Under the Black Flag Read online

  It is not surprising to find that most pirates hailed from seaports. The majority of the English pirates, for instance, were born in London; others were born in Bristol or the West Country. American pirates came from Boston, Charleston, Newport, New York, Salem, and other east coast ports.

  A considerable number of the men on the pirate ships were black. Christian Tranquebar was on a ship attacked by two vessels commanded by Bartholomew Roberts in 1721, and reported that Roberts’ ship was manned by 180 white men and 48 French Creole blacks; his consort (companion ship), a brigantine, was manned by 100 white men and 40 French blacks.33 When Captain Chaloner Ogle rounded up the men on board Roberts’ ships after the battle off Cape Lopez on the African coast, he noted that 187 white men and 75 black men were found alive. The same pattern emerges for other pirate ships. Governor Phenney reported from New Providence that the pirate brigantine Good Fortune, commanded by Anstead, had a crew of 60 white men and 19 blacks when she attacked a Bristol ship near Jamaica in June 1721.34 Edward England, William Moody, and Richard Frowd were all reported as having crews of whites and blacks, and the crew of Augustin Blanco was reported to consist of “English, Scots, Spaniards, Mulattoes, and Negroes.”35

  What is not clear is the precise status of the black men on these pirate ships. It has been suggested that the democratic nature of pirates, and their defiance of the usual customs of the day, led them to welcome the blacks as equal partners on board. It is also said that runaway slaves from the West Indian plantations joined pirate ships because they would find refuge on board, and also to achieve their freedom. This is a romantic idea, but it is not borne out by the facts. The pirates shared the same prejudices as other white men in the Western world. They regarded black slaves as commodities to be bought and sold, and they used them as slaves on board their ships for the hard and menial jobs: working the pumps, going ashore for wood and water, washing and cleaning, and acting as servants to the pirate captain. Robert Dangerfield’s account of his two years on a pirate ship includes a description of an attack on a French ship on the west coast of Africa. The pirates plundered the ship of fifty tons of iron, twenty-five pipes of brandy, several bales of linen, and 16 blacks. They later sold the blacks to the English Governor on the coast at Gambo.36 When William Dampier set off on a buccaneering expedition in 1681, he described the company as having 44 white men, a Spanish Indian, and 2 Moskito Indians, all of whom carried weapons, “and 5 slaves taken in the South Seas, who fell to our share.”37 That the slaves did not carry weapons is an indication of their status as servants to the rest of the company. The buccaneer leaders L’Ollonais and Henry Morgan regarded slaves as part of their booty when they raided Spanish towns in Central America. When Morgan died a wealthy man in Jamaica, his estate included 109 black slaves.

  Robert Ritchie’s detailed study of Captain Kidd makes it clear that slaves were used to carry out the heavy work on Kidd’s ship, though in the Indian Ocean Lascars rather than black slaves were used for this purpose because they were more readily available in that part of the world. An earlier example of a similar practice appears in the journal of Basil Ringrose. He describes the capture of a Spanish merchant ship by the buccaneers in 1679. They take prisoners from the ship, including “twelve slaves, of whom we intended to make good use to do the drudgery of our ship.”38 During the peak period of pirate activity in the West Indies in the years around 1720, there were numerous reports of pirates capturing slave ships, and even going ashore to steal black slaves from the islands. In 1724 a group of merchants trading to Jamaica wrote to the Council of Trade and Plantations in London and complained that pirates were responsible for “the havoc and destruction of the ships employed in the negro trade on which the being of our Colonies chiefly depends.”39

