I
From the thickly forested heights of Cape Masoala one can, without
being one’s self observed, sweep, with an easy turning of the head, the
broad Indian Ocean that pounds perpetually upon the rocky beach at the
base of the Cape; the blue placidity of Antongil Bay up to its farthest
reaches; the huddle of huts which make the town of Mananara, on the
opposite shore, and the tiny island of St. Mary’s snuggling close to
the other portal of the bay.
That is to suppose that you wish to see and not be seen,--a rather
uncommon circumstance in the lives of plain, honest men, but certainly
a great advantage to those who conceive that their particular and
peculiar interests require secrecy. Cape Masoala has known both sort
of folk. The peering botanist has explored it for his specimens;
the French surveyor has mapped every inch of it, and the olive-hued
Malagassy native has for centuries gone about the Cape on his innocent
occasions, all quite careless as to who did or did not observe them.
Certain other gentry, however, have from time to time made a use of
the ancient Cape not entirely commendable. Sad to relate, such persons
not infrequently came ashore from ships wickedly sailing beneath the
black bunting of piracy. These climbed the steep, wooded slopes not
for the purpose of feasting their souls on the beautiful; but for the
pernicious design of observing those worthy people who passed in and
out of Antongil Bay upon the lawful errands of commerce. In March,
1702, to take a notable instance of this reprehensible use of the Cape,
not many less than fifty men lay sprawled in the tropic undergrowth
of the headland watching with quick eyes the tardy evolutions of two
square-rigged, stumpily built ships working their way alongside the
rickety wharf of Mananara.
At length the two ships were berthed, and up their riggings men,
looking like small boys at that distance, climbed and began to take in
the canvas. One of the watchers in the wood yawned, stretched his lean
arms high over his head and said, as he rattled the thick gold rings in
his ears, “We’ll soon be to sea again, Cap’n.”
The man called captain nodded. A great bullock of a fellow he
stood, hands on hips, gazing frowningly down at the bay, apparently
constructing the strategy of an impending move. He had a flattish,
three-cornered hat--somewhat too small for his head--pushed forward
over his eyes; the breeches, stockings and buckled shoes of the period
had evidently had long and hard wear in contrast with the brilliant
sash about his waist from which protruded the handle of a dirk. One
great, sinewy hand dangled a belt to which was fastened a thick
cutlass. If he were captain, then all these fellows strewn about the
grass must be his subordinates. Honest men they no doubt accounted
themselves, but their looks belied them; no ordinary man would have
cared to picnic with that group in their present beautiful retreat.
Their complexions were as colorful as the sashes which almost all
of them affected: here was the blond Scandinavian, with his blue,
wistful, deep-sea eyes and tawny hair and beard: beside him would be
a swart Continental--French predominantly--chattering constantly and
continually winding his beard in ringlets about his forefinger, and
not a few men of the blackest ebon, the hue of the West Indian negro,
not the lighter tint of the native Sakalava. Whatever his color,
every man there was capable of committing any violence; that was his
qualification for companionship. A hard group, and how hard must the
leader of it be! Well, John Bowen, the brawny chieftain, was a hard man.
Although maritime history has failed to spell his name with capital
letters, John Bowen was one of the most willing little workers in the
red trade of sea robbery. Where he came from and what his finish was
we do not certainly know, but while his keel danced its brief hour upon
the waters of the Indian Ocean, John Bowen displayed those qualities
of resolution, ruthlessness and rapidity which ordinarily earned one a
rapid promotion in piracy, and not infrequently a sequential elevation,
before an admiring and applauding populace, at the end of the king’s
rope.
