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[Illustration: The Challenge
Studio April 7 1903.
H. Pyle. del.]
[Illustration:
Howard Pyle's
Book of Pirates
Ye Pirate Bold, as imagined by
a Quaker Gentleman in the--
Farm Lands of Pennsylvania--
Howard Pyle--Chadds Ford
September 13th 1903--]
[Illustration: AN ATTACK ON A GALLEON]
Howard Pyle's
Book of Pirates
Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning
the Buccaneers & Marooners of
the Spanish Main: _From the_
writing & Pictures _of_ Howard
Pyle: _Compiled by_ Merle Johnson
Harper & Brothers _Publishers_
New York & London
* * * * *
CONTENTS
PAGE
FOREWORD BY MERLE JOHNSON xi
PREFACE xiii
I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN 3
II. THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND 39
III. WITH THE BUCCANEERS 75
IV. TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE BOX 99
V. JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES 129
VI. BLUESKIN, THE PIRATE 150
VII. CAPTAIN SCARFIELD 187
VIII. THE RUBY OF KISHMOOR 210
[Illustration]
* * * * *
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS
AN ATTACK ON A GALLEON _Frontispiece_
ON THE TOTUGAS _Facing p._ 6
CAPTURE OF THE GALLEON " 10
HENRY MORGAN RECRUITING FOR THE ATTACK " 14
MORGAN AT PORTO BELLO " 16
THE SACKING OF PANAMA " 20
MAROONED " 26
BLACKBEARD BURIES HIS TREASURE " 32
WALKING THE PLANK " 36
"CAPTAIN MALYOE SHOT CAPTAIN BRAND THROUGH THE HEAD" " 40
"SHE WOULD SIT QUITE STILL, PERMITTING BARNABY TO GAZE" " 68
BURIED TREASURE " 76
KIDD ON THE DECK OF THE "ADVENTURE GALLEY" " 85
BURNING THE SHIP " 92
WHO SHALL BE CAPTAIN? " 104
KIDD AT GARDINER'S ISLAND " 108
EXTORTING TRIBUTE FROM THE CITIZENS " 116
"PIRATES USED TO DO THAT TO THEIR CAPTAINS NOW AND THEN" " 124
"JACK FOLLOWED THE CAPTAIN AND THE YOUNG LADY UP THE
CROOKED PATH TO THE HOUSE" " 132
"HE LED JACK UP TO A MAN WHO SAT UPON A BARREL" " 136
"THE BULLETS WERE HUMMING AND SINGING, CLIPPING ALONG THE
TOP OF THE WATER" " 142
"THE COMBATANTS CUT AND SLASHED WITH SAVAGE FURY" " 146
SO THE TREASURE WAS DIVIDED " 154
COLONEL RHETT AND THE PIRATE " 162
THE PIRATE'S CHRISTMAS " 174
"HE LAY SILENT AND STILL, WITH HIS FACE HALF BURIED IN
THE SAND" " 182
"THERE CAP'N GOLDSACK GOES, CREEPING, CREEPING, CREEPING,
LOOKING FOR HIS TREASURE DOWN BELOW!" " 186
"HE HAD FOUND THE CAPTAIN AGREEABLE AND COMPANIONABLE" " 190
THE BUCCANEER WAS A PICTURESQUE FELLOW " 196
THEN THE REAL FIGHT BEGAN " 200
"HE STRUCK ONCE AND AGAIN AT THE BALD, NARROW FOREHEAD
BENEATH HIM" " 206
CAPTAIN KEITT " 212
HOW THE BUCCANEERS KEPT CHRISTMAS " 224
THE BURNING SHIP " 236
DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES " 240
"I AM THE DAUGHTER OF THAT UNFORTUNATE CAPTAIN KEITT" " 244
* * * * *
FOREWORD
Pirates, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolves
who once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day
conceptions in great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard
Pyle.
Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenth
century and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine faculty of
transposing himself into any chosen period of history and making its
people flesh and blood again--not just historical puppets. His
characters were sketched with both words and picture; with both words
and picture he ranks as a master, with a rich personality which makes
his work individual and attractive in either medium.
He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration, and
his pupils and grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While he bore
no such important part in the world of letters, his stories are modern
in treatment, and yet widely read. His range included historical
treatises concerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was);
fiction, with the same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of
Old World fairy tales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best
sellers to growing lads; stories of the occult, such as _In Tenebras_
and _To the Soil of the Earth_, which, if newly published, would be
hailed as contributions to our latest cult.
In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in
one. It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination
of interest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any
more than there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct
Indians and gun-fighters of the Great West.
Important and interesting to the student of history, the
adventure-lover, and the artist, as they are, these Pirate stories and
pictures have been scattered through many magazines and books. Here,
in this volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhaps
not just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness and
appreciation of the real value of the material which the author's
modesty might not have permitted.
MERLE JOHNSON.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
PREFACE
Why is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly
titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to
make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this
question another--Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had, a
certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Is
there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden
groundwork of the old-time savage? Is there even in these
well-regulated times an unsubdued nature in the respectable mental
household of every one of us that still kicks against the pricks of
law and order? To make my meaning more clear, would not every boy, for
instance--that is, every boy of any account--rather be a pirate
captain than a Member of Parliament? And we ourselves--would we not
rather read such a story as that of Captain Avery's capture of the
East Indian treasure ship, with its beautiful princess and load of
jewels (which gems he sold by the handful, history sayeth, to a
Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop Atterbury's sermons, or
the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of "Theodora and
Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate nature of
most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.
In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales of
derring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even
in spite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the
majority of us would rather turn back over the leaves of history to
read how Drake captured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea,
and of how he divided such a quantity of booty in the Island of Plate
(so named because of the tremendous dividend there declared) that it
had to be measured in quart bowls, being too considerable to be
counted.
Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a
redundancy of _vim_ and life to recommend them to the nether man that
lies within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against
the tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have
had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black
flag. But it is not altogether courage and daring that endear him to
our hearts. There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that
lust for wealth that makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the
story of the division of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the
hiding of his godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic
beach, there to remain hidden until the time should come to rake the
doubloons up again and to spend them like a lord in polite society,
than in the most thrilling tales of his wonderful escapes from
commissioned cruisers through tortuous channels between the coral
reefs.
And what a life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constant
alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he
wanders forever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, now
careening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearing
suddenly to swoop down on some merchant vessel with rattle of
musketry, shouting, yells, and a hell of unbridled passions let loose
to rend and tear. What a Carlislean hero! What a setting of blood and
lust and flame and rapine for such a hero!
Piracy, such as was practiced in the flower of its days--that is,
during the early eighteenth century--was no sudden growth. It was an
evolution, from the semilawful buccaneering of the sixteenth century,
just as buccaneering was upon its part, in a certain sense, an
evolution from the unorganized, unauthorized warfare of the Tudor
period.
For there was a deal of piratical smack in the anti-Spanish ventures
of Elizabethan days. Many of the adventurers--of the Sir Francis Drake
school, for instance--actually overstepped again and again the bounds
of international law, entering into the realms of _de facto_ piracy.
Nevertheless, while their doings were not recognized officially by the
government, the perpetrators were neither punished nor reprimanded for
their excursions against Spanish commerce at home or in the West
Indies; rather were they commended, and it was considered not
altogether a discreditable thing for men to get rich upon the spoils
taken from Spanish galleons in times of nominal peace. Many of the
most reputable citizens and merchants of London, when they felt that
the queen failed in her duty of pushing the fight against the great
Catholic Power, fitted out fleets upon their own account and sent them
to levy good Protestant war of a private nature upon the Pope's
anointed.
Some of the treasures captured in such ventures were immense,
stupendous, unbelievable. For an example, one can hardly credit the
truth of the "purchase" gained by Drake in the famous capture of the
plate ship in the South Sea.
One of the old buccaneer writers of a century later says: "The
Spaniards affirm to this day that he took at that time twelvescore
tons of plate and sixteen bowls of coined money a man (his number
being then forty-five men in all), insomuch that they were forced to
heave much of it overboard, because his ship could not carry it all."
Maybe this was a very greatly exaggerated statement put by the author
and his Spanish authorities, nevertheless there was enough truth in it
to prove very conclusively to the bold minds of the age that
tremendous profits--"purchases" they called them--were to be made from
piracy. The Western World is filled with the names of daring mariners
of those old days, who came flitting across the great trackless ocean
in their little tublike boats of a few hundred tons burden, partly to
explore unknown seas, partly--largely, perhaps--in pursuit of Spanish
treasure: Frobisher, Davis, Drake, and a score of others.
