings a month, which was raised to fifteen shillings when Charles I (1625-1649) became king. But even this small wage was subject to a deduction of six pence for the Chatham Chest founded in 1590 for the relief of injured and disabled seamen.
Peter Easton was one of the most notorious of the English pirates during the reign of James I. In 1611 he had forty vessels under his command. The next year he was on the Newfoundland coast with ten of his ships where he trimmed and repaired, appropriated provisions and munitions and took one hundred men to man his fleet.[4] On June 4, 1614, Henry Mainwaring, was at Newfoundland, with eight vessels in his fleet. Mainwaring became even better known than Easton and a few years later was pardoned and placed in command of a squadron and sent to the Barbary coast in an unsuccessful attempt to drive out the pirates located there. While he was on the Newfoundland coast he plundered the fishing fleet of carpenters and marines and the provisions and stores that he needed. Of every six seamen he took one. From a Portuguese ship he looted a good store of wine and a French ship supplied him with 10,000 fish. Some of the fishermen deserted their vessels and voluntarily went with him. In all he took four hundred men, many of whom were “perforstmen,”[5] and then sailed back across the Atlantic to continue his impartial plundering of the ships of Spain and other nations.
It was an easy matter for the English pirates to obtain bread, wine, cider and fish and all the necessaries for shipping on the Newfoundland coast as the fishermen were unarmed and moreover did not stand together. Not many pirates went there, however, as the voyage across the Atlantic was long and the prevailing winds apt to be westerly or northwesterly during the summer months. Notwithstanding, the fishing fleets suffered so much from these attacks that by 1622, men-of-war were sent out to convoy and remain on the station during the fishing season. In 1636, three hundred English fishing vessels were in the fleet that sailed for home under convoy.
The Irish coast was another favorite resort where pirates went to careen and obtain provisions from the country people. Broadhaven was a favorite rendezvous. The Irish coast not only was a good place to provision but also there “they had good store of English, Scottish and Irish wenches which resort unto them, and these are strong attractions to draw the common sort of them thither.”[6]
Mainwaring in his account of English piracy at this period, supplies an interesting description of their methods of attack.
“In their working they usually do thus: a little before day they take in all their sails, and lie a-hull, till they can make what ships are about them; and accordingly direct their course so as they may seem to such ships as they see to be Merchantmen bound upon their course. If they be a fleet, then they disperse themselves a little before day, some league or thereabouts asunder, and seeing no ships do most commonly clap close by a wind to seem as Plyers.[7] If any ships stand in after them, they heave out all the sail they can make, and hang out drags to hinder their going, so that the other that stand with them might imagine they were afraid and that they shall fetch them up. They keep their tops continually manned, and have signs to each other when to chase, when to give over, where to meet, and how to know each other, if they see each other afar off.
“In chase they seldom use any ordnance, but desire as soon as they can, to come a board and board; by which course he shall more dishearten the Merchant and spare his own Men. They commonly show such colours as are most proper to their ships, which are for the most part Flemish bottoms, if they can get them, in regard that generally they go well, are roomy ships, floaty[8] and of small charge.”
Mainwaring also comments on the ease with which successful pirates might obtain a pardon and of this he spoke with personal knowledge of how it was done, writing, “if they can get £1000 or two, they doubt not but to find friends to get their Pardons for them. They have also a conceit that there must needs be wars with Spain within a few years, and then they think they shall have a general Pardon.”
Capt. John Smith in his “True Travels,” relates that the pirates prospered exceedingly and became a serious menace to trade so that “they grew hatefull to all Christian Princes.” Their increase in number finally induced them to establish a rendezvous on the Barbary coast in Northern Africa.[9] Ward, Bishop and Easton, all Englishmen, were among the first to go there, and were soon joined by others,—Jennings, Harris and Thompson and some who were hanged, at last, at Wapping on the Thames. The Mediterranean was the center of a rich commerce and these outlawed seamen banded together in small fleets, plundered impartially the vessels of Genoa, Malta, England or Holland. Success brought on indolence and the riotous, debauched life they led after a time deprived them of leaders of spirit, so that the Moors began to dominate their operations.[10] Some pirates were enslaved, others became renegades and accepted the Mohammedan faith and all, at last, became merged into the Barbary corsair and for nearly two centuries sailed out of ports in Algiers and Tunis and were the terror of mariners, not only about the Strait of Gibraltar but for some distance up and down the Atlantic coast,—robbing, enslaving or exacting tribute from all so unfortunate as to fall into their hands. Another group of rovers made their home port at Sallee harbor, on the west coast of Morocco. The “Salley rovers” were a great danger to vessels engaged in the Guinea trade.
From this it will be seen that piracy in European waters, in the early years of the seventeenth century, had its origin in a lack of legitimate employment for seamen. This condition was brought about by a period of peace and aggravated by an imperfectly developed maritime commerce that could not be quickly increased in order to find occupation for idle men. “I could wish Merchants, Gentlemen, and all setters forth of ships,” concludes Captain Smith, “not to bee sparing of a competent pay, nor true payment; for neither souldiers nor Sea-men can live without meanes, but necessity will force them to steale; and when they are once entered into that trade, they are hardly reclaimed.”
Another contributing factor, that later helped to supply suitable material for piratical ventures, may be found in the character of the shifting population of the American colonies. In all frontier settlements, in all parts of the world and at all times, there exist irresponsible and lawless elements sloughed off by more perfectly controlled governments. This was true in the early days of the seaport towns along the Atlantic coast. Prisoners of war, poor debtors, criminals from the gaols and young men and boys kidnapped in the streets of English towns, were shipped across the Atlantic and sold to planters and tradesmen for a term of years under conditions closely approaching servitude. It became a trade to furnish the plantations with servile labor drawn from the off-scourings of the mother country. Even the English government took a hand and in 1661 “a committee was appointed to consider the best means of furnishing labor to the plantations by authorizing contractors to transport criminals, beggars, and vagrants. Runaway apprentices, faithless husbands and wives, fugitive thieves and murderers were thus enabled to escape beyond the reach of civil or criminal justice.”[11] Once landed in the colonies and having tasted the hardships of forced labor, a roving disposition was soon awakened and runaway servants were almost as common as blackbirds. Numbers of these men joined marauding expeditions and eventually became pirates of the usual type.
Undoubtedly privateering was the principal training school that taught adventurous men to accept a roving commission not only against Spaniards but against men of all nations. Like pirates, the privateersmen lived on spoil and while legally restricted in their attacks to the vessels of an enemy nation it was easy sometimes to overlook the color of a flag if an honest living was not at hand and one was far from home. In fact, it has been said that “privateers in time of war are a nursery for pirates against a peace.” A stirring description of an attack on a Spanish ship is given in the “Accidence for all Young Seamen,” published in London in 1626, and written by Capt. John Smith, the “Admiral of New England.” It may well serve as an account of what took place at that time on nearly every privately armed vessel attacking an enemy.
“A sail, how stands she, to windward or leeward, set him by the Compass. He stands right a-head. Out with all your sails, a steady man at the helm, sit close to keep her steady. He holds his own. Ho, we gather on him. Out goeth his flag and pennants or streamers, also his Colours, his waist-cloths and top armings, he furls and slings his main sail, in goes his sprit sail and mizzen, he makes ready his close fights fore and after. Well, we shall reach him by and by.
“Is all ready? Yea, yea. Every man to his charge. Dowse your top sail, salute him for the sea. Hail him! Whence your ship? Of Spain. Whence is yours? Of England. Are you Merchants or Men of War? We are of the Sea. He waves us to leeward for the King of Spain, and keeps his luff. Give him a chase piece, a broadside, and run a-head, make ready to tack about. Give him your stern pieces. Be yare at helm, hail him with a noise of Trumpets.
“We are shot through and through, and between wind and water. Try the pump. Master, let us breathe and refresh a little. Sling a man overboard to stop the leak. Done, done. Is all ready again? Yea, yea. Bear up close with him. With all your great and small shot charge him. Board him on his weather quarter. Lash fast your grapplins and shear off, then run stem line the mid ships. Board and board, or thwart the hawse. We are foul on each other.
“The ship’s on fire. Cut anything to get clear, and smother the fire with wet cloths. We are clear, and the fire is out. God be thanked!
“The day is spent, let us consult. Surgeon look to the wounded. Wind up the slain, with each a piece or bullet at his head and feet. Give three pieces for their funeral.
“Swabber make clean the ship. Purser record their names. Watch be vigilent to keep your berth to windward; and that we loose him not in the night. Gunners sponge your Ordnances. Carpenters about your leaks. Boatswain and the rest, repair the sails and shrouds. Cook see you observe your directions about the morning watch. Boy. Hulloa, Master, Hulloa. Is the kettle boiling. Yea, yea.
“Boatswain call up the men to Breakfast; Boy fetch my cellar of Bottles. A health to you all fore and aft, courage my hearts for a fresh charge. Master lay him aboard luff for luff. Midshipmen see the tops and yards well manned with stones and brass balls, to enter them in the shrouds. Sound Drums and Trumpets, and St. George for England.
“They hang out a flag of truce. Stand in with him, hail him amain, abaft or take in his flag. Strike their sails and come aboard, with the Captain, Purser, and Gunner, with your Commission, Cocket, or bills of loading.
“Out goes their Boat. They are launched from the ship’s side. Entertain them with a general cry, God save the Captain, and all the Company, with the Trumpets sounding. Examine them in particular; and then conclude your conditions with feasting, freedom, or punishment as you find occasion.”