While, as we say, his origins are obscure, there is little doubt that
John Bowen came to this Cape Masoala, in the island of Madagascar,
directly or indirectly from the West Indies, which for generations was
the _alma mater_ of all the best pirates. A great school of maritime
crime was this West Indian group, having, at one time or another, on
its faculty such eminent masters as Blackbeard, lecturer on Violent
Deaths at Sea, and whose subsidiary course on Ship Scuttling was
deservedly popular. Then, too, many earnest young students from all
over the world were drawn thither by Morgan’s notable presentation of
the subject of the Assault, Capture and Loot of Municipalities. In
fact, the whole scheme of instruction was very thorough. Two prominent
practitioners of the art of piracy, captains Kidd and Avery, so
esteemed the advantages there offered that both, after distinguishing
themselves in the actual practice, resorted there for postgraduate
work. There was a finish, a fineness about John Bowen’s work which
clearly indicated the superiority of his academic training, and stamped
him as one of the most promising graduates. Everybody in the Caribbean
anticipated a great future for him, and, so far as we can follow his
career, these friendly prophecies were amply fulfilled.
Evidently when he faced the world with his sheepskin in his hand and
the blush of collegiate honors still on his brow, John Bowen had
determined to set up business for himself in the East Indies, a fact
which indicated the clarity of his judgment and real appreciation of
opportunity, for in the East Indies of his day it was so easy for a
competent pirate to get rich as to make one feel that his abilities had
never been properly tested. But, of course, there were accidents and
unavoidable miscalculations, and John must be supposed to have run into
one of those inescapable setbacks to which even pure genius is liable,
from the fact that he is perched upon a headland of Madagascar with a
crew but without a ship. Of course, time and opportunity would correct
that state of affairs, for the matter of appropriating a ship was
just elementary freshman work in the university of piracy from which
he had graduated, _summa cum laude_. And now, as John gazed down on
these two ships below him, he realized with satisfaction that time and
opportunity were in happy concurrence.
He selected four Englishmen--two, as it chanced, were from New
York--and, directing the rest to meet him at dark in the woods behind
Mananara, descended to the beach, where a broken-down native boat was
staked. The party crossed the bay and Bowen himself went down to the
water front to look at the newly arrived ships. It was now towards
evening, and from the cookhouse rose a thin, blue spear of smoke on
each ship where the supper was being prepared. Sailors were hanging
over the bulwarks, smoking long pipes, and laughing and joking in the
burring tongue of Scotland. They noticed the hulking white stranger
loafing about the wharf, but made no comment, for one does not long
knock about the waters of Madagascar without dulling the faculty of
surprise. Bowen marked the names of the two vessels, _Content_ and
_Speedy Return_. This latter name he thought unfortunate in view of all
the circumstances. _Speedy Return_? Not if Jack Bowen knew anything
about the matter.
To get the full value out of this adventure, we have to know a little
something about these two doomed ships and why and how they happened to
be in this little port of Mananara at this particular time. If we lift
the fly-blown, time-stained pages of history we get a queerish kind
of a yarn in this connection. It only needs a momentary glance, and
when we have taken it, we shall the more appreciate the significance
of the sinister meddling of Jack Bowen, who, of course, knew nothing
of what we shall know and if he had known he would not have cared two
straws,--in fact, would have enjoyed his game all the more.
In June, 1695, some half a dozen years before Jack Bowen comes on the
stage, a group of Scotch noblemen, with some other folk of lesser
influence, procured a statute from the English parliament and a
charter from the English Crown, authorizing them to incorporate an
African-Indian trading company. Their chief object was to found a
Scotch colony in the Isthmus of Panama, or Darien, as it was then
called. Everybody was going to get immensely rich out of the venture.
But the noblemen were not stingy about it; they decided to offer
the stock of their corporation to the public. They evidently had a
wonderful advertising manager, for an old writer tells us that when the
stock was put on the market “the nobility, the gentry, the merchants,
the people, the royal burghs without the exception of one, and most
of the other public bodies subscribed. Young women threw their little
fortunes into the stock; widows sold their jointures to get command of
money for the same purpose. Almost in an instant four hundred thousand
pounds were subscribed in Scotland, although it be now known that there
was not at that time above eight hundred thousand pounds of cash in the
kingdom.”
That is what you may call promoting,--to get half the cash of the
kingdom. It was the last chance anybody ever had of that sort in
Scotland.
