THE BUCCANEERS IN THE VIRGIN ISLES
It was due to peculiar circumstances that the Virgin Islands and their
harbors became neutral ground—or, rather, neutral waters—wherein the
corsairs could be sure of safety, and where they never harmed the
inhabitants or such peaceful craft as might come to trade or to seek
refuge.
With the European countries constantly at one another’s throats, the
men without a country, flying no flag but the Jolly Roger, could always
find safety among these disputed isles, and were always sure of a
welcome. The hated Spaniards were the chief sufferers from the pirates’
attacks, and while they might virtually be at peace with Spain, yet the
other powers saw no real reason to interfere with the pirates’
activities merely to aid an hereditary enemy who might at any moment
see fit to start another war. England, as ever, desired the supremacy
of the seas, and, hard put to it to maintain her grip in the Antilles,
she was quite willing that the Dons should be kept in check by fair
means or foul. France was too busy with more serious matters to bother
about the freebooters in the far-off Caribbean. The thrifty Dutch found
it more profitable to trade with the pirates than to fight them, and
the Danes,—with the adventurous blood of the Vikings in their veins,—no
doubt had more or less of a fellow-feeling for the sea-robbers.
And so, although the governments of Europe sent forth royal decrees,
bearing most impressive seals, gay with colored ribbons and engrossed
with lengthy words and involved sentences, and on parchment frowned
upon the corsairs, yet no real effort was made to enforce the law. So
the buccaneers laughed at the “scraps of paper” and went merrily and
virtually unchecked upon their way.
It may be well here to call attention to the fact that we should not
confuse the buccaneers with ordinary pirates, for while buccaneers were
pirates, yet pirates were not necessarily buccaneers; and even in their
piracy the buccaneers or “Brethren of the Main,” as they called
themselves, were by no means the conventional pirates of fiction.
Nearly all of them started on their careers as privateers with royal
warrant to prey upon the enemy’s ships. Then, having found the game to
their liking and with no other means of earning a livelihood when peace
was declared, they kept it up, regardless of such trifling matters as
treaties of peace between kings and emperors several thousands of miles
distant. With a few exceptions, they continued their depredations in
much the same manner and along the same lines as they had conducted
their privateering ventures.
The British buccaneers—and the majority were of that nationality—never
attacked a vessel flying the thrice-crossed flag of England; they did
not molest the Dutch, who were ever friendly, for as long as there were
plenty of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Frenchmen for the plucking they
were quite content to pick and choose. The French buccaneers were
perhaps a little less squeamish, while the Dutch and the Spanish
apparently preyed on friend and foe alike.
But, no matter what their nationality or origin, all left certain
places free from molestation, and among these the favorites were the
Virgin Isles, the island of Tortuga off Haiti, the islets about Santo
Domingo, Aves Island off Venezuela, the Caymans south of Jamaica,
Jamaica itself, and the Bay Islands off Honduras. These islands,
especially the Virgins, became known far and wide as lairs of the
reckless sea-rovers, whither none dared to follow and where they could,
for a space, cast aside all fear of shipwreck, murder, and sudden death
and live in peace.
Callous, case-hardened, and ruffianly as they were, yet they knew well
which side their bread was buttered on, and they made and enforced
strict laws and discipline in their retreats. The natives’ lives and
property were sacred, the towns were patrolled by armed men selected by
the buccaneer chiefs, and death, swift and sure, was the punishment for
any infringement of rules, or a violation of the hospitality accorded.
Many a drunken pirate was pistoled out of hand by his own comrades for
taking, or attempting to take, liberties with some Virgin Island maid.
Many a buccaneer has kicked and writhed as he swung to his ship’s yard
arm as a penalty for picking a quarrel with some citizen of St. John or
St. Barts, and more than one corsair has been cut down without mercy
and his body thrown to the waiting sharks because he refused to pay for
drinks or commodities purchased in the island shops or bar-rooms.
Strange, incomprehensible, quixotic men, these reckless buccaneers.
Cruel, relentless, unprincipled, and yet with their own inexorable
laws, their own code of honor, their streak of gallantry and their
bravery which, despite their sins and their wickedness, we cannot but
admire.