  A common feature of many pirate films, and a number of novels, is the portrayal of the pirate captain as an aristocrat, or as an educated man of some standing in society, who has taken to piracy as the result of some misfortune in his recent past. The hero of the film Captain Blood is a handsome English physician, played by Errol Flynn, who has been sentenced to slavery in the West Indies because he was caught attending to a wounded rebel soldier. He escapes, captures a ship, and becomes a pirate captain. In The Black Pirate, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., is a duke who has joined the pirates in order to seek out and avenge himself on the pirates who murdered his father. There were, in fact, no aristocrats among the Anglo-American pirates of the early eighteenth century, but there were several in the previous century. The most interesting was Sir Henry Mainwaring, who took his degree at Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1602, studied law at the Inner Temple, and after a spell in the army, bought a ship from the famous shipwright Peter Pett and went to sea as a pirate. Between 1613 and 1615 he plundered Spanish ships in the English Channel and on the coast of Spain. He returned to England, received a pardon, and embarked on a successful career as a naval commissioner, a Member of Parliament, and a writer on maritime subjects. One of his works was a treatise entitled “Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates.”40

  Less successful was Sir Francis Verney, who left England after an argument with his stepmother over his inheritance. He joined the corsairs in the Mediterranean, “making havoc of his own countrymen, and carrying into Algiers prizes belonging to the merchants of Poole and Plymouth.” He was later captured by Sicilian corsairs and served two years as a galley slave. He died at the age of thirty-one in the Hospital of St. Mary of Pity at Messina. William Lithgow visited him shortly before he died, and reported that Verney “in the extremest calamity of extreme miseries entreated death.”41

  There were several aristocrats and wealthy landowners in the Elizabethan period who were closely involved with the pirates and smugglers operating around the British coastline and who profited from their activities. These included Sir Richard Edgecumbe, Sir Robert Rich, Sir Richard Bulkely of Beaumaris in Wales, and Sir John Killigrew and his wife, Lady Killigrew, of Pendennis Castle in Cornwall.

  It may have been Lady Killigrew who provided the inspiration for Daphne du Maurier’s novel Frenchman’s Creek. The Frenchman who is the hero of the story is one of the most romantic of all the fictional pirates. He has a fine house in Brittany and has taken to piracy simply for the sense of danger and excitement which it gives him. He has a beautiful ship called La Mouette in which he carries out daring raids on the coast of Cornwall. He is charming to Lady St. Colomb, the lovely heroine of the story, who is much impressed that he reads the poetry of Ronsard and spends hours drawing waterbirds. It has to be said that he bears no resemblance to the majority of uncouth men who plagued the Atlantic shipping lanes in the early eighteenth century. But there were a few educated pirates, notably Major Stede Bonnet. At his trial in Charleston, South Carolina, the judge described him as “a Gentleman that have had the advantage of a liberal education, and being generally esteemed a Man of Letters.” Bonnet had lived in comfortable circumstances on the island of Barbados until he suddenly tired of his life there. At his own expense he fitted out a sloop with ten guns, assembled a crew of seventy, and embarked on a career as a pirate. He plundered a succession of ships off the coast of Virginia and Carolina, and then joined up with Blackbeard and his crew. Bonnet’s problem was that he had no seafaring experience and was therefore not equipped to command a ship. He was persuaded by Blackbeard to hand over his sloop, and an experienced seaman took over as captain. The Boston News Letter of November 11, 1717, reported that Bonnet had been observed on Blackbeard’s ship, and that he “has no command, he walks about in his morning gown, and then to his books of which he has a good library aboard.”

  Bonnet’s background and education were held against him at his trial and provided the judge with an opportunity to make a lengthy and moralizing speech. Bonnet was totally stricken by the death sentence passed on him. “His piteous behaviour under sentence very much affected the people of the Province, particularly the women.”42 He wrote a pathetic letter to the Governor from prison, but to no avail.
He was hanged from a gallows set up on the waterfront of Charleston harbor.

  Apart from Long John Silver, the most memorable of all the pirates of fiction is Captain Hook, the villain of J. M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan. Although he is not always portrayed as an aristocrat onstage, Barrie’s text makes it clear that Captain Hook has had the benefit of the very best education. His most alarming feature is, of course, the hook which replaces the hand bitten off by the crocodile, but he is distinguished from the rest of his crew by “the elegance of his diction, even when he was swearing,” and by his clothes, which are modeled on those of Charles II, the rakish Stuart king he was told he strangely resembled. In 1927, many years after the first production of Peter Pan, Barrie revealed in a talk to the boys of Eton College that Captain Hook had been educated at Eton and Balliol. The books he borrowed from the library of his Oxford college included poetry, mostly of the Lakeland School. “These volumes may still be occasionally picked up at secondhand bookstalls with the name ‘Jacobus Hook’ inserted as the owner.”