During the middle years of the seventeenth century the West India waters were covered with privateers commissioned to prey upon Spanish commerce. Not only did the home government issue these commissions but every colonial governor as well, so that thousands of men were out of employment when a peace was declared. Merchants then took advantage of such conditions and poorly paid and poorly fed their seamen and this bred discontent and made willing volunteers when the first pirate vessel was encountered.
Not infrequently it was difficult to separate privateering from piracy. John Quelch, who was hanged in Boston for piracy, in 1704, preyed upon Portuguese commerce as he supposed in safety and not until he returned to Marblehead did he learn of the treaty of peace that made him a pirate. In 1653, Thomas Harding captured a rich prize sailing from Barbadoes and in consequence was tried in Boston for piracy, but saved his neck when he was able to prove that the vessel was Dutch and not Spanish. In 1692, the Governor and Council of Connecticut were informed that “a catch and 2 small sloops, with about 30 or 40 privateers or rather pirates,” were anchored off East Hampton, Long Island, and had sold a ketch to Mr. Hutchinson of Boston and bought a sloop of Captain Hubbard, also of Boston.
Newport, R. I., sent out many privateers. In 1702 it was reported that nearly all of the able-bodied men on the Island were away privateering. The town also profited frequently from the visits of known pirates, as in 1688, when Peterson, in a “barkalonga” of ten guns and seventy men, refitted at Newport and no bill could be obtained against him from the grand jury as they were neighbors and friends of many of the men on board. Two Salem ketches also traded with him and a master of one brought into “Martin’s Vineyard,” a prize that Peterson “the pirate, had taken in the West Indies.”[12] Andrew Belcher, a well-known Boston merchant and master of the ship “Swan,” paid Peterson £57, in money and provisions, for hides and elephants’ teeth taken from his plunder.
The ill-defined connection between privateering and piracy was fully recognized in those days and characterized publicly by the clergy. In 1704 when Rev. Cotton Mather preached his “Brief Discourse occasioned by a Tragical Spectacle in a Number of Miserables under Sentence of Death for Piracy,” he remarked that “the Privateering Stroke so easily degenerates into the Piratical; and the Privateering Trade is usually carried on with an Unchristian Temper, and proves an Inlet unto so much Debauchery and Iniquity.”
The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, by which peace was made between England and Spain, was signed in 1668, but the colonial authorities were so little concerned by the depredations of the English privateers on Spanish commerce in the West Indies that their commissions were not revoked until 1672 and even then, for a time, the doings of the adventurous, privately armed vessels were not scrutinized too closely.
The Peace of Ryswick in 1697 put an end to most of the privateering in the West Indies and sixteen years later England’s wars with France, over the Spanish succession, lasting for nearly a half-century, ended with the treaty of peace signed at Utrecht. By its terms Great Britain received Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and the right to send African slaves to America. While the notable battles of this war had been fought on land yet, in many respects, it had been a conflict between naval powers and the peace released a great many men who found themselves unable to obtain employment in the merchant shipping. This was particularly true in the West Indies where the colonial governors had commissioned a large number of privateers. When adventurous spirits have been privately employed under a commission to sail the seas and plunder the ships of another nation, it is but a step forward to continue that fine work without a commission after the war is over. To the mind of the needy seaman there was very little distinction between the lawfulness of one and the unlawfulness of the other.
MAP OF THE WEST INDIES ABOUT 1720, SHOWING “THE TRACTS OF THE GALLIONS”
From Herman Moll’s “Atlas Minor,” London, 1732, in the Harvard College Library
Another training school for pirate ships also existed among the buccaneers who flourished in the West Indies during the last half of the seventeenth century. Spain at that time claimed sovereignty over all the lands lying in or about the Caribbean Sea, a territory which she looked upon as a great preserve over which to exercise absolute control and from which to extract the wealth of the mines. Manufactures were forbidden and commerce with other nations was not permitted. Clothing and supplies of all kinds, wines, oil, and even some kinds of provisions must be purchased from merchants in distant Spain. No foreigner might land under pain of death and no foreign ship was permitted to anchor in any of their harbors. Twice each year a splendid fleet left Spain, bound for Mexico and the Isthmus of Panama, laden with all kinds of merchandise required by Spanish-America. On the arrival of the galleons a great fair was held where the traders met and for forty days Porto Bello, the city of the deadly climate, was thronged by the merchants of Peru, cargadores and sailors from the ships, negroes and native Indians.
By the year 1630, small settlements had been established by the English on the islands of Bermuda, St. Christopher, Tortuga and the Barbadoes, and Frenchmen were on Hispaniola; but before many years St. Christopher and Tortuga were ravaged by Spanish fleets, the women and children murdered and all able-bodied men condemned to slavery in the mines. The limitations of English navigation laws at this time were crowding the home ports with unemployed seamen; some took to begging on the high roads, but the more adventurous found their way to the West Indies where twice each year journeyed the fleet of great ships laden with gold and silver from the mines of Mexico and Peru, pearls from Margarita and precious gems gathered from two continents. Here, too, came the scum of Europe and on the island of Tortuga a settlement grew that was frequented by lawless vagabonds coming from everywhere who lived variously by hunting, planting and piracy.
The name “buccaneer,” afterwards applied to these rovers, was derived from the hunters who smoked the flesh of the wild cattle that they killed, over a “boucane” or wood fire. Two centuries and a half later, the French half-breeds canoeing in the Canadian backlands spoke of “la boucane” when they lighted their camp fires. The hunters went to the mainland in large parties and killed the wild cattle for their hides. “After the hunt was over” writes Esquemeling,[13] the historian of the buccaneers, “they commonly sail to Tortuga to provide themselves with guns, powder and shot, and necessaries for another expedition; the rest of their gains they spend prodigally, giving themselves to all manner of vice and debauchery, particularly to drunkenness, which they practiced mostly with brandy.” The tavern keepers and the hangers-on of both sexes, watched for the return of the buccaneers, “even as at Amsterdam, they do for the arrival of the East India fleet.”
It was a Frenchman, known among his associates as “Peter the Great,” who first played the uproarious game of piracy on the Spanish fleet. With only twenty-eight men he cruised off the coast of Hispaniola in an open boat at the time of year when the galleons passed on their homeward voyage. On sighting the fleet he followed during the night and notwithstanding the fact that the Vice-Admiral had been told of the suspicious craft, so confident was he of the strength of his ship that she was allowed to straggle from the convoy. When the boatload of desperadoes ran alongside they scuttled their craft and boarded the Spaniard yelling like demons. They were dressed in their usual manner, in shirts soaked in the blood of wild cattle, leather breeches and moccasins of rawhide, and the Vice-Admiral, sitting in his cabin playing cards, may well have imagined, as in fact he cried out—“The ship is invaded by devils.”
After the news of the rich capture reached Tortuga, many of the buccaneers turned to piracy and in a few years the Spanish seas were infested with small fleets of pirate vessels which obeyed fixed laws and were governed by a single chief. Desperate men in every European port came out to join them and in time many thousand men recognized the command of the great captains of the “Brethren of the Coast,” as they styled themselves. Before the end of the first year that followed the capture of the Spanish galleon, twenty large vessels had been taken, two great plate ships had been cut out of the harbor of Campeachy and a trade in looted merchandize had sprung up between Tortuga and Europe that soon made the piratical settlement one of the richest in America.
The “Brethren of the Coast” established among themselves a code of laws the larger number of which related to captured booty. All offences against these laws were severely punished, the commonest penalty being “marooning” which consisted of landing the offender on an uninhabited key or island with only a small supply of food. The most desperate might well shrink from such an end. The invariable practice required that everything should be held in common and at the last be divided into shares according to a fixed ratio. The captain drew the largest number, of course, and the sailing master, carpenter and surgeon came next. There was also a tariff by which to indemnify those who were mutilated while fighting. For a right arm, six hundred Spanish pieces of eight were awarded or a corresponding value in slaves. The left arm was worth only five hundred pieces of eight, and a leg was of equal value. An eye was worth one hundred and a finger the same. The booty brought into the pirate rendezvous at Tortuga was enormous. Frequently pirates would land bringing in five or six thousand pieces of eight per man and a single vessel once brought in loot amounting to 260,000 pieces. Huge sums were gambled away in a single night and drunken buccaneers would sometimes buy pipes of wine and force every passer-by to drink or fight.
The success of the buccaneers before long paralyzed Spanish commerce and fewer ships were sent to the American colonies so that the “Brethren,” then numbering several thousands, began to plan attacks upon land. The first Spanish settlement assaulted was Campeachy, on the coast of Yucatan. An Englishman named Lewis Scot led this attack which resulted in much loot and the almost entire destruction of the city. Another Englishman named Davis took Nicaragua and plundered the churches of vast quantities of plate and jewels. L’Olonnais, a Frenchman, with eight vessels filled with men, fell upon Maracaibo and after much hard fighting brought away 260,000 pieces of eight and a great amount of jewels and plate. “But,” writes Esquemeling, “in three weeks they had scarce any money left, having spent it all in things of little value, or lost it at play. The taverns and stews, according to the custom of the pirates, got the greatest part.”
Capt. Henry Morgan, the leader of the expedition against Panama, achieved the greatest fame among all these lawless chieftains. Charles II knighted him and made him governor of Jamaica, where he turned upon his late companions and waged a bitter warfare. An early exploit of Morgan was the taking of Puerto Velo, one of the strongest fortresses in New Spain. Surprising the sentry at night he easily captured the outer defences. The prisoners were placed in a room with several barrels of gunpowder and as they were blown into the air the buccaneers assaulted the citadel. The cloisters had been seized and the priests and nuns were forced to climb the scaling ladders before the men, “the religious men and women ceasing not to cry to the governor and beg him to deliver the castle, and so save both his and their lives,” writes Esquemeling. The castle surrendered at last, though “with great loss of the said religious people.” The loot amounted to over 250,000 pieces of eight and much other spoil which was soon squandered at Port Royal, a pirate town in Jamaica that supplied almost unlimited resources for debauchery.
