THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRATES.
[Sidenote: Pompey and the pirates.]
[Sidenote: Piracy on the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.]
At no other time in the world’s history has the business of piracy
thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century and the first part of
the eighteenth. Its golden age may be said to have extended from about
1650 to about 1720. In ancient times the seafaring was too limited
in its area to admit of such wholesale operations as went on after
the broad Atlantic had become a highway between the Old World and the
New. No doubt those Cretan and Cilician pirates who were suppressed
by the great Pompey were terrible fellows. After the destruction of
Carthage they controlled the Mediterranean from the coast of Judæa to
the Pillars of Hercules, and captured the cargoes of Egyptian grain
till at times Rome seemed threatened with famine. Roman commanders
one after another went down before them, until at length, in the year
B. C. 67, Pompey was appointed dictator over the Mediterranean and
all its coasts for fifty miles inland. The dimensions of his task are
indicated by the fact that in the course of that year he captured 3,000
vessels, hung or crucified 10,000 pirates, and made prisoners of 20,000
more, whom he hustled off to hard labour in places far from the sound
of surf. Nevertheless those ancient pirates worked on a much smaller
scale than the buccaneers of America. In the Indian Ocean adjacent
stretches of the Pacific there has always been much piracy until the
recent days when French and English ships have patrolled those waters.
The fame of the Chinese and Malays as sea robbers is well established.
So too with those vile communities north of Sahara which we used to
call the Barbary States, their eminence in crime is unsurpassed. From
the fifteenth century to the first years of the nineteenth, piracy was
one of their chief sources of revenue; their ships were a terror to the
coasts of Europe, and for devilish atrocity scarcely any human annals
are so black as those of Morocco and Algiers. But as these Mussulman
pirates and those of eastern Asia were as busily at work in the
seventeenth century as at any other time, their case does not impair my
statement that the age of the buccaneers was the Golden Age of piracy.
The deeds done in American waters greatly swelled, if they did not more
than double, the volume of maritime robbery already existing.
[Sidenote: The Vikings were not pirates in the strict sense.]
[Sidenote: Blackstone on the crime of piracy.]
If we look into mediæval history for examples to compare with those
already cited, we may observe that the Scandinavian Vikings, such men
as sailed with Rolf and Guthorm and Swegen Forkbeard, are sometimes
spoken of as pirates. If such a classification of them were correct,
we should be obliged to assign the Golden Age of piracy to the ninth
and tenth centuries, for surely all other slayings and plunderings
done by seafaring men shrink into insignificance beside the operations
of those mighty warriors of the North. But it is neither a just nor a
correct use of language that would count as pirates a race of men who
simply made war like all their contemporaries, only more effectively.
The warfare of the Vikings was that of barbarous heathen, but it was
not criminal unless it is a crime to be born a barbarian. The moral
difference between killing the enemy in battle and murdering your
neighbour is plain enough. If there is any word which implies thorough
and downright criminality, it is pirate. In the old English law the
pirate was declared an enemy to the human race, with whom no faith
need be kept. “As therefore,” says Blackstone, “he has renounced all
the benefits of society and government, and has reduced himself afresh
to the savage state of nature by declaring war against all mankind,
all mankind must declare war against him, and every community hath a
right by the rule of self-defence to inflict that punishment upon him
which every individual would in a state of nature have been otherwise
entitled to do for any invasion of his person or property.”[303]
Pirates taken at sea were commonly hung from the yard-arm without the
formality of a trial, and on land neither church nor shrine could serve
them as sanctuary. It was also well understood that they were not
included in the benefit of a general declaration of pardon or amnesty.
[Sidenote: Character of piracy.]
The pirate thus elaborately outlawed was anybody who participated in
violent robbery on the high seas, or in criminal plunder along their
coasts. The details of such crimes were apt to be full of cruelty. The
capture of a merchant ship with more or less bloodshed was usually
involved, and such bloodshed was wholesale murder. If provisions were
less than ample, the survivors were thrown overboard, or set ashore on
some lonely island and left to starve, and this often happened. Murders
from sheer wantonness were not uncommon, and the sack of a coast town
or village was attended with nameless horrors. On the whole we cannot
wonder that public opinion should have branded the skippers and crews
who did such things as the very worst of criminals. One can see that
in old trials for piracy, as in trials for witchcraft, the dread and
detestation were often so great as to outweigh the ordinary English
presumption that an accused person must have the benefit of the doubt
until proved guilty. Desire to extirpate the crime became a stronger
feeling than reluctance to punish the innocent. The slightest suspicion
of complicity with pirates brought with it extreme peril.
[Sidenote: To call the Elizabethan sea kings “pirates” is silly and
outrageous.]
When we thus recall what the crime of piracy really was, we cannot
fail to see how reprehensible is the language sometimes applied, by
writers who should know better, to the noble sailors who in the days
of Queen Elizabeth saved England from the Spanish Inquisition.[304]
Had it not been for the group of devoted men among whom Sir Francis
Drake was foremost, there was imminent danger three hundred years ago
that human freedom might perish from off the face of the earth. The
name of Drake is one that should never be uttered without reverence,
especially by Americans, since it is clear that but for him our
history would not have begun in the days of Elizabeth’s successor.
