15 minute read
PIRATES
from The Chap Issue 110
by thechap
History
THE TRUE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN
Chris Sullivan on the men and women who plundered the Spanish fleet off the coast of the West Indies in the 17th century, and founded a society based on a surprisingly egalitarian code of conduct
n hearing the word, pirate, or for that
Omatter, buccaneer, one instantly conjures up that ever-so-endearing image of a chap in knee-high boots, gold earrings, one leg and an eye patch singing ‘yo-ho ho and a bottle of rum’. And, even though this perhaps clichéd conception of a devil-may-care rogue is in some ways true, your common or garden pirate was a reluctant adventurer who reacted against cruel and unjust circumstances meted out by the authorities. It was society and its treatment of them that made them outlaws. But as the man said, “One man’s outlaw is another man’s freedom fighter”.
The term buccaneer originally described a rather disparate group of individuals mainly drawn from British, Irish, Dutch, Flemish and French stock, whose ranks included castaways, escaped convicts, refugees – both religious and political – escaped bonded slaves, Maroons (African slaves who’d escaped the Spanish) so-called mutineers and indigenous Carib Indians. Drawn together by their mutual hatred of the Spanish, they initially inhabited the forests of Northern Hispaniola and eked a meagre existence by killing and selling the wild cattle and pigs that roamed the countryside. The name ‘Buccaneer’, derived from the French ‘boucan’, refers to the wooden frame they employed to cure their meat. The Spanish, in a reckless fit of pique, decided that the bucaneros’ rather unkempt presence was irksome and so attempted to round them up and cart them off to gaol or slavery. When that failed, they then tried to starve them into surrender by killing and driving away the beasts they lived off. The once peaceful but now starving and irate buccaneers joined together as a gangcome-army hell-bent on a mission to steal as much Spanish property, kill as many Spaniards and rob as many Spanish ships as was humanly possible.
In 1630, with the Spanish hot on their trail, the buccaneers moved to the small island of Tortuga and banded together under the ‘Confederacy of the Brethren of the Coast’, soon capturing Spanish ships and arms with which they fortified the island. By nature lawless and by inclination violent, they existed under a stern code of discipline and sailed under a set of drawn up articles that were known as the Custom of The Coast.
Even though governed by strict guidance, some buccaneers were said to have gone rather over the top when dealing with the Spanish. The Frenchman Francis L’Ollonais, known as The Flail Of The Spanish, was heralded for his penchant for torturing Spanish captives. He would often tear out the tongues of his victims in an effort to discover the whereabouts of their treasure, and was once reputed to have cut out the heart of a Spaniard with his cutlass and chewed on it. Curiously L’Ollonais ended his days at the hands of native South American Indians, who ate him.
Another pirate captain, Dutchman Roche Brasiliano, decided it appropriate to roast a few Spaniards over a fire while still alive, just because they would not tell him where their pigs were
Tomas De Torquemada
corralled. At other times he would happily cut off an offending Spanish limb and let said victim watch his own appendage roast. Yet, however excessive many of these barbarities appear, they must be viewed in relation to the times. The Spanish had led the way in the International League of Qualified Torturers via the auspices of the Grand Inquisitor, Tomas De Torquemada. Many of the Tortuga-based buccaneers such as L’Ollonais had been indentured slaves on the Spanish plantations and had suffered unbelievable cruelties at the hands of their captors, from whom they learnt the gentle art of brutality, while Brasiliano had been tortured to the brink of death by the Inquisition at Campeche Mexico.
Many might attest that the Spanish deserved such treatment, having raped, slaughtered and subjugated indigenous millions of Incas, Aztecs, Maya and Ramas and robbed them of their last gold nugget, mainly in the name of God. After Pope Alexander VI’s papal bullof 1493 not only sanctioned but encouraged slavery of non-believers, the Spanish jumped on the slave trade to facilitate their empirical zeal and transported almost as many from Africa to the New World as did the English.
Posthumous reputations have for centuries relied on patronage. The Sea Dogs of the Armada – Sir John Hawkins, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Drake – were privateers and slavers, the latter nicknamed ‘my pirate,’ by Elizabeth I.
THE PIRATE’S MODUS OPERANDI
Favouring small, fast and easily manoeuvered cedar sloops carrying as many as 50 men and 11-14 guns, the pirates were hard to catch and, as resident in the islands, they knew the waters far better than any foreign captain. Lying in wait in some shadowy inlet, they monitored ships as they left port burdened with booty, then boldly sidled up to the vessel and took it. The British pirates favored cannon, while the French buccaneers preferred small arms and knives and simply shot at the helmsman, incapacitated the rudder and then swarmed aboard, pistols cocked and knives clenched between teeth.
Soon they realised that there was more to piracy than pure vengeance and discovered that a good living was to be had by plundering. In fact, it was the Tortuga buccaneer who precipitated the bankruptcy of the Dutch East India Company. And as word got around, their ranks were bolstered by all manner of miscreants, including former seamen disillusioned by the harsh treatment aboard Navy vessels, mutineers and able seamen captured after an attack and coerced into signing ‘The Articles’.