SIR HENRY MORGAN, THE BUCCANEER, BEFORE PANAMA
From an engraving in Johnson’s “General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Pyrates,” etc., London, 1734, in the Harry Elkins Widener Collection, Harvard College Library]
The capture of Panama took place in 1671. Morgan’s fleet sailed from Jamaica and with only twelve hundred men he crossed the Isthmus. The Spaniards learned of his coming and carried away or destroyed all food stuffs along the route so that when the buccaneers came in sight of the South Sea, after a nine days’ march, they were nearly famished and in desperate straits. A few days’ rest put them in condition again and with many revengeful oaths they fell upon the defences of the city with irresistible fury. No quarter was given on either side. Soon Panama was in flames. It was four weeks before the fires at last were extinguished and over two hundred great warehouses, seven thousand houses, huge stables that sheltered the horses and mules that transported the golden ingots of the King of Spain, and many other buildings were entirely destroyed. The plunder was immense. On the way back a dispute broke out and when Morgan reached the ships he scuttled all but one and set sail with only his chosen followers. Such treachery was unforgivable and he never afterward led the “Brethren of the Coast.”
Morgan became governor of Jamaica with strict orders to enforce the treaty concluded between England and Spain and relentlessly persecuted those of his late associates who neglected to accept the royal pardon which provided grants of lands to all buccaneers who would abandon the sea and become planters. By proclamation all cruising against Spain was forbidden under severe penalties. Many of the English filibusters accepted the pardon while others became logwood cutters in the Bay of Honduras or raised a black flag and preyed upon the ships of every nation.
The pirate commonwealth at Port Royal was abandoned and such Englishmen as continued to rove joined their French brethren who frequented the island of Tortuga, or crossed the Isthmus and preyed upon the Spanish towns in Peru and the shipping of the Great South Sea. They also captured immense booty at Acapulco where the Spanish ships landed the riches of the Philippines. The peace of Ryswick in 1697 settled the disputes between France and Spain and also sounded the knell of the French filibusters. Before long the buccaneers were absorbed in the population of the various islands in the West Indies and the Spanish galleons again sailed peacefully through the tropic seas.
Another strong influence that led to insecurity on the high seas and eventually to outright piracy was the operation of the English Navigation Acts. European nations were in agreement that the possession of colonies meant the exclusive control of their trade and manufactures. Lord Chatham wrote, “The British Colonists in North America have no right to manufacture so much as a nail for a horse shoe,” and Lord Sheffield went further and said, “The only use of American Colonies, is the monopoly of their consumption, and the carriage of their produce.”[14]
English merchants naturally wished to sell at high prices and to buy colonial raw materials as low as possible and as they were unable to supply a market for all that was produced, the colonies were at a disadvantage in both buying and selling. By the Acts of Navigation certain “enumerated articles” could be marketed only in England. Lumber, salt provisions, grain, rum and other non-enumerated articles might be sold within certain limits but must be transported in English or plantation built vessels of which the owners and three-fourths of the mariners were British subjects. Freight rates also advanced as other nations, notably the Dutch, had previously enjoyed a good share of the carrying trade.
The first Navigation Act was passed in 1647. It was renewed and its provisions enlarged in 1651, 1660, 1663 and later. Before long it was found that these attempts to monopolize the colonial markets resulted in a natural resistance and smuggling began and also an extensive trade with privateers and pirates who brought into all the smaller ports of New England captured merchandise that was sold at prices below the usual market values. Matters went from bad to worse and servants of the Crown frequently combined with the colonists to evade the obnoxious laws. Even the royal governors connived at what was going on. This was particularly true in the colonies south of New England. Colonel Fletcher, the governor of New York, commissioned numerous privateers and received a fee, the equivalent of one hundred dollars per man. These vessels when well away from local jurisdiction became pirates in earnest and ravaged the Red Sea and brought home rich cargoes of East India goods in which the members of the governor’s council obtained their share. Hore, a famous privateer and pirate, was very successful in this trade and Thomas Tew, another freebooter, divided his time between New York, Newport and the Madagascar coast. He was on the black list of the East India Company but Governor Fletcher entertained him at his table and when the Lords of Trade remonstrated, the artful governor replied that he wished to make Captain Tew a sober man and in particular “to reclaime him from a vile habit of swearing,”[15] and as for coming to his table, that was but a common hospitality.
In Rhode Island, the president and four assistants granted these commissions with the condition that the colony was to share in any captures. In 1649, Bluefield or Blauvelt, a Dutch privateersman, brought a prize into Newport, which the governor found was taken during a truce. But there was no man-of-war in the harbor to enforce the law and as the townsfolk wanted to buy the cargo and the sailors wanted the prize money, everybody was satisfied. At a later time Governor Bellomont of New York complained of the Admiralty Court at Newport as too “favourable” to piracies and in Queen Anne’s time, Connecticut and Rhode Island were both complained of because “Her Majesty’s and ye Lord High Admiral’s dues are sunk in condemning prizes.”[16]
At Stamford, Conn., a prominent citizen had a warehouse “close to the Sound,” where he received illicit goods and afterwards shipped them to Boston and other ports. The shore of eastern Long Island was haunted by smugglers and pirates. Sometimes the wind lay in the other quarter and a privateersman was adjudged a pirate and hanged. This happened in Boston in 1704 to John Quelch who had captured Portuguese vessels. But contemporaries say that officialdom was after a goodly share of the gold dust that he had brought in. Usually, however, the enterprising rover lived out his days in the character of a “rich privateer” and died respected by friends and neighbors.
There were pirates and pirates. Some were letters-of-marque and legitimate traders and enjoyed the protection of merchants and officials on shore, while others were outlaws. In 1690, Governor Bradstreet of the Massachusetts Colony was complaining of the great damage done to shipping by “French Privateers and Pirates,” and four years later, Frontenac, the governor of Canada, was asking for a frigate to cruise about the St. Lawrence against the New England “corsaires et filibusters.” There is no doubt these French privateers were a considerable menace to New England shipping and that there was need for privately armed vessels to protect the coast, a task not easy or desirable; so why should one scrutinize too closely semi-piratical captures made by so useful friends? In 1709, in mid-winter, a French privateer appeared off Cape Cod and Governor Dudley ordered Capt. Abraham Robinson of Gloucester, to man his sloop and sail in pursuit. It was not an inviting enterprise, especially at that season of the year, and when the drums went about the town beating up for volunteers, enlistments languished and the expedition was finally given up. The minister of the place afterwards wrote to the governor, making excuses saying “it made them quake to think of turning out of their warm beds and from good fires, and be thrust into a naked vessel, where they must lie on the cold, hard ballast, instead of beds, and without fire, excepting some few who might crowd into the cabin.”[17]
The agents sent over by the Lords of Trade and Plantations were unable to make progress against the flagrant evasions of the Navigation Acts. Randolph, who arrived in Boston in 1679, was the most active of these agents, and when he seized several vessels for irregular trading, the courts decided against him and “damages were given against his Majesty.”[18] He afterwards complained of those privateers that were fitting out for the Spanish West Indies and writes of Mr. Wharton of Boston, as “a great undertaker for pyratts and promoter of irregular trade.” “New England rogues and pitiful damned Scotch pedlars,” he termed those who opposed him. The pirates or privateers were supplied with provisions by vessels from the mainland and prize goods were taken in payment. Vessels were often fitted out at Rhode Island and manned in New York and Arabian gold was to be found in both colonies; “in fact, ’tis the most beneficiall trade, that to Madagascar with the pirates, that was ever heard of, and I believe there’s more got that way than by turning pirates and robbing.” So wrote the New York governor, and later, he again wrote to the Lords at Whitehall: “The temptation is soe great to the common seamen in that part of the world where the Moores have so many rich ships and the seamen have a humour more now than ever to turne pirates.”[19]
The profits of piracy and the irregular trade practiced at that time were large, indeed, and twenty-nine hundred per cent profit in illicit trade was not unusual, so there is little wonder that adventurous men took chances and honest letters-of-marque sometimes seized upon whatever crossed their course. The pirate, the privateer and the armed merchantman often blended the one into the other.
FOOTNOTES
[1] True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith, London, 1630.
[2] Oppenheim, The Administration of the Royal Navy, p. 177.
[3] True Travels, Adventures and Observations of Captain John Smith, London, 1630.
[4] Purchas, His Pilgrimage, Vol. IV, p. 1882.
[5] Perforst, i.e., forced.
[6] Mainwaring, The Beginnings, Practices and Suppression of Pirates, ca. 1717. MS. in British Museum.
[7] To ply: to beat up against a wind.
[8] Floaty, i.e., draw little water.
[9] As early as 1613, English pirates were established at Mamora, at the mouth of the Sebu River on the Barbary Coast. That year about thirty sail were using the port.
[10] By 1618 there were one hundred and fifty Turkish vessels to only twenty English at Algiers.
[11] Doyle, English Colonies in America, Vol. I, p. 383.
[12] Massachusetts Archives, Vol. 35, folio 61.
[13] John Esquemeling, The Buccaneers of America, London, 1684.
[14] Viscount Bury, Exodus of the Western Nations, Vol. II, London, 1865.
[15] New York Colonial Documents, Vol. IV, p. 447.