In this left-handed war against Catholic Spain many of the adventurers
were, no doubt, stirred and incited by a grim, Calvinistic,
puritanical zeal for Protestantism. But equally beyond doubt the gold
and silver and plate of the "Scarlet Woman" had much to do with the
persistent energy with which these hardy mariners braved the
mysterious, unknown terrors of the great unknown ocean that stretched
away to the sunset, there in far-away waters to attack the huge,
unwieldy, treasure-laden galleons that sailed up and down the
Caribbean Sea and through the Bahama Channel.
Of all ghastly and terrible things old-time religious war was the most
ghastly and terrible. One can hardly credit nowadays the cold, callous
cruelty of those times. Generally death was the least penalty that
capture entailed. When the Spaniards made prisoners of the English,
the Inquisition took them in hand, and what that meant all the world
knows. When the English captured a Spanish vessel the prisoners were
tortured, either for the sake of revenge or to compel them to disclose
where treasure lay hidden. Cruelty begat cruelty, and it would be hard
to say whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin showed himself to be most
proficient in torturing his victim.
When Cobham, for instance, captured the Spanish ship in the Bay of
Biscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle had
cooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew
and every Spaniard aboard--whether in arms or not--to sew them up in
the mainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead
bodies in the sail when a few days later it was washed up on the
shore.
Of course such acts were not likely to go unavenged, and many an
innocent life was sacrificed to pay the debt of Cobham's cruelty.
Nothing could be more piratical than all this. Nevertheless, as was
said, it was winked at, condoned, if not sanctioned, by the law; and
it was not beneath people of family and respectability to take part in
it. But by and by Protestantism and Catholicism began to be at
somewhat less deadly enmity with each other; religious wars were still
far enough from being ended, but the scabbard of the sword was no
longer flung away when the blade was drawn. And so followed a time of
nominal peace, and a generation arose with whom it was no longer
respectable and worthy--one might say a matter of duty--to fight a
country with which one's own land was not at war. Nevertheless, the
seed had been sown; it had been demonstrated that it was feasible to
practice piracy against Spain and not to suffer therefor. Blood had
been shed and cruelty practiced, and, once indulged, no lust seems
stronger than that of shedding blood and practicing cruelty.
Though Spain might be ever so well grounded in peace at home, in the
West Indies she was always at war with the whole world--English,
French, Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to
keep her hold upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon
the earthquake of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to
totter and to crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and
from it alone could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold
and silver. So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to
keep out the world from her American possessions--a bootless task, for
the old order upon which her power rested was broken and crumbled
forever. But still she strove, fighting against fate, and so it was
that in the tropical America it was one continual war between her and
all the world. Thus it came that, long after piracy ceased to be
allowed at home, it continued in those far-away seas with unabated
vigor, recruiting to its service all that lawless malign element which
gathers together in every newly opened country where the only law is
lawlessness, where might is right and where a living is to be gained
with no more trouble than cutting a throat.
[Illustration: Howard Pyle,
His mark]
Howard Pyle's
Book of Pirates
[Illustration]
Ye Pirate Bold.
It is not because of his life of adventure and daring that I admire
this one of my favorite heroes; nor is it because of blowing winds nor
blue ocean nor balmy islands which he knew so well; nor is it because
of gold he spent nor treasure he hid. He was a man who knew his own
mind and what he wanted.
Howard Pyle
[Illustration]
Chapter I
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
Just above the northwestern shore of the old island of Hispaniola--the
Santo Domingo of our day--and separated from it only by a narrow
channel of some five or six miles in width, lies a queer little hunch
of an island, known, because of a distant resemblance to that animal,
as the Tortuga de Mar, or sea turtle. It is not more than twenty miles
in length by perhaps seven or eight in breadth; it is only a little
spot of land, and as you look at it upon the map a pin's head would
almost cover it; yet from that spot, as from a center of inflammation,
a burning fire of human wickedness and ruthlessness and lust overran
the world, and spread terror and death throughout the Spanish West
Indies, from St. Augustine to the island of Trinidad, and from Panama
to the coasts of Peru.
About the middle of the seventeenth century certain French adventurers
set out from the fortified island of St. Christopher in longboats and
hoys, directing their course to the westward, there to discover new
islands. Sighting Hispaniola "with abundance of joy," they landed, and
went into the country, where they found great quantities of wild
cattle, horses, and swine.
Now vessels on the return voyage to Europe from the West Indies needed
revictualing, and food, especially flesh, was at a premium in the
islands of the Spanish Main; wherefore a great profit was to be turned
in preserving beef and pork, and selling the flesh to homeward-bound
vessels.
The northwestern shore of Hispaniola, lying as it does at the eastern
outlet of the old Bahama Channel, running between the island of Cuba
and the great Bahama Banks, lay almost in the very main stream of
travel. The pioneer Frenchmen were not slow to discover the double
advantage to be reaped from the wild cattle that cost them nothing to
procure, and a market for the flesh ready found for them. So down upon
Hispaniola they came by boatloads and shiploads, gathering like a
swarm of mosquitoes, and overrunning the whole western end of the
island. There they established themselves, spending the time
alternately in hunting the wild cattle and buccanning[1] the meat, and
squandering their hardly earned gains in wild debauchery, the
opportunities for which were never lacking in the Spanish West Indies.
[Footnote 1: Buccanning, by which the "buccaneers" gained their name,
was a process of curing thin strips of meat by salting, smoking, and
drying in the sun.]
At first the Spaniards thought nothing of the few travel-worn
Frenchmen who dragged their longboats and hoys up on the beach, and
shot a wild bullock or two to keep body and soul together; but when
the few grew to dozens, and the dozens to scores, and the scores to
hundreds, it was a very different matter, and wrathful grumblings and
mutterings began to be heard among the original settlers.
But of this the careless buccaneers thought never a whit, the only
thing that troubled them being the lack of a more convenient shipping
point than the main island afforded them.
This lack was at last filled by a party of hunters who ventured across
the narrow channel that separated the main island from Tortuga. Here
they found exactly what they needed--a good harbor, just at the
junction of the Windward Channel with the old Bahama Channel--a spot
where four-fifths of the Spanish-Indian trade would pass by their very
wharves.
There were a few Spaniards upon the island, but they were a quiet
folk, and well disposed to make friends with the strangers; but when
more Frenchmen and still more Frenchmen crossed the narrow channel,
until they overran the Tortuga and turned it into one great curing
house for the beef which they shot upon the neighboring island, the
Spaniards grew restive over the matter, just as they had done upon the
larger island.
Accordingly, one fine day there came half a dozen great boatloads of
armed Spaniards, who landed upon the Turtle's Back and sent the
Frenchmen flying to the woods and fastnesses of rocks as the chaff
flies before the thunder gust. That night the Spaniards drank
themselves mad and shouted themselves hoarse over their victory, while
the beaten Frenchmen sullenly paddled their canoes back to the main
island again, and the Sea Turtle was Spanish once more.
But the Spaniards were not contented with such a petty triumph as that
of sweeping the island of Tortuga free from the obnoxious strangers;
down upon Hispaniola they came, flushed with their easy victory, and
determined to root out every Frenchman, until not one single buccaneer
remained. For a time they had an easy thing of it, for each French
hunter roamed the woods by himself, with no better company than his
half-wild dogs, so that when two or three Spaniards would meet such a
one, he seldom if ever came out of the woods again, for even his
resting place was lost.
But the very success of the Spaniards brought their ruin along with
it, for the buccaneers began to combine together for self-protection,
and out of that combination arose a strange union of lawless man with
lawless man, so near, so close, that it can scarce be compared to any
other than that of husband and wife. When two entered upon this
comradeship, articles were drawn up and signed by both parties, a
common stock was made of all their possessions, and out into the woods
they went to seek their fortunes; thenceforth they were as one man;
they lived together by day, they slept together by night; what one
suffered, the other suffered; what one gained, the other gained. The
only separation that came betwixt them was death, and then the
survivor inherited all that the other left. And now it was another
thing with Spanish buccaneer hunting, for two buccaneers, reckless of
life, quick of eye, and true of aim, were worth any half dozen of
Spanish islanders.
By and by, as the French became more strongly organized for mutual
self-protection, they assumed the offensive. Then down they came upon
Tortuga, and now it was the turn of the Spanish to be hunted off the
island like vermin, and the turn of the French to shout their victory.
Having firmly established themselves, a governor was sent to the
French of Tortuga, one M. le Passeur, from the island of St.
Christopher; the Sea Turtle was fortified, and colonists, consisting
of men of doubtful character and women of whose character there could
be no doubt whatever, began pouring in upon the island, for it was
said that the buccaneers thought no more of a doubloon than of a Lima
bean, so that this was the place for the brothel and the brandy shop
to reap their golden harvest, and the island remained French.
[Illustration: On the Tortugas
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September_, 1887]
Hitherto the Tortugans had been content to gain as much as possible
from the homeward-bound vessels through the orderly channels of
legitimate trade. It was reserved for Pierre le Grand to introduce
piracy as a quicker and more easy road to wealth than the semihonest
exchange they had been used to practice.
