Amid an infernal hilarity, the officers’ cabins were now looted. The
little chests of personal belongings were smashed in and the contents
tumbled out to be grabbed by whoever could get to them first. Watches,
cheap trinkets of jewelry, silk handkerchiefs and what little money
could be found were divided with shouts of dispute. But two or three
boxes containing considerable coins and the property of the shipowners
were withdrawn for more decorous and equitable division.
Everything in the way of liquor was rushed to the quarter-deck and
a night-long orgy ensued. The ship somehow wallowed along while its
masters reveled. With a bottle of wine in one hand, the greedily gulped
liquid streaming down his bushy beard, and a cutlass in the other, one
Williams, a proper rascal, smote his weapon ringingly against a cannon
and cried, “Captain Gow, you are welcome--welcome to your command.”
In this way, informally but effectively, second mate John Gow accepted
his promotion to the office of captain.
Captain Gow politely returned the kindness by saying, “Mr. Williams,
you shall be our lieutenant.” Thereupon the nominations were closed,
as parliamentarians say, and the elections unanimously carried. The
night went along in a roaring good humor till the placid eye of
morning, slowly opening in the watery east, was shocked to find the
decks red with an unholy stain.
As a matter of fact, the whole affair had been carried by a group of
eight men, six of whom had been summoned from their hammocks by the
watchword “Who fires first?”, the remaining two being up on deck. From
the circumstance we have just seen, John Gow must have been a party to
the criminal enterprise, as he indeed was.
Four men were over the side, eight were conspirators; thus there
remained twelve men of the crew more or less neutral. These men fled
for hiding to the shrouds, into the lazaret, or anywhere that might
shield them from the passionate tempest.
A very similar circumstance has often engaged the interest of the
story-tellers. If this were a fictitious narration of the conventional
sort, this thrilling situation would be artfully resolved by the
wonderful recovery of the ship and the ultimate defeat of the mutineers
by the faithful and ingenious twelve. If it be permissible to point out
the deficiency of such enthralling yarns, as related to practical fact,
it would lie in the circumstance that by the time the ship had been
recaptured there would not be enough men left alive to work it, and, at
least according to the canny calculations of Lloyd’s, it would thereby
become an impossible risk.
John Gow had a ship to man, and as no ship probably in all history
ever started out with too many hands, generally too few, the _George_
must be supposed to have been no exception to the common rule; hence
while Gow might personally have liked to toss all opposition over the
bulwarks, he realized that to do so would have been tantamount to
wrecking his vessel, so another method of approach to the problem was
indicated.
First, however, he had to get his lively eight in hand. As the morning
waves slapped foamingly across the slanting deck, the challenge to
orderly work was obvious. He therefore, in a regular quarter-deck talk
to the men, demanded their obedience and good conduct, concluding with
the announcement that alone ever assured harmony to a pirate ship,--an
equal division of the spoils to all, with a double share to the ship,
that is, the captain.
Next he sent a deputation with drawn cutlasses to hunt out the
fugitives and bring them before him under the persuasion of peaceful
treatment. Out of their refuges came the frightened and tousled seamen,
doubtless full dubious of the efficacy of the promise of him whom they
now regarded as a monster. Lining them up, he thus addressed them:
“Men, the inhumanity of the captain, of which you as well as we have
complained, produced the consequences of last night. We are now going
on a cruise. You may join with us, and if anything good comes to us you
shall have your equal share. All I require is obedience and good order.
You who have not been in this conspiracy have nothing to fear from us;
do your duty as seamen and you will be well paid.”
Four of the twelve grinned and stepped over to the ranks of the
mutineers; eight stood dumb, answering never a word. It took a great
deal of moral courage to stand amid those eight, deprived of even their
dirks and utterly helpless in the hands of a crowd capable of the
horrors which the eight had witnessed.
In the story of the sea, the bravery of naval battle, the courageous
deportment of men on sinking ships, the unselfish giving of one’s life
for another, all these have been properly remembered with all the
glowing artifice of rhetoric, and the heroes’ names treasured in the
marine annals of their country. Unhonored and unsung, for the most
part, are those obscure sailors who, without the incitement of martial
camaraderie, without the applause of onlookers, without expectation of
fame--in the most dejected and hopeless of situations--have manfully
stood by their notion of conscientious duty against their mutinous or
piratical fellows. Nevertheless, these unknown ones ascended the very
height of true heroism.
