Villains of All Nations

by Marcus Rediker

  Yet the freebooter was more than an antagonist of the British merchant and government; he was “equally an Enemy and dangerous to all Societies,” and to “every State, Christian or Infidel.” Piracy was “Destructive of Government” in general, “in open violation of the Rights of Nations.” Pirates could claim the benefit of no country because every nation was “threatened from the Combinations, Conspiracies, and Confederacies” of such “Profligate and Desperate Wretches.” In 1717 a Boston prosecutor of eight sea robbers explained to the court the history of the word pirate. In “early and barbarous Ages,” he claimed, the term had positive connotations, yet when nations settled into regular governments, the pirate soon became hostes humani generis, the common enemy of mankind. Since pirates tended to “Subvert and extinguish the Natural and Civil Rights of Mankind,” they should therefore be eliminated in “the Interest of Mankind.” The pirate was thus a threat to property, the individual, society, the colony, the empire, the Crown, the nation, the world of nations, and indeed all mankind. His villainy was complete.6

  In 1718, in his opening remarks in the trial of Stede Bonnet and crew in Charleston, Richard Allen, attorney general of South Carolina, explained that piracy “is a Crime so odious and horrid in all its Circumstances, that those who have treated on that Subject have been at a loss for Words and Terms to stamp a sufficient Ignominy upon it.” He outlined the task that would occupy men of his station for years to come. Which “Words and Terms” would be used to make the pirate ignominious and therefore hangable? How would the process of vilification work?7

  Many writers, referring to pirates, agreed that “the name of Men they do not deserve.” So they re-created the outlaws as subhuman beings—monsters, demons, and animals. Mather called them “Sea-Monsters, who have been the Terror of them that haunt the Sea.” Others called them blood-lusting monsters, merciless monsters, cruel sea monsters, sea wolves, and hellhounds. They were feral and carnivorous, “full of Malice, Rage, and Blood.” They were wild and savage beasts, like a menacing mountain lion, which everyone should destroy in the public interest. When the authorities were confident of success against the pirates, as they were after the Winchelsea, a man-of-war, had taken a pirate ship and several of its crew had been hanged in Curaçao in 1723, the sea robbers were merely “Vermin” to be cleared from the seas. The language of demonization predicted the violence of naval battle and hangings.8

  These demons created vast disorder, in their own lives and through their depredations against others. “Oh! the Folly. Oh! the Madness of wicked men!” wailed Mather to a crowd that soon would observe a multiple hanging of pirates in 1723. As fools and madmen, pirates betrayed disorders of the mind. Philip Ashton, captured by a “mad, roaring, and mischevious Crew” of pirates in 1722, had to endure “a perpetual Din of Madness,” much rage and dementia, while among them. Indeed, Ashton thought himself aboard a ship of fools. Others insisted that pirates were “mad fellows,” that they had madness in their hearts, that they swore like madmen, and that each died “as a Fool dieth.”9

  Pirates were as disordered in their hearts as in their minds, their natural temperament being rage and fury. Ashton closed the account of his providential escape from Edward Low’s pirates by thanking God for “saving me from the Rage of the Pirates.” Frequently, a pirate’s “too aspiring Temper” was behind his derangement. Indeed, such savage, villainous, fierce, and depraved tempers possessed by pirates were “often mistaken for a degree of madness.” In 1720 the Boston News-Letter printed a lengthy account of the wanton ruination of a ship’s cargo by pirates, who used cutlasses, axes, and any other tools at hand as they “cut, tore, and broke open Trunks, Boxes, Cases and Bales.”10 Such insane destructiveness was clearly incompatible with reason. Pirates “declared themselves to live in opposition to the rule of Equity and Reason”; they had “no rational prospect”; they were “unreasonable Men.” The wickedness of their crimes was “evident to the Reason of all Men,” as Judge Trott explained.11

