EVOLUTION OF THE SMUGGLER AND THE PIRATE
Among the first acts of the English Parliament for the regulation of the
commerce of the American colonies, notable here, was that passed in 1646,
by which it was provided that no colonial produce should be carried away
to foreign ports except in vessels under the British flag.
Since the days of Raleigh, who had done his utmost to create the sea habit
among his countrymen, the English people had been growing jealous of the
enterprising Dutch, who then were carrying the commerce of the world. This
act was a measure to restrain the freedom of the Dutch carrying trade
and to give it to English (including colonial) ships. In 1650, although
England was yet torn by civil war, Parliament prohibited all foreign ships
from trading with the colonies without first obtaining a license. A year
later came the culminating act of the Protector's Parliament, "the famous
Act of Navigation," as McCulloch calls it (London edition, 1839, p. 817).
It provided that no goods produced or manufactured in _Asia_, _Africa_, or
_America_ should be imported into any part of the English domain except
in ships belonging to English subjects whereof the master and more than
half the crew were Englishmen. The importation of _European_ goods was
prohibited except in English ships, or ships belonging to the country
where the goods were produced, or those of the country from which they
could only be or were most usually exported. As is well known, this act
was intended as a final blow at the Dutch carrying trade.
Consider, now, that "shipping" means one thing, "commerce" or "trade"
another. While modern American "commerce" is increasing in a way that
seems marvellous, American shipping has been almost entirely driven
from the foreign "carrying trade." The English enactments relating to
the colonies, from the settlement of Virginia down to and including
the "famous Act of Navigation," were all designed to favor all colonial
commerce as well as shipping.
After the Restoration, Parliament passed what is known as the Navigation
Act of 1660, which was followed by another in 1663, which was still more
stringent. The object of these laws, as expressly stated in the later
act itself, was in part "the maintaining the greater correspondence and
kindness between subjects at home and those in the plantations; keeping
the colonies in a firmer dependence upon the mother country; making them
yet more beneficial to it; ... it being the usage of other nations to keep
their plantation trade exclusively to themselves."
To this end it was first "enacted" (to quote McCulloch), "that certain
_specified_ articles, the produce of the colonies, and since well known
in commerce by the name of _enumerated_ articles, should not be exported
_directly_ from the colonies to any foreign countries, but that they
should first be sent to Britain, and there unladen (the words of the act
are, _laid upon the shore_), before they could be forwarded to their final
destination. Sugar, molasses, ginger, fustic, tobacco, cotton and indigo
were originally enumerated; and the list was subsequently enlarged by the
addition of coffee, hides and skins, iron, corn [_i.e._ grain], lumber,
&c."
That is to say, the colonists were compelled to take the _enumerated_
products to England and there lay them "upon the shore." The restriction
was laid upon the "commerce" of the colonists; there was no restriction
upon the use of colonial ships.
The writer begs the indulgence of intelligent readers while he treats this
matter as if for a kindergarten. From the days of McCulloch to the present
time no one has sufficiently emphasized the difference between commerce
and shipping, a distinction that must be made entirely plain before one
can see clearly just how these navigation acts affected the American
merchant marine.
Having compelled the colonies to send all their enumerated products
to England (it was not necessary to _sell_ them there; they could be
reëxported under certain regulations), Parliament went still further in
its effort to maintain a "greater correspondence and kindness" between the
colonists and the home subjects, by enacting, in 1663, that "no commodity
of the growth, production or manufacture of Europe, shall be imported
into the British plantations but such as are laden and put on board in
England, Wales, or Berwick-upon-Tweed," and in English-built shipping with
an English crew.
The export _trade_ of the colonies was to be restricted for the benefit
of the merchants of England; so also was this import trade. Whether so
intended or not, the restrictions resulted in a lowering of the prices of
the colonial enumerated products when sent to England, because the market
was glutted. At the same time the prices of the European products, which
the colonist wished to buy, were, with few exceptions, greatly enhanced.
