Once on board, the quartermaster took charge of the prize vessel, assembling the sailors and asking them, as we will see, how their captain treated them. He would also use the occasion to ask the sailors who among them wished to join the pirate ship, and he usually got several volunteers. He then toured the prize vessel, looking over the cargo, deciding “what he thinks fit for the Company’s use,” and directing its movement from one ship to the other. Back aboard his own ship, he “kept a book” in order to account properly and fairly for everyone’s share. Sam Bellamy’s quartermaster, who oversaw £20,000 to £30,000 worth of gold and silver, “declared to the company, that if any man wanted Money he might have it.” Peter Hooff testified that aboard the Whydah, “Their money was kept in Chests between Decks without any Guard, but none was to take any without the Quarter Masters leave.” On another ship loot was kept in an “iron bound Chest which was called the Company’s Chest.” The quartermaster was the keeper of “the common Chest.”22
The use of the quartermaster to contain authority within a dual and representative executive was a distinctive feature of social organization among pirates, and one that influenced the formation of new ships. The quartermaster, who was part tribune, part mediator, part treasurer, and part keeper of the peace on one ship, often became the captain of a new one when a prize vessel was taken and converted because the original vessel was overcrowded or divided by discord. Calico Jack Rackam, Paul Williams, and several other pirate captains had been quartermasters first and had thereby gained the trust—and votes—of their crews. In this way the limits pirates placed on authority were institutionalized and transmitted from ship to ship.23
And yet neither the captain nor the quartermaster represented the highest authority on the pirate ship. That honor belonged to the common council, which met regularly and included every man from captain to foremast man. The decisions that had the greatest bearing on the welfare of the crew were taken up in open meetings that featured lively, even tumultuous debate. In making the crew sovereign, pirates drew on an ancient maritime custom that had lapsed by 1700, in which the master of a merchant vessel consulted his entire crew (who were often part owners of the cargo) in making crucial decisions. Freebooters also knew of the naval tradition—the council of war—in which the top officers in a ship or fleet met to plan strategy, and they democratized the naval custom. The floating town meeting acknowledged the truth of the old proverb “We are all in this boat together.”24
The main purpose of the council, as suggested earlier, was to elect officers, especially the captain and quartermaster and lesser officers as well, particularly if a crew had more than the minimum number of skilled workers such as carpenters. One crew carried the logic so far as to elect a boatswain’s mate! The council also determined such matters as where the best prizes could be taken and how any disruptive dissension was to be resolved. When Edward England proposed that he and his consort ship attack Portuguese Goa on the western coast of India, the men gathered in council and debated the matter, but “they could not agree on it, so proceeded to the southward.” What happened with England and his crew was not uncommon, for rank-and-file pirates frequently carried the day against the wishes and judgments of their officers. In one instance Captains Sam Bellamy and Paul Williams were “for giving [merchant captain Samuel] Beer his Sloop again after they had took out her Loading, but the Ships Crew ordered her to be sunk.” The same thing happened to Edward Low and Francis Spriggs, who found themselves “overpower’d by Votes.” Pirates also voted on punishments to be doled out to those who violated the articles, and on the requests of forced men and prisoners to be released, sometimes granting their requests, sometimes denying them.25
The decisions the council made were sacrosanct. Even the boldest captain dared not challenge its power. Indeed, councils removed a number of captains and other officers from their positions. Thomas Anstis lost his position as captain; he was, as the pirates put it, “turn’d before the Mast,” that is, made a common seaman on the ship he had once commanded. Charles Vane was labeled a coward by his crew and removed from his captaincy. Captain Charles Martel’s company deposed him on account of his cruelty in the treatment of crew and captives and chose a “more righteous” man in his place. A majority of Bartholomew Roberts’s crew thought that David Simpson, an “old pirate,” had grown vicious as quartermaster; he was “turn’d out by them.” Shipboard democracy, especially to those who had labored long and hard in a totalitarian work environment, could be intoxicating. Some crews continually used the council, “carrying every thing by a majority of votes”; others set up the council as a court. They loved to vote, claimed a captured captain, “all the Pyrates[’] Affairs being carried by that.” Indeed, there was “so little Government and Subordination” among pirates that “they are, on Occasion, all Captains, all Leaders.” Naval captain Humphrey Orme, who captured and interrogated a gang of pirates in 1723, summed up the situation succinctly: “the enjoyment of posts aboard them [pirate ships] are very precarious, depending wholly upon the will and pleasure of the crew.”26