Everything went so well that the English East India Company became
exceedingly jealous and not a little fearful that a powerful rival was
rising in the north to challenge its hold in the Far East. In politics,
in the financial world, in every way it possibly could, the English
company sought to thwart the Scotchmen and upon the whole succeeded
very satisfactorily in handicapping the latter. Being Scotchmen,
however, they went right ahead, “satisfied of the envy of the English
and of their consciousness of the advantages which were to flow to
Scotland” from the Darien colony. Six ships were built, each able to
carry two hundred emigrants, and on the twenty-sixth of July, 1698,
the whole city of Edinburgh streamed down upon Leith to see the Darien
voyagers depart, amidst the tears and praises and prayers of relations
and friends, and of their countrymen. Many seamen and soldiers, whose
services had been refused, because more offered themselves than were
needed, were found hid in the ships, and when ordered ashore, clung to
the ropes and timbers, imploring to go without reward.
The colony, however, was a dismal and tragic failure. When the people
arrived at Darien, the Dutch East India Company--instigated it was
believed by agents of the English company--forbade the factors of
their forts in that region to give help of any sort to the Scotchmen.
Expecting to get supplies locally and being thus refused, “the
colonists fell into diseases from bad food and want of food” and almost
all of them faded and died. Eight months of horror lagged along and
then the colony broke up, only a handful surviving to stagger to the
ship for home. In the meanwhile, however, another crowd of thirteen
hundred colonists had left Scotland for Darien amid the same hurrah,
only to meet the same fate as had the first, and to send back as
survivors only a pitiful remnant of thirty.
Scotland laid all the blame upon England in general and the East India
Company in particular and deeply smoldered the already traditional
hatred between the northern and southern peoples.
Withal, the Scotch African-Indian trading company kept intact, but
took on the character of a more private commercial corporation. It
entered in the orthodox fashion on the East India trade wherever it
could circumvent the English monopoly, and to this end sent forth its
young but not unpromising fleet to Indian waters, and of this fleet the
_Content_ and the _Speedy Return_ were fair representatives.
But see what an unhappy destiny pursues this Scotch company! Here it
is, trying to recuperate from the terrible disaster of Darien, just,
as they say of an invalid, getting about again, when wretched, wicked
and utterly reprehensible Jack Bowen is here, in far-off Madagascar,
lurking about in the woods ready to inflict upon the poor company
another terrible adversity!
On May 26, 1701, the _Speedy Return_ and the _Content_ had sailed from
Glasgow for the East Indies. What great things they were to accomplish!
How they were to return soon--speedily, as the name would seem to
hope--laden with gold and gain! The name of John Bowen did not mean a
thing in Glasgow. Such is life. They lumbered, after the fashion of
the blunt ships of that age, first to Guinea, then to the Cape of Good
Hope--propitious name--and there, as well as at Guinea, they discovered
there was not a little profit to be had by postponing their arrival at
Malabar and the Indian trade proper and diverting themselves to the
slave business. In this traffic then they came over from the mainland
of Africa to the island of St. Mary’s, in Madagascar, where they loaded
their holds with the negroid Sakalaves sold to them by the Hovitas and
other superior tribes of the island.
So cargoed, they went on from St. Mary’s, Madagascar, to Mauritius,
where they discharged their load of slaves and in March, 1702, were
back again in Madagascar, at a place they called Maritan, but which
has probably become Mananara, ready for another batch of blacks, and,
though naturally this was beyond their expectation, the thunderbolt of
as desperate a gang of pirates as ever cast dice with the hangman.
Gradually Bowen’s shipless crew gathered in the woods back of the town
and impatiently waited for morning. When the tropic sun at length
surged up abruptly from beneath the far, thin, eastern line of the
Indian Ocean, they girded their belts about them, looked to their
weapons, hefting their cutlasses and attending to the priming of their
pistols, and waited the cheerful word of onslaught. Bowen called
together the four English-speaking men he had first selected the day
before, on the chance of being able to make immediate use of them, and
left with them for the very outskirts of the town, where they settled
themselves in the lush vegetation and watched their prey. Before
separating from the main group, Bowen, like a true general, addressed
his troops. “If it comes to trouble,” he said succinctly, “and ye find
ye against a man bigger than ye, take your tools quickly”--here he
tapped his cutlass, “and cut him down to your size.”