  Unlike Robert Louis Stevenson, who was little known outside a small literary circle until the appearance of Treasure Island, his fellow Scotsman J. M. Barrie was already a celebrated author and playwright when he wrote Peter Pan.43 His third novel, The Little Minister, had been hailed as a work of genius, and a number of long-running plays, including The Admirable Crichton of 1902, had brought him wealth and acclaim. His reputation undoubtedly helped to overcome the difficulties posed by the stage production of Peter Pan. When the famous actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree was first shown the script he thought Barrie had taken leave of his senses and turned it down, but the American producer Charles Frohman had a very different reaction. When Barrie read the play to him he immediately sensed a winner and agreed to give it his full backing.

  Beerbohm Tree’s misgivings were understandable. A whimsical story about a boy who never grew up and a cast which included a large dog, mermaids, Lost Boys, Red Indians, a crew of bizarre pirates, and a crocodile with a ticking clock inside it were bad enough. More formidable were the staging requirements, which involved extended flying sequences, elaborate scenery, and a giant reducing lens to miniaturize the actress who played the part of Tinker Bell. However, the producer and playwright were determined to overcome all obstacles. George Kirby’s Flying Ballet Company were taken on to devise a new form of flying equipment, costumes were commissioned from the artist William Nicholson, and the cast was led by Gerald du Maurier, who played the parts of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, and by Nina Boucicault, who played Peter Pan.

  The rehearsals were chaotic, and Barrie had to alter and rewrite the script as they went along. The first performance was scheduled for December 22, 1904, but had to be postponed because the machinery for raising the Little House to the treetops was not ready, and there were major problems over the installation of the set of the pirate ship in the third act. Rumors about the lavish production of Barrie’s new play had circulated around London and led to an unusually expectant audience arriving to watch the first performance on December 27. The reception was ecstatic, and Barrie was able to send a relieved telegram to Charles Frohman in New York: “Peter Pan all right. Looks like a big success.”44 It was more than all right. The children were bewitched and fell in love with Peter and Wendy. The critics were full of praise, especially for Barrie’s “marvellous fertility in humorous and pathetic touches.” And everybody enjoyed the flying sequences and the spirited acting of a talented cast.

  Although the pirates are only one element in the plot, it is evident that Barrie enjoyed devising them. He makes several references to Treasure Island (he was a friend and admirer of Stevenson) and to the historical pirates he had read about in Captain Johnson’s General History. Hook’s ship is moored in Kidd’s Creek, and we are told that Hook himself was Blackbeard’s bosun and “the worst of them all.” Barrie also has fun with mock nautical phrases, often stringing them together in a nonsensical way: “Avast, belay, yo ho, heave to, A-pirating we go.” No adult is likely to believe that real pirates resembled Bosun Smee, with his glasses and his sewing machine, or Gentleman Starkey, “once an usher in a public school,” but Captain Hook is another matter. He is a larger-than-life character who has become one of the best-loved villains of stage and screen. The part is a gift to an actor and has been played by a host of famous names, including Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Alastair Sim, Donald Sinden, and Dustin Hoffman. Over the years a Peter Pan industry has grown up. Every Christmas holiday there are stage performances of Peter Pan in theaters and church halls throughout Britain and the United States. There are dozens of illustrated versions of the book available. There are Peter Pan playgrounds and theme parks. Walt Disney made a cartoon version of the story, and Steven Spielberg devised and directed Hook, a star-studded epic with stunning visual effects and costumes and a magnificent pirate ship. It is little wonder that many children first learn about pirates through seeing some version of the Peter Pan story.

