by Frank Sherry
Despite its proximity to Africa, Madagascar’s people are not of African origin. They are rather of Malayo-Polynesian stock. It is thought that they migrated to Madagascar from Indonesia more than three thousand miles to the east across the Indian Ocean.
Because the great island offers numerous bays, coves, inlets, and harbors suitable as anchorages, seafarers have resorted to it from the very earliest times.
Madagascar was known to both Arab and Hindu traders in the Indian Ocean at least two centuries before Europeans “discovered” the island. Some time around the end of the fourteenth century small groups of Muslim traders, perhaps from Zanzibar, set up trading colonies in the north of Madagascar. Indian merchants also visited the northern part of the island during this period. It is likely that during this time Madagascar was part of a regular Indian Ocean trading route followed by both Arab and Indian merchants.
Although visited frequently by merchants, Madagascar remained a place of mystery and fable to eastern civilizations. It is, for example, described in early Arabic tales as the home of the giant bird called the roc, which was capable of carrying off elephants and which, in one tale, attacked Sinbad’s ship.
Although Madagascar is mentioned in the writings of Marco Polo, the first European definitely known to have visited the island was Diogo Dias, a Portuguese navigator who touched on the island in 1500 on his way to India. The Portuguese, who called Madagascar the Isle of St. Lawrence, frequently raided the island during the sixteenth century in unsuccessful attempts to dislodge Muslim trading settlements there.
In the early years of the seventeenth century, as more and more European states initiated trade with the East, attempts were made to establish permanent European outposts on Madagascar.
In 1642 the French East India Company established settlements along the southern coast. The most important of these posts they named Port Dauphin. The French also attempted to lay claim to the entire island of Madagascar, but since France could not back up her claim with arms, other European powers active in the region ignored it.
In 1645 the English, not to be outdone by the French, also planted a colony in the southern sector of the island, in an area known as St. Augustine’s Bay. The Dutch, too, attempted to establish a permanent settlement.
The English attempt at colonization failed miserably, primarily because of malaria and other tropical fevers. Of the original 140 colonists who had gone ashore at St. Augustine’s Bay, only 23 survived the first year. This initial effort at colonization was abandoned. Twenty-three years later, the East India Company tried again, but this time hostile natives put an end to the effort.
The Dutch fared little better than the English, also abandoning their effort at colonization within a year or two. The French were more stubborn. They maintained their presence at Port Dauphin until 1674.
But though the European maritime nations failed in their attempts to colonize Madagascar, the great island and its environs played an important part in European trade with the East.
European and American merchant captains used the harbors and offshore islands on both sides of Madagascar as way stations on the long voyage to India. In addition to sheltered harbors, where mariners could clean and repair their hulls, Madagascar overflowed with fresh water, and meat was always available, as were limes and oranges—indispensable for preventing and curing scurvy.
Long before Europeans had attempted to settle there—and long after they had failed, too—the harbors of St. Augustine on the southwest, Port Dauphin on the southeast, and Ranter Bay on the northeast were all popular places for trading ships to put in.
The island of Johanna, just off the northwestern coast, and St. Mary’s, off the northeastern coast, were also important ports of call. Less often visited but still frequently used by trading vessels were the farther islands in the Madagascar region: the Mascarenes to the east in the Indian Ocean, and the Comoro Islands to the west in the Mozambique Channel.
(It is important to keep in mind, however, that when these Madagascar islands are described as “popular” places, or “frequently visited,” these are relative terms. Actual ship traffic in these harbors was extremely light when compared with the Great Mogul’s ports, or Red Sea harbors. Even in the most frequently used Madagascar ports, weeks would often elapse between ships, and for more than one ship to be anchored in a roadstead at the same time was unusual.)
If Madagascar was an attractive stopping place for lawful trading vessels, it was equally attractive to—and as frequently visited by—ships engaged in less lawful, or less humane, traffic.
From the middle years of the seventeenth century onward, free-lance slave traders, most of them based in England’s North American colonies, began to call at Madagascar, usually to refresh and repair before going on to their destinations across the Atlantic, but occasionally to obtain cargoes from local chieftains who dabbled in the slave trade.
Pirates also visited Madagascar’s harbors even before the great outbreak of piracy after 1692. Although few in number, European freebooters had been present in the Indian Ocean as early as 1614 when French privateers, operating with Royal Commissions, preyed on shipping in the Red Sea.
In 1617 two London merchants, Sir Robert Rich and Philip Bernhardi, notwithstanding the fact that they were shareholders in the East India Company, fitted out two small ships, the Francis and the Lion, and sent them to attack “Moorish” shipping off the coast of India.
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In 1630 Charles I himself financed a privateer called Sea Horse and sent her to attack Dutch shipping in the east.
Throughout the seventeenth century small-time piracies like these took place in the eastern waters as Danes, French, and of course, English pirates sought easy prey among the “heathen.”