Conduct of this kind brands as a lie the cynical saying that “every man
has his price”, for some men will not accept life itself in payment for
principle.
Quelch, the Boston pirate, had his sturdy protestants; so too did Major
Bonnet, colleague of the infamous Blackbeard, and so did many other sea
rogues. In truth, almost every instance of the sort exhibits the moral
hardihood of an incorruptible minority.
John Gow’s eight were delivered over to the rough abuse of Lieutenant
Williams, who flogged them at will, and set men to keep them at work
at the point of the cutlass. On them fell all the hard labor of the
ship and they became the drudges of whatever roistering rascal chose to
command them.
At the same time, there is a final leniency about Gow’s treatment of
this minority which lifts him from the charge of entirely purposeless
ferocity. Purposeless ferocity is a tradition of piracy, but a curious
thing is that not one of the pirates, of the major type, whose crimes
were afterwards subjected to judicial examination, is particularly
marked with a simple lust of cruelty. Tales of brutality abound
concerning ruffians like Lafitte, England, Low, Lewis, Rackam and
the rest of the roguish gallery, which may or may not be true. The
same stories circulated about Kidd, Quelch, Avery and Gow, but when
compared with the judicial records, the source alone of this series of
pirate tales, of the activities of these last-named men, merely wanton
cruelty is notably missing. On the contrary, in not a few cases there
is a surprising magnanimity manifested by men of undoubtedly criminal
disposition.
Lives were taken in the actual capture of ships, but when the pirates
gained possession there is no judicial record of plank-walking or other
inhuman treatment. More often than not, the pirate chief recruited new
hands from among the captives, though apparently without compulsion,
and those that refused to join the black flag were commonly allowed to
return to their ship and go their way. Plunder was the chief quest of
the pirates, and that obtained their interest in ships or men ceased.
If the pirate coveted the ship for his own use, he generally disposed
of its crew by signing on those who would and putting ashore those who
would not. Not that he was a tender chap--he could be very frightful
where he conceived his profit required violence--but merely sportive
torture was not a characteristic of those remembered in the only
authentic sources of the subject,--the printed trials of the pirates.
If this is true of those of whom we have definite information, it
follows that the sanguinary accounts of those who never came to trial
must be considerably thinned out by doubt.
Gow in his method followed the invariable practice of piracy: he stole
his ship. They all began that way. In all the judicial reports of
piracy we have examined only Major Stede Bonnet bought and outfitted
a vessel for what was then called “the grand account.” In two cases
that we know of, the disaffection of the crews made possible their
corruption; Henry Avery, mate of the _Charles the Second_, capitalized
the discontent of the men at not receiving their pay from the Spanish
Government, and as Gow, in his quarter-deck speech declared, short
rations and harsh treatment combined to drive the crew of the _George_
into mutiny. Probably the captains of neither the _Charles the Second_
nor the _George_ were individually responsible for the condition; they
were themselves creatures of circumstance, but as representatives
of the owners or charterers they became the tangible objects of
undiscriminating violence.
The men who managed mutinous plots such as these were much more shrewd
in their selection of conspirators than were the men who attempted
the great political plots of history, for the sea plotters seldom or
never had a betrayal. They never approached the entire crew, but picked
out a positive core, who would hold fast, seize ship and weapons and
dominate the situation. Perhaps this resolute conduct rose from the
personal sense of wrong under which the individual plotter suffered;
self-interest only could have produced so tight an adhesion to the
group. The first part of the game called for few rather than many men,
and apparently Gow could have persuaded four more men to come in with
him than he actually did.
Properly, the matter was a mutiny but its development into piracy was
inevitable, foreseen and provided for. In their position, they might as
well hang for a sheep as a lamb.
Another typically piratical trick followed; they painted out _George_
and substituted for it the name _Revenge_, of all ship’s names the best
beloved of pirates.
The sailmaker hemmed up a strip of black bunting and under the funereal
ensign they turned their prow to the affronted sea.