His character was far loftier than that of Nelson, the only other sea
warrior whose achievements have equalled his. His performances never
transgressed the bounds of legitimate warfare as it was conducted in
the sixteenth century. Among his contemporaries he was exceptionally
humane, for he would not permit the wanton destruction of life or
property. To use language which even remotely alludes to such a man
as a pirate is to show sad confusion of ideas. As for Elizabeth’s
other great captains,--such as Raleigh, Cavendish, Hawkins, Gilbert,
Grenville, Frobisher, Winter, and the Howards,--few of them rose to
the moral stature of Drake, but they were very far above the level of
freebooters. It seems ridiculous that it should be necessary to say so.
Their business was warfare, not robbery.
[Sidenote: Features of maritime warfare out of which piracy could grow.]
[Sidenote: Privateering.]
It is nevertheless undeniable that naval warfare in the days of
Elizabeth stood on a lower moral plane than naval warfare in the days
of Victoria, and things were done without hesitation then that would
not be tolerated now. Wars are ugly things at best, but civilized
people have learned how to worry through them without inflicting
quite so much misery as formerly. Three centuries ago not only
were the usages more harsh than now, but the methods of conducting
maritime warfare contained a feature out of which, under favouring
circumstances, piracy afterward grew. There can be no doubt that
the seventeenth century was the golden age of pirates because it
came immediately after the age of Elizabeth. The circumstances of
the struggle of the Netherlands and England against the greatest
military power in the world made it necessary for the former to rely
largely, and the latter almost exclusively, upon naval operations.
Dutch ships on the Indian Ocean and English ships off the American
coasts effectually cut the Spaniard’s sinews of war. Now in that age
ocean navigation was still in its infancy, and the work of creating
great and permanent navies was only beginning. Government was glad to
have individuals join in the work of building and equipping ships of
war, and it was accordingly natural that individuals should expect to
reimburse themselves for the heavy risk and expense by taking a share
in the spoils of victory. In this way privateering came into existence,
and it played a much more extensive part in maritime warfare than it
now does. The navy was but incompletely nationalized. Into expeditions
that were strictly military in purpose there entered some of the
elements of a commercial speculation, and as we read them with our
modern ideas we detect the smack of buccaneering.
[Sidenote: Fighting without declaring war.]
To this it should be added that fighting between hostile states
occurred much more frequently than now without a formal declaration
of war. There were times in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
when the hatred between the commercial rivals, Venice and Genoa, was so
fierce that whenever their ships happened to meet on the Mediterranean
they went to fighting at sight, yet those bloody scrimmages did not
always lead to war. In the youth of Christopher Columbus it was
seldom that Christian and Turkish ships met without bloodshed, on the
assumption that war was the normal state of things between Crescent
and Cross. So when the Dutch were contending against Philip II. the
English often helped their heroic cousins by capturing Spanish ships
long before war was declared between Philip and Elizabeth. Such laxity
of international usage made it easy to cross the line which demarcates
privateering from piracy.
[Sidenote: Lack of protection for neutral ships.]
It should also be remembered that the ships of neutral nations had
no such protection as now. The utmost that is now permitted the
belligerent ship is to search the neutral ship for weapons or other
materials of war bound for an enemy’s port, and to confiscate such
materials without further injury to person or property. In the
sixteenth century it was allowable to confiscate the neutral ship bound
for an enemy’s port, sell her cargo for prize money, and hold her crew
and passengers for ransom. The milder doctrine that any kind of goods
might be seized, but not the ship and her people, had been propounded
but was not yet generally accepted.
[Sidenote: Spanish treasure.]
All the circumstances here mentioned were favourable to the growth
of piracy. At the same time the temptations were unusually strong.
There was a vague widespread belief that America was a land abounding
in treasure, and there were facts enough to explain such a belief.
Immense quantities of gold and silver were carried across the Atlantic
in Spanish ships, to say nothing of other articles of value. This
treasure was used to support a war which threatened English liberty,
and therefore English cruisers were right in seizing it wherever they
could. But it only needed that such cruising should fall into the hands
of knaves and ruffians, and that it should be kept up after Spain and
England were really at peace, for this semi-mediæval warfare to develop
into a gigantic carnival of robbery and murder. And so it happened.
[Sidenote: Origin of buccaneering.]
It was toward the end of the sixteenth century, in the course of
the great Elizabethan war, that the West Indies witnessed the first
appearance of the marauders known as “Brethren of the Coast.” They were
of various nationalities, chiefly French, English, and Dutch. They
all regarded Spain as the world’s great bully that must be teased.
The Spaniards had won such a reputation for tyranny and cruelty that
public opinion was not shocked when they were made to swallow a dose or
two of their own medicine. After peace had been declared, any foreign
adventurers coming to the West Indies were liable to be molested as
intruders, and their ships sometimes had to fight in self-defence.
Wherefore the more unscrupulous rovers, expecting ill-treatment,
used not to wait for it, but when they saw a good chance for robbing
Spaniards they promptly seized it. This they called, in the witty
phrase of a French captain, _se dédommager par avance_, or recouping
one’s self beforehand.