The plan was for the four men and Bowen to board the ship _Speedy
Return_ by stratagem, when, if the chance was good, Bowen would sound
the bo’sun’s whistle which he carried for that purpose and the reserves
were to come up in full force.
Early after breakfast the lurkers noticed what was evidently the
captain of the _Speedy Return_, accompanied by a group of men, come
ashore and set off through the woods to the neighboring villages,
evidently in the transaction of their traffic in human beings. The
day burned to high noon and high noon waned towards evening, and
still the cautious Bowen, not risking a fizzle in this his great and
long-sought opportunity, held his hounds in the leash. Quite late in
the afternoon, when it was reasonably certain the captain had gone for
a considerable time, and when the remnant of the crews of the two ships
were scattered, some about the town and others dozing on the hot decks,
John Bowen and his four aides stepped from the brush, strode past the
thatched native huts and out on the dock. They ran up the ladder and
were on the deck of the _Speedy Return_.
“Ho, mate,” called Bowen, grinning genially to what was evidently the
ship’s cook, carrying a butcher knife in one hand and a leg of a sheep
in the other, “who’s the master of this ship?”
“Cap’n Rab Drummond, frae Edinburgh,” burred the cook, “and who be ye,
mon?”
“Oh, we’re nobody; just come aboard, looking to buy a bit of breadstuff
and tobacco, if ye’ve such to spare.”
There were not more than a dozen men aboard, according to Bowen’s swift
calculation. Over on the _Content_, a few yards away, there appeared
still fewer. The hour had struck. Bowen drew a pistol from the arsenal
of his sash and thrust it against the full girth of the cook. “Go on
to your cookhouse, my lad,” he commanded. “You’re going to have a few
friends for supper.” Thus the chef received notice of the change of
management. He took it dully and obediently; anything may happen when
one goes so far from Glasgie. Sharp and shrill the signal whistle beat
echoingly from the cliffs of the Cape to the heights above the town,
and with a terrifying shout, the rest of Bowen’s men hurled themselves
over the bulwarks of both the _Speedy Return_ and the _Content_. The
gang that boarded the latter had a definitely prescribed job to do and
expeditiously they did it. First of all, they ran the gaping sailors
off her decks and on to those of the _Speedy Return_; then, hastening
back, they smeared the decks of the _Content_ with pitch, set a train
to the small powder magazine, and as the thick brown-black clouds of
smoke rolled sluggishly over the sides, they fled, whooping as demons
may be supposed to whoop at the mouth of the Inferno, for the _Speedy
Return_. Her sides they clutched even as she moved away in tow of the
ship’s boats, out into the bay, where she picked up a helping breeze;
where her hastily hoisted sails began to tauten and whence she began
quite prettily to glide out into the wide, the welcome ocean. John
Bowen was on a quarter-deck again; it mattered to him little who
claimed that same quarterdeck; he was on it and the quartermaster at
the whipstaff swung the helm to this side and that, in obedience to
his orders. He felt the wind of the free ocean upon his breast and
lifted up his great bellowing voice in song. Ha! ha! he! ho! in a jiffy
the tables had been turned; John Bowen had had the shore and no ship
and now Captain Robert Drummond, of Edinburgh, out of Glasgow, had all
the shore he cared to use and no ship.
No stenographer was present to record what Captain Drummond said when
he came out of the woods and found the black embers of the _Content_
knocking about the piling or bobbing far out on the bay, and of his
ship only the stupid, inarticulate remembrance of the gaping Malagassy
natives, but without doubt it was something pretty. Captain Stewart
was master of the _Content_ and probably had been absent with Drummond
of the _Speedy Return_--although he might have been on his own ship
and been captured with the rest of the crew; nobody has given us the
precise information--but if he came out of the woods at the same time
that Drummond did, there is no doubt the inhabitants beheld two of
the angriest Scotchmen they had ever seen or ever were likely to see.