The colonial producer was robbed by the artificial reduction of the
selling price of his products, and the artificial increase of the price
he paid for his European goods--robbed twice by arbitrary laws.
In 1672 Parliament passed another act still further to increase the
"correspondence and kindness" existing between the colonials and the
subjects living in the mother-country. A heavy tax was laid upon the
commerce between the colonies.
"By these successive regulations," says Robertson, "the plan of securing
to England a monopoly of its colonies ... was perfected."
It should now be interesting to note the actual influence of all this
legislation upon the colonial _merchant marine_. On July 4, 1631,
Massachusetts had launched her first ship, a vessel of 30 tons. In 1676
Randolph reported that her people owned 30 ships of from 100 to 250 tons'
burden, 200 of from 50 to 100 tons, 200 of from 30 to 50 tons, and 300 of
from 6 to 10 tons, the latter being chiefly fishing smacks, though some
were engaged in the coasting trade. The colony owned 430 vessels as large
or larger than the _Blessing of the Bay_. Many ships were also owned in
the other New England colonies. In 1678 New York owned "5 smale ships and
a Ketch" that were in the coasting trade.
Sir Josiah Child, a notable Englishman engaged in the trade with America,
said, in a book which he wrote on commercial matters:--
"Of all the American plantations his Majesty has none so apt for building
of shipping as New England, nor any comparably so qualified for the
breeding of seamen, not only by reason of the _natural industry_ of that
people, but principally by reason of their cod and mackerel fisheries."
And to this he adds a statement which for the first time gave expression
to what has since been known as the "American Peril." He said, "And, in
my poor opinion, there is nothing more prejudicial and in prospect more
dangerous to any mother kingdom than the increase of shipping in her
colonies."
All this is to say that while Parliament had passed three acts that were
confessedly intended to prohibit a part, and hamper all of the colonial
_trade_, except that with the mother-country; and while these acts had
proved injurious and vexatious to the colonial producers and merchants,
the colonial _shipping_, the merchant marine, had had such a vigorous
growth that it was alarming the ship-owners who lived in England.
This condition of affairs becomes all the more interesting when it is
remembered that a restriction of colonial trade was likely to affect
colonial shipping indirectly, at any rate; that is, through a reduction
in the amount of cargo to be carried. This injury was sure to appear in
any reduction of trade between the colonies, and it was certain to affect
the ships trading on owner's account first of all.
One easily finds a variety of reasons why colonial shipping had grown
so rapidly in spite of legislation adverse to trade. For one thing, good
ships were built in New England for £4 per ton burden--carrying capacity;
the cost in England was higher. Charnock says it was a little less than
£6 there, while Sir Josiah Child says it was from £7 to £8. Whatever
the difference, it is a memorable fact that the mechanics in New England
received higher wages than those in the old country.
Naturally many merchants of England bought colony-built ships, and this
proved beneficial indirectly to all colonial shipping. The New England
shipyards were full of orders the year round. The percentage of the
inhabitants engaged in building ships and in supplying the ships' builders
with forest and farm products was therefore very large. These forest and
farm owners, as well as the shipyard hands and the crews of colonial
vessels, helped to cultivate the sea habit among all the people. Then
the farms were all within driving distance of navigable water; all farm
surplus exported, either abroad or to other colonies, went in ships, and
the farmer from the most remote plantation was not unlikely to see his
produce loaded upon a ship of some kind. In fact, many a man behind the
plough could "hand, reef and steer."