  Such disorders of mind and affection logically produced a disturbed way of life. “Riots, Revels, Debauches” among pirates were said to be commonplace. Indeed, as Captain Charles Johnson pointed out in 1724, “a riotous Manner of Living ... is the Custom of Pyrates”; there were “almost constant Noisy Revellings,” which were abated only by sleep—a drunken sleep, since the unruly manner of living was organized around the incessant use of strong drink. Drunkenness was so common among pirates that “Sobriety brought a Man under a Suspicion of being in a Plot” against the group, and “he was looked upon to be a Villain that would not be drunk.” Drink, according to a clergyman, “renders a Man a Monster,” and drunkenness was “a beastly sin, a voluntary madness” that placed one below the brute beasts. Pirates were “almost always mad or drunk, [and] their Behaviour produced infinite Disorders.” Alcohol, some said, led to rioting and civil disturbance. It also was “the great incendiary of Lust,” which was the bodily parallel of the pirate’s disorder of mind. The “infernal fire of Lust” mastered these criminals, producing in them “a desire of living after their own wicked inclinations.” Pirates found “their Lusts perpetually Enslaving of them; their Passions throwing them into perpetual Disorders,” making them slaves to Satan.12

  The greatest disorder perpetrated by the pirate was violence. Writers reported “unheard of Barbarities”—that pirates slit the noses of captives, cut off ears, and used the whip, knife, and gun against their victims, which, as we have seen in previous pages, did happen, although usually with a causal logic that was omitted by the pirates’ enemies. Violence was natural to those who lived without government, in a state of nature, abandoned to riotous living, lusts, and passions. In an execution sermon preached to pirates in 1726, Benjamin Colman observed: “What a fearful state and condition a state of Sin is: a state of nature which is a state of wrath.” Pirates, their enemies never tired of saying, were cruel, barbarous, and bloody. These “Sons of Violence” transgressed the flesh. By emphasizing violence and by describing it in lurid detail, writers universalized piracy as a threat, creating a community of interest between merchants and investors on one hand and the broader public on the other. Yet some of the reported barbarities were “unheard of” because they were invented: the Boston News-Letter reported in April 1723 that a crew of black pirates recently executed in Jamaica “confessed” on the gallows that they had eaten the hearts of eleven white men!13

  Pirates were held up as the antithesis of the Christian way of life. They were possessed by Satan, “Led Captive by him to do his will.” Pirates did not have the fear of God before their eyes and were instigated by the devil; they were “Children of the Wicked One.” As the Reverend John Barnard said to his congregation and to Philip Ashton in particular, who had escaped from pirates, “Think what God has Delivered you from ... a Herd of Wild Beasts; among whom ... prodigious Defiances of Heaven and Amazing Assurances of their own Damnation ... gave you the Liveliest Picture of Hell, and rendered your Companions no better than Devils Incarnate.” Try as they might to run as far as they could from God, striving “to keep all Thoughts of God out of their Minds,” pirates were, with providential assistance, captured. And when authorities and pirates came face to face, both seized the moment to explain how one came to travel “the Way of Wicked Men.” Pirate confessions were published, and even though many of them were too uniform in style and content to have been entirely authentic, the pattern of alleged lamentations nonetheless illuminates the representation of the pirate and his way of life.14

  Pirates were said to regret their transgressions of godly speech, the Sabbath, acceptable sexuality, and legitimate authority. Pirates rued having been such vehement swearers, cursers, and blasphemers. As Cotton Mather put it, they were users of “Horrid Oathes, & the Language of Fiends.” They voiced furious expressions, engaged in “monstrous Swearing and Cursing”; they had “Tongues set of Fire of Hell.” They openly defied heaven, blasphemed like madmen, and sang “Bawdy & Filthy Songs, enough to infect the ve
ry air they are uttered in.” They also desecrated the Sabbath, profaning the Lord’s day, and “absenting themselves from the Public Worship of God.” Their environment did not help, since “some of them scarce knew when it was the Lord’s Day, (while they were on the Seas).”15

  Pirates asked repentance for their “stings” of unchastity and uncleanness—their visits to the House of the Harlot, their “running after Lewd Women,” their homosexuality, their wild debaucheries—for which they were reckoned more like “beasts than men. Yea, the Scripture compares them to the filthiest of beasts, even to Dogs.”16 Pirates also bemoaned their disobedience to their parents and other authorities. Mather wondered, “How often do you hear them Confessing; My Grieving & Leaving & Scorning of my Parents, has been that which has Brought the dreadful Vengeance of GOD upon me!” They also bid “monstrous Undutifulness to their Superiors” and were said to “Mock the Ministers and Messengers of God with outrageous Insolencies.”17

  The last two sins on the long list were greed and the forsaking of honest toil. Pirates were driven to their plunder by a “craving Appetite, and an insatiable Thirst after inordinate Gain.” They displayed an “Immoderate, Inordinate, Irregular Desire of Worldly Possessions.” In 1726 Mather elaborated on the point by quoting lines written by Sir Richard Blackmore:

  To this vile Crue you may the PIRATE add

  Who puts to Sea the Merchant to invade,

  And reaps the Profit of another’s Trade.