Although this handful of early eastern pirates made almost no impact on trade, they too discovered the attractions of Madagascar. For pirates, however, Madagascar and its nearby islands offered even more than drinkable water, citrus fruit, and sheltered harbors. They also offered hidden coves where a pirate vessel could hide to careen or share out plunder. Even more important: Despite the legitimate cargo vessels that called there, Madagascar ship traffic was actually sparse when compared with the great number of vessels that crisscrossed the Indian Ocean or rounded the Cape for Europe or America, a fact that made it possible for pirates to frequent the area without much chance of discovery or interference. Moreover, warships seldom operated in Madagascar waters because the commercial and naval conflicts between the western trading powers usually took place far to the north in waters around India and Indonesia.
Another element that made Madagascar especially attractive to pirates was the fact that the native population was usually friendly, if not forced to conform to European laws or customs.
But by far the most important factor was its status as a political orphan. No European nation owned it. Despite hollow claims and pitiful attempts to colonize the island, there was no legitimate western presence on Madagascar. Furthermore, none of the numerous squabbling local tribes dominated more than a few square miles of the huge island.
Madagascar was unclaimed territory: pleasant, impregnable, and—above all—lawless.
It is little wonder that, few as they were, virtually all the pirates who operated in eastern waters before the 1690s regarded Madagascar and its nearby islands as a comfortable haven. Most of them had, at one time or another, visited the place.
Some pirates had even made more or less permanent homes in the area, establishing settlements of thirty to fifty “retired” pirates, plus their women and children.
Almost always these enclaves were under the command of a single individual, who often called himself a “king.” These pirate settlements supported themselves by trade and by exploiting and dominating the natives of the neighborhood. Some of them remained in existence for many years. One pirate chieftain, a Captain John Rivers, set up his little “kingdom” some time around 1686 and continued to “reign” over i
t until he died in 1719.
There were perhaps half a dozen such small European enclaves, usually led by ex-pirates, on and around Madagascar by 1690. Although most of them traded with both the natives and the ships that called in their areas, none of them could be called thriving enterprises.
Then, early in 1691, a wily Scot named Adam Baldridge arrived at St. Mary’s Island, just off Madagascar’s northeastern coast. Here he set himself up as a trader—and soon began to prosper as no Madagascar trader ever had before, serving as the main supplier of the pirate ships that began pouring into the Indian Ocean and calling at St. Mary’s in ever-increasing numbers starting about 1694.
A somewhat shadowy figure, Baldridge seems to have been an ex-pirate who had cruised extensively in the eastern seas and had come to know the Madagascar area well. It was after he killed a man in a tavern fight in Jamaica that Baldridge, seeking a refuge from authorities, had decided to settle down—as other ex-pirates had—in Madagascar.
He apparently chose the island of St. Mary’s because it was often visited by both pirates and honest traders—and because its anchorage was almost landlocked and therefore easily defensible.
Arriving at the island with a full load of trade goods supplied to him by New York merchants, Baldridge built a stockade fort, with forty guns overlooking the harbor, strong enough to protect any ships that might anchor at St. Mary’s from attack by other ships. In addition to the fort, Baldridge built himself a large and sturdy house on the top of a hill, which served both as a landmark for approaching ships and as a lookout from which to spot visitors.
Baldridge’s little settlement eventually became the center of life for scores of ex-pirates, sailors, and retired seamen of the neighborhood who had chosen to live the rest of their days in the relative ease of Madagascar—where women, liquor, and other comforts were readily available to a white man for little money or effort. But it reached the zenith of its prosperity and influence when pirates from Europe and America poured into the Indian Ocean after Captain Tew’s pathfinding voyage.
For these pirates, St. Mary’s, where Adam Baldridge always extended a warm welcome, was the ideal port. But they used other harbors and anchorages as well.
(By the mid 1690s scores of pirate vessels were resorting to Madagascar and its satellite islands as bases from which to strike northward toward the Red Sea and toward the western coast of India, and as sanctuaries too remote, and too strong to attack. With the influx of the pirate fleets, Madagascar bustled with activity. On any given day there might be as many as a dozen pirate ships anchored in Madagascar harbors, taking on stores, effecting repairs, bartering booty, or just lazing away a few days or weeks before resuming a plundering cruise, or returning home with holds stuffed with plunder.)
Baldridge, and other traders who followed him to Madagascar, made huge profits by exchanging such commodities as cattle, rum, guns, gunpowder, clothing, spices, wine, and tools for pirate plunder.
Baldridge also traded successfully with the natives, exchanging European manufactured goods and cloth for meat and produce that he later supplied to the pirates. Nor was he above an occasional deal in slaves.
A quintessential middleman, Baldridge filled his warehouses with luxury goods such as ivory and silks—all pirate plunder that would eventually be turned into cash through resale to “honest” merchants from New York, Boston, and other colonial cities, where the black market for such goods was booming as never before.
For the prosperity of Madagascar merchants like Baldridge, as well as the enormous success of the Madagascar pirates, depended not only on the unique attributes of their island bases and sanctuaries but also on the fervent economic support provided by American colonial merchants who dealt in pirate booty as a means of circumventing England’s pernicious Navigation Acts.
