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Transcriber's note.

Many of the names in this book are inconsistently spelt. I have chosen to retain the original spelling treating these as author error rather than typographical carelessness.

THE PIRATES'

WHO'S WHO

BY PHILIP GOSSE

ILLUSTRATED

BURT FRANKLIN: RESEARCH & SOURCE WORKS SERIES 119

Essays in History, Economics & Social Science 51

BURT FRANKLIN

NEW YORK

Published by BURT FRANKLIN 235 East 44th St., New York 10017 Originally Published: 1924 Printed in the U.S.A.

Library of Congress Catalog Card No.: 68-56594 Burt Franklin: Research & Source Works Series 119 Essays in History, Economics & Social Science 51

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

MY FELLOW-MEMBERS OF

THE FOUNTAIN CLUB

WITH THE EARNEST HOPE THAT NOTHING IT CONTAINS MAY INCITE THEM TO EMULATE ITS HEROES

TO FACE PAGE

A PAGE FROM THE LOG-BOOK OF CAPTAIN DAMPIER 98

PRESSING A PIRATE TO PLEAD 140

A PIRATE BEING HANGED AT EXECUTION DOCK, WAPPING 182

ANNE BONNY AND MARY READ, CONVICTED OF PIRACY NOVEMBER 28TH, 1720, IN JAMAICA 256

CAPTAIN BARTHOLOMEW ROBERTS 262

PREFACE Let it be made clear at the very outset of this Preface that the pages which follow do not pretend to be a history of piracy, but are simply an attempt to gather together, from various sources, particulars of those redoubtable pirates and buccaneers whose names have been handed down to us in a desultory way.

I do not deal here with the children of fancy; I believe that every man, or woman too--since certain of the gentler sex cut no small figure at the game--mentioned in this volume actually existed.

A time has come when every form of learning, however preposterous it may seem, is made as unlaborious as possible for the would-be student. Knowledge, which is after all but a string of facts, is being arranged, sorted, distilled, and set down in compact form, ready for rapid assimilation. There is little fear that the student who may wish in the future to become master of any subject will have to delve into the original sources in his search after facts and dates.

Surely pirates, taking them in their broadest sense, are as much entitled to a biographical dictionary of their own as are clergymen, race-horses, or artists in ferro-concrete, who all, I am assured, have their own "Who's Who"? Have not the medical men their Directory, the lawyers their List, the peers their Peerage? There are books which record the names and the particulars of musicians, schoolmasters, stockbrokers, saints and bookmakers, and I dare say there is an average adjuster's almanac. A peer, a horse, dog, cat, and even a white mouse, if of blood sufficiently blue, has his pedigree recorded somewhere. Above all, there is that astounding and entertaining volume, "Who's Who," found in every club smoking-room, and which grows more bulky year by year, stuffed with information about the careers, the hobbies, and the marriages of all the most distinguished persons in every profession, including very full details about the lives and doings of all our journalists. But on the club table where these books of ready reference stand with "Whitaker," "ABC," and "Ruff's Guide to the Turf," there is just one gap that the compiler of this work has for a long while felt sorely needed filling. There has been until now no work that gives immediate and trustworthy information about the lives, and--so sadly important in their cases--the deaths of our pirates and buccaneers.

Even so there can be no excuse for the past and present neglect of these sea-adventurers. But a change is beginning to show itself. Increasing evidence is to be found that the more intelligent portions of the population of this country, and even more so the enlightened of the great United States of America, are beginning to show a proper interest in the lives of the pirates and buccaneers. That this should be so amongst the Americans is quite natural, when it is remembered what a close intimacy existed between their Puritan forefathers of New England and the pirates, both by blood relation and by trade, since the pirates had no more obliging and ready customers for their spoils of gold dust, stolen slaves, or church ornaments, than the early settlers of New York, Massachusetts, and Carolina.