[Sidenote: Illicit traffic.]
It was not all the people of Spanish America, however, that frowned
upon foreigners. Among those who came were sundry small traders of the
illicit sort. Like all semi-barbarous governments, the court of Spain
pursued a highly protectionist policy. The colonists were not allowed
to receive European goods from any but Spanish ports, and thus the
Spanish exporters were enabled to charge exorbitant prices. Many of the
colonists therefore welcomed smugglers who brought European wares to
exchange for cargoes of sugar or hides. To suppress this traffic, the
authorities at San Domingo patrolled the coasts with small cruisers
known as _guardacostas_, and when they caught the intruders they
pitched them overboard, or strung them up to the yard-arm, without
the smallest ceremony. In revenge the intruders combined into fleets
and made descents upon the coasts, burning houses, plundering towns,
and committing all manner of outrages. Thus there grew up in the West
Indies a chronic state of hostilities quite independent of Europe. It
came to be understood among the intruders that, whether their countries
were at peace or war with one another, all persons coming to the West
Indies were friends and allies against that universal enemy, the
Spaniard. Thus these rovers took the name of “Brethren of the Coast.”
[Sidenote: Buccaneers and “flibustiers.”]
As the consequence of more than a century of frightful misrule the
beautiful island of Hispaniola, or Hayti, had come to be in many parts
deserted. Many good havens were unguarded, and everywhere there were
immense herds of cattle and swine running wild. Some of the brethren,
mostly Frenchmen, were thus led to settle in the island and do a
thriving business in hides, tallow, smoked beef, and salted pork, which
they bartered with their sailor brethren for things smuggled from
Europe. They drove away the Spaniards who tried to disturb them, and
amid perpetual fighting the island came to be more and more French.
Presently, from 1625 to 1630, they took possession of the little
islands of St. Christopher and Nevis, and built strong fortifications
at Tortuga. About this time they began to be called “boucaniers”
or “buccaneers.” To cure meat by smoking was called by the Indians
“boucanning” it. La Rochefort says of the Caribs that they used to
eat their prisoners well boucanned. In the days before cattle came to
the New World, Americus Vespucius saw boucanned human shoulders and
thighs hanging in Indian cabins as one would hang a flitch of bacon.
The buccaneers were named for the excellent boucanned beef and pork
which they sold. For their brethren on shipboard another name was at
first used. The English word “freebooter” became in French mouths
“flibustier,” in spelling which a silent _s_ was inserted after the _u_
by a false analogy, as so often happens. In recent times “flibustier”
has come back into English as “filibuster,” a name originally given
to such United States adventurers as William Walker, making raids upon
Spanish-American coasts in the interests of slavery. In the first use
of the epithets, if you lived on shore and smoked beef you were a
_boucanier_; but if you lived on ship and smuggled or stole wherewithal
to buy the beef you were a _flibustier_. Naturally, however, since so
many of these restless brethren passed back and forth from the one
occupation to the other, the names came to be applied indiscriminately,
and whether you called a scamp by the one or the other made no
difference.
[Sidenote: The kind of people that became buccaneers.]
Those “Brethren of the Coast” were recruited in every way that can be
imagined. Cutthroats and rioters, spendthrifts and debtors, thieves
and vagabonds, runaway apprentices, broken-down tradesmen, soldiers
out of a job, escaped convicts, religious cranks, youths crossed in
love, every sort of man that craved excitement or change of luck,
came to swell the numbers of the buccaneers. Graceless sons of good
families usually assumed some new name. Yet not all were ashamed of
their lawless occupation. Some gloried in it, and deemed themselves
pinks of propriety in matters pertaining to religion. One day, when
a certain sailor was behaving with unseemly levity in church while a
priest was saying mass, his captain suddenly stepped up and rebuked
him for his want of reverence, and then blew his brains out. It is
told of a Frenchman from Languedoc that his career was determined by
reading a book on the cruelties of the Spaniards in America, probably
“The Destruction of the Indies,” by Las Casas. This perusal inflamed
him with such furious hatred of Spaniards that he conceived it to
be his sacred mission to kill as many as he could. So he joined the
buccaneers, and murdered with such exemplary diligence that he came
to be known as Montbars the Exterminator. Another noted freebooter,
Raveneau de Lussan, joined the fraternity “because he was in debt, and
wished, as every honest man should do, to have wherewithal to satisfy
his creditors.”[305]
[Sidenote: Deeds of Olonnois.]
One of the early exploits of the brethren was performed by Pierre of
Dieppe, surnamed “the Great.” In a mere longboat, with a handful of
men, he surprised and captured the Spanish vice-admiral’s ship, heavily
freighted with treasure, set her people ashore in Hispaniola, and
took his prize to France. This exploit is said to have given quite an
impetus to buccaneering. In 1655 the buccaneers had grown so powerful
that they gave important aid to Cromwell’s troops in conquering
Jamaica. When any nation went to war with Spain, the buccaneers of that
nationality would get from the government letters of marque, which made
them privateers and entitled them to certain rights of belligerents.