[16] New York Colonial Documents, Vol. IV, p. 1116.
[17] Babson, History of Gloucester, p. 138.
[18] Andros Tracts, Vol. III, p. 5.
[19] New York Colonial Documents, Vol. IV, p. 521.
CHAPTER II
Dixey Bull, the First Pirate in New England Waters and Some Others who Followed Him
The doubtful honor of having been the first pirate to plunder the small shipping of the New England colonists belongs to one Dixey Bull who was living in London in 1631 and who came over late that fall and for a short time was living at Boston. He probably was sent over by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and certainly was associated with him in a large grant of land lying east of Agamenticus, at York, on the coast of Maine. He came of a respectable family but was of an adventurous disposition and soon after reaching New England became a “trader for bever,” spending much of his time on the Maine coast bartering with the Indians and the scattered white settlers.
In June, 1632, he was trading in Penobscot Bay when a roving company of Frenchmen in a pinnace came upon him and seized his shallop and stock of “coats, ruggs, blanketts, bisketts, etc.” These Frenchmen had previously rifled the trading post on the Penobscot maintained by the Pilgrim Colony at Plymouth, where “many French complements they used, and Congees they made.”[20]
Having lost his slender stock of trading goods Bull seems to have become desperate and getting together a small company of wanderers, located here and there along the coast, he proposed a venture against the French. Governor Winthrop relates that Bull added to his own crew “fifteen more of the English who kept about the East,” and with these men he sailed along the coast in the late summer hoping to fall in with some Frenchmen and so retrieve his losses. But the French kept out of sight and badly in need of supplies he took and plundered two or three small vessels owned by colonial traders and from them forced four or five men to join his company.
The next venture was to sail into the harbor at Pemaquid and loot that trading station of goods to the value of over £500. He met with practically no resistance while the plundering was going on and the goods were safely got on board the shallop. But just as they were weighing anchor, a well-aimed musket shot from shore killed the second in command. This was the first blood that had been shed and as the entire company, so far as known, had had no previous piratical experience, the fatal outcome and the sight of human blood seems to have been somewhat of a shock. Capt. Anthony Dicks, a Salem skipper, fell into their hands not long after and some of them told him of what had happened at Pemaquid and expressed great fear and horror so “that they were afraid of the very Rattling of the Ropes.”[21]
Bull tried to persuade Captain Dicks to pilot them to Virginia which may have been an excellent refuge at that time for a New England pirate, for a contemporaneous Puritan writer describes the Virginia colony as “a nest of rogues, whores, dissolute and rooking persons.” The Salem skipper, however, refused to serve Bull and his company and so the voyage to Virginia was abandoned for the time and it was decided to continue attacks on other trading posts. The company then adopted a body of articles to govern their acts and among them a law against excessive drinking. “At such times as other ships use to have prayer, they would assemble upon the deck, and one sing a song, or speak a few senseless sentences, etc. They also sent a writing, directed to all the governors, signifying their intent not to do harm to any more of their countrymen, but to go to the southward, and to advise them not to send against them; for they were resolved to sink themselves rather than be taken: signed underneath, Fortune le garde, and no name to it.”[22]
The threat of piratical attack on the trading posts was soon spread abroad by men returning from the Penobscot and then “perils did abound as thick as thought could make them.” Late in November the authorities in the Massachusetts Bay sent out a pinnace with twenty armed men to join with four small pinnaces and shallops and about forty men already sent out from Piscataqua and the united expedition in time reached Pemaquid where it lay windbound for nearly three weeks. This was the first hostile fleet fitted out in New England and the first naval demonstration made in the colonies. Samuel Maverick who lived on Noddle’s Island, now East Boston, was the “husband and merchant of the pinnace sent out to take Dixie Bull.”
The pirate shallop was nowhere to be found and after two months of winter weather the hostile expedition returned home. Early in February, 1633, three men who had served under Bull and deserted, reached their homes. They claimed that he had sailed eastward and gone over to the French. Governor Winthrop, two years later, repeated this version of his disappearance, but Capt. Roger Clap of Dorchester, relates in his “Memoirs,” that Bull at last safely reached England. Whatever his fortune or fate he disappears from New England leaving behind him the badly earned fame of having been the first pirate captain in these waters.
Dixey Bull’s captures do not seem to have been followed by any other piratical venture in New England for some years. Shipping sailing to and from England was obliged to run the gauntlet of the Dutch and French privateers and the so-called pirates sailing out of Flushing and Ostend made several captures that effected the fortunes of the Boston traders. Nov. 12, 1644, the Great and General Court of Massachusetts granted a commission to Capt. Thomas Hawkins of Boston “to take any ship that shall assault him, or any other that hee shall have certeine knowledge to have taken either ship or ships of ours, or to take any ship that hath commission to make prize of any of ours.” Fourteen days later he sailed for Spain in the “Seafort,” of four hundred tons, a ship that he had just built and which was loaded with bolts, tobacco, etc. As he neared the Spanish coast very early one morning he thought he saw some Turkish vessels and preparing for attack stood towards them. Unhappily the ship soon went aground about two miles from the shore and nineteen were drowned. Captain Hawkins was a London shipbuilder who came to New England in 1632 and engaged in shipbuilding and commerce. It was his grandson Thomas, who was tried in Boston in 1690 for piracy as is told elsewhere in this volume.
At the Nov. 12, 1644 session of the General Court, a commission was also granted to Capt. Thomas Bredcake for twelve months, to take Turkish pirates, thereby meaning the Algerines who were a constant danger to shipping trading with Spain. John Hull, the Boston mint-master, records in his diary in 1671 that William Foster, one of his neighbors, had been taken by the Turks as he was going to Bilboa with fish. He afterwards was redeemed and reached home safely in November, 1673.
Capt. Thomas Cromwell of Boston, master of the ship “Separation,” obtained a commission in 1645 from the Earl of Warwick, the Lord Admiral of the Long Parliament, and after capturing several rich prizes in the West Indies, came into Massachusetts Bay and was forced by a strong northwest wind to take refuge in Plymouth Harbor where he remained for two weeks. There were about eighty men in his crew and they “did so distemper themselves with drink as they became like madd-men; ... they spente and scattered a great deale of money among the people, and yet more sine than money.”[23]
From Plymouth, he sailed for Boston where he presented Governor Winthrop with a sedan that he had captured. It had been sent by the Viceroy of Mexico as a present to his sister and by capture reached Puritan hands. Captain Cromwell had formerly been known about Boston as a common sailor and on his appearance possessed of a great fortune, the Governor offered him for his use one of the best houses in the town. But the captain refused and took lodgings in “a poor thatched house” saying that in his former “mean estate that poor man entertained him, when others would not, and therefore he would not leave him now, when he might do him good.” Governor Winthrop says of Cromwell:—“He was ripped out of his mother’s belly, and never sucked, nor saw father nor mother, nor they him.”[24] He died in Boston in 1649, and by will gave to the town “my six bells.”
Another Boston man who sailed under a commission from the Long Parliament was Capt. Edward Hull, the brother of John Hull, the mint-master who made the “pine tree shillings.” His vessel, the barque “Swallow frigott,” was owned by his father and brother and he had sent them word that he was engaged in a design for the good of the English nation and for the glory of God. He sailed from Boston in the spring of 1653, and captured several vessels from the French and the Dutch and while in Rhode Island waters sent some of his men to Block Island with orders to seize the trading stock in the house of Capt. Kempo Sebada, which afterwards was valued at nearly one hundred pounds. He then sold the bark and dividing the plunder went for England. Sebada afterwards brought suit for damages against the Hulls, the owners of the bark; but they claimed that the vessel was engaged in privateering wholly without their knowledge and consent and the court gave the verdict to them. It is interesting to note that Edward Hull is styled a “pirate” in the court records and that his father deposed that when he learned of his son’s exploits he did not protest for fear that he would never see him or the vessel again.
Rev. Cotton Mather, the pastor of the North Church, Boston, in his “History of Some Criminals Executed in this Land,” relates the story of the seizure of the ship “Antonio,” in 1672, off the Spanish coast. She was owned in England and her crew quarrelled with the master and at last rose and turned him adrift in the ship’s longboat with a small quantity of provisions. With him went some of the officers of the ship. The mutineers, or pirates as they were characterized at the time, then set sail for New England and on their arrival in Boston they were sheltered and for a time concealed by Major Nicholas Shapleigh, a merchant in Charlestown. He also was accused of aiding them in their attempt to get away. Meanwhile, “by a surprizing providence of God, the Master, with his Afflicted Company, in the Long-boat, also arrived; all, Except one who Dyed of the Barbarous Usage.
“The Countenance of the Master, was now become Terrible to the Rebellious Men, who, though they had Escaped the Sea, yet Vengeance would not suffer them to Live a Shore. At his Instance and Complaint, they were Apprehended; and the Ringleaders of this Murderous Pyracy, had sentence of Death Executed on them, in Boston.”
The three men who were executed were William Forrest, Alexander Wilson and John Smith. As for Major Shapleigh; he was fined five hundred pounds which amount was afterwards abated to three hundred pounds because “his estate not being able to beare it.”
The extraordinary circumstances of this case probably induced the General Court to draw up the law that was enacted on Oct. 15, 1673. By it piracy became punishable by death according to the local laws. Before then a kind of common law was in force in the colony based upon Biblical law as construed by the leading ministers. Of course the laws of England were theoretically respected, but Massachusetts, in the wilderness, separated from England by three thousand miles of stormy water, in practice actually governed herself and made her own laws.