We cannot understand them; it would baffle the most expert
psychoanalyist to fathom the workings of their brains; but we must not
judge them by modern standards. In their day piracy was a profession
rather than a crime and, while openly frowned upon by the powers,
privately abetted and encouraged. Indeed, it was looked upon rather as
a gentleman’s profession, and not a few gentlemen were engaged in it.
To us these men appear bloodthirsty monsters, but we must bear in mind
that in their day life was cheap and torture was legalized as a
punishment for the most trivial crimes.
Such pleasantries as burning holes through liars’ tongues, cutting off
eavesdroppers’ ears, branding the palms of thieves’ hands, or putting
out eyes were in the same category as ten days’ imprisonment or ten
dollars’ fine to-day. And death in fiendish forms was meted out for
violations of the law which in our day we should think severely
punished with six months in a modern jail with such accessories as
motion pictures, baseball games, and musical concerts in lieu of rack,
wheel, and thumb-screw.
In the days when the Virgins were a haven for pirates the bodies of men
hanging in chains and surrounded by carrion crows were almost an
essential part of the waterside landscape in all seaports, and
attracted no more attention than an illuminated advertisement on
Broadway does at the present time.
No doubt the country people who came to town for a holiday or to do
their marketing, stared with bulging eyes at the rotting corpses
swaying in the wind and pointed them out to their young hopefuls as
awful examples of the end they would come to if they ran away to become
sea-rovers, just as to-day our country cousins stare and gape at the
sights of the metropolis. And unquestionably the denizens of the ports
snickered and made rude jokes about the “rubes” and “bumpkins” who were
such “jays” as to stare at a pirate’s body in chains.
But such a fate overtook the buccaneers only when, by some mischance,
they forgot themselves and overstepped the bounds of propriety; for as
a rule they had a peculiar sense of patriotism—although men without a
country, legally—and seldom troubled persons or ships of the land of
their birth. And as long as they confined their activities to harassing
hereditary enemies, even though official peace might have been
established, their countrymen put tongues in cheeks, figuratively
speaking, and let well enough alone.
Indeed, from a diplomatic and economic point of view it was not a bad
plan to have a score or two of corsairs preying on a competitor
nation’s commerce, or within call in case of war. No small proportion
of the buccaneer ships were fitted out and partly owned by law-abiding
and highly respectable gentlemen and merchants who would have become
apoplectic with righteous indignation if any one had dared assume that
they were even morally in sympathy with piracy.
Many of the buccaneers were exceedingly interesting characters, and the
pity is that, aside from Esquemelling and one or two others, they had
no chroniclers, no biographers to leave us a true account of their
lives, to give us a real insight into their natures, their ideals, and
their aims, and to thrill us with their adventures. A few have become
famous, have lived on in history and legend; but doubtless many more,
whose careers were far more thrilling and whose characters were far
more interesting, have been completely forgotten. Now and then some bit
of tradition, some fragment of story makes us wish we knew more of
them.
It is hard to imagine a swashbuckling, blood-spilling pirate, spending
his leisure hours in writing poetry, but it was no other than Foster, a
pirate who served under Morgan and whom the famous Sir Harry one time
rebuked for his ruthlessness, that penned “Sonnyettes of Love,” which,
although they may not be good verse, are certainly more intelligible
than much of our modern poetry, and express delightful and tender
sentiments.
No doubt the screams of captive Spanish wives and daughters maltreated
by his ruffianly crew furnished the author with inspiration and turned
his mind to thoughts of shady Devon lanes or ivy-clad Surrey cottages
and buxom, fair-haired, red-cheeked English lassies. But this is mere
speculation; all we know is that he was a romantic soul and preferred
writing tender effusions of love, in his cramped, painstaking hand, to
carousing ashore and making merry with negro wenches.
Old Teach, the Blackbeard associated with the castle in St. Thomas, was
a most interesting type, a man such as even Poe or Stevenson could not
have created out of whole cloth or vivid imagination. Born as Edward
Teach, in Bristol, England,—a port, by the way, where many a
redoubtable freebooter was recruited,—the youngster in due course of
time became a sailor and voyaged, among other places, to the West
Indies. To be sure, the heyday of buccaneering was then over, but
still, in 1716, there were many freebooters afloat upon the Caribbean.