In beginning to compile such a list as is to be found in this volume, a difficulty is met at once. My original intention was that only pirates and buccaneers should be included. To admit privateers, corsairs, and other sea-rovers would have meant the addition of a vast number of names, and would have made the work unwieldy, and the very object of this volume as a book of ready reference would not have been achieved. But the difficulty has been to define the exact meaning of a pirate and of a buccaneer. In the dictionary a pirate is defined as "a sea-robber, marauder, one who infringes another's copyright"; while a buccaneer is described as "a sea-robber, a pirate, especially of the Spanish-American coasts." This seems explicit, but a pirate was not a pirate from the cradle to the gallows. He usually began his life at sea as an honest mariner in the merchant service. He perhaps mutinied with other of the ship's crew, killed or otherwise disposed of the captain, seized the ship, elected a new commander, and sailed off "on the account." Many an honest seaman was captured with the rest of his ship's crew by a pirate, and either voluntarily joined the freebooters by signing their articles, or, being a good navigator or "sea-artist," was compelled by the pirates to lend them his services. Others, again, were in privateer ships, which carried on a legitimate warfare against the shipping of hostile countries, under a commission or letter of marque.

Often the very commission or letter of marque carried about so jealously by some shady privateer was not worth the paper it was written on, nor the handful of dubloons paid for it. One buccaneer sailed about the South Seas, plundering Spanish ships and sacking churches and burning towns, under a commission issued to him, for a consideration, by the Governor of a Danish West India island, himself an ex-pirate. This precious document, adorned with florid scrolls and a big, impressive seal, was written in Danish. Someone with a knowledge of that language had an opportunity and the curiosity to translate it, when he found that all it entitled the bearer to do was to hunt for goats and pigs on the Island of Hispaniola, and nothing more.

When, at the conclusion of hostilities, peace was declared, the crew of a privateer found it exceedingly irksome to give up the roving life, and were liable to drift into piracy. Often it happened that, after a long naval war, crews were disbanded, ships laid up, and navies reduced, thus flooding the countryside with idle mariners, and filling the roads with begging and starving seamen. These were driven to go to sea if they could find a berth, often half starved and brutally treated, and always underpaid, and so easily yielded to the temptation of joining some vessel bound vaguely for the "South Sea," where no questions were asked and no wages paid, but every hand on board had a share in the adventure.

The buccaneers were a great source of piracy also. When a war was on hand the English Government was only too glad to have the help of these daring and skilful seamen; but when peace was declared these allies began to lead to international complications, and means had to be taken to abolish them, and to try and turn them into honest settlers in the islands. But when a man has for years lived the free life, sailed out from Jamaica a pauper, to return in six weeks or less with, perhaps, a bag of gold worth two, three, or four thousand pounds, which he has prided himself on spending in the taverns and gambling-hells of Port Royal in a week, how can he settle down to humdrum uneventful toil, with its small profits? Thus he goes back "on the account" and sails to some prearranged rendezvous of the "brethren of the coast."

Out of these semi-pirate adventurers developed the buccaneers, a ruffianly, dare-devil lot, who feared neither God, man, nor death.

The advent of the telegraph and of steam-driven ships settled for ever the account of the pirates, except in China, when even to this day accounts reach us, through the Press, of piratical enterprises; but never again will the black, rakish-looking craft of the pirate, with the Jolly Roger flying, be liable to pounce down upon the unsuspecting and harmless merchantman.

The books devoted to the lives and exploits of buccaneers and pirates are few. Indeed, but two stand out prominently, both masterpieces of their kind. One, "The Bucaniers of America, or a True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of Late Years upon the Coasts of the West Indies," etc., was written by a sea-surgeon to the buccaneers, A.O. Exquemelin, a Dutchman, and was published at Amsterdam in 1679.

Many translations were made, the first one in English being published in 1684 by William Crooke, at the Green Dragon, without Temple Bar, in London. The publication of this book was the cause of a libel action brought by Sir Henry Morgan against the publisher; the buccaneer commander won his case and was granted ?200 damages and a public apology. In this book Morgan was held up as a perfect monster for his cruel treatment to his prisoners, but although Morgan resented this very much, the statement that annoyed him much more was that which told the reader that Morgan came of very humble stock and was sold by his parents when a boy, to serve as a labourer in Barbadoes.

The greatest work on pirates was written in 1726 by Captain Charles Johnson. The original edition, now exceedingly rare, is called "A General History of the Pyrates, from Their First Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence, to the Present Time," and is illustrated by interesting engravings.

Another edition, in 1734, is a handsome folio called "A General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen," etc., "To which is added a Genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the Most Notorious Pyrates," and contains many full-page copperplates by J. Basire and others. The pirates are given only a share in the pages of this book, but it has some very fine engravings of such famous pirates as Avery, Roberts, Low, Lowther, and "Blackbeard."