Gathering together eight-and-twenty other spirits as hardy and
reckless as himself, he put boldly out to sea in a boat hardly large
enough to hold his crew, and running down the Windward Channel and out
into the Caribbean Sea, he lay in wait for such a prize as might be
worth the risks of winning.
For a while their luck was steadily against them; their provisions and
water began to fail, and they saw nothing before them but starvation
or a humiliating return. In this extremity they sighted a Spanish ship
belonging to a "flota" which had become separated from her consorts.
The boat in which the buccaneers sailed might, perhaps, have served
for the great ship's longboat; the Spaniards outnumbered them three to
one, and Pierre and his men were armed only with pistols and
cutlasses; nevertheless this was their one and their only chance, and
they determined to take the Spanish ship or to die in the attempt.
Down upon the Spaniard they bore through the dusk of the night, and
giving orders to the "chirurgeon" to scuttle their craft under them as
they were leaving it, they swarmed up the side of the unsuspecting
ship and upon its decks in a torrent--pistol in one hand and cutlass
in the other. A part of them ran to the gun room and secured the arms
and ammunition, pistoling or cutting down all such as stood in their
way or offered opposition; the other party burst into the great cabin
at the heels of Pierre le Grand, found the captain and a party of his
friends at cards, set a pistol to his breast, and demanded him to
deliver up the ship. Nothing remained for the Spaniard but to yield,
for there was no alternative between surrender and death. And so the
great prize was won.
It was not long before the news of this great exploit and of the vast
treasure gained reached the ears of the buccaneers of Tortuga and
Hispaniola. Then what a hubbub and an uproar and a tumult there was!
Hunting wild cattle and buccanning the meat was at a discount, and the
one and only thing to do was to go a-pirating; for where one such
prize had been won, others were to be had.
In a short time freebooting assumed all of the routine of a regular
business. Articles were drawn up betwixt captain and crew, compacts
were sealed, and agreements entered into by the one party and the
other.
In all professions there are those who make their mark, those who
succeed only moderately well, and those who fail more or less
entirely. Nor did pirating differ from this general rule, for in it
were men who rose to distinction, men whose names, something tarnished
and rusted by the lapse of years, have come down even to us of the
present day.
Pierre Francois, who, with his boatload of six-and-twenty desperadoes,
ran boldly into the midst of the pearl fleet off the coast of South
America, attacked the vice admiral under the very guns of two
men-of-war, captured his ship, though she was armed with eight guns
and manned with threescore men, and would have got her safely away,
only that having to put on sail, their main-mast went by the board,
whereupon the men-of-war came up with them, and the prize was lost.
But even though there were two men-of-war against all that remained of
six-and-twenty buccaneers, the Spaniards were glad enough to make
terms with them for the surrender of the vessel, whereby Pierre
Francois and his men came off scot-free.
Bartholomew Portuguese was a worthy of even more note. In a boat
manned with thirty fellow adventurers he fell upon a great ship off
Cape Corrientes, manned with threescore and ten men, all told.
Her he assaulted again and again, beaten off with the very pressure of
numbers only to renew the assault, until the Spaniards who survived,
some fifty in all, surrendered to twenty living pirates, who poured
upon their decks like a score of blood-stained, powder-grimed devils.
They lost their vessel by recapture, and Bartholomew Portuguese barely
escaped with his life through a series of almost unbelievable
adventures. But no sooner had he fairly escaped from the clutches of
the Spaniards than, gathering together another band of adventurers, he
fell upon the very same vessel in the gloom of the night, recaptured
her when she rode at anchor in the harbor of Campeche under the guns
of the fort, slipped the cable, and was away without the loss of a
single man. He lost her in a hurricane soon afterward, just off the
Isle of Pines; but the deed was none the less daring for all that.
Another notable no less famous than these two worthies was Roch
Braziliano, the truculent Dutchman who came up from the coast of
Brazil to the Spanish Main with a name ready-made for him. Upon the
very first adventure which he undertook he captured a plate ship of
fabulous value, and brought her safely into Jamaica; and when at last
captured by the Spaniards, he fairly frightened them into letting him
go by truculent threats of vengeance from his followers.
Such were three of the pirate buccaneers who infested the Spanish
Main. There were hundreds no less desperate, no less reckless, no less
insatiate in their lust for plunder, than they.
The effects of this freebooting soon became apparent. The risks to be
assumed by the owners of vessels and the shippers of merchandise
became so enormous that Spanish commerce was practically swept away
from these waters. No vessel dared to venture out of port excepting
under escort of powerful men-of-war, and even then they were not
always secure from molestation. Exports from Central and South America
were sent to Europe by way of the Strait of Magellan, and little or
none went through the passes between the Bahamas and the Caribbees.
So at last "buccaneering," as it had come to be generically called,
ceased to pay the vast dividends that it had done at first. The cream
was skimmed off, and only very thin milk was left in the dish.
Fabulous fortunes were no longer earned in a ten days' cruise, but
what money was won hardly paid for the risks of the winning. There
must be a new departure, or buccaneering would cease to exist.
Then arose one who showed the buccaneers a new way to squeeze money
out of the Spaniards. This man was an Englishman--Lewis Scot.
The stoppage of commerce on the Spanish Main had naturally tended to
accumulate all the wealth gathered and produced into the chief
fortified cities and towns of the West Indies. As there no longer
existed prizes upon the sea, they must be gained upon the land, if
they were to be gained at all. Lewis Scot was the first to appreciate
this fact.
Gathering together a large and powerful body of men as hungry for
plunder and as desperate as himself, he descended upon the town of
Campeche, which he captured and sacked, stripping it of everything
that could possibly be carried away.
When the town was cleared to the bare walls Scot threatened to set the
torch to every house in the place if it was not ransomed by a large
sum of money which he demanded. With this booty he set sail for
Tortuga, where he arrived safely--and the problem was solved.
After him came one Mansvelt, a buccaneer of lesser note, who first
made a descent upon the isle of Saint Catharine, now Old Providence,
which he took, and, with this as a base, made an unsuccessful descent
upon Neuva Granada and Cartagena. His name might not have been handed
down to us along with others of greater fame had he not been the
master of that most apt of pupils, the great Captain Henry Morgan,
most famous of all the buccaneers, one time governor of Jamaica, and
knighted by King Charles II.
[Illustration: Capture of the Galleon
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September_, 1887]
After Mansvelt followed the bold John Davis, native of Jamaica, where
he sucked in the lust of piracy with his mother's milk. With only
fourscore men, he swooped down upon the great city of Nicaragua in the
darkness of the night, silenced the sentry with the thrust of a knife,
and then fell to pillaging the churches and houses "without any
respect or veneration."
Of course it was but a short time until the whole town was in an
uproar of alarm, and there was nothing left for the little handful of
men to do but to make the best of their way to their boats. They were
in the town but a short time, but in that time they were able to
gather together and to carry away money and jewels to the value of
fifty thousand pieces of eight, besides dragging off with them a dozen
or more notable prisoners, whom they held for ransom.
And now one appeared upon the scene who reached a far greater height
than any had arisen to before. This was Francois l'Olonoise, who
sacked the great city of Maracaibo and the town of Gibraltar. Cold,
unimpassioned, pitiless, his sluggish blood was never moved by one
single pulse of human warmth, his icy heart was never touched by one
ray of mercy or one spark of pity for the hapless wretches who chanced
to fall into his bloody hands.
Against him the governor of Havana sent out a great war vessel, and
with it a negro executioner, so that there might be no inconvenient
delays of law after the pirates had been captured. But l'Olonoise did
not wait for the coming of the war vessel; he went out to meet it, and
he found it where it lay riding at anchor in the mouth of the river
Estra. At the dawn of the morning he made his attack--sharp,
unexpected, decisive. In a little while the Spaniards were forced
below the hatches, and the vessel was taken. Then came the end. One by
one the poor shrieking wretches were dragged up from below, and one by
one they were butchered in cold blood, while l'Olonoise stood upon the
poop deck and looked coldly down upon what was being done. Among the
rest the negro was dragged upon the deck. He begged and implored that
his life might be spared, promising to tell all that might be asked of
him. L'Olonoise questioned him, and when he had squeezed him dry,
waved his hand coldly, and the poor black went with the rest. Only one
man was spared; him he sent to the governor of Havana with a message
that henceforth he would give no quarter to any Spaniard whom he might
meet in arms--a message which was not an empty threat.
The rise of l'Olonoise was by no means rapid. He worked his way up by
dint of hard labor and through much ill fortune. But by and by, after
many reverses, the tide turned, and carried him with it from one
success to another, without let or stay, to the bitter end.