  He sculks behind some Rock, or swiftly flies

  From Creek to Creek, rich Vessels to surprize.

  By this ungodly Course the Robber gains,

  And lays up so much Wealth, that he disdains

  And mocks the poor, unprofitable Toil,

  Of those, who plant the Vine, or till the Soil.

  The victims of piracy, explained the King’s attorney in 1717, were merchants, “the most Useful and Beneficial to the Publick; whose indefatigable Industry conveys amidst innumerable Dangers, besides that of falling into the hands of Pirates, Blood into the veins of the Body Politick, and nourishes every Member.” Many an exploited sailor would have stood astonished at the description, but such was part of the ruling rationale.18

  The pirate’s image was closely related to the space he occupied—the sea, a distant place full of dangers, a site of frequent disaster, a potential path of invasion to England and the colonies, and finally a natural space that was difficult if not impossible to control. Massachusetts governor Samuel Shute insisted in May 1717 that a primary concern of his colony was to create “some good posture of Defence ... to secure our Sea Coast and Trading Places from such Danger & Violence by way of the Sea.” Six years later Mather observed that “the Terrors of them that haunt the Sea are of late exceedingly multiplied.” Both men were referring in some measure to piracy, but the sea was awe-inspiring in its own right. It was a “furious Creature,” and, in Christian terms, was likened to “the Gulph of Despair.” In 1726 John Flavel’s Navigation Spiritualized: or, a New Compass for Sea-Men emphasized one of the principal dangers of the sea and revealed that it was nothing new. Flavel wrote that Plato had “diligently admonished all men to avoid the Sea; For (saith he) it is the School master of all vice and dishonesty.” It was a place teeming with strange creatures, a place where sins proliferated and where death was omnipresent. Seamen, noted Flavel, are “to be numbered neither with the living nor the dead, their lives hanging continually in suspense before them.” Sailors were liminal figures traveling upon a perilous space.19

  The pirate’s occupation of a space that was dangerous and distant from centers of authority was a vital element in his image. For as the King’s attorney claimed in a 1717 trial, piracy was a singularly atrocious crime “Because it is done in remote and Solitary Places, where the weak and Defenceless can expect no Assistance nor relief and where these ravenous Beasts of Prey may ravage undisturb’d, hard’ned in their Wickedness with Hopes of Impunity, and of being Concealed for ever from the Eyes and Hands of avenging Justice.” He continued, “Those Crimes ought to be Punished with the utmost Severity, which cannot without the greatest difficulty be prevented.” In 1720 a similar charge was made by another of the King’s advocates: “The Crime of Pyracy...is of all other Robberies the most aggravating and inhumane, in that being...in remote and distant Parts, ye do in Wantonness of Power add Cruelty to Theft.” The suggestion that distance from authority conferred power on the pirate illustrates a crucial point.20

  But the sea created distance from authority in ways other than merely geographic, because it was not hospitable territory for the principal organizing institutions of early modern life: church, family, and labor. In 1725 the noted essayist Bernard Mandeville acknowledged that “Amongst our Seafaring Men, the practice of Piety is very scarce.” He continued, “There are not many of them that are well-grounded in the Principles of their Religion.” The seaman’s mobility, long stints of work at sea, and his single-sex community of labor diminished the family’s regulatory powers and encouraged other social bonds. And labor itself was none too reliable a mechanism given the tendency of seamen to mutiny and turn pirate. The disciplinary network that underlay the social order thus had a weak presence at sea.21