American merchants who had once evaded the Navigation Acts by buying illegally the plunder that privateers “liberated” from the former Spanish enemy in the Caribbean, and who had often bankrolled such privateers, had now become the backers of pirates bound for the Indian Ocean. They had also become the brokers for goods plundered from the ships of eastern potentates.
The “Red Sea Men,” as the eastern pirates were called in the colonies, not only had the financial backing of American merchants, they also had the sympathetic support of a public that tended to look upon them as almost-heroic figures, rather than as outright pirates. If they committed illegal acts, at least they committed them against “heathens.”
The Red Sea Men and their merchant backers also had the help of corrupt colonial governors who were easily bribed to allow pirate ships to deliver their stolen goods to buyers ashore—without the bother of customs inspections. Some colonial governors, such as Captain Tew’s good friend Benjamin Fletcher, not only took bribes from pirates but even invested in pirate expeditions to the East, and profited handsomely from their share of the plunder.
So great was the demand in the colonies for the luxury goods that the pirates provided that the Red Sea Men developed a regular sailing route and course of operation that they dubbed the “Pirate Round.”
Following the Pirate Round, pirate ships would set out from any of several North American ports, cross the Atlantic, taking whatever merchants came into view, and then round the tip of Africa into the Mozambique Channel to Madagascar. Here they would rest, resupply, and clean their hulls before going on to savage the lumbering ships of the Great Mogul in the region of the Red Sea or along the sea-lanes to India. When they had sufficient booty, the pirate masters would then return to a Madagascar port, usually St. Mary’s, where they would once again refresh and resupply themselves under the protective guns of Adam Baldridge’s fort. Eventually they would retrace their route along the Pirate Round, returning to their starting point to dispose of their loot.
With the Pirate Round in full operation by the middle of the 1690s, ship builders in New England were hard-pressed to keep up with the demand for vessels suitable for the pirate trade in the Indian Ocean. Pirate booty was everywhere. In New York “Arab gold” even became common currency. So attractive was the trade that one syndicate of New York merchants decided to eliminate the middlemen in Madagascar by opening up their own depots there to resupply pirate ships (at a healthy markup) and to bid for pirate booty on the spot.
Yet the profits from piracy were so great that Madagascar merchants flourished in spite of competition.
In time Baldridge, as the key trader on St. Mary’s, became in fact, as well as in name, the king of the island. He held court in his big house on the hill overlooking St. Mary’s harbor, dispensing law for both the white and native populations. Warring tribes on the main island sought him as an ally, and he often participated in local wars, almost invariably deciding their outcome with his powerful arsenal of European weapons.
He not only acted like a king, he lived like one. He kept numerous slaves in his establishment. He enlarged and beautified his house, furnishing it with luxurious rugs, divans, hangings, and art all taken from bartered pirate loot. He kept a harem of Madagascar girls, and his entertainments were famous.
For Baldridge, and for the pirates who used Madagascar as a base, the “sweet trade,” as they termed their calling, had never been so sweet.
For the first time in history, a large number of sea outlaws had come together to claim what was essentially their own piece of the globe, had achieved a phenomenal prosperity, and seemed capable of defying the power of any maritime state.
Unlike the buccaneers of Hispaniola and Jamaica, and the Channel pirates of earlier days, the Madagascar outlaws were more than a local nuisance, more than the desperate enterprise of a handful, more than a transitory phenomenon dependent upon conditions in the immediate environment. The Madagascar pirates were new in the experience of the world: international in scope, well financed, numerous, independent, and apparently powerful.
Furthermore, because the Madagascar pirates shared similar economic interests, similar personal backgrounds as author
ity-hating ordinary seamen, and a common geographic center in Madagascar, they began to experience a kind of “gravitational force” that, within a brief period, pulled them into a rough outlaw confederacy—out of which, many thought, an authentic state might emerge.
By 1696 the Madagascar freebooters were already using a generally recognized system of rules and laws to govern their relations with each other. All pirate ships, without exception, operated under “articles” that spelled out the rights and duties of all aboard, from captain to apprentice. These articles were remarkably uniform in both style and substance. Essentially they expressed the “laws” of what Defoe called a “roguish commonwealth.” Because of the similarity of these ship’s articles, pirates—like the citizens of any commonwealth—always shared a general understanding of what was acceptable and unacceptable behavior, no matter what port they might be visiting or what ship they might be serving on.
Another strong sign of an evolving nationalism was the loyalty pirates showed to their fellow outlaws. In fact, pirates were more loyal to each other than they were to their country of origin or to their religion or even to their own race. The evidence for this abounds. English, American, and French pirates sailed together and fought effectively together in Henry Every’s crew, despite the fact that France was at war with England and her colonies. Irish Catholics and Protestant Scots worked alongside each other without friction aboard scores of pirate vessels, despite the religious antagonisms that divided their nonpirate countrymen. The ethnic and religious variation in the makeup of pirate crews was noted over and over again by Admiralty courts that tried pirates. For example, the court noted that of the twenty-four men of Captain John Quelch’s crew tried in Boston in 1704, thirteen were English, four Irish, two Scottish, one Swiss, one Dutch, and three Americans.