Cruising off Maracaibo, he captured a rich prize laden with a vast
amount of plate and ready money, and there conceived the design of
descending upon the powerful town of Maracaibo itself. Without loss of
time he gathered together five hundred picked scoundrels from Tortuga,
and taking with him one Michael de Basco as land captain, and two
hundred more buccaneers whom he commanded, down he came into the Gulf
of Venezuela and upon the doomed city like a blast of the plague.
Leaving their vessels, the buccaneers made a land attack upon the fort
that stood at the mouth of the inlet that led into Lake Maracaibo and
guarded the city.
The Spaniards held out well, and fought with all the might that
Spaniards possess; but after a fight of three hours all was given up
and the garrison fled, spreading terror and confusion before them. As
many of the inhabitants of the city as could do so escaped in boats to
Gibraltar, which lies to the southward, on the shores of Lake
Maracaibo, at the distance of some forty leagues or more.
Then the pirates marched into the town, and what followed may be
conceived. It was a holocaust of lust, of passion, and of blood such
as even the Spanish West Indies had never seen before. Houses and
churches were sacked until nothing was left but the bare walls; men
and women were tortured to compel them to disclose where more treasure
lay hidden.
Then, having wrenched all that they could from Maracaibo, they entered
the lake and descended upon Gibraltar, where the rest of the
panic-stricken inhabitants were huddled together in a blind terror.
The governor of Merida, a brave soldier who had served his king in
Flanders, had gathered together a troop of eight hundred men, had
fortified the town, and now lay in wait for the coming of the pirates.
The pirates came all in good time, and then, in spite of the brave
defense, Gibraltar also fell. Then followed a repetition of the scenes
that had been enacted in Maracaibo for the past fifteen days, only
here they remained for four horrible weeks, extorting money--money!
ever money!--from the poor poverty-stricken, pest-ridden souls crowded
into that fever hole of a town.
Then they left, but before they went they demanded still more
money--ten thousand pieces of eight--as a ransom for the town, which
otherwise should be given to the flames. There was some hesitation on
the part of the Spaniards, some disposition to haggle, but there was
no hesitation on the part of l'Olonoise. The torch was set to the town
as he had promised, whereupon the money was promptly paid, and the
pirates were piteously begged to help quench the spreading flames.
This they were pleased to do, but in spite of all their efforts nearly
half of the town was consumed.
After that they returned to Maracaibo again, where they demanded a
ransom of thirty thousand pieces of eight for the city. There was no
haggling here, thanks to the fate of Gibraltar; only it was utterly
impossible to raise that much money in all of the poverty-stricken
region. But at last the matter was compromised, and the town was
redeemed for twenty thousand pieces of eight and five hundred head of
cattle, and tortured Maracaibo was quit of them.
In the Ile de la Vache the buccaneers shared among themselves two
hundred and sixty thousand pieces of eight, besides jewels and bales
of silk and linen and miscellaneous plunder to a vast amount.
Such was the one great deed of l'Olonoise; from that time his star
steadily declined--for even nature seemed fighting against such a
monster--until at last he died a miserable, nameless death at the
hands of an unknown tribe of Indians upon the Isthmus of Darien.
* * * * *
And now we come to the greatest of all the buccaneers, he who stands
pre-eminent among them, and whose name even to this day is a charm to
call up his deeds of daring, his dauntless courage, his truculent
cruelty, and his insatiate and unappeasable lust for gold--Capt. Henry
Morgan, the bold Welshman, who brought buccaneering to the height and
flower of its glory.
Having sold himself, after the manner of the times, for his passage
across the seas, he worked out his time of servitude at the Barbados.
As soon as he had regained his liberty he entered upon the trade of
piracy, wherein he soon reached a position of considerable prominence.
He was associated with Mansvelt at the time of the latter's descent
upon Saint Catharine's Isle, the importance of which spot, as a center
of operations against the neighboring coasts, Morgan never lost sight
of.
The first attempt that Capt. Henry Morgan ever made against any town
in the Spanish Indies was the bold descent upon the city of Puerto del
Principe in the island of Cuba, with a mere handful of men. It was a
deed the boldness of which has never been outdone by any of a like
nature--not even the famous attack upon Panama itself. Thence they
returned to their boats in the very face of the whole island of Cuba,
aroused and determined upon their extermination. Not only did they
make good their escape, but they brought away with them a vast
amount of plunder, computed at three hundred thousand pieces of eight,
besides five hundred head of cattle and many prisoners held for
ransom.
[Illustration: Henry Morgan Recruiting for the Attack
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September_, 1887]
But when the division of all this wealth came to be made, lo! there
were only fifty thousand pieces of eight to be found. What had become
of the rest no man could tell but Capt. Henry Morgan himself. Honesty
among thieves was never an axiom with him.
Rude, truculent, and dishonest as Captain Morgan was, he seems to have
had a wonderful power of persuading the wild buccaneers under him to
submit everything to his judgment, and to rely entirely upon his word.
In spite of the vast sum of money that he had very evidently made away
with, recruits poured in upon him, until his band was larger and
better equipped than ever.
And now it was determined that the plunder harvest was ripe at Porto
Bello, and that city's doom was sealed. The town was defended by two
strong castles thoroughly manned, and officered by as gallant a
soldier as ever carried Toledo steel at his side. But strong castles
and gallant soldiers weighed not a barleycorn with the buccaneers when
their blood was stirred by the lust of gold.
Landing at Puerto Naso, a town some ten leagues westward of Porto
Bello, they marched to the latter town, and coming before the castle,
boldly demanded its surrender. It was refused, whereupon Morgan
threatened that no quarter should be given. Still surrender was
refused; and then the castle was attacked, and after a bitter struggle
was captured. Morgan was as good as his word: every man in the castle
was shut in the guard room, the match was set to the powder magazine,
and soldiers, castle, and all were blown into the air, while through
all the smoke and the dust the buccaneers poured into the town. Still
the governor held out in the other castle, and might have made good
his defense, but that he was betrayed by the soldiers under him. Into
the castle poured the howling buccaneers. But still the governor
fought on, with his wife and daughter clinging to his knees and
beseeching him to surrender, and the blood from his wounded forehead
trickling down over his white collar, until a merciful bullet put an
end to the vain struggle.
Here were enacted the old scenes. Everything plundered that could be
taken, and then a ransom set upon the town itself.
This time an honest, or an apparently honest, division was made of the
spoils, which amounted to two hundred and fifty thousand pieces of
eight, besides merchandise and jewels.
The next towns to suffer were poor Maracaibo and Gibraltar, now just
beginning to recover from the desolation wrought by l'Olonoise. Once
more both towns were plundered of every bale of merchandise and of
every piaster, and once more both were ransomed until everything was
squeezed from the wretched inhabitants.
Here affairs were like to have taken a turn, for when Captain Morgan
came up from Gibraltar he found three great men-of-war lying in the
entrance to the lake awaiting his coming. Seeing that he was hemmed in
in the narrow sheet of water, Captain Morgan was inclined to
compromise matters, even offering to relinquish all the plunder he had
gained if he were allowed to depart in peace. But no; the Spanish
admiral would hear nothing of this. Having the pirates, as he thought,
securely in his grasp, he would relinquish nothing, but would sweep
them from the face of the sea once and forever.
That was an unlucky determination for the Spaniards to reach, for
instead of paralyzing the pirates with fear, as he expected it would
do, it simply turned their mad courage into as mad desperation.
A great vessel that they had taken with the town of Maracaibo was
converted into a fire ship, manned with logs of wood in montera caps
and sailor jackets, and filled with brimstone, pitch, and palm leaves
soaked in oil. Then out of the lake the pirates sailed to meet the
Spaniards, the fire ship leading the way, and bearing down directly
upon the admiral's vessel. At the helm stood volunteers, the most
desperate and the bravest of all the pirate gang, and at the ports
stood the logs of wood in montera caps. So they came up with the
admiral, and grappled with his ship in spite of the thunder of all his
great guns, and then the Spaniard saw, all too late, what his opponent
really was.
[Illustration: Morgan at Porto Bello
_Illustration from_
MORGAN
_by_ E. C. Stedman
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _December, 1888_]
He tried to swing loose, but clouds of smoke and almost instantly a
mass of roaring flames enveloped both vessels, and the admiral was
lost. The second vessel, not wishing to wait for the coming of the
pirates, bore down upon the fort, under the guns of which the cowardly
crew sank her, and made the best of their way to the shore. The third
vessel, not having an opportunity to escape, was taken by the pirates
without the slightest resistance, and the passage from the lake was
cleared. So the buccaneers sailed away, leaving Maracaibo and
Gibraltar prostrate a second time.
And now Captain Morgan determined to undertake another venture, the
like of which had never been equaled in all of the annals of
buccaneering. This was nothing less than the descent upon and the
capture of Panama, which was, next to Cartagena, perhaps, the most
powerful and the most strongly fortified city in the West Indies.