  If ever there was a typical pirate, Henry Avery would fill the bill. He was not aristocratic. He was not notoriously cruel. And, like so many of his kind, his career as a pirate was surprisingly short. He is not so well known today as Captain Kidd and Blackbeard, and he ended his days in obscurity, but during his lifetime he became a legend. A play entitled The Successful Pirate, which was inspired by his career, ran for several years at Drury Lane Theatre, and Daniel Defoe wrote a book called The King of the Pirates which seems to have been based on interviews with him.

  Henry Avery (also known as John Avery, Long Ben, and Captain Bridgeman) did not conform to any of the popular images we have of pirates today. He was of middle height, rather fat, with a dissolute appearance and what was described as a jolly complexion. According to Defoe, he was born in Plymouth in 1653 and spent some years in the Royal Navy, serving as a midshipman on HMS Kent and HMS Rupert.45 In 1694 he was second mate of the Charles, a privateer which had been hired to raid the Spanish colonies. The ship spent several months in the port of Corunna, where the crew grew restless because their pay was delayed. On May 7, while the ship’s captain was laid low with drink, Avery and a number of his companions seized the ship.

  “I am captain of this ship now,” Avery announced, “I am bound to Madagascar, with the design of making my own fortune, and that of all the brave fellows joined with me.”

  They renamed the ship the Fancy and sailed south. They plundered three English ships in the Cape Verde Islands, and captured two Danish ships on the west coast of Africa near the island of Principe. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, they headed for the northeast corner of Madagascar, where they dropped anchor and went ashore for much needed provisions. Avery’s plan was to intercept the ships of the pilgrim fleet which sailed every year from the Indian port of Surat across to Mocha at the mouth of the Red Sea and then up to Mecca. The fleet was almost as attractive a target for pirates as the Spanish treasure ships were for the buccaneers in the Caribbean, because merchants traveled with the pilgrims so that they could trade spices and cloth for gold and coffee. The emperor of the Mogul Empire in India, who was known as the Great Mogul, also sent his own ships with the fleet.

  In September 1695 Avery was cruising off the mouth of the Red Sea in the Fancy, which was now armed with forty-six guns and had a crew of 150 men. He was joined by a number of other pirate ships, including the Pearl and the Portsmouth Adventure from Rhode Island and the Amity from New York. The first ship in the pilgrim fleet to fall into the pirates’ hands was the Path Mahmamadi, which was looted of gold and silver worth more than £50,000. A few days later Avery sighted the ship which was to make his fortune and whose capture was to create his legend. The Ganj-i-Sawai (or Gunsway, as she was later called) was the largest of the ships belonging to the Great Mogul. She had forty guns, and her captain, Muhammed Ibrahim, had four hundred rifles to defend her against attack, which made the ship a formidable opponent.

  Avery had luck on his side. As his flotilla of pirate ships approached the Gan
j-i-Sawai, one of his first shots brought down the Muslim ship’s mainmast. Then one of her cannon exploded, causing carnage and confusion on deck. The fight lasted two hours, but when the pirates came alongside and boarded her, they met with little resistance. The Indian historian Khafi Kahn wrote that the captain of the Ganj-i-Sawai dressed up some Turkish girls as men and urged them to fight while he fled belowdecks and hid himself in the hold.

  According to the stories which circulated afterward, one of the Great Mogul’s daughters was on the ship, together with her attendants, a number of slave girls, and many wealthy merchants. Avery claimed that no harm was done to the women, but one of the pirate crew later confessed at his trial that “the most horrid barbarities” were committed.46 All the evidence suggests that the pirates embarked on an orgy of rape, torture, and plunder which lasted several days as the ships lay becalmed in the Arabian Sea. Huge quantities of gold and silver were looted, including 500,000 rials, which, when divided among the pirates, produced at least £1,000 for every man with a full share.

  With the taking of this prize Avery wisely decided to retire from his brief career as a pirate. He abandoned the other pirate ships which had sailed with him and headed for the West Indies. He bribed the Governor of New Providence to allow his men to come ashore and presented him with his ship and £1,000 worth of ivory tusks. The pirates went their separate ways, some heading for Carolina and others for England. Six of Avery’s crew were eventually caught. In October 1696 they were tried at the Old Bailey in London, amid considerable public excitement, and sentenced to death.