Reference has already been made to the resourcefulness of the American
seaman of the period, but it may be said again that the manner of life
of the people--the fact that "even at the end of the colonial period the
average American led a life of struggling and privation"--made American
crews the most efficient in the world. Captain John Gallop, in a sloop
of twenty tons, manned by two men and two boys, was, in 1636, not only
able to take care of his vessel in a gale of wind but to retake another
sloop that had been captured by the Indians. Many vessels traded to the
West Indies with but five men and a boy on board. Raleigh had mourned
because Dutch ships, in his day, needed no more than half as many sailors
as English ships, but in 1676 the New England ships needed less than
the Dutch or any other ships. It was when contemplating a New England
ship manned by a New England crew that Sir Josiah Child discovered the
"American Peril." He saw that a colonial ship manned by a colonial crew
_was more efficient_ than the same ship manned by any other crew, and that
is a most important fact in this story.
A most interesting cause of the growth of the colonial merchant marine
is found in the bounties which the navigation laws offered to, and the
facilities they provided for, those who would engage in clandestine trade.
It was unlawful to carry tobacco from the colonies direct to a foreign
port, but the export of fish and staves was permitted. Importations of
salt were permitted, but Spanish iron must be purchased in England at a
time when Spanish iron was the best in the world for ship-builder's use.
The restriction on tobacco lowered the price in the colonies; that on the
iron raised the price there. If tobacco were clandestinely exported direct
to Spain and iron brought directly home, the ship made far greater profits
than in the days before the hated laws. Moreover, the smuggled cargo paid
no tariff-for-revenue dues or port charges. And it was easy to smuggle in
any kind of a cargo.
In connection with this provision of a bounty on smuggling, consider
the influence of the fact that the laws were intentionally unfair to the
colonists. The colonists resented the injustice, and all the more because
their trade previous to the enactment of the laws had been free. Then
the conditions under which the laws were enforced were inquisitorial and
otherwise vexatious. A time came when forts were built and revenue cutters
were provided for the enforcing of the laws, and the officials of forts
and cutters were insolent and overanxious to confiscate accused ships.
Recall, now, the mental attitude of the colonists toward all authority.
Some had emigrated from England to escape religious tyranny. Many had
come over as indentured servants, looking forward to a time when they
should be free, and become men of influence. Then all the conditions of
colonial life, and especially its dangers, cultivated a feeling of manly
independence of all authority. Finally, the colonists had from the first
made at least their local laws according to their own standards of right.
"It is not unknown to you that they look upon themselves as a free State
... there being many against owning the King, or having any dependence on
Engld." (Letter dated March 11, 1660.)
In short, the colonists had been rapidly developing the American habit of
doing what they happened to believe to be right, regardless of the law in
the case, and they called, or were to call, this habit an appeal to the
"higher law."
Inspired by honest indignation and an opportunity to increase their
profits, the colonial ship-owners and crews, with much unanimity, appealed
to the "higher law."
Smuggling began as soon as attempts were made to enforce the law. It
was estimated that the losses to the British revenue through the direct
sale of tobacco to the Dutch at Manhattan Island previous to the year
1664 amounted to £10,000 a year. When, in 1665, the king took notice of
colonial dereliction, by issuing instructions for a strict enforcement
of the laws, the General Court of Massachusetts replied that they were
not conscious of having "greatly violated" them. In 1776 Edward Randolph
was sent over especially "Impowered" to prevent "Irregular Trade," and
the letters he wrote to the "Lords Commissioners of the Council of Trade
and Plantations"[1] are full of references to the ways of the smugglers.
Other letters of the period, especially those of Governor Bellomont, are
similarly interesting.
At first the evasions were quite open. It is related that Skipper Clæs
Bret loaded the ship _De Sterre_ in the Chesapeake "in the name of an
English skipper," and sent her to the Island of Jersey. Virginia officials
must have aided this transaction. Weeden quotes from the Massachusetts
archives the story of another Dutch skipper whose ship was seized because
he "broake his word to the Governor in not clearing his ship to belong to
the English." Governor Andros, who tried to enforce the laws, complained
because there were "noe Custom houses," and because the "Governor
of Massachusetts gives clearings, certificates and passes for every
particular thing from thence to New York" without inquiring whether these
things had been lawfully imported into Massachusetts.