In preparation for this venture he obtained letters of marque from the
governor of Jamaica, by virtue of which elastic commission he began
immediately to gather around him all material necessary for the
undertaking.
When it became known abroad that the great Captain Morgan was about
undertaking an adventure that was to eclipse all that was ever done
before, great numbers came flocking to his standard, until he had
gathered together an army of two thousand or more desperadoes and
pirates wherewith to prosecute his adventure, albeit the venture
itself was kept a total secret from everyone. Port Couillon, in the
island of Hispaniola, over against the Ile de la Vache, was the place
of muster, and thither the motley band gathered from all quarters.
Provisions had been plundered from the mainland wherever they could be
obtained, and by the 24th of October, 1670 (O. S.), everything was in
readiness.
The island of Saint Catharine, as it may be remembered, was at one
time captured by Mansvelt, Morgan's master in his trade of piracy. It
had been retaken by the Spaniards, and was now thoroughly fortified by
them. Almost the first attempt that Morgan had made as a master pirate
was the retaking of Saint Catharine's Isle. In that undertaking he had
failed; but now, as there was an absolute need of some such place as a
base of operations, he determined that the place _must_ be taken. And
it was taken.
The Spaniards, during the time of their possession, had fortified it
most thoroughly and completely, and had the governor thereof been as
brave as he who met his death in the castle of Porto Bello, there
might have been a different tale to tell. As it was, he surrendered it
in a most cowardly fashion, merely stipulating that there should be a
sham attack by the buccaneers, whereby his credit might be saved. And
so Saint Catharine was won.
The next step to be taken was the capture of the castle of Chagres,
which guarded the mouth of the river of that name, up which river the
buccaneers would be compelled to transport their troops and provisions
for the attack upon the city of Panama. This adventure was undertaken
by four hundred picked men under command of Captain Morgan himself.
The castle of Chagres, known as San Lorenzo by the Spaniards, stood
upon the top of an abrupt rock at the mouth of the river, and was one
of the strongest fortresses for its size in all of the West Indies.
This stronghold Morgan must have if he ever hoped to win Panama.
The attack of the castle and the defense of it were equally fierce,
bloody, and desperate. Again and again the buccaneers assaulted, and
again and again they were beaten back. So the morning came, and it
seemed as though the pirates had been baffled this time. But just at
this juncture the thatch of palm leaves on the roofs of some of the
buildings inside the fortifications took fire, a conflagration
followed, which caused the explosion of one of the magazines, and in
the paralysis of terror that followed, the pirates forced their way
into the fortifications, and the castle was won. Most of the Spaniards
flung themselves from the castle walls into the river or upon the
rocks beneath, preferring death to capture and possible torture; many
who were left were put to the sword, and some few were spared and held
as prisoners.
So fell the castle of Chagres, and nothing now lay between the
buccaneers and the city of Panama but the intervening and trackless
forests.
And now the name of the town whose doom was sealed was no secret.
Up the river of Chagres went Capt. Henry Morgan and twelve hundred
men, packed closely in their canoes; they never stopped, saving now
and then to rest their stiffened legs, until they had come to a place
known as Cruz de San Juan Gallego, where they were compelled to leave
their boats on account of the shallowness of the water.
Leaving a guard of one hundred and sixty men to protect their boats as
a place of refuge in case they should be worsted before Panama, they
turned and plunged into the wilderness before them.
There a more powerful foe awaited them than a host of Spaniards with
match, powder, and lead--starvation. They met but little or no
opposition in their progress; but wherever they turned they found
every fiber of meat, every grain of maize, every ounce of bread or
meal, swept away or destroyed utterly before them. Even when the
buccaneers had successfully overcome an ambuscade or an attack, and
had sent the Spaniards flying, the fugitives took the time to strip
their dead comrades of every grain of food in their leathern sacks,
leaving nothing but the empty bags.
Says the narrator of these events, himself one of the expedition,
"They afterward fell to eating those leathern bags, as affording
something to the ferment of their stomachs."
Ten days they struggled through this bitter privation, doggedly
forcing their way onward, faint with hunger and haggard with weakness
and fever. Then, from the high hill and over the tops of the forest
trees, they saw the steeples of Panama, and nothing remained between
them and their goal but the fighting of four Spaniards to every one of
them--a simple thing which they had done over and over again.
Down they poured upon Panama, and out came the Spaniards to meet them;
four hundred horse, two thousand five hundred foot, and two thousand
wild bulls which had been herded together to be driven over the
buccaneers so that their ranks might be disordered and broken. The
buccaneers were only eight hundred strong; the others had either
fallen in battle or had dropped along the dreary pathway through the
wilderness; but in the space of two hours the Spaniards were flying
madly over the plain, minus six hundred who lay dead or dying behind
them.
As for the bulls, as many of them as were shot served as food there
and then for the half-famished pirates, for the buccaneers were never
more at home than in the slaughter of cattle.
Then they marched toward the city. Three hours' more fighting and they
were in the streets, howling, yelling, plundering, gorging,
dram-drinking, and giving full vent to all the vile and nameless lusts
that burned in their hearts like a hell of fire. And now followed the
usual sequence of events--rapine, cruelty, and extortion; only this
time there was no town to ransom, for Morgan had given orders that it
should be destroyed. The torch was set to it, and Panama, one of the
greatest cities in the New World, was swept from the face of the
earth. Why the deed was done, no man but Morgan could tell. Perhaps
it was that all the secret hiding places for treasure might be brought
to light; but whatever the reason was, it lay hidden in the breast of
the great buccaneer himself. For three weeks Morgan and his men abode
in this dreadful place; and they marched away with _one hundred and
seventy-five_ beasts of burden loaded with treasures of gold and
silver and jewels, besides great quantities of merchandise, and six
hundred prisoners held for ransom.
[Illustration: The Sacking of Panama
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]
Whatever became of all that vast wealth, and what it amounted to, no
man but Morgan ever knew, for when a division was made it was found
that there was only _two hundred pieces of eight to each man_.
When this dividend was declared, a howl of execration went up, under
which even Capt. Henry Morgan quailed. At night he and four other
commanders slipped their cables and ran out to sea, and it was said
that these divided the greater part of the booty among themselves. But
the wealth plundered at Panama could hardly have fallen short of a
million and a half of dollars. Computing it at this reasonable figure,
the various prizes won by Henry Morgan in the West Indies would stand
as follows: Panama, $1,500,000; Porto Bello, $800,000; Puerto del
Principe, $700,000; Maracaibo and Gibraltar, $400,000; various
piracies, $250,000--making a grand total of $3,650,000 as the vast
harvest of plunder. With this fabulous wealth, wrenched from the
Spaniards by means of the rack and the cord, and pilfered from his
companions by the meanest of thieving, Capt. Henry Morgan retired from
business, honored of all, rendered famous by his deeds, knighted by
the good King Charles II, and finally appointed governor of the rich
island of Jamaica.
Other buccaneers followed him. Campeche was taken and sacked, and even
Cartagena itself fell; but with Henry Morgan culminated the glory of
the buccaneers, and from that time they declined in power and wealth
and wickedness until they were finally swept away.
The buccaneers became bolder and bolder. In fact, so daring were their
crimes that the home governments, stirred at last by these outrageous
barbarities, seriously undertook the suppression of the freebooters,
lopping and trimming the main trunk until its members were scattered
hither and thither, and it was thought that the organization was
exterminated. But, so far from being exterminated, the individual
members were merely scattered north, south, east, and west, each
forming a nucleus around which gathered and clustered the very worst
of the offscouring of humanity.
The result was that when the seventeenth century was fairly packed
away with its lavender in the store chest of the past, a score or more
bands of freebooters were cruising along the Atlantic seaboard in
armed vessels, each with a black flag with its skull and crossbones at
the fore, and with a nondescript crew made up of the tags and remnants
of civilized and semicivilized humanity (white, black, red, and
yellow), known generally as marooners, swarming upon the decks below.
Nor did these offshoots from the old buccaneer stem confine their
depredations to the American seas alone; the East Indies and the
African coast also witnessed their doings, and suffered from them, and
even the Bay of Biscay had good cause to remember more than one visit
from them.
Worthy sprigs from so worthy a stem improved variously upon the parent
methods; for while the buccaneers were content to prey upon the
Spaniards alone, the marooners reaped the harvest from the commerce of
all nations.
So up and down the Atlantic seaboard they cruised, and for the fifty
years that marooning was in the flower of its glory it was a sorrowful
time for the coasters of New England, the middle provinces, and the
Virginias, sailing to the West Indies with their cargoes of salt fish,
grain, and tobacco. Trading became almost as dangerous as
privateering, and sea captains were chosen as much for their
knowledge of the flintlock and the cutlass as for their seamanship.