Their aid was so liable to be useful in time of need that the English
and French governments connived at some of their performances. No
civilized government could countenance their cruelties. One monster,
called Olonnois, having captured a Spanish ship with a crew of ninety
men, beheaded them all with a sabre in his own hands. Four cases are
on record in which he threw the whole crew overboard, and it is said
that he sometimes tore out and devoured the bleeding hearts of his
victims, after the Indian fashion. In concert with another wretch,
Michel le Basque (whose name tells his origin), at the head of 650
men, he captured the towns of Gibraltar and Maracaibo, in the Gulf of
Venezuela, and carried off a booty of nearly half a million crowns,
equivalent to more than two million modern dollars. Prisoners were
tortured to disclose hidden treasure. But this precious Olonnois was
soon afterward paid in his own coin: he fell into the hands of a party
of hungry Indians, who cooked and ate him.
[Sidenote: Henry Morgan.]
Such incidents as these in Venezuela made many Spanish towns prefer to
buy off the buccaneers, and thus a system of blackmail was established.
It was for the buccaneer to decide for himself whether he deemed it
more profitable to end all in one mad frolic of plunder and slaughter,
or to accept a round sum and leave the town for the present unharmed.
Operations on a grand scale began about 1664, under a leader named
Mansvelt, who soon died and was succeeded by Henry Morgan, the most
famous of the buccaneers and one of the vilest of the fraternity. This
Welshman is said to have been of good family and well brought up. He
made his way to Barbadoes as a redemptioner, and after serving out
his term joined the pirates. He was a man of remarkable courage and
resource. For cruelty no Apache could surpass him, and his perfidy
equalled his cruelty. He paid so little heed to the maxims of
honour among thieves that it is a wonder he should have retained his
leadership through several expeditions.
One of Morgan’s early exploits was the capture of Puerto del Principe,
in Cuba. Then with 500 men he attacked Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of
Darien. Having taken a convent, he forced the nuns to carry scaling
ladders and plant them against the walls of the citadel, perhaps in
the hope that Spaniards would not fire upon Spanish women; but many of
the poor nuns were killed. After the garrison had surrendered, Morgan
set fire to the magazine and blew into fragments the fort with its
defenders. The scenes that followed must have won Satan’s approval.
With greed unsatisfied by the enormous booty, the monster devised
horrible tortures for the discovery of secret hoards that doubtless
existed only in his fancy. Many victims died under the infliction.
[Sidenote: Alexander Exquemeling.]
Soon afterward Morgan met in the Caribbean Sea a powerful French pirate
ship and invited her to join him. On the French captain’s refusal,
Morgan, with an air of supreme cordiality, invited him to come over to
dinner with all his officers. No sooner had these guests arrived than
they were seized and put in irons, while Morgan attacked their ship
and captured it. Then came a strange retribution. Morgan put some of
his own officers with 350 of his crew into the French ship; presently
the officers got drunk, and through accident or carelessness the ship
was blown up with all the English crew and the French prisoners.
This story is told by a pious and literary Dutch buccaneer, the
fraternity’s best historian, by name Alexander Exquemeling, sometimes
corrupted into Oexmelin. His well-written narrative was first published
at Amsterdam in 1678, entitled _De Americansche Zee Roovers_. It has
been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe, and ranks
among the most popular books of the last two centuries.[306] The pious
Exquemeling, in recounting the explosion of the captured ship, sees
in it a special divine judgment upon Morgan for treachery to guests,
a kind of philosophizing which is duly ridiculed by Voltaire in his
“Candide.”[307]
[Sidenote: Maracaibo and Gibraltar.]
The loss of 350 men and a ship better than any of his own was a serious
blow to Morgan, but it did not prevent him from capturing those unhappy
towns, Maracaibo and Gibraltar, where he shut up a crowd of prisoners
in a church and left them to die of starvation. His own escape from
capture, however, was a narrow one. Three Spanish galleons arrived at
the entrance to the Gulf of Venezuela and strongly garrisoned a castle
that stood there, so that it began to look as if the day of reckoning
for Morgan had come. But he made one of his vessels into a fire-ship
and succeeded in burning two of the galleons. Then it became easy
for his little fleet to surround and capture the third, after which
a masterly series of stratagems enabled him to slip past the castle,
richer by a million dollars than when he entered the Gulf, and ready
for fresh deeds of wickedness.
[Sidenote: Treaty of America, 1670.]
[Sidenote: Sack of Panama.]
[Sidenote: Morgan absconds.]
The British government lamented these cruel aggressions upon people
whose only offence was that of having been born Spaniards, and in 1670
a treaty was made between Spain and Great Britain for the express
purpose of putting an end to buccaneering. This interesting treaty,
which was conceived in an unusually liberal and enlightened spirit,
was called the treaty of America. As soon as the buccaneers heard of
it, they resolved to make a defiant and startling exhibition of their
power. Thirty-seven ships, carrying more than 2,000 men of various
nationalities, were collected off the friendly meat-curing coast of
Hispaniola. Morgan was put in the chief command, and it was decided
to capture Panama. On arriving at the isthmus they stormed the castle
at the mouth of the river Chagres and put the garrison to the sword.