We don’t know what happened to Stewart, but a man who spent fifteen
years in captivity among the Madagascans came home with the story that
Drummond found his way to Tullea, on the southwest coast of the island,
where, in an altercation with a Jamaican negro, who was of course one
of those far-faring West Indian pirates, he received a wallop from the
black rogue which deprived the Scotch African-Indian trading company
of a faithful servant and the rising British Merchant Marine of a
competent shipmaster.
Now, Bowen, between the two appropriated vessels, very likely gathered
in some thirty men, all well-seasoned sailors. We know the names of
only two of these honest tars to whom this vivid change of circumstance
occurred; Israel Phippany and Peter Freeland. Some of these captives
accepted the fate of the sea and even counted themselves among the
pirates; others, naturally, found the situation not to their liking
and stood by for an opportunity to escape. It was all one to their
swaggering captors, whether a man liked it or not; a sailor he was and
sail that ship he should. None of that topmast business for the bold
pirate boys; in a jam they might lend a hand at working the vessel,
but ordinarily they insisted that fighting was their specialty and
avoided the rope and the tar bucket as quite beneath their dignity. But
they were fair in their way, for when it came to a fight they did not
call on the shellbacks for help; that too would have been essentially
undignified for a master pirate. This gang of Bowen stood in a rough
relation to the sailors aboard as the marines do to a war vessel. Many
ships, of course, were completely manned by confessed pirates, and
when that was so they had to do sailor work, but whenever they could
they were great little chaps for pressing men aboard especially to
do the ship’s chores. So the _Speedy Return_ being happily in their
possession, the pirates lay back under the awnings and drank copiously
of arrack, the universal intoxicant of the East Indies, the while their
bold chieftain drove his keel along for joyful fights and glorious
plunder.
Swinging smartly around the northern nose of Madagascar, and shooting
westerly, Bowen set the course for the Comoro Islands, some three
hundred and fifty miles northwest of Madagascar and two hundred miles
east of the coast of Africa. Apparently John was going to lose no time
in his business, for the Comoros would be the nearest likely place
to pick up a prize; no waiting until he made the distant littoral of
India, you notice. His ultimate destination was Rajapore, way up in
what is now called the Bombay presidency, but he did not care to go as
the crow flies, but rather as the vulture does; pausing for anything
that might be carrion.
The Comoros was a pretty good guess. At Mayotta, one of those islands,
they found a ship commanded by George Weoley, which was loading with
sugar, rum, cocoa oil and taking in fresh beef. The fact that Weoley’s
vessel was in harbor did not mean anything to John Bowen; if the island
itself had been navigable he would have put a crew on it and sailed
it away. The _Speedy Return_ shoved alongside their victim, and
casually, as men doing an easy job away below their real abilities, a
handful of fighters dropped to her decks. Nobody interfered with them
but the unimaginative first mate, and his protest was met with a crack
on the head which created an immediate promotion for the second mate.
A little more than a year after this misfortune Captain Weoley wrote
a plaintive letter to Mr. Pennyng, “Chief of the English East India
Company’s Factory at Calicut,” giving a full and detailed account of
the naughtiness of John Bowen, wherein he states that at Mayotta he
fell into Bowen’s hands and was “detained by him after they had slain
my chief mate and plundered what they pleased.”
Poor Mr. Weoley and the rest of his people were taken into the
forecastle of the _Speedy Return_ and thus recruited that ship’s list
of able seamen. Whether Bowen burnt, scuttled or simply abandoned
Weoley’s craft the good captain does not inform us, but we may be sure
that when he headed off for India, he left that unfortunate vessel no
better for his visit.
During the long and uneventful voyage--uneventful, that is, so far
as the piracy game went--Captain Bowen, alas! did not observe those
little amenities between brother captains which so pleasantly mitigate
the sternness of the sea. Doubtless Mr. Weoley had to do many things
aboard which drove a bitter iron into his soul. One day he might be
lending a hand with the art of navigation if the load of rum captured
at Mayotta should happen temporarily to incapacitate Captain Bowen;
next day he might pitiably have to fetch and carry water at the behest
of the sprawling villains, or again bend his elderly and stiffening
back at the eternal task of pumping, and pumping ship in the Indian
Ocean must have been--well, hot. He says himself that he received “many
hazards of life and abuses from those villains.” Not the least of his
grievances was that of listening through the long hours of a torrid
night to the liquored Bowen boasting of his wickedness. That remark of
Weoley’s places Bowen as the true, deliberate, almost romantic pirate
and approximates him to the traditional pirate of fiction.