As by far the largest part of the trading in American waters was
conducted by these Yankee coasters, so by far the heaviest blows, and
those most keenly felt, fell upon them. Bulletin after bulletin came
to port with its doleful tale of this vessel burned or that vessel
scuttled, this one held by the pirates for their own use or that one
stripped of its goods and sent into port as empty as an eggshell from
which the yolk had been sucked. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
Charleston suffered alike, and worthy ship owners had to leave off
counting their losses upon their fingers and take to the slate to keep
the dismal record.
"Maroon--to put ashore on a desert isle, as a sailor, under pretense
of having committed some great crime." Thus our good Noah Webster
gives us the dry bones, the anatomy, upon which the imagination may
construct a specimen to suit itself.
It is thence that the marooners took their name, for marooning was one
of their most effective instruments of punishment or revenge. If a
pirate broke one of the many rules which governed the particular band
to which he belonged, he was marooned; did a captain defend his ship
to such a degree as to be unpleasant to the pirates attacking it, he
was marooned; even the pirate captain himself, if he displeased his
followers by the severity of his rule, was in danger of having the
same punishment visited upon him which he had perhaps more than once
visited upon another.
The process of marooning was as simple as terrible. A suitable place
was chosen (generally some desert isle as far removed as possible from
the pathway of commerce), and the condemned man was rowed from the
ship to the beach. Out he was bundled upon the sand spit; a gun, a
half dozen bullets, a few pinches of powder, and a bottle of water
were chucked ashore after him, and away rowed the boat's crew back to
the ship, leaving the poor wretch alone to rave away his life in
madness, or to sit sunken in his gloomy despair till death mercifully
released him from torment. It rarely if ever happened that anything
was known of him after having been marooned. A boat's crew from some
vessel, sailing by chance that way, might perhaps find a few chalky
bones bleaching upon the white sand in the garish glare of the
sunlight, but that was all. And such were marooners.
By far the largest number of pirate captains were Englishmen, for,
from the days of good Queen Bess, English sea captains seemed to have
a natural turn for any species of venture that had a smack of piracy
in it, and from the great Admiral Drake of the old, old days, to the
truculent Morgan of buccaneering times, the Englishman did the boldest
and wickedest deeds, and wrought the most damage.
First of all upon the list of pirates stands the bold Captain Avary,
one of the institutors of marooning. Him we see but dimly, half hidden
by the glamouring mists of legends and tradition. Others who came
afterward outstripped him far enough in their doings, but he stands
pre-eminent as the first of marooners of whom actual history has been
handed down to us of the present day.
When the English, Dutch, and Spanish entered into an alliance to
suppress buccaneering in the West Indies, certain worthies of Bristol,
in old England, fitted out two vessels to assist in this laudable
project; for doubtless Bristol trade suffered smartly from the Morgans
and the l'Olonoises of that old time. One of these vessels was named
the _Duke_, of which a certain Captain Gibson was the commander and
Avary the mate.
Away they sailed to the West Indies, and there Avary became impressed
by the advantages offered by piracy, and by the amount of good things
that were to be gained by very little striving.
One night the captain (who was one of those fellows mightily addicted
to punch), instead of going ashore to saturate himself with rum at the
ordinary, had his drink in his cabin in private. While he lay snoring
away the effects of his rum in the cabin, Avary and a few other
conspirators heaved the anchor very leisurely, and sailed out of the
harbor of Corunna, and through the midst of the allied fleet riding at
anchor in the darkness.
By and by, when the morning came, the captain was awakened by the
pitching and tossing of the vessel, the rattle and clatter of the
tackle overhead, and the noise of footsteps passing and repassing
hither and thither across the deck. Perhaps he lay for a while turning
the matter over and over in his muddled head, but he presently rang
the bell, and Avary and another fellow answered the call.
"What's the matter?" bawls the captain from his berth.
"Nothing," says Avary, coolly.
"Something's the matter with the ship," says the captain. "Does she
drive? What weather is it?"
"Oh no," says Avary; "we are at sea."
"At sea?"
"Come, come!" says Avary: "I'll tell you; you must know that I'm the
captain of the ship now, and you must be packing from this here cabin.
We are bound to Madagascar, to make all of our fortunes, and if you're
a mind to ship for the cruise, why, we'll be glad to have you, if you
will be sober and mind your own business; if not, there is a boat
alongside, and I'll have you set ashore."
The poor half-tipsy captain had no relish to go a-pirating under the
command of his backsliding mate, so out of the ship he bundled, and
away he rowed with four or five of the crew, who, like him, refused to
join with their jolly shipmates.
The rest of them sailed away to the East Indies, to try their fortunes
in those waters, for our Captain Avary was of a high spirit, and had
no mind to fritter away his time in the West Indies, squeezed dry by
buccaneer Morgan and others of lesser note. No, he would make a bold
stroke for it at once, and make or lose at a single cast.
On his way he picked up a couple of like kind with himself--two
sloops off Madagascar. With these he sailed away to the coast of
India, and for a time his name was lost in the obscurity of uncertain
history. But only for a time, for suddenly it flamed out in a blaze of
glory. It was reported that a vessel belonging to the Great Mogul,
laden with treasure and bearing the monarch's own daughter upon a holy
pilgrimage to Mecca (they being Mohammedans), had fallen in with the
pirates, and after a short resistance had been surrendered, with the
damsel, her court, and all the diamonds, pearls, silk, silver, and
gold aboard. It was rumored that the Great Mogul, raging at the insult
offered to him through his own flesh and blood, had threatened to wipe
out of existence the few English settlements scattered along the
coast; whereat the honorable East India Company was in a pretty state
of fuss and feathers. Rumor, growing with the telling, has it that
Avary is going to marry the Indian princess, willy-nilly, and will
turn rajah, and eschew piracy as indecent. As for the treasure itself,
there was no end to the extent to which it grew as it passed from
mouth to mouth.
Cracking the nut of romance and exaggeration, we come to the kernel of
the story--that Avary did fall in with an Indian vessel laden with
great treasure (and possibly with the Mogul's daughter), which he
captured, and thereby gained a vast prize.
Having concluded that he had earned enough money by the trade he had
undertaken, he determined to retire and live decently for the rest of
his life upon what he already had. As a step toward this object, he
set about cheating his Madagascar partners out of their share of what
had been gained. He persuaded them to store all the treasure in his
vessel, it being the largest of the three; and so, having it safely in
hand, he altered the course of his ship one fine night, and when the
morning came the Madagascar sloops found themselves floating upon a
wide ocean without a farthing of the treasure for which they had
fought so hard, and for which they might whistle for all the good it
would do them.
[Illustration: Marooned
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]
At first Avary had a great part of a mind to settle at Boston, in
Massachusetts, and had that little town been one whit less bleak and
forbidding, it might have had the honor of being the home of this
famous man. As it was, he did not like the looks of it, so he sailed
away to the eastward, to Ireland, where he settled himself at
Biddeford, in hopes of an easy life of it for the rest of his days.
Here he found himself the possessor of a plentiful stock of jewels,
such as pearls, diamonds, rubies, etc., but with hardly a score of
honest farthings to jingle in his breeches pocket. He consulted with a
certain merchant of Bristol concerning the disposal of the stones--a
fellow not much more cleanly in his habits of honesty than Avary
himself. This worthy undertook to act as Avary's broker. Off he
marched with the jewels, and that was the last that the pirate saw of
his Indian treasure.
Perhaps the most famous of all the piratical names to American ears
are those of Capt. Robert Kidd and Capt. Edward Teach, or
"Blackbeard."
Nothing will be ventured in regard to Kidd at this time, nor in regard
to the pros and cons as to whether he really was or was not a pirate,
after all. For many years he was the very hero of heroes of piratical
fame; there was hardly a creek or stream or point of land along our
coast, hardly a convenient bit of good sandy beach, or hump of rock,
or water-washed cave, where fabulous treasures were not said to have
been hidden by this worthy marooner. Now we are assured that he never
was a pirate, and never did bury any treasure, excepting a certain
chest, which he was compelled to hide upon Gardiner's Island--and
perhaps even it was mythical.
So poor Kidd must be relegated to the dull ranks of simply respectable
people, or semirespectable people at best.
But with "Blackbeard" it is different, for in him we have a real,
ranting, raging, roaring pirate _per se_--one who really did bury
treasure, who made more than one captain walk the plank, and who
committed more private murders than he could number on the fingers of
both hands; one who fills, and will continue to fill, the place to
which he has been assigned for generations, and who may be depended
upon to hold his place in the confidence of others for generations to
come.