“The Court observing the wicked and unrighteous practices of evill men to encrease, some piratically seizing of shipps, ketches, &c. with their goods, and others by rising up against their commanders, officers, and imployers, seizing their vessells and goods at sea, exposing theire persons to hazard, &c. for the prevention whereof, and that due witnes may be borne against such bold and notorious transgressions,—
“This Court doeth order, & be it hereby ordered & enacted, that what person or persons soever shall piratically or ffelloniously seize any ship or other vessell, whither in the harbour or on the seas, or shall rise up in rebellion against the master, officers, merchant or owners of any such ship or other sea vessell and goods, and dispoyle or dispossess them thereof, and excluding the right owner or those betrusted therewith, every such offender, together with their complices, if found in this jurisdiction, shall be apprehended, and, being legally convicted thereof, shall be put to death; provided allwayes, that any such of the said company (who through feare or force have binn draune to comply in such wicked action), that shall, upon their first arrival in any of our ports or harbours, by the first opperturnity, repaire to some magistrate or others in authority, and make discovery of such a practise, shall not be liable to the aforesaid poenalty of death.”[25]
In July, 1684, this order was revised and it became unlawful for any person to “enterteyne, harbour, counsel, trade, or hold any correspondence by letter or otherwise with any person or persons that shall be deemed or adjudged to be privateers, pyrates, or other offenders within the construction of this Act.” The highest commissioned officer in any town or harbor was also impowered to issue warrants for the seizure of suspected privateers and pirates and he could raise and levy armed men to inforce the apprehension of such persons.
Pillars of Salt.
An HISTORY
OF SOME
CRIMINALS Executed in this Land
FOR
Capital Crimes.
With some of their Dying
Speeches;
Collected and Published,
For the WARNING of such as Live in
Destructive Courses of Ungodliness.
Whereto is added,
For the better Improvement of this History,
A Brief Discourse about the Dreadful
Justice of God, in Punishing of
SIN, with SIN.
Deut. 19, 20.
Those which remain shall hear & fear, and shall henceforth
commit no more any such Evil among you.
BOSTON in New-England.
Printed by B. Green and J. Allen, for Samuel Phillips
at the Brick Shop near the Old Meeting House, 1699.
On the evening of July 6, 1685, a small ketch hailing from New London, Conn., came to anchor before the town of Boston and the next morning the master, Capt. John Prentice, appeared before the General Court and gave information that he had been chased by a pirate until he had come in sight of the Brewster’s, at the mouth of the harbor. He deposed that while at New London, on July 1st, a sloop had put into that port commanded by one Captain Veale, and with him was one Harvey who was the merchant on board. Captain Veale asked Captain Prentice if he might “set his mast by the said Prentice’s Katches side,” which was done. A little later there came in a vessel from Pennsylvania commanded by Capt. Daniel Staunton who at once accused Veale and Harvey of piracy committed in Virginia. Staunton went before the local magistrate and repeated his charge and demanded that Veale and Harvey be arrested and tried as pirates. But the magistrate was a little uncertain of his authority and asked for security. While the matter was being discussed Harvey “went away from them in great hast, & got on bord & speedily sailed away in the said Sloop.”
Not long after Captain Prentice set sail in his ketch and on clearing the mouth of the harbor he saw a shallop at anchor with Veale’s and Harvey’s sloop hove to near by. A boat passed from the shallop to the sloop and soon the sloop stood to seaward firing guns several times and catching sight of Captain Prentice’s ketch made after her, the chase continuing until darkness came on when the course of the ketch was changed and in the morning nothing was seen of the sloop. Three days later, however, early in the morning, the sloop was sighted ahead under easy sail and after a time she bore up toward the ketch. Captain Prentice then ordered guns to be fired and also “spread his antient” and braced to for the sloop to come up. But Captain Veale brought to as well and kept to the windward for about an hour all the while firing guns. A severe thunder storm then coming up the sloop fell to the leeward but continued in chase of the ketch until the Brewster’s, off Boston harbor, came in sight, when the sloop bore away towards Cape Ann and Captain Prentice came to an anchorage before the town without further molestation.
Captain Prentice also reported that one Graham was in command of the shallop seen in company with Veale and that fourteen men were said to be on board. Captain Veale, while at New London, tried to buy of John Wheeler several small carriage guns offering three times their value. At the time he was well supplied with money. Nicholas Hallam, a sailor on board the ketch, testified before the magistrates that the men on board the suspected sloop had some silver plate with the letters and marks scratched out and also some fine clothing, including a plush cloak, a broadcloth petty-coat trimmed with broad gold lace and also “a pair of staies of cloth-of-Tishue.”[26]
The Court at once ordered drums to be forthwith beat up for a convenient number of volunteers not exceeding forty to man Mr. Richard Patteshall’s brigantine. Soon the Court was informed that the men did not readily offer themselves to the service of the country in the expedition against Veale and Graham, whereupon it was ordered “for their Incouragemt that free plunder be offered to such as shall Voluntarily list themselves or that a sufficient number of men be forthwith Impressed to that service.” Those willing to serve were directed to report “with sufficient & compleate Arms” to Mr. John Vyall at the ship Tavern “where Capt. Sampson Waters will enter their names & direct them presently to goe on board the Brigantine whereof Mr. Richard Patteshall is master.”
The directions given to Capt. Sampson Waters required him “in all difficulties to consult with Mr. Richard Pattishall endeavoring to maintain a good correspondence with him.” All goods seized were to be brought back for a legal condemnation; prisoners were to be brought to Boston for trial and care was to be taken to “beware of killing any of the enemy unnecessarily or exposing your own company to any hazard without necessity.”[27]
The expedition at last got away and after cruising about the Bay for several days returned empty-handed like many other similar expeditions that were sent out in following years.
Piracy now began to be more common on the New England coast. Buccaneering in the West Indies was disappearing and some of these bold adventurers raised a black flag against all nations. Desperate sailors out of a berth also became rovers. The number of sporadic appearances of these men in northern waters can only be touched upon in these pages. They came upon the coast and then sailed away leaving little behind save a mention of their coming.
In the summer of 1687 the ketch “Sparrow,” Richard Narramore, master, owned by Nicholas Paige of Boston, arrived in the harbor from the Barbadoes and the Isle of Eleuthera. She had sailed from Boston ten months before bound for Virginia with English goods. Captain Narramore loaded with provisions at Maryland and at Roanoke and then sailed for the Barbadoes where the lading was sold for plate and money. At the Isle of Eleuthera he loaded with dyeing wood and took on board eighteen passengers under an agreement that they should be landed at Newfoundland for forty pieces of eight, per man, passage money. One of these men, John Danson, shipped as mate and came to Boston in the ketch but the rest changed their minds as to their intended destination and asked to be landed at different points. Two men were put ashore at the easternmost end of Long Island; six landed at Gardiner’s Island; five at “Martin’s” Vineyard; one was taken to the “Sackadehock” on the Maine coast and two were left at “Damaras Cove” near there. Captain Narramore claimed that he had learned the names of none of these men; but he admitted that they had brought on board two heavy chests which were taken off at Gardiner’s Island.
Strange stories began to circulate about the wharves and Captain Narramore and his mate were soon sent for by the magistrates. A search of Danson’s chest discovered nine hundred pieces of eight—not a very large fortune for a successful pirate! Danson deposed that he had sailed from Boston four years before in a private man-of-war commanded by one Henley, “bound for the Rack,” and afterwards had gone into the Red Sea where they had plundered and taken what they could from the Malabars and the Arabs. He left Henley and took passage with one Wollery, a consort of Henley, for the Isle of Eleuthera where he shipped with Captain Narramore. He acknowledged that Henley was now considered a pirate. Thomas Scudder, one of the passengers who had come to Boston, had gone on board a ketch bound for Salem, where his family lived, and Christopher Goffe had gone ashore at Gardiner’s Island.[28]
A warrant was issued for the arrest of Scudder and the seizure of any plate, money or goods in his possession. The sheriff in Essex County also arrested several other supposed pirates who were sent to Boston for examination.
Christopher Goffe came into Newport, R. I., in a ship commanded by William Wollery who was supposed to have come from the Great South Sea. A shot was fired across their forefoot whereupon they came to anchor but the next day sailed for Andrews Island where the vessel was burnt and the men dispersed.[29] In November, 1687, Goffe appeared in Boston and surrendered himself in pursuance of His Majesty’s “Proclamation for Calling in and Suppressing Pyrates and Privateers.” He was then very sick and weak and gave a bond, also signed by two Boston citizens, that as soon as he recovered he would go to England and receive the King’s pardon.
Nothing seems to have come of the lengthy investigations made by the magistrates. The plate and money that had been seized was returned to Captain Narramore and John Danson and two of the suspected passengers who had been taken—Edward Calley and Thomas Dunston—were freed and their money, plate and “a parcel of stones” returned to them.
About the same time a man named William Douglass applied to Edward Randolph, the English Agent, for relief. He had been a passenger on board a small vessel sailing between the Barbadoes and the Carolinas and had been taken by Henry Holloway, the pirate, from whom he had escaped as the pirate ship rode at anchor in Casco Bay, Maine.