The distribution of plunder was regulated explicitly by the ship’s articles, which allocated booty according to a crewman’s skills and duties. Pirates used the precapitalist share system to apportion their take. The captain and the quartermaster received between one and a half and two shares; gunners, boatswains, mates, carpenters, and doctors, one and a quarter or one and a half; all the others got one share each.27 This pay system represented a radical departure from the practices in the merchant service, Royal Navy, and privateering. It leveled an elaborate hierarchy of pay ranks and decisively reduced the disparity between the top and the bottom of the scale. Indeed, this must have been one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the early eighteenth century. If (as Philip Gosse, a noted historian of piracy, suggested) “the pick of all seamen were pirates,” the equitable distribution of plunder and the conception of partnership may be understood as the work of men who valued and respected the skills of their comrades. By expropriating a merchant ship (after a mutiny or a capture), pirates seized the means of maritime production and declared it to be the common property of those who did its work. They abolished the wage relation central to the process of capitalist accumulation. So rather than work for wages using the tools and machine (the ship) owned by a merchant capitalist, pirates commanded the ship as their own property and shared equally in the risks of their common adventure.28
The articles, or in some cases pirate customs, carefully regulated the distribution of food and drink aboard ship, for these very items had, for many, figured crucially in the decision to “go upon the account” in the first place. A mutinous sailor aboard the George Galley in 1724 responded to his captain’s orders to furl the mizzen top by saying “in a surly Tone, and with a kind of Disdain, So as we Eat so shall we work.” Other mutineers simply insisted that “it was not their business to starve,” and that if a captain was making it so, hanging could be little worse. It was on old joke among underfed, angry sailors that should mutiny fail, the weight of their bodies would not be enough to hang them.29
Sailors, as pirates, changed all this. Those who had long suffered short or rotten provisions in other maritime employments ate and drank “in a wanton and riotous Way,” which was indeed their custom. They conducted so much business “over a Large Bowl of Punch” that sobriety sometimes brought “a Man under a Suspicion of being in a Plot against the Commonwealth.” Shipmates ribbed an always-sober man named Thomas Wills by nicknaming him “Presbyterian.” The very first item in Bartholomew Roberts’s articles guaranteed every man “a Vote in Affairs of Moment” and “equal Title” to “fresh provisions” and “strong Liquors,” showing how political and economic democracy might be linked. For one man (and probably a great many more) who joined the pirates, drink was more important than the wealth he might gain. Most would have agreed with the motto “No Adventures to be made without Belly-Timber.”30
&n
bsp; Not surprisingly, many observers of pirate life noted the carnivalesque quality of pirate occasions—the eating, drinking, fiddling, dancing, and merriment—and some considered such “infinite Disorders” inimical to good discipline at sea. They had a point; shipboard life did sometimes get out of control, but then again that was the point, for pirates were under no one’s control but their own. Captain Snelgrave commented on the ferocious ways in which the pirates with Howell Davis took food and drink from a prize vessel. They “made such Waste and Destruction” during their pillage that Snelgrave was sure that a more “numerous set of such Villains would in a short time, have ruined a great City.” Using winches and tackle, they hoisted from belowdecks “a great many half Hogsheads of Claret, and French Brandy.” They promptly “knock’d their Heads out, and dipp’d Canns and Bowls into them to drink out of.” As soon as these casks were empty, they hoisted up more. Soon they were throwing “full Buckets” of claret and brandy on each other, and at the end of the day they “washed the Decks with what remained in the Casks.” They were no more restrained in their handling of bottled liquor. They “would not give themselves the trouble of drawing the cork out, but nick’d the Bottles, as they called it, that is struck their necks off with a Cutlace; by which means one in three was generally broke.” In short, “they made such havock” of the bottled liquor that “in a few days they had not one Bottle left.” Something similar went on among Edward England’s crew, who kept Christmas “in a most riotous manner” for three days, destroying about two-thirds of their fresh provisions. Such wastefulness no doubt led to greetings like the one reported between pirates and Captain John Brett on a recently captured prize vessel in June 1716: the outlaws “damn’d the Depnt. and bid him bring his Liquor onboard.”31