Captain Teach was a Bristol man born, and learned his trade on board
of sundry privateers in the East Indies during the old French
war--that of 1702--and a better apprenticeship could no man serve. At
last, somewhere about the latter part of the year 1716, a privateering
captain, one Benjamin Hornigold, raised him from the ranks and put him
in command of a sloop--a lately captured prize--and Blackbeard's
fortune was made. It was a very slight step, and but the change of a
few letters, to convert "privateer" into "pirate," and it was a very
short time before Teach made that change. Not only did he make it
himself, but he persuaded his old captain to join with him.
And now fairly began that series of bold and lawless depredations
which have made his name so justly famous, and which placed him among
the very greatest of marooning freebooters.
"Our hero," says the old historian who sings of the arms and bravery
of this great man--"our hero assumed the cognomen of Blackbeard from
that large quantity of hair which, like a frightful meteor, covered
his whole face, and frightened America more than any comet that
appeared there in a long time. He was accustomed to twist it with
ribbons into small tails, after the manner of our Ramillies wig, and
turn them about his ears. In time of action he wore a sling over his
shoulders, with three brace of pistols, hanging in holsters like
bandoleers; he stuck lighted matches under his hat, which, appearing
on each side of his face, and his eyes naturally looking fierce and
wild, made him altogether such a figure that imagination cannot form
an idea of a Fury from hell to look more frightful."
The night before the day of the action in which he was killed he sat
up drinking with some congenial company until broad daylight. One of
them asked him if his poor young wife knew where his treasure was
hidden. "No," says Blackbeard; "nobody but the devil and I knows where
it is, and the longest liver shall have all."
As for that poor young wife of his, the life that he and his rum-crazy
shipmates led her was too terrible to be told.
For a time Blackbeard worked at his trade down on the Spanish Main,
gathering, in the few years he was there, a very neat little fortune
in the booty captured from sundry vessels; but by and by he took it
into his head to try his luck along the coast of the Carolinas; so off
he sailed to the northward, with quite a respectable little fleet,
consisting of his own vessel and two captured sloops. From that time
he was actively engaged in the making of American history in his small
way.
He first appeared off the bar of Charleston Harbor, to the no small
excitement of the worthy town of that ilk, and there he lay for five
or six days, blockading the port, and stopping incoming and outgoing
vessels at his pleasure, so that, for the time, the commerce of the
province was entirely paralyzed. All the vessels so stopped he held as
prizes, and all the crews and passengers (among the latter of whom was
more than one provincial worthy of the day) he retained as though they
were prisoners of war.
And it was a mightily awkward thing for the good folk of Charleston to
behold day after day a black flag with its white skull and crossbones
fluttering at the fore of the pirate captain's craft, over across the
level stretch of green salt marshes; and it was mightily unpleasant,
too, to know that this or that prominent citizen was crowded down with
the other prisoners under the hatches.
One morning Captain Blackbeard finds that his stock of medicine is
low. "Tut!" says he, "we'll turn no hair gray for that." So up he
calls the bold Captain Richards, the commander of his consort the
_Revenge_ sloop, and bids him take Mr. Marks (one of his prisoners),
and go up to Charleston and get the medicine. There was no task that
suited our Captain Richards better than that. Up to the town he rowed,
as bold as brass. "Look ye," says he to the governor, rolling his quid
of tobacco from one cheek to another--"look ye, we're after this and
that, and if we don't get it, why, I'll tell you plain, we'll burn
them bloody crafts of yours that we've took over yonder, and cut the
weasand of every clodpoll aboard of 'em."
There was no answering an argument of such force as this, and the
worshipful governor and the good folk of Charleston knew very well
that Blackbeard and his crew were the men to do as they promised. So
Blackbeard got his medicine, and though it cost the colony two
thousand dollars, it was worth that much to the town to be quit of
him.
They say that while Captain Richards was conducting his negotiations
with the governor his boat's crew were stumping around the streets of
the town, having a glorious time of it, while the good folk glowered
wrathfully at them, but dared venture nothing in speech or act.
Having gained a booty of between seven and eight thousand dollars from
the prizes captured, the pirates sailed away from Charleston Harbor to
the coast of North Carolina.
And now Blackbeard, following the plan adopted by so many others of
his kind, began to cudgel his brains for means to cheat his fellows
out of their share of the booty.
At Topsail Inlet he ran his own vessel aground, as though by accident.
Hands, the captain of one of the consorts, pretending to come to his
assistance, also grounded _his_ sloop. Nothing now remained but for
those who were able to get away in the other craft, which was all that
was now left of the little fleet. This did Blackbeard with some forty
of his favorites. The rest of the pirates were left on the sand spit
to await the return of their companions--which never happened.
As for Blackbeard and those who were with him, they were that much
richer, for there were so many the fewer pockets to fill. But even yet
there were too many to share the booty, in Blackbeard's opinion, and
so he marooned a parcel more of them--some eighteen or twenty--upon a
naked sand bank, from which they were afterward mercifully rescued by
another freebooter who chanced that way--a certain Major Stede Bonnet,
of whom more will presently be said. About that time a royal
proclamation had been issued offering pardon to all pirates in arms
who would surrender to the king's authority before a given date. So up
goes Master Blackbeard to the Governor of North Carolina and makes his
neck safe by surrendering to the proclamation--albeit he kept tight
clutch upon what he had already gained.
And now we find our bold Captain Blackbeard established in the good
province of North Carolina, where he and His Worship the Governor
struck up a vast deal of intimacy, as profitable as it was pleasant.
There is something very pretty in the thought of the bold sea rover
giving up his adventurous life (excepting now and then an excursion
against a trader or two in the neighboring sound, when the need of
money was pressing); settling quietly down into the routine of old
colonial life, with a young wife of sixteen at his side, who made the
fourteenth that he had in various ports here and there in the world.
Becoming tired of an inactive life, Blackbeard afterward resumed his
piratical career. He cruised around in the rivers and inlets and
sounds of North Carolina for a while, ruling the roost and with never
a one to say him nay, until there was no bearing with such a pest any
longer. So they sent a deputation up to the Governor of Virginia
asking if he would be pleased to help them in their trouble.
There were two men-of-war lying at Kicquetan, in the James River, at
the time. To them the Governor of Virginia applies, and plucky
Lieutenant Maynard, of the _Pearl_, was sent to Ocracoke Inlet to
fight this pirate who ruled it down there so like the cock of a walk.
There he found Blackbeard waiting for him, and as ready for a fight as
ever the lieutenant himself could be. Fight they did, and while it
lasted it was as pretty a piece of business of its kind as one could
wish to see. Blackbeard drained a glass of grog, wishing the
lieutenant luck in getting aboard of him, fired a broadside, blew some
twenty of the lieutenant's men out of existence, and totally crippled
one of his little sloops for the balance of the fight. After that, and
under cover of the smoke, the pirate and his men boarded the other
sloop, and then followed a fine old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict
betwixt him and the lieutenant. First they fired their pistols, and
then they took to it with cutlasses--right, left, up and down, cut and
slash--until the lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the hilt.
Then Blackbeard would have finished him off handsomely, only up steps
one of the lieutenant's men and fetches him a great slash over the
neck, so that the lieutenant came off with no more hurt than a cut
across the knuckles.
At the very first discharge of their pistols Blackbeard had been shot
through the body, but he was not for giving up for that--not he. As
said before, he was of the true roaring, raging breed of pirates, and
stood up to it until he received twenty more cutlass cuts and five
additional shots, and then fell dead while trying to fire off an empty
pistol. After that the lieutenant cut off the pirate's head, and
sailed away in triumph, with the bloody trophy nailed to the bow of
his battered sloop.
Those of Blackbeard's men who were not killed were carried off to
Virginia, and all of them tried and hanged but one or two, their
names, no doubt, still standing in a row in the provincial records.
But did Blackbeard really bury treasures, as tradition says, along the
sandy shores he haunted?
[Illustration: Blackbeard Buries His Treasure
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]
Master Clement Downing, midshipman aboard the _Salisbury_, wrote a
book after his return from the cruise to Madagascar, whither the
_Salisbury_ had been ordered, to put an end to the piracy with which
those waters were infested. He says:
"At Guzarat I met with a Portuguese named Anthony de
Sylvestre; he came with two other Portuguese and two
Dutchmen to take on in the Moor's service, as many Europeans
do. This Anthony told me he had been among the pirates, and
that he belonged to one of the sloops in Virginia when
Blackbeard was taken. He informed me that if it should be my
lot ever to go to York River or Maryland, near an island
called Mulberry Island, provided we went on shore at the
watering place, where the shipping used most commonly to
ride, that there the pirates had buried considerable sums of
money in great chests well clamped with iron plates. As to
my part, I never was that way, nor much acquainted with any
that ever used those parts; but I have made inquiry, and am
informed that there is such a place as Mulberry Island. If
any person who uses those parts should think it worth while
to dig a little way at the upper end of a small cove, where
it is convenient to land, he would soon find whether the
information I had was well grounded. Fronting the landing
place are five trees, among which, he said, the money was
hid. I cannot warrant the truth of this account; but if I
was ever to go there, I should find some means or other to
satisfy myself, as it could not be a great deal out of my
way. If anybody should obtain the benefit of this account,
if it please God that they ever come to England, 'tis hoped
they will remember whence they had this information."