Thus they gained an excellent base of operations. Leaving part of his
force to guard castle and fleet, Morgan at the head of 1,200 men made
the difficult journey across the isthmus in nine days. Panama was not
fortified, but a force of 2,000 infantry and 400 horse confronted the
buccaneers. In an obstinate battle, without quarter asked or given, the
Spaniards lost 600 men and gave way. The city was then at the mercy
of the victors. It contained about 7,000 houses and some handsome
churches, but Morgan set fire to it in several places, and after a
couple of days nearly all these buildings were in ashes. By the light
of those flames most hideous atrocities were to be seen,--such a
carnival of cruelty and lust as would have disgraced the Middle Ages.
After three bestial weeks the buccaneers departed with a long train of
mules laden with booty, and several hundred prisoners, most of whom
were held for ransom. Among these were many gentlewomen and children,
whom Morgan treated savagely. He kept them half dead with hunger and
thirst, and swore that if they failed to secure a ransom he would sell
them for slaves in Jamaica. Exquemeling draws a pathetic picture of
the poor ladies kneeling and imploring at Morgan’s feet while their
starving children moaned and cried; the only effect upon the ruffian
was to make him ask them how much ransom they might hope to secure if
these things were made known to their friends. When the party arrived
at Chagres, there was a division of spoil, and the rascals were amazed
to find how little there seemed to be to distribute. Morgan was accused
of loading far more than his rightful share upon his own vessels,
whereupon, not wishing to argue the matter, he made up his mind to
withdraw from the scene, “which he did,” says our chronicler, “without
calling any council or bidding any one adieu, but went secretly on
board his own ship and put out to sea without giving notice, being
followed only by three or four vessels of the whole fleet, who it is
believed went shares with him in the greatest part of the spoil.” All
that can be said for him is that most of his comrades would gladly have
done the same by him.
[Sidenote: Scotching the snake.]
With Morgan’s departure the pirate fleet was scattered, and plenty
of strong language was used in reference to their tricksome
commodore.[308] The arrival of a new English governor at Jamaica, with
instructions to enforce the treaty of America, led to the hanging
of quite a number of buccaneers; and a crew of 300 French pirates,
shipwrecked on the coast of Porto Rico, were slaughtered by order of
the Spanish governor. But such casualties produced little effect upon
the swarming multitude of rovers, and within half a dozen years we find
the governor of Jamaica conniving at them and sharing in their plunder.
One pirate crew brought in a Spanish ship so richly freighted that
there was £400 for every man after a round sum in hush-money had been
handed to the governor. Then the pirates burned the ship and embarked
in respectable company for England, “where,” says Exquemeling, “some of
them live in good reputation to this day.”
[Sidenote: Morgan’s metamorphosis.]
But what shall we say when we find the devil turning monk, when we
see the arch-pirate Morgan administering the king’s justice upon his
quondam comrades and sending them by scores to the gallows! It reads
like a scene in comic opera, how this dirty fellow, after absconding
with a lion’s share of the Panama spoil and bringing it to Jamaica,
suddenly put on airs of righteousness, wooed and won the fair daughter
of one of the most eminent personages on the island, and was appointed
a judge of the admiralty court. The finishing touch was put upon the
farce when Charles II. decorated him with knighthood. It is not clear
how he won the king’s favour, but we know that Charles was not above
taking tips. After this our capacity for amazement is so far exhausted
that we read with benumbed acquiescence how in 1682 Sir Henry Morgan
was appointed deputy-governor of Jamaica.[309] But when we find him
handing over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards a whole crew of
English buccaneers who had fallen into his clutches, we seem to
recognize the old familiar touch, and cannot repress the suspicion that
he sold them for hard cash! He remained in office three years, until
James II. ascended the throne, when the Spanish government accused him
of secret complicity with the pirates. On this charge he was removed
from office and sent to England, where he was for some years imprisoned
but never met the fate which he deserved.
[Sidenote: Decline of buccaneering.]
Exquemeling expresses the opinion that, after the trick which
Morgan played upon his comrades at Chagres, he must have thought it
more prudent to be on the side of government than to stay with the
buccaneers. He may also have foreseen that sooner or later the treaty
of America was likely to interfere with the business of piracy. It
is curious that, after all his caution, his downfall on a charge
brought by Spain before the British government was due to the treaty
of America. Although imperfectly enforced, that treaty seems to have
marked the turning point in the history of buccaneering. The sack of
Panama was the apogee of the golden age of pirates; the events that
followed are incidents in a gradual but not slow decline. In 1684 the
number of French buccaneers in the West Indies and on adjacent coasts
was estimated at 3,000, and of other nationalities there were perhaps
as many more; but their operations were on a smaller and tamer scale
than those of Olonnois and Morgan.
[Sidenote: Buccaneers of the South Sea.]
