A pariah amongst pirates

When even other pirates wince when they spot your sails on the horizon, you must be a bad lot and that was certainly the case with Charles Vane (16801720).

He is thought to have arrived in the Caribbean around 1716 during the War of the Spanish Succession and sailed under British privateer Henry Jennings. The Spanish Treasure Fleet had sunk off Florida the previous year and when the Spanish set up camp to try and salvage the treasure, Henry Jennings turned pirate and robbed them of 350,000 pieces of eight. On the way back to Jamaica, he relieved another Spanish ship of 60,000 more.

Vane’s share of the plunder allowed him to fit out his own ship, which he named ‘Ranger’. Adopting Nassau in the Bahamas as his home port Vane plundered merchant shipping for two years in collaboration with other famous pirates, who were collectively known as The Flying Gang. Each time he captured a better ship, he took it for himself, but always changed the name to ‘Ranger’.

In July, 1718, a new Governor, Woodes Rogers, arrived with ten ships, including two Royal Navy warships, 100 soldiers and the firm intention to stamp our piracy! Whilst other pirate captains surrendered and accepted the King’s Pardon, Vane himself first stalled Rogers and then escaped by setting fire to the largest of his own ships, a 20-gun vessel called ‘Lark’ and sending it

towards the British fleet. As anchors were cut to avoid the fire ship, Vane escaped to the open sea in a six-gun sloop, firing his cannons as he went,

He quickly captured another sloop and appointed Yeats, his quartermaster, to captain her. In August, 1718, the two ships attacked a large brigantine heading for Charleston. She was holding 90 slaves from West Africa and Vane ordered that they should all be transferred to Yeats’ sloop despite complaints about overcrowding. By now, Yeats had finally lost patience and one evening, he sailed away to Charleston, escaping Vane’s pursuit, where

he and his crew were granted the King’s Pardon from the Governor of South Carolina.

In November that year, Vane’s luck finally ran out when, eager for new plunder, he hoisted his pirate flag and was surprised that his intended prey fired a broadside and identified herself as a French warship with considerably more guns. Despite the advice from his new quartermaster, Jack Rackham, that they should rush in and board the Frenchie, Vane insisted on flight. Ranger escaped, but the following day, the crew accused Vane of cowardice and voted for Rackham as their new captain.

Relegated to a small sloop, with the few men still loyal to him, Vane upgraded the vessel in Honduras and began taking ships again. After some initial success, disaster struck in February, 1719, when he lost his ship and most of his crew in a violent storm and became stranded on an island off Honduras. Rescued by a ship, he then had the bad luck to be taken captive when his rescuer met up with a ship captained by a pirate acquaintance called Holford. Now an honest seafarer, he recognised Vane, who was taken in irons to Port Royal, Jamaica, where he was tried and hung.

Vane frequently ignored The Pirate Code, treated his own crew with contempt and was capriciously cruel, promising those aboard captured ships they would be well-treated and then murdering them all. It was no surprise that so many former accomplices damned him in court.