The king's instructions to Governor Dongan tell him how "to prevent the
acceptance of forged Cockets (which hath been practiced to our great
prejudice)." A cocket is a document given by a customs officer to a
merchant as a certificate that the goods have been entered according to
law. Randolph reported (April, 1698) that he had asked the Governor of
Pennsylvania "to appoint an Attorney Generall to prosecute" certain men
who had aided in an evasion of the laws, "but he did nothing in it." In
the same year Randolph was arrested in New York by aggrieved merchants
because he had, as he alleges, seized a smuggler in Virginia, and although
his case seems now to have been according to law, Governor Bellomont had
much difficulty in getting him out of jail. No one sympathized with a
revenue official.
Before Bellomont's time no official except Governor Andros had tried to
enforce the navigation acts. When Bellomont took office, he found all New
York opposing him in his efforts to enforce them. When the ship _Fortune_,
Captain Thomas Moston, came to port, bringing cargo worth £20,000 direct
from Madagascar (where it had been purchased of a gang of pirates), and
Bellomont asked Collector of Customs Chidley Brooks to seize her, he
replied that "it was none of his business, but belonged to a Man of Warr;
that he had no boat; and other excuses; and when I gave him positive
commands to do it, which he could not avoid, yet his delay of four days"
gave the smugglers time to unload and conceal all of the cargo except a
part estimated to be worth £1000. Thus runs one of Bellomont's letters.
He also acknowledged that several cargoes had already been smuggled in
without his learning the fact until it was too late to intercept them.
In Boston, as Bellomont learned, there were various ways of smuggling.
"When ships come in the masters swear to their manifests; that is, they
swear to the number of parcels they bring, but the contents unknown; then
the merchant comes and produces an invoice, and whether true or false is
left to his ingenuity."
"If the merchants of Boston be minded to run their goods," he continues,
"there's nothing to hinder them. Mr. Brenton, the Collector is absent and
has been these two years; his deputy is a merchant; the two waiters keep
public houses, and besides that, that coast is naturall shap'd and cut out
to favour unlawful trade." It was a "common thing to unload their ships
at Cape Ann and bring their goods to Boston in wood boats." If that were
thought too expensive the goods could be "run" within the city, where
there were "63 wharfs," or in Charlestown, where there were fourteen
more, all unguarded. French and Spanish ships were bringing many goods to
Newfoundland and the ports of Canada, where they met New England ships
ready to "swap" cargoes. There was lively trade carried directly to the
ports of Canada and to the French and Spanish ports of the West Indies.
After returning to New York from Boston, Bellomont wrote that "Nassaw
alias Long Island" was notorious for smugglers and pirates. "There are
four towns that make it their daily practice to receive ships and sloops
with all sorts of merchandise, tho' they be not allowed ports." They
were "so lawless and desperate a people" that the governor could "get
no honest man" to go among them to collect the revenue. From Long Island
the goods were brought to New York by wagons and small boats. "There is
a town called Stamford in Connecticut colony" where "one Major Selleck
lives who has a warehouse close to the Sound.... That man does us great
mischief with his warehouse for he receives abundance of goods, and the
merchants afterwards take their opportunity of running them into this
town." During Bellomont's time Selleck's warehouse was the favorite resort
of the merchants doing business with the Madagascar pirates. Selleck had
£10,000 worth of the goods which Captain Kidd brought from the East.
Turning now to the stories of the pirates, we read that when one Captain
Cromwell, a pirate with three ships, manned by eighty men, came to
Plymouth in 1646, and remained five or six weeks with the Pilgrims,
Governor Bradley referred to the visit in these words:--
"They spente and scattered a great deal of money among ye people, and yet
more, sine, than money."
The statement that the Pilgrims (of all others!) entertained the pirates
so well as to detain them for weeks in the harbor is somewhat shocking to
one not fully acquainted with the conditions of commerce in that period.