  Numerous writers, citing the need of “Discipline of the Seas” for the betterment of trade, tried to compensate by telling the seaman (a potential pirate) that God will follow you “to the uttermost parts of the Sea”; that the religious “eye is continually upon you”; and that “all your Actions and Transactions are open and naked.” In 1723 Cotton Mather indicated that those who “go to Sea should have their Sailing Orders from our SAVIOUR” and instructed the seaman to acknowledge in prayer “thine Eye is always upon me.” These warnings tried to make it clear to sailors that the reach of certain authorities could not be lessened by distance. But most sailors knew otherwise.22

  The discourse on piracy thus revealed and attempted to correct a serious disconnection between authority and life at sea. The sea had made available to “desperate, filthy fellows” like seamen a singular opportunity: they could, with a willingness to face danger, risk their lives, and forsake some fundamental social rules, escape conventional authority, manufacture their own power, and accumulate considerable wealth by turning pirate. They used the uncontrollable seas for their own purposes, but these would figure only obliquely in the public discussion. Indeed, the extremity of the demonization suggests that the alternatives and challenges that piracy posed to the prevailing power relations, both in seafaring and the larger class-based society, had to be answered by destruction.23

  The image of the pirate evolved alongside and influenced a series of practical policies to eradicate robbery at sea. “A Proclamation for Suppressing of Pyrates” was issued by the royal government on September 5, 1717, offering a general amnesty for those who had committed piracies as well as rewards to any who might capture freebooters and turn them over to the government, dead or alive. Hundreds of freebooters accepted the pardon, but many of these returned immediately “to the Old Trade of Pyrating.” Another act of grace, as it was called, was issued later that year, on December 5, with similar results. Meanwhile, the government acted on complaints about the pirate rendezvous in the Bahama Islands, sending Woodes Rogers to destroy it and put a proper English government in its place. He arrived, as we have noted, on July 20, 1718, and most of the pirates scattered in response. A final amnesty was issued on December 21, 1718, to be extended a few months into 1719 in the hope that pirates would wish to come in, accept the pardon, and sign onto privateers in the brief War of the Quadruple Alliance against Spain. Some did, but many of them seem to have taken the side of Spain. Throughout, some accepted the grace but refused to reform; others “seem’d to slight it,” and the most defiant “used the King’s Proclamation with great contempt, and tore it into pieces.”24

  The attacks against trade continued, and transatlantic merchants who felt their sting began to petition the government for an alternative policy to the fa
iling pardons. By 1720 ruling groups had decided to use force, and in two forms: more vigilant naval patrolling and ever-greater numbers of spectacular executions. Many merchants had a vested interest in eliminating piracy, but the final assault was launched in large measure as a response to demands by the increasingly powerful traders in West African slaves.25

  A series of sailors’ mutinies shook the slave trade between 1716 and 1726, a logical outcome of the chronic complaints about food, discipline, and the general conditions of the working life aboard the slave ships that left England and America for West Africa during these years. Sailors alleged in court that Captain Theodore Boucher of the slave ship Wanstead “did not allow victualls & liquor enough to support them & used them very barbarously and inhumanly in their diett.” Other sailors complained of tyrannical discipline. Those who dared to resist shipboard conditions might find themselves “as Slaves linked and coupled by chains together & were fedd with Yams &Water the Usuall dyett for Slaves.” In 1720 Francis Willis, a naval captain posted to the West African station, reported to the Admiralty that the sailors in the slave ships were “ripe for pyracy.” He added, with discretion, “Whether it be occasioned by the masters’ ill usage or their own natural inclination I must leave their Lordships to judge.”26

  Some mutinous sailors, however, averted a fate of chains by seizing their vessels and raising the black flag. When George Lowther and his comrades mutinied aboard the Royal African Company ship Gambia Castle in 1720, they “knocked down the Cabins, made the Ship flush fore and aft, prepared black Colours, new named her, the Delivery,” and sailed away in triumph. Lowther and his crew may have taken inspiration from the hundreds of pirates who headed for the coast of Africa after the 1718 reestablishment of royal authority in the Bahama Islands, attacking poorly defended ships, seizing their cargo, and recruiting their crew members. Edward England and other pirate captains found the slavers to be excellent recruiting grounds. One slave trader testified that when his ship was taken, the pirates “diverted themselves” with the women slaves but also “Took off the Irons from all the [250] Negroes I had on board.” Worse still, they “had armed the Negroes” with knives, leaving the captain in fear of deadly insurrection when he was allowed to retake control of the vessel.27