The third edition of the "History of Pirates," of 1725, has a quaint frontispiece, showing the two women pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, in action with their swords drawn, upon the deck of a ship. While the fourth edition, published in 1726, in two volumes, contains the stories of the less well-known South-Sea Rovers.

After studying the subject of piracy at all closely, one cannot but be struck by the number of pirates who came from Wales. Welshmen figure not only amongst the rank and file, but amongst the leaders. Morgan, of course, stands head and shoulders above the rest. It is curious how certain races show particular adaptability for certain callings. Up to two hundred years ago the chief pirates were Welshmen; to-day most of our haberdashers hail from the same land of the leek. It would be interesting to try and fathom the reason why these two callings, at first sight so dissimilar, should call forth the qualities in a particular race. Perhaps some of our leading haberdashers and linen drapers will be willing to supply the answer.

I sometimes wonder what happens to the modern pirates; I mean the men who, had they lived 200 years ago, would have been pirates. What do they find to exercise their undoubted, if unsocial, talents and energies to-day? Many, I think, find openings of an adventurous financial kind in the City.

Politics, again, surely has its buccaneers. One can imagine, for example, some leading modern politician--let us say a Welshman--who, like Morgan, being a brilliant public speaker, is able by his eloquence to sway vast crowds of listeners, whether buccaneers or electors, a man of quick and subtle mind, able to recognize and seize upon the main chance, perfectly ruthless in his methods when necessity requires, and one who, having achieved the goal on which he had set his ambition, discards his party or followers, as Morgan did his buccaneers after the sacking of Panama. Nor is Europe to-day without a counterpart to the ruffian crews who arrogantly "defied the world and declared war on all nations."

One great difficulty which the author of this work is met with is to decide who was, and who was not, a pirate.

Certain friends who have taken a kindly, if somewhat frivolous, interest in the compilation of this work have inquired if Sir Francis Drake was to be included; and it must be admitted that the question is not an easy one to answer. The most fervent patriot must admit that the early voyages of Drake were, to put it mildly, of a buccaneering kind, although his late voyages were more nearly akin to privateering cruises than piracy. But if, during the reign of King Philip, a Spaniard had been asked if Drake was a pirate, he would certainly have answered, "Yes," and that without any hesitation whatever. So much depends upon the point of view.

In the 1814 edition of Johnson's "History of Highwaymen and Pirates," the famous Paul Jones holds a prominent place as a pirate, and is described in no half measures as a traitor; yet I doubt if in the schools of America to-day the rising young citizens of "God's Own Country" are told any such thing, but are probably, and quite naturally, taught to look upon Paul Jones as a true patriot and a brave sailor. Again, there is Christopher Columbus, the greatest of all explorers, about whom no breath of scandal in the piratical way was ever breathed, who only escaped being a pirate by the fact that his was the first ship to sail in the Caribbean Sea; for there is little doubt that had the great navigator found an English ship lying at anchor when he first arrived at the Island of San Salvador, an act of piracy would have immediately taken place.

For the student who is interested there are other writers who have dealt with the subject of piracy, such as the buccaneers Ringrose, Cooke, Funnell, Dampier, and Cowley; Woodes Rogers, with his "Voyage to the South Seas"; Wafer, who wrote an amusing little book in 1699 describing his hardships and adventures on the Isthmus of Darien. Of modern writers may be recommended Mr. John Masefield's "Spanish Main," "The Buccaneers in the West Indies," by C.H. Haring, and the latest publication of the Marine Research Society of Massachusetts, entitled "The Pirates of the New England Coast," and last, but far from least, the works of Mr. A. Hyatt Verrill.

Every man shall obey civil Command; the Captain shall have one full Share and a half in all Prizes; the Master, Carpenter, Boatswain and Gunner shall have one Share and quarter.

If any Man shall offer to run away, or keep any Secret from the Company, he shall be marroon'd with one Bottle of Powder, one Bottle of Water, one small Arm, and Shot.

If any Man shall steal any Thing in the Company, or game, to the value of a Piece of Eight, he shall be Marroon'd or shot.

If at any Time we should meet another Marrooner that Man that shall sign his Articles without the Consent of our Company, shall suffer such Punishment as the Captain and Company shall think fit.

That Man that shall strike another whilst these Articles are in force, shall receive Moses's Law on the bare Back.

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