The facts regarding the pirates seem worth, therefore, some consideration.
While pirates were found upon the ocean as soon as other ships in the
early history of the world, some of the piracy affecting the early
commerce of the colonies grew out of a curious system of private reprisals
that was previously countenanced by European governments. Thus, when the
Inquisition in the Canary Islands seized the property of Andrew Barker,
an Englishman, in 1576, and he was unable to obtain redress from any
Spanish authority, he, with the permission of his government, "fitted
out two barks to revenge himself." He captured enough Spanish merchantmen
to recoup his loss with interest. His commission was called a letter of
marque and reprisal.
Then recall the system of forcing trade that was practised in the West
Indies. Sir John Hawkins sold slaves to the Spanish at the muzzles of
his guns. Eventually Sir John's fleet was "bottled up" in Vera Cruz by a
Spanish squadron and destroyed. Drake was one of the men ruined by this
act of Spanish "perfidy," and to recoup his losses he began the series of
raids by which he acquired fortune and a title.
Reprisals led to wanton aggressions, like those of the buccaneers, and
wanton aggressions produced reprisals again. All governments encouraged
their merchantmen to rob those of rival peoples as a means of promoting
commerce, just as the warring fur traders on the American frontier were
encouraged in their fights waged to the same end.
The encouragement of reprisals was at all times more or less covert. In
war times the armed merchantmen were openly commissioned and sent afloat
not only to prey upon the ships of the enemy but upon those of neutral
powers as well. It was the theory of all statesmen that the best way to
encourage the shipping of one nation was to injure as much as possible,
and by all means, the shipping of all rivals. As late as the end of the
eighteenth century the Barbary pirates were subsidized by some governments
to encourage them to prey upon the shipping of rivals.
At one time the privateer captain was the judge of the offending of the
neutral. Later, when privateers were obliged to carry captured ships
before a court of admiralty, the difference between the robbery as
committed by the privateer and the confiscation ordered by the court was
found only in the course of procedure.
A theorist here and there denounced the systems of reprisals and
privateering. Governor Bradford was worried somewhat by the doings of
Cromwell's men. Government officials denounced as pirates the privateers
who smuggled in goods instead of bringing them in openly and paying
the usual fees and duties. But the state of civilization warranted the
Pilgrims in the warmth of the reception they gave to the pirates.
How far the piratical cruisers influenced the American merchant marine is
not definitely told in the documents, but it is certain that damage was
inflicted. We get a glimpse of a vicious raid in the story of a French
pirate (perhaps he had a commission, however) named Picor, who landed on
Block Island in July, 1689. The pirates "remained in possession of the
island, plundering the houses, and despoiling it of every moveable thing,"
for a week. Two of the islanders were tortured to make them reveal the
hiding-place of valuables, and two negroes were killed.
From the island the pirates went to New London, but they were driven
away. On sailing toward the open sea once more, they were intercepted by
two armed sloops that had been sent out from Newport under one Captain
Paine. _A Naval History of Rhode Island_ says that Paine had "followed the
privateering design" in former years as a lieutenant under Picor, and that
the Frenchman, on recognizing him, fled, saying he "would as soon fight
the devil as Paine."
In the _Canadian Archives_ (1894) are two stories of raids upon French
possessions, made in one case by "Englishmen" (they took Quebec), and in
the other by "the people of Massachusetts."
Many letters charging various colonies with encouraging pirates are found
in the old documents. Rhode Island, New York, and the two Carolinas were
accused in this way more frequently than the others, and New York was the
chief offender in the days of Governor Benjamin Fletcher (1692-1697).
