Exit Buccaneer; Enter Pirate
The buccaneers of the West Indies and South America had grown to be a
most formidable body of reckless freebooters. From merely capturing
Spanish ships, laden with the treasures taken from the natives of the
new world, they had grown strong enough to attack Spanish towns and
cities. But when they became soldiers and marched in little armies, the
patience of the civilized world began to weaken: Panama, for instance,
was an important Spanish city; England was at peace with Spain;
therefore, when a military force composed mainly of Englishmen, and led
by a British subject, captured and sacked the said Spanish city, England
was placed in an awkward position; if she did not interfere with her
buccaneers, she would have a quarrel to settle with Spain.
Therefore it was that a new Governor was sent to Jamaica with strict
orders to use every power he possessed to put down the buccaneers and to
break up their organization, and it was to this end that he set a thief
to catch thieves and empowered the ex-pirate, Morgan, to execute his
former comrades.
But methods of conciliation, as well as threats of punishment, were used
to induce the buccaneers to give up their illegal calling, and liberal
offers were made to them to settle in Jamaica and become law-abiding
citizens. They were promised grants of land and assistance of various
kinds in order to induce them to take up the legitimate callings of
planters and traders.
But these offers were not at all tempting to the Brethren of the Coast;
from pirates _rampant_ to pirates _couchant_ was too great a change, and
some of them, who found it impossible to embark on piratical cruises, on
account of the increasing difficulties of fitting out vessels, returned
to their original avocations of cattle-butchering and beef-drying, and
some, it is said, chose rather to live among the wild Indians and share
their independent lives, than to bind themselves to any form of honest
industry.
The French had also been very active in suppressing the operations of
their buccaneers, and now the Brethren of the Coast, considered as an
organization for preying upon the commerce and settlers of Spain, might
be said to have ceased to exist. But it must not be supposed that
because buccaneering had died out, that piracy was dead. If we tear
down a wasps' nest, we destroy the abode of a fierce and pitiless
community, but we scatter the wasps, and it is likely that each one of
them, in the unrestricted and irresponsible career to which he has been
unwillingly forced, will prove a much more angry and dangerous insect
than he had ever been before.
This is what happened to these buccaneers who would not give up a
piratical life; driven away from Jamaica, from San Domingo, and even
from Tortuga, they retained a resting-place only at New Providence, an
island in the Bahamas, and this they did not maintain very long. Then
they spread themselves all over the watery world. They were no longer
buccaneers, they were no longer brothers of any sort or kind, they no
longer set out merely to pillage and fight the Spaniards, but their
attacks were made upon people of every nation. English ships and French
ships, once safe from them, were a welcome prey to these new pirates,
unrestrained by any kind of loyalty, even by any kind of enmity. They
were more rapacious, they were more cruel, they were more like fiends
than they had ever been before. They were cowardly and they no longer
proceeded against towns which might be defended, nor ran up alongside of
a man-of-war to boldly board her in the very teeth of her guns. They
confined themselves to attacks upon peaceable merchant vessels, often
robbing them and then scuttling them, delighted with the spectacle of a
ship, with all its crew, sinking hopelessly into the sea.
The scene of piratical operations in America was now very much changed.
The successors of the Brothers of the Coast, no longer united by any
bonds of fellowship, but each pirate captain acting independently in his
own wicked way, was coming up from the West Indies to afflict the
seacoast of our country.
The old buccaneers knew all about our southern coast, for they were
among the very first white men who ever set foot on the shores of North
and South Carolina before that region had been settled by colonists, and
when the only inhabitants were the wild Indians. These early buccaneers
often used its bays and harbors as convenient ports of refuge, where
they could anchor, divide spoils, take in fresh water, and stay as long
as they pleased without fear of molestation. It was natural enough that
when the Spanish-hating buccaneer merged into the independent pirate,
who respected no flag, and preyed upon ships of every nation, he should
feel very much at home on the Carolina coasts.
As the country was settled, and Charles Town, now Charleston, grew to be
a port of considerable importance, the pirates felt as much at home in
this region as when it was inhabited merely by Indians. They frequently
touched at little seaside settlements, and boldly sailed into the harbor
of Charles Town. But, unlike the unfortunate citizens of Porto Bello or
Maracaibo, the American colonists were not frightened when they saw a
pirate ship anchored in their harbors, for they knew its crew did not
come as enemies, but as friendly traders.
The early English colonists were not as prosperous as they might have
been if the mother country had not been so anxious to make money out of
them. They were not allowed to import goods from any country but
England, and if they had products or crops to export, they must be sold
to English merchants. For whatever they bought they had to pay the
highest prices, and they could not send into the markets of the world to
get the best value for their own productions.
Therefore it was that a pirate ship was a very welcome visitor in
Charles Town harbor. She was generally loaded with goods, which, as they
were stolen, her captain could afford to sell very cheaply indeed, and
as there was always plenty of Spanish gold on board, her crew was not
apt to haggle very much in regard to the price of the spirits, the
groceries, or the provisions which they bought from the merchants of the
town. This friendly commerce between the pirates and the Carolinians
grew to be so extensive that at one time the larger part of the coin in
circulation in those colonies consisted of Spanish gold pieces, which
had been brought in and used by the pirates for the purchase of goods.
But a pirate is very seldom a person of discretion, who knows when to
leave well enough alone, and so, instead of contenting themselves with
robbing and capturing the vessels belonging to people whom their Charles
Town friends and customers would look upon as foreigners, they boldly
sailed up and down the coast, seeking for floating booty wherever they
might find it, and when a pirate vessel commanded by an English captain
and manned principally by an English crew, fell in with a big
merchantman flying the English flag, they bore down upon that vessel,
just as if it had been French, or Spanish, or Dutch, and if the crew
were impertinent enough to offer any resistance, they were cut down and
thrown overboard.
At last the pirates became so swaggeringly bold and their captains so
enterprising in their illegal trading that the English government took
vigorous measures, not only to break up piracy, but to punish all
colonists who should encourage the freebooters by commercial dealings
with them. At these laws the pirates laughed, and the colonists winced,
and there were many people in Charles Town who vowed that if the King
wanted them to help him put down piracy, he must show them some other
way of getting imported goods at reasonable prices. So the pirates went
on capturing merchantmen whenever they had a chance, and the Carolinians
continued to look forward with interest to the bargain days which always
followed the arrival of a pirate ship. But this state of things did not
last, and the time came when the people of Charles Town experienced a
change of mind. The planters were now growing large quantities of rice,
and this crop became so valuable that the prosperity of the colonies
greatly increased. And now the pirates also became very much interested
in the rice crops, and when they had captured four or five vessels
sailing out of Charles Town heavily laden with rice, the people of that
town suddenly became aware of the true character of a pirate. He was now
in their eyes an unmitigated scoundrel who not only stole goods from all
nations, which he brought to them and sold at low prices, but he
actually stole their goods, their precious rice which they were sending
to England.
The indignant citizens of Charles Town took a bold stand, and such a
bold one it was that when part of a crew of pirates, who had been put
ashore by their comrades on account of a quarrel, made their way to the
town, thinking they could tell a tale of shipwreck and rely upon the
friendship of their old customers, they were taken into custody, and
seven out of the nine were hanged.
The occasional repetition of such acts as this, and the exhibition of
dangling pirates, hung up like scarecrows at the entrance of the
harbors, dampened the ardor of the freebooters a good deal, and for some
years they kept away from the harbor of Charles Town, which had once
been to them such a friendly port.