Christopher Goffe recovered from his sickness and in August, 1691, was commissioned by Governor Bradstreet, to cruise with his ship “Swan” between Cape Cod and Cape Ann and off the Isles of Shoals for the safeguard of the coast. This came about as the result of the capture at Piscataqua, now Portsmouth, N. H., of a vessel commanded by Capt. Thomas Wilkinson, inward bound from Cadiz. She was taken by two privateers commanded respectively by Capt. Thomas Griffin and Captain Dew. Captain Griffin landed at Portsmouth and sent a letter to the Governor in which he claimed that he carried a privateering commission and that he had mistaken Captain Wilkinson for a French vessel said to be on the coast. But as he had found prohibited goods on board he had seized her after firing three great shot and a volley of small arms. Captain Griffin wrote that he feared if he brought the prize to Boston he “should be unkindly dealt with.” He also quite gratuitously accused the Bostonians of furnishing the French at Fort Royal with arms, ammunition and cloth in truck for beaver and other goods. Griffin and Dew first carried their prize into the Isle of Shoals and afterwards into the river at Portsmouth where part of the cargo was disposed of without trial or adjudication.
Meanwhile, Captain Goffe was anchored near Portsmouth. On August 14th he wrote to the Governor:—“I shall obay your honors Comand in making Seasuer of Capt. Griffin and Capt. Dew If it lies in my power to meet with them ... one of them is now in site standing of and on between this place and the Isle of Sholes.... They sayle two foot to ower one.... Ower Bread and beare is all most Expended.” A few days later he asked to be recalled to Nantasket to provide necessary supplies, “the Docters chest Espeshely,”[30] and there the episode seems to have ended.
The ketch “Elinor,” William Shortrigs, master, came to anchor at Nantasket road, near the mouth of Boston harbor, early in the afternoon of Nov. 20, 1689. She was inward bound from the island of Nevis, loaded with sugar and indigo, and the wind failing and the flood tide being almost spent, the captain was obliged to anchor as most of his men were sick or disabled with the cold. Leaving the vessel in charge of James Thomas, he took his mate and one other man and started for Boston in the ship’s boat to get help to bring the vessel into harbor. Provisions also were running short. The next day his owner, Mr. Thomas Cooper, was unable to secure a permit to bring her up because there had been smallpox on board but on the 22d he told the captain that she might be brought up as far as the Castle, so four men were sent down the harbor. The next morning they returned and astonished the captain with the news that the ketch had disappeared from her anchorage. Mr. Cooper at once sent out a “hue and cry” according to law and hired a sloop to go in search of the missing ketch which was found two days later run ashore within Cape Cod hook.
About seven o’clock in the evening of the day on which Captain Shortrigs had started to row up to Boston, Thomas was between decks and had just called the boy to turn the glass and mind the pump, when he heard a noise on deck and going up to investigate found that four armed men and a boy had come aboard. One of the men at once gave Thomas a blow on the head with the butt of his musket and ordered him to keep quiet. Soon after he was forced under the half-deck and the scuttle was shut and a tarpaulin put over it. The leader of the party then came down into the cabin and asked how many were on board, finding four men, two boys and a woman, all sick save Thomas and one of the boys. The armed men then cut the cable, which was about half in, and two of them went aloft to cut the gaskets and loose the sails after which a course was taken for Cape Cod.
The next morning was Friday and early in the day they came to anchor at Cape Cod and shot a musket to call a shallop. The leader asked Thomas if he would go to England with them when they were revictualled and when he refused they threatened his life. When the shallop came out to them an agreement was made for a supply of provisions which were brought out the next morning, but only a small supply—a gallon of rum, some biscuits and some cheese. The shallop-men said the ketch must be brought in nearer shore. About midnight, at full sea, they loosed the cable and let it run out and not long after the ketch went ashore. At low water the armed party went off and soon disappeared.
Such was the homely tale of the appearance and disappearance of the ketch “Elinor.” The sequel was soon found in the new stone gaol in Boston where William Coward, Peleg Heath, Thomas Storey and Christopher Knight were to be seen confined and in irons. What became of the boy does not appear. Thomas Pound, Thomas Hawkins, Thomas Johnston and other more valorous pirates were also confined there at the same time. Justice moved swiftly that year and notwithstanding the claim made by Coward, the leader of the party that boarded the ketch, that his crime had been committed upon the high seas without the jurisdiction of the court, he was found guilty of piracy and sentenced to be hanged on January 27, 1690.[31] His companions also were found guilty and sentenced to death but afterwards reprieved and eventually allowed to go free.
The story of the capture of James Gillam, a notorious pirate in his time, is best told by the Earl of Bellomont, Governor of Massachusetts, in a letter written to the Council of Trade and Plantations on Nov. 29, 1699.
“I gave you an account, Oct. 24, of my taking Joseph Bradish and Tee Wetherley, and writ that I hoped in a little time to be able to send news of my taking James Gillam, the Pirate that killed Capt. Edgecomb, commander of the Mocha frigate for the East India Co., and that with his own hand while the Captain was asleep. Gillam is supposed to be the man that encouraged the ship’s company to turn pirates, and the ship has been ever since robbing in the Red Sea and Seas of India. If I may believe the reports of men lately come from Madagascar, she has taken above £2,000,000 sterling. I have been so lucky as to take James Gillam and he is now in irons in the gaol of this town, and at the same time we seized one Francis Dole, in whose house he was harboured, who proves to be one of Hore’s crew, one of Col. Fletcher’s pirates, commissioned by him from N. York. Dole is also committed to gaol. My taking of Gillam was so very accidental, one would believe there was a strange fatality in that man’s stars. On Saturday, 11th inst., late in the evening, I had a letter from Col. Sanford, Judge of the Admiralty Court in Rhode Island, giving me an account that Gillam had been there, but was come towards Boston a fortnight before, in order to ship himself for some of the Islands, Jamaica or Barbadoes; that he was troubled he knew it not sooner and was afraid his intelligence would come too late to me; that the messenger he sent knew the mare Gillam rode on to this town. I was in despair of finding the man because Col. Sandford writ to me that he was come to this town so long a time as a fortnight before that. However, I sent for an honest constable I had made use of in apprehending Kidd and his men, and sent him with Col. Sandford’s messenger to search all the inns in town for the mare, and at the first inn they went to they found her tied up in the yard. The people of the inn reported that the man that brought her thither had lighted off her about a quarter of an hour before, had then tied her, but went away without saying anything. I gave orders to the master of the inn that if anybody came to look after the mare, he should be sure to seize him, but nobody came for her. Next morning, which was Sunday, I summoned a Council, and we published a proclamation wherein I promised a reward of 200 [pieces of eight] for the seizing and securing Gillam, whereupon there was the strictest search made all that day and the next that was ever made in this part of the world, but we had missed of him, if I had not been informed of one Capt. Knot as an old pirate, and therefore likely to know where Gillam was concealed. I sent for Knot and examined him, promising him, if he would make an ingenious confession, I would not molest him. He seemed much disturbed, but would not confess anything to purpose. I then sent for his wife and examined her on oath apart from her husband, and she confessed that one who went by the name of James Kelly had lodged several nights in her house, but for some nights past he lodged, as she believed, in Charlestown, cross the river. I knew he went by the name of Kelly. Then I examined Capt. Knot again, telling him his wife had been more free and ingenious than him, which made him believe she had told all, and then he told me of Francis Dole in Charlestown, and that he believed Gillam would be found there. I sent half a dozen men immediately over the water, to Charlestown and Knot with ’em; they beset the house and searched it, but found not the man, Dole affirming he was not there, neither knew he any such man. Two of the men went through a field behind Dole’s house and passing through a second field they met a man in the dark (for it was 10 o’clock at night) whom they seized at all adventures, and it happened as oddly as luckily to be Gillam; he had been treating two young women some few miles off in the country and was returning at night to his landlord Dole’s house. I examined him, but he denied everything, even that he came with Kidd from Madagascar, or ever saw him in his life; but Capt. Davies who came thence with Kidd, and all Kidd’s men, are positive he is the man and that he went by his true name Gillam all the while he was on the voyage with ’em, and Mr. Campbell, Postmaster of this town, whom I sent to treat with Kidd, offers to swear this is the man he saw on board Kidd’s sloop under the name of James Gillam. He is the most inpudent, hardened villain I ever saw. That which led me to a search after this man was the information of William Cuthbert, which I sent your Lordships with my packet of July 26th, wherein he says that it was commonly reported that Gillam had killed Capt. Edgecomb with his own hands, that he had served the Mogul, turned Mohammedan and was circumcised. I had him searched by a surgeon and a Jew in this town: they have both declared on oath that he is circumcised. I recommend the perusal of the evidence I enclose as what will inform you of the strange countenance given to pirates by the Government and people of Rhode Island. In searching Capt. Knot’s house America belonging to the E. I. company. I should think an advertisement in the Gazette requiring some of those men to appear before one of the Secretaries of State to give their evidence would be proper.