Off the coast of Malabar, Bowen nearly had to sober up, for he was
come to his proper fishing grounds. Up and down this roadstead passed
much of the commerce of the East Indies. Quite a medley it was, to be
sure. There were craft from the ten-ton sloop belonging to a petty
local merchant, up through increasing tonnage chartered by Moors,
Persians, Armenians, Hindoos, to the two-and three-decker so-called
East Indiaman, the ship of the august and imperial East India Company
itself. In disturbing this traffic captain William Kidd had found a
fortune in less than six months, and numerous pirates of many nations
had here easily enriched themselves.
Captain Bowen, who must have been something of a joker as were so many
of his outlaw colleagues, doubtless enjoyed immensely taking a ship
with the name of _Prosperous_, which he did shortly after his entry
into Indian waters proper. With a chuckle he realized that he had made
the owners of the _Content_ discontented; he intended the _Speedy
Return_ should go home neither slowly nor speedily, and it is very
likely that he put the charterers of the _Prosperous_ into bankruptcy.
It might have been of a better omen in those days to name your ship the
very opposite to your hopes; say call the _Content_ the _Dissatisfied_;
the _Speedy Return_ the _Never Come Back_ and the _Prosperous_, _Hard
Times_,--in which case a marauding pirate would at least lose the
dramatic pleasure of surprise.
Having bagged the _Prosperous_, Bowen put a crew on board and used
her for an auxiliary, and with this augmented command in a few
months, according to Weoley, he took “six sail of ship” and “hundreds
ruined.” The last of these six ships was one from Surat, evidently of
considerable size, for Bowen transferred all hands to her and then,
being as drunk as a fool, entertained the amazed city of Rajapore
with a grand nautical bonfire made up both of the _Prosperous_ and
the _Speedy Return_. How uneasily the stockholders of the Scotch
Indian-African trading company would have turned in their beds had
that lurid light gleamed against their far-off window panes!
This man Bowen was an incorrigible ship burner, which proves that he
had not the heart of a true sailorman or the first instincts of a real
conqueror of the sea.
On this captured Surat ship, when Bowen got over his pyrotechnic spree,
he counted up his men and found, so Weoley records, “70 Lascars (native
of India) and 146 fighting men (the Lascars being used as sailors) of
which part are 43 English, the better part of the company French, the
rest Negroes (our Jamaica friends), Dutch and other nations that cries
‘yaw’.” Quaint foible! Amid all his sufferings poor Captain Weoley
could still find a feeling of irritation for men that “cries ‘yaw’”
instead of “yes.”
Bowen steered from Rajapore down along the Malabar coast until he came
to Cochin, a Portuguese settlement and where a miscalled Portuguese
war fleet made its anchorage. Those old sieves were the local maritime
joke, and a brisk pirate would think little of using them for mooring
buoys. This aggregation had once gone out after the formidable Captain
Kidd and much to its surprise and pain had found him. It had never
been known to attempt anything notable since. Certainly, they did not
trouble John Bowen. As Bowen dawdled along in these parts, touching at
this and that small port for frolic or land robbery or both, “about
three leagues to the northward of Cochin” Weoley states that “I got
clear of the pirates.” Thus ended the worst seven months in the life of
that worthy mariner.
What became of Bowen after Weoley escaped from him we do not know, at
least so far as the authentic record we are consulting is concerned.
Probably he met the violent end of his ilk; one thing is sure, however;
he was never hanged for the piracy of the _Speedy Return_, but--and
this makes the dread, dark sequel of the crime--another man who knew
not Bowen, Robert Drummond or the ill-fated ship _Speedy Return_
suffered by one of the most notable miscarriages of justice known to
the law as the murderer of Captain Drummond and the pirate of the
_Speedy Return_.