Having heard, in Port Royal and other notorious resorts, glowing tales
of the pirate’s life, Edward decided that life aboard a merchantman was
a very unattractive and unprofitable one and that piracy was the most
promising get-rich-quick scheme.
Regardless of his failings, we must admit that young Teach would have
won the highest esteem of an efficiency expert (had such beings existed
in his day), for he believed implicitly that a thing worth doing at all
was worth doing well and bent all his energies to practising his
profession in a thorough manner. As an example of the rewards or
successes attendant upon application to an idea, Teach was a model, for
within a space of two years from the time he announced his intention of
turning corsair he could lay undisputed claim to being the world’s
greatest pirate.
Moreover, the amiable Edward was a firm believer in publicity and in
the spectacular. Indeed, he very evidently was far in advance of his
time, and to-day he would have brought untold joy to the heart of a
film director and would be drawing a far larger income than he ever
enjoyed through his chosen career. If ever there was an original of the
buccaneer of melodrama and lurid fiction, it must have been Teach;
only, no author or playwright would ever dare draw a character as
bizarre, repulsive, and hideously ferocious as this Prince of Pirates.
Of immense size and coarse and brutal aspect, Teach nurtured a huge
black beard which covered his ugly face to his eyes, and which, falling
to his waist, was braided into innumerable small pigtails, the ends
being tied together over his ears. His hair, also of inky hue, fell to
his shoulders and almost met his beetling, bushy black eyebrows over
his forehead. As though not ferocious-looking enough naturally, he was
accustomed, when making an attack, to stick burning slow-matches in
hair and beard, which surrounded his fierce face and gleaming eyes with
a ring of fire and smoke and, according to a contemporaneous
description, “glowed most horribly.” Unlike many of his notorious
predecessors and compeers, Blackbeard was no dandy. His favorite
costume was a long-skirted, deep-cuffed coat, much the worse for wear
and dribbled liquor; a rough shirt open to the waist and exposing a
chest as hairy as a gorilla’s; short, wide breeches, and low seaman’s
shoes. Stockings he usually dispensed with, and a battered felt hat of
the type made familiar by stage robbers crowned his ebon mane, while,
to complete his get-up, a pair of cutlasses and a knife or two hung at
his belt and half a dozen pistols were stuck through his sash.
And, in truth, Blackbeard’s character was as ferocious as his looks,
and his soul as black as his whiskers. There was not a single redeeming
feature about him, unless it was his sheer courage, and altogether he
was a despicable scoundrel. On more than one occasion he robbed and
murdered his own men, and he cared not a whit whether prizes he took
were flying the flag of his mother country or of another. To him,
torture and butchery were mere pastimes, and one day, just as a joke,
he placed seventeen of his own crew on a tiny desert island, promising
to return at intervals to see how long they could survive without food
or water. Fortunately for the castaways, Teach was unable to carry out
this, to him, interesting experiment in human endurance, for another
corsair,—and a rank amateur, at that,—Major Stede Bonnet, rescued the
marooned pirates.
No doubt time hung heavy on the pirates’ hands at times as they sailed
aimlessly about waiting for a prize, but those upon Blackbeard’s ship
could always be sure that tedium would not be their lot. As an
entertainer Teach was a marvel, albeit his ideas of amusement were not
always appreciated by others and he must have devoted a considerable
portion of his spare time to inventing new schemes to relieve the
monotony between fights.
Once, when his ship was becalmed on a blistering hot day and no sail
broke the scintillating horizon, the resourceful Blackbeard appeared on
deck hatless, coatless, and in his bare feet, and proposed that his
shipmates should make a little “hell of their own,” adding that, as
they were all bound for the lower regions eventually, it would be
interesting to learn in advance who would be able to bear it the
longest. As his crew well knew that any imitation devised would be
nothing to the inferno their captain would raise if they declined his
invitation, they rather hesitatingly and half-heartedly fell in with
his plan. Thereupon Teach and his men—some of whom had to be urged by
sundry well-aimed kicks and blows—descended into the ship’s hold and,
having securely fastened the hatches, set fire to several kegs of
sulphur and seated themselves upon the stone ballast.