While the buccaneers were ravaging the Spanish mainland, another horde
found opportunity in the conditions prevailing on the coast of Asia. These
latter pirates formed a settlement upon Madagascar Island, wherein gold
and jewels were abundant, but such products of civilization as rum and
weapons were scarce and much wanted. New York merchants usually supplied
these wants, but New Englanders sent them at least one cargo of masts and
yards for their ships. The merchant captains engaged in this supply trade
also took a turn at piracy whenever opportunity offered. Governor Fletcher
did a thriving business in supplying captains with commissions when they
sailed, and "protections" when they returned. Captain Edward Coates, of
the ship _Jacob_, said that he paid £1300 for "his share" of the price
of the commission with which the ship sailed. At the end of the voyage
the crew "shared the value of 1800 pieces of eight, a man." Fletcher took
the ship, valued at £800, for his bribe when he allowed Coates to land
the cargo. The sailors had to pay the governor from seventy-five to one
hundred pieces of eight for "protections."
Captain Giles Shelly, of the ship _Nassau_, carried rum which cost two
shillings a gallon to Madagascar, and sold it for from fifty shillings to
three pounds a gallon. "A pipe of Madeira wine which cost him £19 he sold
for £300."
Captain William Kidd was the most notorious of the captains engaged in
the Madagascar trade, but the story of his career is interesting chiefly
because of the light it throws upon the state of civilization then
prevailing. His troubles began when Lord Bellomont and some other noble
lords of England fitted out a private armed ship to go to Madagascar and
rob the pirates. Bellomont describes this venture as "very honest." Kidd
was chosen to command the ship--_The Adventure Galley_. On arriving at
Madagascar, he found that the pirates had a stronger ship than his, and
he was afraid to attack them. The crew had been shipped on the usual
privateer plan of no prize, no pay, and on finding they were to get
no prize they became mutinous. Many of them deserted to the pirates of
the island. In a half-hearted effort to maintain discipline among those
remaining, Kidd hit a man with a bucket and happened to kill him. Then
he went cruising, pirate fashion, and captured a ship belonging to "the
Moors," which was valued at £30,000. In this ship Kidd sailed for home. He
learned, on the way, that he had been proclaimed as a pirate. Bellomont
had been accused by political enemies in Parliament of fitting out a
piratical cruiser, and being unwilling to face the charge by telling
the facts frankly, he shuffled, told falsehoods, and eventually made a
scapegoat of Kidd, who was hanged (May 12, 1701).
That this man, who at worst had killed one man in a sea brawl, and had
taken one ship, should have had ballads written about him in which he was
described as "bloody" is one of the most remarkable facts in the history
of the sea. But that he should have been referred to ever since in all
literature as a typical pirate is still more remarkable.
A book, Hughson's _Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce_, has been
written to tell about the deeds of such men as Bane, Stede Bonnet, Moody,
and Edward Thatch, or Blackbeard, but it has little to say about the
influence of the pirates upon commerce, because there is little to say.
The pirates mentioned captured a few ships, American as well as English,
and for brief periods interrupted the trade of various ports. On the other
hand, some of them supplied the colonists with low-priced goods, and at
times the only coin in circulation was that brought in by the freebooters.
On the whole, in a financial point of view, the pirates benefited the
young merchant marine more than they damaged it. In anticipation of
attacks by pirates, all ships in deep-water trade carried cannon, and
some coasters did so, especially in the longer voyages. In the trade
with Spain and Portugal and the Canary Islands the American vessels were
often chased, and sometimes captured, by Barbary pirates who had learned
their trade from European renegades. New England ships in the West Indies
were always obliged to keep a sharp lookout for piratical cruisers under
French and Spanish flags. But these aggressions were not an unmixed evil.
For such conditions increased freight rates and the profits on cargoes
carried on owners' account. Thus the freight rate from Boston to Barbados,
in 1762, was "14 per ton or four times former rates," and all because
of pirates. Sure fortune came to the ship captain who was equal to the
emergencies of the trade. Dangers cultivated the courage and enterprise of
the crews. In a still broader view the habits of a people soon to become
an independent nation were forming, and it was well worth while for some
of them to learn how to swim in rough water.