About this time the South Sea began to be the favourite field of work
for some of the most famous buccaneers. In 1680 the first party
crossed the isthmus and set sail on the Bay of Panama in a swarm of
canoes, with which on the same day they captured a Spanish vessel of
30 tons. With this ship they captured another the next day, and so
on till at the end of the week they were in possession of quite a
fleet, comprising some ships of 400 tons. They cruised as far as the
island of Juan Fernandez and beyond, capturing many ships and much
treasure, but not doing much harm ashore. One of the officers, Basil
Ringrose, an educated man, left a journal of this cruise, the original
manuscript of which is in the British Museum. Other voyages followed
until the buccaneers had visited such remote places as the Ladrone
Islands, Easter Island, the coasts of Australia, and Tierra del Fuego.
Among their commanders were men of far better type than those that
have hitherto been mentioned; such were Ambrose Cowley, Edward Davis,
the surgeon Lionel Wafer, and the celebrated William Dampier, whom we
are more wont to remember as a great navigator and explorer than as a
pirate. Cowley, Wafer, and Dampier have left charming narratives of
their adventures, in which a mixture of scientific inquisitiveness
with the love of barbaric independence is more conspicuous than mere
greed. As Henry Morgan was a pirate of the worst type, so Edward Davis,
discoverer of Easter Island, was of the best. He never would permit
acts of cruelty or wanton bloodshed, and his loyalty and kindness to
his comrades won their affection, so that his mellowing influence over
rough natures was remarkable. In 1688 he took advantage of a royal
proclamation of amnesty to quit buccaneering and go to England, where
he was afterward counted as “respectable.”
[Sidenote: Plunder of Peruvian towns.]
As we read the journals of those remote voyages it is easy to forget
for a moment that the business is piracy. We seem to see the staunch
ships, superbly handled by their expert sailors, blithely cleaving the
blue waters under the Southern Cross; we breathe the cool salt breeze;
we watch with interest the gray cliffs, the strange foliage, the birds
and snakes and insects which arouse the curiosity of the mariners; we
follow them to the Galapagos Islands, which first suggested to Darwin
and afterward to Wallace the theory of natural selection; we note with
pleasure their description of the uncouth natives of Australia; and
we remember Thackeray when we encounter oysters so huge that Basil
Ringrose has to cut them in quarters.[310] In the careless freedom of
life on an unknown sea with each morrow bringing its new adventures, we
forget what company we are in, till suddenly the victim ship heaves in
sight, the brief chase ends in a deadly struggle, the Spanish colours
go down before the black flag, a few bodies are buried in the depths,
and a rich spoil is divided. It is vulgar robbery and murder after
all, and there was a good deal of it in the South Sea. The coast of
Peru, where there were the richest towns, suffered the most. The Lima
Almanacs for 1685-87, comprising an official record of events for each
year immediately preceding, mention the towns of Guayaquil, Santiago
de Miraflores, and five others as plundered by the pirates. When Davis
divided his booty at Juan Fernandez, there was enough to give every
man a sum equivalent to $20,000. Very often a pirate got more gold
and silver than he could handle or carry, but it was apt to slip away
easily. Many of Davis’s company quickly lost every dollar in gambling
with their comrades. Our friend Raveneau de Lussan, who took to piracy
in order to satisfy his creditors, tells his readers that his winnings
at play, added to his share of booty, amounted to 30,000 pieces of
eight, which would now be equivalent to at least $120,000; so we may
hope that he paid his debts like an honest man.
[Sidenote: Effects of the alliance between France and Spain.]
The event which did more than anything else to put an end to
buccaneering was the accession of a Bourbon prince, Philip V., to
the throne of Spain in 1701. It was then that his grandfather, Louis
XIV., declared there were no longer any Pyrenees. Ever since the days
of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain and France had been enemies. Their
relations now became so friendly that all the ports of Spanish America,
whether in the West Indies or on the Pacific coast, were thrown open
to French merchants. This made trade more profitable than piracy, and
united the French and Spanish navies in protecting it. The English and
Dutch fleets also put forth redoubled efforts, and during the next
score of years the decline of the pirates was rapid.
[Sidenote: Carolina and the Bahamas.]
The first English settlements south of Virginia were made at the time
when buccaneering was mighty and defiant. The colony of Sir John
Yeamans, on Cape Fear River, was begun in 1665, and it was in 1670,
the very year of the treaty of America, that Governor Sayle landed
at Port Royal. The earliest settlers in Carolina, as we have seen,
were not of such good quality as those who came a few years later.
They furnished a convenient market for the pirates, who were apt to
be open-handed customers, ready to pay good prices in Spanish gold,
whether for clothes, weapons, and brandy brought from Europe, or for
timber, tar, tobacco, rice, or corn raised in America. One of the
Bahama Islands, called New Providence, had been settled by the English.
Its remarkable facilities for anchorage and its convenient situation
made it a favourite haunt of pirates, whose evil communications
corrupted the good manners of the inhabitants. Rather than lose such
customers they befriended them in every possible way, so that the
island became notorious as one of the worst nests of desperadoes in the
American waters. The malady was not long in spreading to the mainland.