Many such seamen had been pressganged, often bashed over the head and carried unconscious on board, to find themselves under the rule of some tyrannical British Royal Navy Captain. Many pirates had been petty criminals or political dissenters, all banished to the Caribbean by the courts to work out their sentence as slaves on the plantations. By the mid 17th Century, the British West Indies had become a dumping ground for thousands of so-called malefactors, who had been sold by their governments to landowners to work the sugar plantations and prevented from returning home when their they had worked out their contract. At this time the slave trade was in full flow and it’s been estimated that 40 percent of all pirates were black slaves who’d escaped the plantations. The pirate community was the only community in the Western world where blacks had exactly the same opportunities and rights as their white confederates.
AN ALMIGHTY FORCE TO BE RECKONED WITH
By 1655 the British had wrested Jamaica from the Spanish, and early governors offered letters of marque (papers that legalised their piracy) to buccaneers wanting to settle in Port Royal, as long as they continued to harass the Spanish and thus aid the vulnerable colony. With a vast harbour able to shelter five hundred ships, sympathetic bureaucrats and the perfect location at the centre of the trade routes, Port Royal became pirate Valhalla. Port Royal in the mid 17th century had more alehouses, gambling dens and brothels than any other place on earth. Jamaica became the centre of buccaneering activity in the Caribbean and therefore the world.
In 1664, Sir Thomas Modyford was made governor of Jamaica and landed with 700 planters and their slaves, marking the wholesale introduction of a slavery-based plantation economy in Jamaica. At first, he tried to subjugate the buccaneer but, when Britain declared war on Spain in March 1665, he began reissuing even more letters of marque.
Soon the rabid buccaneers ruled the high seas, securing the island for the British crown. With their new-found wealth, the pirates let rip in the depraved enclave that was Port Royal and engaged in “all manner of debauchery with strumpets and wine.” Piracy slipped into high gear, with the likes of Henry Morgan upping the ante by fielding vast fleets of armed brigands.
Born in Llanrhymney, South Wales in 1635, Captain Henry Morgan pushed the buccaneers of Port Royal and the art of piracy to a new level. After travelling to the Caribbean in 1663 as a soldier, he soon fell into the pirate life, joining the crew of the buccaneer Mansvelt in Tortuga, and, after the older man’s demise, took over the captainship of the pirate flotilla. Morgan soon carved out a name for himself as totally fearless, using the most extreme methods to discover the whereabouts of Spanish booty. Having earned both his letter of Marque and the nod from Governor Modyford in 1688, Morgan – now more ‘privateer’ that ‘buccaneer’ – pulled together his 700-strong bunch of mad bastards and attacked Puerto del Principe and Bello at the Isthmus of Panama, returning to Port Royal with 500,000 pieces of eight, a vast cache of jewellery and 300 slaves.
His most daring move was to attack the so-called ‘cup o’gold’, AKA Panama City – the gateway to the Spaniards’ coveted South America – with 40 ships and 2000 men. He captured the quiet port of San Lorenzo on the Caribbean side of Panama, then marched for eight days through the jungle to the city. Outside Panama, outnumbered 3-1 by the Spanish, the ragged and starving buccaneers killed the soldiers and took the city. After an orgy of bloodletting they blew up Panama and left with 750,000 pieces of eight (in today’s money enough for a minor European principality).
However, England had signed the Treaty of Madrid in July 1671, thus making the Panamanian venture unlawful. They were arrested and brought back to the Tower of London, only for King Charles to take particular interest in the pair. Soon Morgan was in the company of rich young nobles and feted by young ladies as the toast of London. A knighthood followed in 1674 and the next year he was made Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica.
Another name synonymous with piracy the world over is Edward Teach, or Blackbeard, as he came to be known. He was said to have hailed from Bristol, Jamaica or Carolina, depending on who told the story. A former privateer (licensed pirate) out of Port Royal, Teach (or Thatch or Tash) began as a deckhand and, after serving his apprenticeship under Captain Hornigold, terrorized the seas from Virginia to Honduras. A huge giant of a man, Blackbeard struck fear into his combatants by boarding ship with a pistol in each hand, six in his bandolier, black gunpowder smeared around his eyes with lighted tapers attached to his deadlocked hair, while his Irish drummer banged out a mighty rhythm. A great reader of history, Teach knew that striking such fear into the enemy meant an easy capture, little resistance and modest fatalities amongst his crew.
His final fight occurred off the coast of Carolina. Teach was trapped on deck with only two men and fought like a demon only to be “wounded some twenty-five times, eight of which were made by shot and pistol” and as a result died fighting until the last.