Pirates thus made merry. Indeed, “merry” is the word most commonly used to describe the mood and spirit of life aboard the pirate ship. This was inadvertently made clear in testimony given in the 1718 trials of Stede Bonnet and his men in Charleston, South Carolina. As James Killing fingered various pirates for execution, he testified that these men had tried to cheer him up after his capture. “They asked me [why] I would not come and eat along with them?” Killing, upset, had replied, “I told them I had but little stomach to eat.” They would not give up. “They asked me, why I looked so melancholy?” Killing answered, “I told them I looked as well as I could.” They then turned their attention from changing his mood to changing their own: “They asked me what Liquor I had on board? I told them some rum and sugar.” The pirates fetched these items, made bowls of punch, drank toasts, and “sung a song or two.” Captain Peter Manwaring, who for ten weeks was a prisoner among Bonnet’s crew, confirmed the picture conveyed by the morose Killing. “They were civil to me, very civil,” testified Manwaring. They “were all very brisk and merry; and had all Things plentiful, and were a-making Punch and drinking.” Another merchant captain recalled that the crew of Captain Francis Spriggs drank hot punch every morning, and that “They live merrily all Day; at Meals the Quarter-Master overlooks the Cook, to see the Provisions equally distributed to each Mess.” When a knowledgeable but initially reluctant seaman finally decided to sign Spriggs’s articles, huzzahs filled the air, cannon boomed, and a day was spent in “boysterous Mirth, roaring and drinking of Healths.”32
The merriness of the pirate ship had its downside. The endless drinking easily led to fights, which in turn sometimes became brawls engulfing the entire ship. Worse, drunkenness could lead to disaster. Sam Bellamy’s crew “regaled themselves so liberally with Madera that they all got drunk and run their vessel on shoar.” Nor did prolonged merriness make for battle readiness. For example, when the time came for engagement with HMS Swallow, numerous men aboard Bartholomew Roberts’s ship were drunk. One of these was Joseph Mansfield, who “came up [on deck] vapouring with his Cutlash” after his own vessel had already struck her colors and surrendered. He wanted to know “who would go on board the Prize; and it was some Time before they could perswade him into the Truth of their Condition.”33
It is astonishing to think that in devising their shipboard social order pirates anticipated a modern idea that many consider one of the most humane of our times: creating their own social security system. The popular image of the pirate as a man with a patched eye, a peg leg, and a hook for a hand is not wholly accurate, but it speaks an essential truth: sailoring was a dangerous line of work, destructive to the human body. Pirates therefore addressed the issues of health, safety, and security in their articles, making it a point to allocate a portion of all booty to a “common fund” to provide for men who had sustained injury of lasting effect, whether the loss of eyesight or a limb. Pirate Jeremiah Huggins claimed that he had been given 14 gold pistoles, 7H ounces of gold dust, 82 pieces of eight, and 17 ounces of silver bullion “by reason of his being wounded among them.” Moreover, those who suffered accidents and the resulting disabilities did not face discrimination aboard the pirate ship. Indeed, the one-armed John Fenn became a captain, as did John Taylor, who was “lame of his Hands.” By guaranteeing food and drink and creating a sort of welfare system, pirates attempted to protect their health, enhance recruitment, and promote loyalty within the group.34 One of the most dramatic acts undertaken by pirates was Blackbeard’s blockade of Charleston Harbor in the fall of 1718. The reason for the action that brought trade to a standstill was that the pirates needed medicines to treat their sick.35