The Carolina coast, with its numerous sheltered harbours and inlets,
afforded excellent lurking-places, whither one might retreat from
pursuers, and where one might leisurely repair damages and make ready
for further mischief. The pirates, therefore, long haunted that coast,
and it was rather a help than a hindrance to them when settlements
began to be made there. For now instead of a wilderness it became a
market where they could buy food, medicines, tools, or most of such
things as they needed. So long as they behaved moderately well while
ashore, it was not necessary for the Carolinians to press them with
questions as to what they did on the high seas. For at least thirty
years after the founding of Carolina, nearly all the currency in the
colony consisted of Spanish gold and silver brought in by freebooters
from the West Indies.
[Sidenote: Effect of the Navigation Laws.]
Nothing went so far toward making the colonists tolerate piracy as the
Navigation Laws which we have already described. We have seen how they
enabled English merchants to charge exorbitant prices for goods shipped
to America, and to pay as little as possible for American exports. The
contrast between such customers and the pirates was entirely in favour
of the latter, who could afford to be liberal both with goods and with
cash that had cost them nothing but a little fighting.[311] After the
founding of Charleston, the dealings with pirates there were made the
subject of complaint in London. In 1684 Robert Quarry, acting governor
of Carolina, a man of marked ability and good reputation, was removed
from office for complicity with pirates. This did not, however, prevent
his being appointed to other responsible positions. His successor,
Joseph Morton, actually gave permission to two buccaneer captains to
bring their Spanish prizes into the harbour. Soon afterward John Boon,
a member of the council, was expelled for holding correspondence with
freebooters. At the close of Ludwell’s administration, it was said that
Charleston fairly swarmed with pirates, against whose ill-got gold
the law was powerless. Along with such commercial reasons, the terror
of their fame conspired to protect them. Desperadoes who had sacked
Maracaibo and Panama might do likewise to Charleston or New York. It
was not only in Carolina that such fears combined with the Navigation
Laws to sustain piracy. In Pennsylvania a son of the deputy-governor
Markham was elected to the Assembly, but not allowed to take a seat
because of dealings with the freebooters. Governor Fletcher, of New
York, was deeply implicated in such proceedings, and the record of
distant New England was far from stainless.
[Sidenote: Effect of rice culture.]
But at the end of the seventeenth century a marked change became
visible. In South Carolina the cultivation of rice had reached such
dimensions that tonnage enough could not be found to carry the crop of
1699 across the Atlantic. The colonists were allowed to sell in foreign
markets such goods as were not wanted in England, and England took
very little rice. Most of it went to Holland, Hamburg, Bremen, Sweden,
Denmark, and Portugal. As rice was thus becoming the chief source of
income for South Carolina, people began to be sorely vexed when pirates
captured their cargoes. Besides this, the character of the population
was entirely changed by the influx of steady, law-abiding English
dissenters under Blake, and by the immigration of large numbers of
Huguenots. The pirates became unpopular, and the year 1699 witnessed
the hanging of seven of them at Charleston. As the colony yearly grew
stronger and the administration firmer, such rigours increased, and the
great gallows on Execution Dock was decorated with corpses swinging in
chains, a dozen or more at a time, until the pirates came to think of
that harbour as a place to be shunned.
[Sidenote: North Carolina.]
There still remained for them, however, an excellent place of refuge in
the neighbourhood. In the year 1700 Edward Randolph reported that the
population of North Carolina consisted of smugglers, runaway servants,
and pirates. There is no doubt that for the latter it furnished a
favourite hiding-place.
[Sidenote: Swarms of pirates.]
For some years after 1700 the vigorous measures of South Carolina
kept her own coast comparatively safe, but the snake was as yet only
scotched. Swarms of buccaneers, though far thinner than of old, were
still harboured in the West Indies, and when occasion was offered
they came out of their dens. In 1715, when South Carolina was nearly
exhausted from her great Indian war, with crops damaged and treasury
empty and military gaze turned toward the frontier and away from the
coast, the pirates swarmed there again, with numbers swelled by rovers
and bandits turned adrift by the peace of Utrecht in 1713. James Logan,
Secretary of Pennsylvania, reported in 1717 that there were 1,500
pirates on our coasts, with their chief headquarters at Cape Fear and
New Providence, from which points they swept the sea from Newfoundland
to Brazil. For South Carolina there was ground of alarm lest wholesale
pillage of rice cargoes should bring ruin upon the colony. But that
year 1717 saw the arrival of the able governor Robert Johnson, who was
destined, after some humiliation, to suppress the nuisance of piracy.
[Sidenote: New Providence redeemed.]
The next year, 1718, was the beginning of the end. In midsummer
an English fleet, under Woodes Rogers, captured the island of New
Providence, expelled the freebooters, and established there a strong
company of law-abiding persons. Henceforth New Providence became a
smiter of the wicked instead of their hope and refuge. It was like
capturing a battery and turning it against the enemy. One of its
immediate effects, however, was to turn the whole remnant of the
scoundrels over to the North Carolina coast, where they took their
final stand. For a moment the mischief seemed to have increased. One
deed, in particular, is vivid in its insolence.
[Sidenote: Blackbeard, the “Last of the Pirates.”]