We can well imagine that in the ill-smelling, unventilated hold a very
creditable imitation of the infernal regions soon resulted, while
Blackbeard might well have served as a model for the Evil One himself.
At any rate, the officers and crew soon decided that even if they were
on the straight road to perdition they had no desire to arrive ahead of
time, and, choking and gasping, they broke through the hatches and
climbed on deck. But not so with old Teach. Long after the last of his
men had deserted the hold, he remained, seated on the stones, breathing
the brimstone fumes, and throughout the rest of his days it was his
greatest pride that he had been the last to give in.
Indeed, when one of his officers informed him that he had looked like a
half-hanged man as he emerged, Teach seemed greatly pleased and
declared that at some future time he was going to make a test to see
who could dangle the longest from a noose without being wholly hanged.
Blackbeard believed in keeping himself before the public and in not
allowing even his friends to forget who he was or what his character,
as illustrated by an incident in his career when he was entertaining
his own sailing-master and a pilot in the cabin of his sloop, which was
at anchor in one of the Virgin Island harbors.
After a time conversation lagged and Teach, blowing out the solitary
candle, cocked his pistols, and, crossing his arms, fired point-blank
toward his companions. The unfortunate sailing-master was shot through
the knee and permanently crippled, but in the darkness of the cabin the
other shot went wild and the pilot escaped with nothing worse than a
fright. When, after this pleasantry, the candle was re-lit and the two
indignant seamen demanded an explanation, Teach cursed them fluently
and at length, and finished by explaining that they would forget who he
was if he didn’t shoot one of them now and then.
Strangely enough, Blackbeard, despite his unattractive face and still
more unattractive personality, appears to have been a good deal of a
lady-killer, figuratively if not literally, for he managed to win the
hearts and hands of fourteen maidens whom he married. History fails to
record their subsequent fate or whether Teach devised some speedy form
of divorce to suit himself. The fourteenth wife was a “most charming
young creature of sixteen,” if we are to believe those who wrote of her
at first hand.
Blackbeard’s courtships would have made entertaining reading had they
been recorded, and it would be interesting to know what there was about
him that appealed so strongly to feminine tastes, but chroniclers
evidently considered such matters too trivial to record.
Of course it would be expected that a man of Edward Teach’s character
and attainments would die with his boots on and fighting to the last,
and he was not one to disappoint the lover of lurid adventure. In the
end he completely fulfilled everything expected of him. So great a
menace had he become to shipping, especially to the merchant marine of
the British colonies in America, that the powers that were demanded
that his activities be brought to a speedy end. Accordingly, the
Governor of Virginia, in 1718, posted divers and sundry notices to the
effect that forty pounds sterling would be paid as a reward for the
capture of any pirate captain, and that Edward Teach, otherwise known
as “Blackbeard,” was worth one hundred pounds to the authorities,
whether he be brought in dead or alive. In those days such a sum was a
small fortune, enough to tempt any brave and hardy soul to have a try
for it, but the first to camp on Blackbeard’s trail was Lieutenant
Maynard of H. M. S. Pearl. By some means never fully revealed, Maynard
learned that the redoubtable pirate was enjoying a brief vacation in a
secluded cove near Ocracoke Inlet (North Carolina). Gossip had it that
the Governor of Carolina was on far too friendly terms with Teach, and
that no small portion of that worthy gentleman’s wealth had found its
way into the governor’s pockets, owing to the pirate’s appreciation of
being left undisturbed in his chosen haven on the Carolina coast.
Whatever the truth may be, the young naval officer started forth in a
sloop he had fitted out and manned, intent on Blackbeard’s capture or
death. Although the pirate was apprised of the lieutenant’s approach,
he scorned to move from his retreat, but spent the night before the
expected visit in striving to outdrink a friendly merchant skipper who
had dropped in for a call. Toward daylight, however, Teach’s men saw
Maynard approaching, and the pirate, realizing that the officer really
meant business, cut his cables, hoisted the Jolly Roger, and let his
vessel drift ashore. Here, in the shoal water, he felt sure the sloop
could not follow, and as, oddly enough, neither vessel carried cannon
and it would be a hand-to-hand conflict, Blackbeard’s ruse was worthy
of him.