Another area of social life in which pirates appear modern is their sense of sexual liberty, which their articles did little to regulate. Seventeenth-century buccaneers had practiced matelotage, a relationship of shared property and mutual obligation that existed between two men, or in some instances, between a man and a youth. Such practices reflected personal choice but also the skewed sex ratio of the Caribbean, where women were scarce. Only two crews of early-eighteenth-century pirates were known to have included anything about sexual relations in their articles. One was a prohibition enacted by the crew of Bartholomew Roberts around 1720: “No Boy or Woman to be allowed amongst them.” The second, established by the pirates with John Phillips in 1723, outlawed “meddling” with a “prudent Woman” without her consent. None of the articles mentioned anything about sexual relations among men or about sodomy, suggesting that pirates were free to do as they liked. It is, however, too much to state, as historian B.R. Burg has done, that pirates organized themselves as a “sodomitical society.” For as the literary historian Hans Turley has written, “The evidence for pirate sodomy is so sparse as to be almost non-existent.” And yet there are suggestive shards. In July 1723, during the trial of thirty-six freebooters in Newport, Rhode Island, John Wilson testified that pirate Thomas Powell had said to him, “I wish you and I were both ashore here stark naked.” In the sermon given before Powell and twenty-five others were hanged, Cotton Mather called attention to “the abominable Sin of Uncleanness,” a phrase that suggested sex with prostitutes or other men. In a homosocial and hypermasculine world, one that valued strength, stamina, toughness, courage, and aggressiveness, the choice was for a sexual liberty that transgressed the polite standards of the day.36
The articles also regulated discipline aboard ship, though “discipline” is perhaps a misnomer for a system of rules that left large ranges of behavior uncontrolled. Less arbitrary than that of the merchant service and less codified than that of the navy, discipline among pirates always depended on a collective sense of transgression. Many misdeeds were accorded “what Punishment the Captain and Majority of the Company shall think fit,” and it is noteworthy that pirates did not often resort to the whip. Their discipline, if no less severe in certain cases, was generally tolerant of behavior that provoked punishment in other maritime occupations.37
Three major methods of discipline were employed, all conditioned by the fact that pirate ships were crowded; an average crew numbered nearly eighty on a 250-ton vessel. The articles of Bartholomew Roberts’s ship revealed one tactic for maintaining order: “No str
iking one another on board, but every Man’s Quarrels to be ended on Shore at Sword and Pistol.” The antagonists were to fight a duel with pistols, but if both missed their first shots, they would then seize swords, and the first to draw blood would be declared the victor. By taking such conflicts off the ship (and symbolically off the sea), pirates promoted harmony in the crowded quarters belowdecks.38
The ideal of harmony was also reflected when pirates made a crew member the “Governor of an Island.” Men who were incorrigibly disruptive or who transgressed important rules were marooned. For defrauding his mates by taking more than a proper share of plunder, for deserting or malingering during battle, for keeping secrets from the crew, or for stealing, a pirate risked being deposited “where he was sure to encounter Hardships.”39
The ultimate method of maintaining order was execution. This penalty could be imposed for bringing on board “a Boy or a Woman” or for meddling with a “prudent Woman” on a prize ship, and in extreme cases for desertion if it was believed that by fleeing, a pirate had put the entire company in danger. Such would appear to have been the case when in 1722 Bartholomew Roberts’s crew executed two crew members for desertion. Each man was allowed to choose his own executioner, was then tied to the mainmast, and was shot. On another occasion, a deserter who was recaptured was given two lashes by each member of the crew. In the end, execution was most commonly invoked to punish a captain who had abused his authority.40
Crewmen also intervened against their leaders in lesser, but equally telling ways. In 1719 pirate captains Howell Davis, Oliver LaBouche, and Thomas Cocklyn designed one evening to go ashore to visit “the Negroe-Ladies” in Sierra Leone. Wanting to look their best, they took from the store of plundered goods some fancily embroidered waistcoats. But they did not have permission to do this from the quartermaster, whose job it was to keep track of all such items in the “common Chest.” When the crew learned what the captains had done, they were outraged. They immediately confiscated the clothes and put them back in the chest, insisting that they would be sold at the mast, by auction, to the highest bidder. As they explained to William Snelgrave, “If they suffered such things, the Captains would for the future assume a Power, to take whatever they liked for themselves.” In this instance as in all others, whether the infraction was large or small, the crew declared itself to be sovereign. Captain Richard Hawkins spoke of the essential point about discipline: “If anyone commits an Offense, he is try’d by the whole Company.” By the articles of a pirate ship, even a sea cook could govern.41
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