One of Teach’s crew skedaddled before the rout. Shortly after he turned King’s Evidence, he was ostracized and forced back to London, where he found himself penniless and begging
The head of Blackbeard
on the streets, exchanging his tales of piracy for pennies. His name was Israel Hands. Robert Louis Stephenson might well have heard his ripping yarns while hanging out in the London docklands and featured him as the scurrilous villain in his landmark novel, Treasure Island.
Two other names have slipped into folklore as pirates of note – not because they were particularly ruthless but because they were of the fair sex. Anne Bonney and Mary Read were both crew members on board the ship of pirate captain Calico Jack and, having only recently become aware of each other’s identity and sex, put up a memorable fight before being captured alongside their leader in Negril Bay, Jamaica, everyone else having scarpered. At their trial, to everyone’s utter bewilderment, it was discovered that the two crew members who had staged this entirely sensational last stand were in fact women disguised as men.
Mary Read was born in London, first becaming a ‘footboy’ to a French lady, then ‘seaman’ aboard a British man-of-war, then a ‘cadet’ footsoldier in Flanders. She got married and then boarded The West India Man for passage to the Caribbean. Pirates led by Calico Jack with Anne Bonney in male attire attacked the ship. Read, revealing a display of excellent swordsmanship, put up such a good fight that she was promptly invited to join the crew of buccaneers and readily accepted.
Anne Bonney was the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy Irish lawyer who had migrated to Carolina. Disguised as a man, she frequented the waterfront dives, where she met and married itinerant sailor John Bonney, but was soon swept off her feet by the dashing pirate leader ‘Calico’ Jack Rackham (known so because of his penchant for calico underwear). Jack’s courtship technique was
similar to taking a ship: “No time wasted, straight up alongside, every gun brought to play, and the prize boarded”. Such was Rackham’s expertise that Bonny joined Jack and became a pirate.
Curiously, it was peace that heralded the Golden Age of Piracy in the West Indies in the first part of the 18th Century. After the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, even though the European powers lived peacefully, many a legalized plunderer and pillager was left out of work, and so they continued their practices without government sanction.
Yet even though the situation had changed, one thing did not and that was the articles – now the accepted moniker for the Custom of The Coast. Now even stronger, the Captain was elected and commanded only in ‘fighting, chasing or being chased,’ received the same rations as his crew and might be voted out if guilty of cowardice or cruelty. A duly elected quartermaster doled out the booty according to rank and adjudicated in disputes, while a Pirate council made of all the crew decided on where to go and whom to attack.
By the dawn of the 18th century, piracy on the high seas had shifted slightly and centered on New Providence in The Bahamas, which by 1716 had become a veritable ‘nest of pyrates’ all of whom preyed on the merchant ships traveling to and from Virginia. A new Port Royal, it featured a natural inlet big enough to contain 500 pirates’ sloops but too shallow to allow entry to pursuing warships. Opportunist entrepreneurs opened bars, gambling houses and brothels that catered to the pirates’ every need. Subsequently, in 1717 English pirate captains Thomas Barrow and Ben Horn gold declared New Providence a Pirate Republic with them as governors, to be joined by prominent pirate leaders Charles Vane, Calico Jack Rackham, Thomas Burgess and Blackbeard, while a tented city full of miscreants grew under the name of Nassau.
And it was here that the pirate caricature grew. While at sea, most wore sailcloth trousers, jerkins and leather doublets coated in pitch, when on shore they really pulled out the kit. Aping English dandies, the pirates would adorn themselves with plundered silks, satins velvet and lace, tricorn hats with plumes, silver buckled heeled shoes, even applying a bit of powder to both wig and gloriously battered face. And then there was the jewellery, as gaudy as possible: long hooped earrings, massive rings, pearl necklaces and heavy gold chains with emerald encrusted crosses.
By the end of the 1720s the Caribbean pirate’s day was almost over. The Piracy Act of 1721 had delivered a killer blow by extending the same sentences to those who dealt with pirates as they did to the pirates themselves, thus ostracizing a whole chunk of sympathizers. Pirates were not only attacking Spanish ships, which attracted little sympathy, but also innocent merchant ships that plied goods to needy settlers. As pirate sympathy dissipated, more of them were caught and hanged, provoking a last gasp of pirate savagery by men like Edward Low and George Lowther.
The pirate legacy is still apparent in the West Indies today. Jamaica’s national maxim ‘out of many comes one’ reflects the entirely mixed bag of nationalities from which the pirates, and as a result the country’s inhabitants, are drawn. And as colour was never an issue among these democratic and egalitarian buccaneer scoundrels, they all procreated to create the melting pot that is Jamaica today. The pirate captain Henry Morgan attracted a rather large contingent of Welsh, Scottish and Irish pirates. The resulting accent, as well as the fact that many of Jamaicans still have British names (Lloyd, Morris, McGregor, Marley) is a direct consequence of such piratical action. n
Anne Bonney
BRITISH LEATHER GOODS
SARTORIAL
Interview: Jeremy Hackett (p44) • The Chap Watch (p61) • Ski Wear (p62) • Robinson’s Shoes (p70) • Grey Fox Column (p76)