Among these corsairs one of the boldest was a fellow whose name appears
in court records as Robert Thatch, though some historians write it
Teach. He was a native of Bristol in England, and his real name seems
to have been Drummond. But the soubriquet by which he was most widely
known was “Blackbeard.” It was a name with which mothers and nurses
were wont to tame froward children. This man was a ruffian guilty of
all crimes known to the law, a desperate character who would stick at
nothing. For many years he had been a terror to the coast. In June,
1718, he appeared before Charleston harbour in command of a forty-gun
frigate, with three attendant sloops, manned in all by more than 400
men. Eight or ten vessels, rashly venturing out, were captured by him,
one after another, and in one of them were several prominent citizens
of Charleston, including a highly respected member of the council, all
bound for London. When Blackbeard learned the quality of his prisoners,
his fertile brain conceived a brilliant scheme. His ships were in need
of sundry medicines and other provisions, whereof a list was duly made
out and entrusted to a mate named Richards and a party of sailors, who
went up to Charleston in a boat, taking along one of the prisoners with
a message to Governor Johnson. The message was briefly this, that,
if the supplies mentioned were not delivered to Blackbeard within
eight-and-forty hours, that eminent commander would forthwith send to
Governor Johnson, with his compliments, the heads of all his prisoners.
[Sidenote: South Carolina government over-awed.]
It was a terrible humiliation, but the pirate had calculated correctly.
Governor and council saw that he had them completely at his mercy.
They knew better than he how defenceless the town was; they knew that
his ships could batter it to pieces without effective resistance. Not
a minute must be lost, for Richards and his ruffians were strutting
airily about the streets amid fierce uproar, and, if the mob should
venture to assault them, woe to Blackbeard’s captives. The supplies
were delivered with all possible haste, and Blackbeard released the
prisoners after robbing them of everything they had, even to their
clothing, so that they went ashore nearly naked. From one of them he
took $6,000 in coin. After this exploit Blackbeard retired to North
Carolina, where it is said that he bought the connivance of Charles
Eden, the governor, who is further said to have been present at the
ceremony of the pirate’s marriage to his fourteenth wife.[312]
[Sidenote: Epidemic of piracy; cases of Kidd and Bonnet.]
[Sidenote: Fate of Bonnet.]
While the arch-villain, thus befriended, was roaming the coast as
far as Philadelphia and bringing his prizes into Pamlico Sound,
another rover was making trouble for Charleston. Major Stede Bonnet,
of Barbadoes, had taken up the business of piracy scarcely two years
before. He had served with credit in the army and was now past middle
life, with a good reputation and plenty of money, when all at once
he must needs take the short road to the gallows. Some say it was
because his wife was a vixen, a droll reason for turning pirate. But
in truth there was a moral contagion in this business. The case of
William Kidd, a few years before Bonnet, is an illustration. Kidd was
an able merchant, with a reputation for integrity, when William III.
sent him with a swift and powerful ship to chase pirates; and, lo!
when with this fine accoutrement he brings down less game than he had
hoped, he thinks it will pay better to turn pirate himself. In this
new walk of life he goes on achieving eminence, until on a summer day
he rashly steps ashore in Boston, is arrested, sent to London, and
hung.[313] Evidently there was a spirit of buccaneering in the air,
as in the twelfth century there was a spirit of crusading. And even
as children once went on a crusade, so we find women climbing the
shrouds and tending the guns of pirate ships.[314] Major Bonnet soon
became distinguished in his profession, and committed depredations
all the way from Barbadoes to the coast of Maine. Late in the summer
of 1718 Governor Johnson learned that there was a pirate active in
his neighbourhood, and he sent Colonel William Rhett, with two armed
ships, to chase him. The affair ended in an obstinate fight at the
mouth of Cape Fear River, in the course of which all the ships got
aground on sand-bars. It was clear that whichever combatant should
first be set free by the rising tide would have the other at his mercy,
and we can fancy the dreadful eagerness with which every ripple was
watched. One of Rhett’s ships was first to float, and just as she was
preparing to board the pirate he surrendered. Then it was learned that
he was none other than the famous Stede Bonnet. At the last his brute
courage deserted him, and the ecstasy of terror with which he begged
for life reminds one of the captive in “Rob Roy” who was hurled into
Loch Lomond. But entreaty fell upon deaf ears. It was a gala day at
Execution Dock when Bonnet and all his crew were hung in chains.
[Sidenote: Fate of Blackbeard.]
A few weeks later, while Blackboard was lurking in Ocracoke Inlet, with
ship well armed and ready for some fresh errand, he was overhauled by
two stout cruisers sent after him by Governor Spotswood, of Virginia.
In a desperate and bloody fight the “Last of the Pirates” was killed.
All the survivors of his crew were hanged, and his severed head
decorated the bowsprit of the leading ship as she returned in triumph
to James River.
Such forceful measures went on till the waters of Carolina were cleared
of the enemy, and by 1730 the fear of pirates was extinguished. For
year after year the deeds of Kidd and Blackbeard were rehearsed at
village firesides, and tales of buried treasure caused many a greedy
spade to delve in vain, until with the lapse of time the memory of all
these things grew dim and faded away.