Another worthy was Capt. Edward Low, who learned his trade of
sail-making at good old Boston town, and piracy at Honduras. No one
stood higher in the trade than he, and no one mounted to more lofty
altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness. 'Tis strange
that so little has been written and sung of this man of might, for he
was as worthy of story and of song as was Blackbeard.
It was under a Yankee captain that he made his first cruise--down to
Honduras, for a cargo of logwood, which in those times was no better
than stolen from the Spanish folk.
One day, lying off the shore, in the Gulf of Honduras, comes Master
Low and the crew of the whaleboat rowing across from the beach, where
they had been all morning chopping logwood.
"What are you after?" says the captain, for they were coming back with
nothing but themselves in the boat.
"We're after our dinner," says Low, as spokesman of the party.
"You'll have no dinner," says the captain, "until you fetch off
another load."
"Dinner or no dinner, we'll pay for it," says Low, wherewith he up
with a musket, squinted along the barrel, and pulled the trigger.
Luckily the gun hung fire, and the Yankee captain was spared to steal
logwood a while longer.
All the same, that was no place for Ned Low to make a longer stay, so
off he and his messmates rowed in a whaleboat, captured a brig out at
sea, and turned pirates.
He presently fell in with the notorious Captain Lowther, a fellow
after his own kidney, who put the finishing touches to his education
and taught him what wickedness he did not already know.
And so he became a master pirate, and a famous hand at his craft, and
thereafter forever bore an inveterate hatred of all Yankees because of
the dinner he had lost, and never failed to smite whatever one of them
luck put within his reach. Once he fell in with a ship off South
Carolina--the _Amsterdam Merchant_, Captain Williamson, commander--a
Yankee craft and a Yankee master. He slit the nose and cropped the
ears of the captain, and then sailed merrily away, feeling the better
for having marred a Yankee.
New York and New England had more than one visit from the doughty
captain, each of which visits they had good cause to remember, for he
made them smart for it.
Along in the year 1722 thirteen vessels were riding at anchor in front
of the good town of Marblehead. Into the harbor sailed a strange
craft. "Who is she?" say the townsfolk, for the coming of a new vessel
was no small matter in those days.
Who the strangers were was not long a matter of doubt. Up goes the
black flag, and the skull and crossbones to the fore.
"'Tis the bloody Low," say one and all; and straightway all was
flutter and commotion, as in a duck pond when a hawk pitches and
strikes in the midst.
It was a glorious thing for our captain, for here were thirteen Yankee
crafts at one and the same time. So he took what he wanted, and then
sailed away, and it was many a day before Marblehead forgot that
visit.
Some time after this he and his consort fell foul of an English sloop
of war, the _Greyhound_, whereby they were so roughly handled that Low
was glad enough to slip away, leaving his consort and her crew behind
him, as a sop to the powers of law and order. And lucky for them if no
worse fate awaited them than to walk the dreadful plank with a bandage
around the blinded eyes and a rope around the elbows. So the consort
was taken, and the crew tried and hanged in chains, and Low sailed off
in as pretty a bit of rage as ever a pirate fell into.
The end of this worthy is lost in the fogs of the past: some say that
he died of a yellow fever down in New Orleans; it was not at the end
of a hempen cord, more's the pity.
Here fittingly with our strictly American pirates should stand Major
Stede Bonnet along with the rest. But in truth he was only a poor
half-and-half fellow of his kind, and even after his hand was fairly
turned to the business he had undertaken, a qualm of conscience would
now and then come across him, and he would make vast promises to
forswear his evil courses.
However, he jogged along in his course of piracy snugly enough until
he fell foul of the gallant Colonel Rhett, off Charleston Harbor,
whereupon his luck and his courage both were suddenly snuffed out with
a puff of powder smoke and a good rattling broadside. Down came the
"Black Roger" with its skull and crossbones from the fore, and Colonel
Rhett had the glory of fetching back as pretty a cargo of scoundrels
and cutthroats as the town ever saw.
After the next assizes they were strung up, all in a row--evil apples
ready for the roasting.
"Ned" England was a fellow of different blood--only he snapped his
whip across the back of society over in the East Indies and along the
hot shores of Hindustan.
The name of Capt. Howel Davis stands high among his fellows. He was
the Ulysses of pirates, the beloved not only of Mercury, but of
Minerva.
He it was who hoodwinked the captain of a French ship of double the
size and strength of his own, and fairly cheated him into the
surrender of his craft without the firing of a single pistol or the
striking of a single blow; he it was who sailed boldly into the port
of Gambia, on the coast of Guinea, and under the guns of the castle,
proclaiming himself as a merchant trading for slaves.
The cheat was kept up until the fruit of mischief was ripe for the
picking; then, when the governor and the guards of the castle were
lulled into entire security, and when Davis's band was scattered about
wherever each man could do the most good, it was out pistol, up
cutlass, and death if a finger moved. They tied the soldiers back to
back, and the governor to his own armchair, and then rifled wherever
it pleased them. After that they sailed away, and though they had not
made the fortune they had hoped to glean, it was a good snug round sum
that they shared among them.
[Illustration: Walking the Plank
_Illustration from_
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
_by_ Howard Pyle
_Originally published in_
HARPER'S MAGAZINE, _August and September, 1887_]
Their courage growing high with success, they determined to attempt
the island of Del Principe--a prosperous Portuguese settlement on the
coast. The plan for taking the place was cleverly laid, and would have
succeeded, only that a Portuguese negro among the pirate crew turned
traitor and carried the news ashore to the governor of the fort.
Accordingly, the next day, when Captain Davis came ashore, he found
there a good strong guard drawn up as though to honor his coming. But
after he and those with him were fairly out of their boat, and well
away from the water side, there was a sudden rattle of musketry, a
cloud of smoke, and a dull groan or two. Only one man ran out from
under that pungent cloud, jumped into the boat, and rowed away; and
when it lifted, there lay Captain Davis and his companions all of a
heap, like a pile of old clothes.
Capt. Bartholomew Roberts was the particular and especial pupil of
Davis, and when that worthy met his death so suddenly and so
unexpectedly in the unfortunate manner above narrated, he was chosen
unanimously as the captain of the fleet, and he was a worthy pupil of
a worthy master. Many were the poor fluttering merchant ducks that
this sea hawk swooped upon and struck; and cleanly and cleverly were
they plucked before his savage clutch loosened its hold upon them.
"He made a gallant figure," says the old narrator, "being dressed in a
rich crimson waistcoat and breeches and red feather in his hat, a gold
chain around his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it, a sword in
his hand, and two pair of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling
flung over his shoulders according to the fashion of the pyrates."
Thus he appeared in the last engagement which he fought--that with the
_Swallow_--a royal sloop of war. A gallant fight they made of it,
those bulldog pirates, for, finding themselves caught in a trap
betwixt the man-of-war and the shore, they determined to bear down
upon the king's vessel, fire a slapping broadside into her, and then
try to get away, trusting to luck in the doing, and hoping that their
enemy might be crippled by their fire.
Captain Roberts himself was the first to fall at the return fire of
the _Swallow_; a grapeshot struck him in the neck, and he fell forward
across the gun near to which he was standing at the time. A certain
fellow named Stevenson, who was at the helm, saw him fall, and
thought he was wounded. At the lifting of the arm the body rolled over
upon the deck, and the man saw that the captain was dead. "Whereupon,"
says the old history, "he" [Stevenson] "gushed into tears, and wished
that the next shot might be his portion." After their captain's death
the pirate crew had no stomach for more fighting; the "Black Roger"
was struck, and one and all surrendered to justice and the gallows.
* * * * *
Such is a brief and bald account of the most famous of these pirates.
But they are only a few of a long list of notables, such as Captain
Martel, Capt. Charles Vane (who led the gallant Colonel Rhett, of
South Carolina, such a wild-goose chase in and out among the sluggish
creeks and inlets along the coast), Capt. John Rackam, and Captain
Anstis, Captain Worley, and Evans, and Philips, and others--a score or
more of wild fellows whose very names made ship captains tremble in
their shoes in those good old times.
And such is that black chapter of history of the past--an evil
chapter, lurid with cruelty and suffering, stained with blood and
smoke. Yet it is a written chapter, and it must be read. He who
chooses may read betwixt the lines of history this great truth: Evil
itself is an instrument toward the shaping of good. Therefore the
history of evil as well as the history of good should be read,
considered, and digested.