But the one hundred pounds still glittered before the lieutenant’s
eyes, and, determined to do or die, he cast everything possible
overboard, including the water-casks, set his sails, and headed
directly for the pirate vessel. Thereupon Blackbeard, with his
slow-matches smoking and sputtering in hair and beard, “hailed him in a
most rude manner,” cursed him, defied him, and, to show his utter
contempt, stood in plain view upon his ship’s rails and drank a goblet
of liquor to Maynard’s damnation. Finding that, even with everything
movable jettisoned, his sloop still drew too much water to grapple with
the pirate, the lieutenant manned small boats and attempted to board
Blackbeard’s craft. He was met with so hot a welcome of musketry and
pistols that twenty-nine men were killed and wounded, and the boats
retreated to the sloop.
Meanwhile the tide was rising, and Maynard’s sloop was constantly
drifting closer to the pirate. Still confident of success, the
lieutenant ordered all his men below, he alone remaining on deck with
the helmsman. Presently, the sloop grated and bumped against the other
vessel, and immediately the pirates began to pelt her with
fire-grenades. Then, drawing cutlasses and pistols, they sprang over
the bulwarks and swarmed upon the sloop’s decks in true melodramatic
piratical style. Up from the hold poured Maynard’s men, and hot and
furious was the battle. Teach and the lieutenant were face to face.
Both fired at the same instant, at point-blank range, but while the
officer dodged, Teach was less fortunate, and Maynard’s bullet buried
itself in the pirate’s face.
With blood streaming from the wound and dripping from the braided ends
of his beard, the maddened pirate flung down his pistol, whipped out
his cutlass, and, swearing horribly, leaped at the officer, who also
had drawn his sword. Then followed a duel, a hand-to-hand struggle to
the death between the gigantic, cursing, horrible-featured pirate and
the young officer—a contest between brute strength and trained
swordsmanship. Chasing each other back and forth across the
blood-covered deck, stumbling and tripping over dead and wounded men,
they hacked and parried and thrust. Again and again the officer’s sword
went home, more than once the pirate’s cutlass found its mark, until at
last a terrific blow of Blackbeard’s heavy blade snapped his opponent’s
light sword at the hilt and the lieutenant was at the pirate’s mercy.
With a blood-curdling yell and a terrible oath, Teach swung his cutlass
and struck with all his failing strength, expecting to cut his enemy
down with a single blow. But Maynard, leaping back, escaped, the stroke
falling short and merely slicing off several fingers from the officer’s
hand. Before Teach could strike again, ere he could raise his arm, one
of Maynard’s men leaped forward, his naval hanger flashed, and the
pirate chief staggered back, his head lolling on one side, his neck
half severed. But even then, with his life-blood spouting like a
crimson fountain from the gaping wound, with his head rolling horribly
on his shoulders, Blackbeard swung his cutlass and with a mighty blow
cut the brave sailor down.
Knowing his doom was sealed, realizing his death was but a matter of
moments, the pirate was still game. Kicking off his shoes, that his
feet might not slip upon the bloody planks, he backed to the bulwarks,
fighting off a half-dozen men who fell upon him. Dripping with blood
from a score of wounds, holding his all but decapitated head in place
with one hand, he roared like a maddened bull, drew a pistol from his
sash, cocked it, and with a last superhuman effort aimed at the
oncoming men. But the piece was never fired; before his finger could
pull the trigger, before a swinging blade could reach him, his hands
fell at his sides, his head dropped forward in ghastly fashion on his
blood-drenched beard, and he slumped to the deck, dead.
Those of the pirate crew still alive had leaped into the water; the
fight was over, the battle won, the notorious, inhuman Blackbeard was
no more. Cutting the sinews and muscles that still kept Teach’s head
and body together, the victorious Maynard suspended the gruesome trophy
at his sloop’s bowsprit end, and with thirteen captured pirates under
hatches, sailed into Bath Town, North Carolina, where the unlucky
thirteen were promptly hanged and Lieutenant Maynard received his
well-merited and hard-won reward.
Oddly enough, the one man of Blackbeard’s crew who escaped unscathed
was his sailing-master, Israel Hands, the selfsame man whom Teach had
wounded in the knee a short time previously, and who, owing to his late
captain’s practical joke, was ashore nursing his injured leg at the
time of Maynard’s attack.