“Your Lordships will meet with a pass among the other papers to Sion Arnold, one of the pirates brought from Madagascar by Shelley of N. York, signed by Governor Basse, which is a bold step in Basse after such positive orders as he received from Mr. Secretary Vernon, but I perceive plainly the meaning- of it, he took several pirates at Burlington in West Jerzey and a good store of money with them as ’tis said: and I dare say he would be glad they [?should] escape, for when they are gone who can witness what money he seized with ’em? I know the man so well that I verily believe that’s his plot. John Carr mentioned in some of the [?papers to] be in Rhode Island was one of Hore’s crew. There are abundance of other pirates in that island at this time, but they are out of my power. Mr. Brinley, Col. Sanford, and Capt. Coddington are honest men and of the best estates in the island, and because they are heartily weary of the maladministrations of that Government, and because I commissioned ’em, by virtue of H. M. Commission to me, to [make] enquiry into the irregularities of those people, they are become strangely odious to ’em and are often affronted by ’em; neither will they make ’em Justices of the Peace, so that when they would commit pirates to gaol, they are forced to go to the Governor, for his warrant, and very [comm]only the pirates get notice and avoid the warrant. Gardiner, the Dep. Collector, is accused to have been once a pirate, in one of the papers enclosed. I doubt he will forswear himself rather than part with Gillam’s gold which is in his hands. ’Tis impossible for me to transmit to the Lords of the Treasury these proofs against Gardiner, being so jaded with writing, but I could wish they were made acquainted with his character and would send over honest, in[tellige]nt men to be Collectors of Rhode Island, Connecticut and N. Hampshire, and that they [would] hasten Mr. Brenton hither to his post or send some other Collector in his room. I could wish Mr. Weaver were ordered to hasten to N. York. Captain Knot in one of his depositions accuses Gillam to have pirated four years together in the South Sea against the Spaniards. We have advice that Burk, an Irishman and pirate, that committed sea-robberies on the coast of Newfoundland, is drowned with all his ship’s company, except 7 or 8, somewhere to the southward, in the hurricane about the end of July or the beginning of Aug. last. ’Tis good news, he was very strong and said to have had a good ship with 140 men and 24 guns.”[32]
John Halsey was a Boston privateersman who heard of the good fortune of those who scoured the Red Sea and the Arabian coast and so abandoned cruising on the banks of Newfoundland and set a course for Madagascar. He was the son of James and Dinah Halsey and was born Mar. 1, 1670. As a boy he followed the sea and in time became master of small vessels trading with the Southern Colonies and the West Indies. In April, 1693, while master of the sloop “Adventure,” of Boston, he testified in court in relation to a seaman shipped by him the previous November on a voyage to Virginia. At that time he deposed that he was twenty-three years old.
While Joseph Dudley was governor, he was given the command of the brigantine “Charles,” and sent out with a privateering commission to cruise against French vessels on the fishing banks. From there he went to the Canaries where he took a Spanish “barcalonga” which he plundered and sunk. Having determined on a free life in the Indian Ocean he wooded and watered at one of the Cape Verdes and then stood away for the Cape of Good Hope and Madagascar.
For a time Captain Halsey was followed by ill-fortune. He was nearly taken by a Dutchman of sixty guns and later was chased by the “Albemarle,” East Indiaman, and only got clear because he could show a better share of heels. In the Strait of Babelmandeb, a Moorish fleet of twenty-five sail came upon him and the brigantine was only saved from being taken when they fell to with their oars. Three days later their luck changed and two English ships fell into their hands after brisk fighting. The loot amounted to over £50,000 in money and also many bale goods, so they steered for Madagascar where they shared their booty. Here, Captain Halsey fell sick of a fever and died in 1716 and was buried with great ceremony. His sword and pistols were laid on his coffin, which was covered with a ship’s jack, and minute guns were fired. He was a brave man and died regretted by his men and the friends he had made in Madagascar. “His Grave was made in a Garden of Water Melons and fenced in with Pallisades to prevent his being rooted up by wild Hogs, of which there are Plenty in those Parts.”[33]
Another Massachusetts pirate was Joseph Bradish of Cambridge, who was born there Nov. 28, 1672. In March, 1698 he was in London, England, out of a berth and so shipped as boatswain’s mate on board “the ship or hakeboat Adventure,” Thomas Gulleck, commander, bound for the island of Borneo on an interloping trade. The ship was about 350 tons burthen and carried twenty-two guns. The following September, while at the island of Polonais for water, most of the officers and passengers being on shore, the rest of the ship’s company cut the cable and ran away with the ship. There were about twenty-five men aboard and Joseph Bradish was chosen their commander because of his skill in navigation. Sail was made for Mauritius where they refitted the ship and took on fresh provisions and then a course was set for New England.
Not long after rounding the Cape of Good Hope a sharing was made of the money found on board which was contained in nine chests stowed in the breadroom. Each man received over fifteen hundred Spanish dollars and the captain was assigned two and a half shares. Later there was a sharing of the broadcloths, serges and other goods in the lading of the ship.
The “Adventure” arrived at the east end of Long Island on March 19, 1699 and Captain Bradish went on shore at Nassau Island taking with him most of his money and jewels. He sent a pilot on board to bring the ship around to Gardiner’s Island, but the wind not favoring, Block Island was made instead. Two men were then sent to Rhode Island to buy a sloop but the Governor, suspecting them to be pirates, ordered them seized. A day or two later several sloops sailing near the “Adventure” were hailed and after some bartering one of them was bought and another hired. The sloopmen were allowed to take what they pleased out of the ship and having transferred their money and some of the richer of the lading to the two sloops, the “Adventure” was sunk. Some of the crew were set ashore at different landings where they reached farmhouses and purchased horses and departed for parts unknown.
Captain Bradish and others of his company ventured into Massachusetts early in April, but the news of their arrival at Long Island had preceded them and soon the captain and ten of his men were lodged in the stone gaol in Boston where Caleb Ray, his kinsman, was the gaol-keeper. Bradish and his men were examined by the authorities and several of them confessed. Money and goods to the value of about £3000, were seized and Bradish’s jewels, which had been left with Col. Henry Peirson at Nassau Island, were sent for and taken to New York to be inventoried. Ten or more of his crew were also captured on Rhode Island.
Bradish lay in gaol for nearly two months and it does not appear that he was placed in irons which was the fate of Captain Kidd a few weeks later. Governor Bellomont ordered Kidd placed in irons weighing sixteen pounds and not content with that paid the gaoler forty shillings a week above his salary in the hope of keeping him honest. This all came about because Bradish was allowed to escape. Caleb Ray, the gaol-keeper, was a relative of Bradish, a fact unknown to the authorities, and doubtless not many days passed before family influences were exerted in his behalf.
On the morning of June 25th, Ray found the prison door open and Bradish and Tee Wetherly, one of his company, who had but one eye, were missing. The Governor was angry and finding the Council slow to take action he became still more enraged. Learning that prisoners had mysteriously escaped at other times, Ray finally was dismissed and a prosecution ordered.
Meantime, Bellomont had devoted much of his time to pirates and piracy. Kidd had been taken and his spoil sequestered. A ship had arrived at New York bringing sixty pirates from Madagascar and a vast deal of treasure. The New York owners were said to have cleared £30,000 by the voyage. He learned that about two hundred Madagascar pirates were intending to take passage for New York in Frederick Phillips’ ships at £50 each. A great ship had been seen off the Massachusetts coast supposed to be commanded by Maise, the pirate, and laded with much wealth taken in the Red Sea. There was a sloop in at Rhode Island, undoubtedly a pirate as the crew went ashore daily and spent their gold freely. He also was occupied in manning out a ship to go in quest of the “Quidah Merchant,” Kidd’s ship, left by him in the West Indies. Long reports were sent to the Lords of Trade and Plantations by the busy Governor in one of which he mentions “having writ myself almost dead.”
RICHARD COOTE, EARL OF BELLOMONT, GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS, 1699-1700
From a rare engraving in the Harvard College Library
When Bradish and Wetherly stole out of gaol they made their way to the eastward and Governor Bellomont offered a reward of two hundred pieces of eight for the recapture of Bradish and one hundred pieces for Wetherly. He also wrote to the Governors of Canada and St. Johns. There happened to be in Boston at the time, an Indian sachem, Essacambuit, who had come to make submission in behalf of the Kennebeck Indians and the reward sent him on the trail of the fleeing pirates with such success that they were taken and brought into the fort at Saco. On Oct. 24th, they were again in Boston gaol, this time well secured with irons. During the following months they made two unsuccessful attempts to escape. Once they broke through the floor, but that failing them a night or two later they filed off their fetters, whereupon they were manacled and chained to one another. “I believe this new gaoler I have got is honest; otherwise I should be very uneasy,” wrote the Governor.[34]
On Feb. 3, 1700, the man-of-war “Advice” arrived in Boston harbor for the express purpose of conveying Kidd, Bradish and other pirates to London, for trial before an Admiralty Court and on April 8th they arrived there, still in irons.
Justice was summarily meted out to Bradish and his men and their fate became well-known to sailormen and pirates in all seas. Twenty years later when Capt. Bart. Roberts captured a Boston-bound ship, the captain was told by some of the pirate crew that they never would “go to Hope-Point, to be hang’d up a Sun drying, as Kidd’s and Braddish’s Company were; but that if they should ever be overpower’d, they would set Fire to the Powder, with a Pistol, and go all merrily to Hell together.”
FOOTNOTES
[20] Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, Boston, 1856, p. 293.
[21] Capt. Roger Clap’s Memoirs, p. 35.
[22] Winthrop’s Journal, New York, 1908, Vol. I, p. 96.
[23] Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, p. 441.
[24] Winthrop’s Journal, New York, 1908, Vol. II, p. 273.
[25] Records of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Vol. IV, Part II, p. 563.
[26] Massachusetts Archives, Vol. LXI, leaf 280.
[27] Massachusetts Archives, Vol. LXI, leaf 280.
[28] Massachusetts Archives, Vol. CXXVII, leaf 10.
[29] Massachusetts Archives, Vol. CXXVII, leaf 191.
[30] Massachusetts Archives, Vol. XXXVII, leaf 117.
[31] See chapter on Capt. Thomas Pound.
[32] Calendar of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1699, pp. 551-554.
[33] Johnson, The History of the Pirates, London, 1726.
[34] Calendars of State Papers, America and West Indies, 1699, p. 1011.
CHAPTER III
John Rhoade, Pilot of the Dutch Pirates on the Coast of Maine
In the summer of 1674, while the Dutch were yet in control of New York, the privateer frigate “Flying Horse,” came sailing into the harbor. Her commander, Capt. Jurriaen Aernouts, had been commissioned by the governor of Curacao, “to take, plunder, spoil and possess any of the ships, persons or estates” of the enemies of the great States of Holland, which meant the English and the French at the time the commission was issued. But when the Dutch captain reached New York he was much surprised to learn of the treaty of peace, signed nearly six months before, which made it illegal for him to prey on English shipping. The war was still on with France, however, so he decided to sail northward for the fishing banks and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. While the “Flying Horse” was recruiting and preparing for sea, Captain Aernouts accidentally made the acquaintance of a coasting pilot from Boston, Capt. John Rhoade, an adventurous character who told the captain that he was well acquainted with the coast along the French colonies at the north; that their forts and defences were weak and if taken by surprise it would be easy conquest for him of a rich fur country. Rhoade said that he had recently been at Pentagoet (now Castine, Maine) and had exact information as to the strength of the French garrison there. The Dutch captain submitted the project to his officers and crew and it was unanimously favored. Captain Rhoade then enlisted, took the oath of allegiance to the Prince of Orange, and was made the chief pilot of the “Flying Horse.”
The Dutchmen landed at Pentagoet on Aug. 1, 1674, and as the fort was garrisoned by only thirty men it soon surrendered. The commander of the fort, M. de Chambly, was also the Governor of Acadie and for him a ransom of one thousand beavers was demanded, an amount he was unable to furnish. With the Governor on board, the “Flying Horse” sailed eastward and every French fort and trading post as far as the St. John river was captured. Captain Aernouts proclaimed all this territory a Dutch conquest, naming it New Holland, and at every point where he landed he buried a bottle containing a copy of his commission and a statement of his conquest. Laden with the plunder of Acadie, the “Flying Horse” reached Boston the last of September and the Dutch captain applied to Governor Leverett for leave to remain in the harbor in order to repair his ship and dispose of his plunder. This was granted and soon the frigate lay at anchor before the town. The Colony gladly purchased the cannon that had been taken from the French forts and the Boston traders bought the rest of the spoil.
The Massachusetts fur traders now applied to Captain Aernouts for leave to trade in the newly conquered territory, a privilege they had always paid well for in the past. But they were disappointed, for the Dutch officers claimed that this conquest had been made by the sword and that the fur trade was of great value to the States of Holland, so all requests for leave or license were refused. The owners of two Boston vessels, however, disregarded the warnings of the Dutch officers and set sail, and probably others followed.
When Captain Aernouts was ready to depart, which was about the first of November, he left in Boston two of his officers, Capt. Peter Roderigo, a “Flanderkin,” and Capt. Cornelius Andreson, a Dutchman, and also Captain Rhoade and a Cornishman, John Williams, and gave these men and their associates, authority to return to New Holland and there to trade and keep possession until further instructions were received. They induced four or five others to join them and before the month had gone they had purchased a small vessel, the “Edward and Thomas,” Thomas Mitchell of Malden, part-owner, who shipped with the company, which was commanded by Roderigo, and hired another, the “Penobscot Shallop,” commanded by Andreson, and after arming them as well as they could, they sailed down the harbor with the flag of the Prince of Orange at each topmast. At Pentagoet, they found that Englishmen from Pemaquid had recently been there and carried away iron and other materials found in the ruins of the fort. Farther eastward, Edward Hilliard of Salem was found in a small vessel, and when ordered to come on board he immediately submitted and said he was ignorant that he was trespassing on their authority and further complained of the bad voyage he had made thus far. He was dismissed with a warning and his vessel and peltry returned to him. Not long after they came upon a Boston vessel, commanded by William Waldron, who had been refused a permit to trade. He was recognized at once and his vessel made a prize but after a time returned to him. His peltry, however, was seized.
Among the men who had applied for a permit to trade and been refused was George Manning, who commanded a shallop called the “Philip,” owned by John Feake, a Boston merchant. Nevertheless he had sailed and on December 4th Captain Roderigo came upon him at anchor in “Adowoke Bay to ye Estward of Mount deZart.” The shallop was boarded, the hatches opened and all the peltry taken away. Captain Manning had in his cabin a loaded pistol and planned to shoot Captain Roderigo but a boy on board warned him to look out for himself and drawing a cutlass the “Flanderkin” laid about him. There was some firing of guns but no one was killed. Manning was confined on board the Dutch boat and the next day it was proposed to burn his shallop and set him adrift in his boat. Rhoade told him he deserved to be turned ashore on an island and there be compelled to eat the roots of trees. Manning had received a flesh wound in one hand and was cut about the head. There is much confusion in the testimony bearing on the encounter and doubtless some lying, but it is plain that Manning continued in command of his shallop and accompanied the Dutchmen in their later operations.[35]
A small barque owned by Major Shapleigh of Piscataqua in New Hampshire was taken shortly and found to have traded for peltry and also to have brought provisions from Port Royal to the French at Gamshake on the St. John river. The peltry and provisions were seized and the barque dismissed. The Dutchmen, when on trial in Boston, claimed that this barque had transported French from Port Royal to the St. John river and supplied them with ammunition so that when Captain Roderigo arrived that winter they were able to defend themselves and he was obliged to return to Machias in Maine, where he had established a trading post.
The Dutch carried on a prosperous trade with the Indians that winter at Machias and there was always the hope that the tri-colored flag of the United Provinces might appear over a fleet coming to their assistance. On March 10th, 1675, a vessel flying an English flag appeared off shore. It was commanded by Thomas Cole of Nantasket. A boatload of men, well armed, came ashore and finding only four men at the trading post these were soon overpowered. The Dutch flag was pulled down, the men taken prisoners and the winter’s store of peltry and trading goods carried off. The Dutch afterwards testified in court that Cole ordered Randall Judson’s[36] arms bound behind him and then put him ashore where he remained for four days and nights without shelter or food, and this was early in March on the eastern Maine coast.
It was to be expected that sooner or later the news of the capture of the trading vessels would reach Boston. The shallop commanded by George Manning was owned by John Feake, a Boston merchant, and Feb. 15, 1675, he appeared before Governor Leverett and the Magistrates and made his complaint, that property had been piratically seized and his vessel detained. He named Captain Rhoade as the principal offender. William Waldron and others had already presented a protest. Mr. Feake proposed that Capt. Samuel Mosely, afterwards the famous Indian fighter, be instructed to organize an expedition to proceed to the eastern parts and seize Rhoade and his company, and the Council at once assented and ordered that no shipping in the harbor bound eastward should be permitted to sail until after Captain Mosely and his company had departed. Captain Mosely had recently been in command of an armed vessel that had cruised about the island of Nantucket to protect Boston interests against suspected attacks by the Dutch, and he was ready for any new adventure. He received his instructions on Feb. 15, 1675 and soon after sailed for the eastward. Before reaching the Dutchmen he fell in with a French vessel which he induced to join his enterprise. He provided her with men and ammunition and when these vessels bore down on Captain Roderigo’s little fleet, Manning, who had gone into the Dutch service at a wage of £7 per month, at once joined the new-comers and without taking the trouble to haul down the tri-colored flag flying from his topmast, opened fire on the Dutch vessels. Taken by surprise and attacked by three vessels carrying English, French and Dutch colors, resistance was soon over. The prisoners were closely confined, their vessels were plundered of the peltry obtained during the winter’s barter and their remaining trading stock was turned over to Boston men who had accompanied the expedition and these traders were left to continue the barter with the Indians while the victorious Captain Mosely sailed back to Boston where he arrived on April 2d. Again, had commercial greed brought about military attack. The Dutch, at war with France, had seized French territory which previously had been exploited by colonial traders, who, deprived of their rich opportunity for gain, now seized the Dutch outpost.
The Court of Assistants met at Cambridge on April 7th and ordered the pirates, as the prisoners were styled, confined in the prison at Cambridge. The Dutch vessels and their fittings were appraised and left in the hands of John Feake who had made the complaint of the alleged piracy. At the examination of the prisoners, the day they reached Boston, they frankly declared what had been done by them and justified in writing their supposed authority. A special Court of Admiralty was then summoned to meet on May 17th, but before the day arrived John Feake, the complainant, was dead and buried. On May 4th, he had gone on board a ship in the harbor, just arrived from Virginia, and while in the great cabin with Captain Scarlett, one of the appraisers of the Dutch vessels, in conference with the supercargo of the ship and others, there was a great explosion resulting in the death of Feake, Scarlett and the supercargo, and the wounding of nine others. The great Increase Mather preached a sermon “Occasioned by this awful Providence.”
The Court of Admiralty sat on the day appointed and shortly declared the Dutch vessels and their cargoes lawful prizes to be delivered to the heirs of Feake as satisfaction for the injury done to the shallop commanded by Manning. The Court then adjourned. A week later it reassembled and Peter Roderigo and Cornelius Andreson were placed on trial, charged with piratically seizing several small English vessels and making prize of their goods, etc.[37] A verdict of guilty was declared against Roderigo and he was sentenced to be hanged. Not long after he petitioned the Great and General Court for his life and on May 12th “the Court judged it meete to grant the petitioner a full & free pardon, according to his desire in his petition.” Roderigo found his way again to the eastward and in June of the next year served in the company of Capt. Joshua Scottow in Indian fighting about Black Point, near Scarborough, Maine. On the other hand Andreson, who owned during his examination that he had taken two English vessels, Waldron’s and Hilliard’s, was not found guilty of piracy and the Court sent the jury out again with instruction to “find what they could against him.” The jury obediently brought in a verdict of guilty of “theft and robbery,” based on the seizure of the peltry. He, too, was sentenced but later pardoned.