by Frank Sherry
Some pirate captains and crews enjoyed tweaking the nose of Authority by issuing “receipts” to merchants when they ransomed their captured vessels. More often than not, these receipts were signed with fictitious and often ridiculous names such as “Aaron Whisslingham” and “Simon Tugmutton”—false signatures that members of Bartholomew Roberts’s crew actually used.
One of the oddest—and most popular—forms of derision employed by pirates was the mock trial.
Held aboard ship—or ashore on deserted islets during careening—this game consisted of a macabre lampoon of an Admiralty court session, with ordinary seamen playing the roles of bewigged judges and prosecutors who would try their shipmates with rough humor on one fatuous charge or another.
Defoe tells the story of one such mock trial reported to him by an eyewitness.
Defoe says the sport began with appointment of the criminals in the case. Counsel were then also appointed, as were an attorney-general and a judge. Once these worthies were named, the judge climbed up a tree which he used as his bench. The judge then wrapped a tarpaulin around his shoulders for his judicial robe, and put a shaggy cap on his head instead of a wig. He also equipped himself with what Defoe calls a “large Pair of Spectacles upon his Nose.”
Now, with the court ready and their grinning shipmates crowding around, the criminals were brought out “making a thousand sour faces.” The attorney-general then revealed the charge against them.
Defoe reproduces the rest in a dialogue that he may very well have improved, but which nevertheless preserves the flavor and the atmosphere of the event:
ATTOR. GEN.: An’t please your Lordship, and you Gentlemen of the Jury, here is a Fellow before you that is a sad Dog, a sad, sad Dog; and I humbly hope your Lordship will order him to be hang’d out of the Way immediately—He has committed Pyracy upon the High Seas, and we shall prove, an’t please your Lordship, that this Fellow, this sad Dog before you, has escaped a thousand Storms, nay, has got safe ashore when the Ship has been cast away, which was a certain Sign he was not born to be drown’d; yet not having the Fear of hanging before his Eyes, he went on robbing and ravishing Man, Woman and Child, plundering Ships cargoes fore and aft, burning and sinking Ship, Bark and Boat, as if the Devil had been in him. But this is not all, my Lord, he has committed worse Villainies than all these, for we shall prove, that he has been guilty of drinking Small-Beer; and your Lordship knows, there never was a sober Fellow but what was a Rogue. My Lord, I should have spoken much finer than I do now, but that as your Lordship knows our Rum is all out, and how should a Man speak good Law that has not drunk a Dram—However, I hope your Lordship will order the Fellow to be hang’d.
JUDGE: Heark’ee me, Sirrah—you lousy, pittiful, ill-look’d Dog; what have you to say why you should not be tuck’d up immediately and set a sun-drying like a Scare-crow?—Are you guilty or not guilty?
PRIS: Not guilty, an’t please your Worship.
JUDGE: Not guilty! say so again, Sirrah, and I’ll have you hang’d without any Trial.
PRIS: An’t please your Worship’s Honour, my Lord, I am as honest a poor Fellow as ever went between stem and stern of a Ship, and can hand, reef, steer and clap two ends of a Rope together, as well as e’er He that ever cross’d salt Water; but I was taken by one George Bradley (the name of him that sat as Judge) a notorious Pyrate, a sad Rogue as ever was unhang’d, and he forc’d me, an’t please your Honour.
JUDGE: Answer me, Sirrah—How will you be try’d?
PRIS: By God and my Country.
JUDGE: The Devil you will—Why then, Gentlemen of the Jury, I think we have nothing to do but to proceed to Judgment.
ATTOR. GEN.: Right my Lord; for if the Fellow should be suffered to speak, he may clear himself and that’s an Afront to the Court.
PRIS: Pray, my Lord, I hope your Lordship will consider…
JUDGE: Consider!—How dare you talk of considering?—Sirrah, Sirrah, I never considered in all my Life—I’ll make it Treason to consider.
PRIS: But, I hope your Lordship will hear some reason!
JUDGE: D’ye hear how the Scoundrel prates?—What I’d have you to know, Raskal, we don’t sit here to hear Reason—we go according to Law—Is our Dinner ready?
ATTOR. GEN.: Yes, my Lord.
JUDGE: Then heark’ee, you Raskal at the Bar; hear me, Sirrah, hear me—You must suffer, for three reasons; first, because it is not fit I should sit here as Judge and no Body be hanged. Secondly, you must be hanged, because you have a damn’d hanging Look—and thirdly, you must be hanged, because I am hungry for know, Sirrah, that ’tis a Custom, that whenever the Judge’s Dinner is ready before the Tryal is over, the Prisoner is to be hanged of Course—There’s Law for you, ye Dog,—So take him away, Gaoler.”
By means of such mockery, the pirates reduced the institutions of the society they warred with to mere caricatures. By doing so they also diminished the lingering fears that they, as rebels against—but products of—that society, still bore in their hearts. Like all rebels, in order to free themselves of the past, they had to laugh at it.
It was an effective system for achieving psychological solidarity against the common foe. As such it was worthy of the professional revolutionaries of later, more ideological and sophisticated times. Yet the men who invented it, the outlaws who had evolved their own free brotherhood of the sea in defiance of the political powers of their time, were neither ideologues nor sophisticates—but only ordinary, uneducated seamen.
The mythology of piracy, composed by writers of romantic fiction long after the great outbreak, may depict pirates as wronged noblemen seeking justice, or as swashbuckling soldiers of fortune, or as gentry with a score to settle, but this is far from reality. In fact, virtually all pirates were simple seafaring men who had first gone to sea as boys. Even the most outstanding pirate captains all began their careers as ordinary sailors. Most of them discovered their ability to command only after turning pirate and entering an outlaw society in which merit, rather than birth, conferred leadership.
There were no wronged noblemen aboard pirate vessels, nor were there London pickpockets, Irish convicts, or displaced farmers in pirate crews, despite what fiction writers put in their stories. For no matter how lax the discipline aboard a pirate vessel, knowledgeable seafarers, men who understood the ways of a ship at sea and how to furl a sail and haul a line, were essential to its working. Landlubbers were not welcome. There were some exceptions to this rule: A doctor was always happily received, even if he didn’t know a mizzen from a marlinspike, and musicians were also gleefully accepted. But most of those who served under the black flag were hard and seasoned men of the sea.
Generally speaking, there were three ways men became pirates: by voluntarily joining a pirate crew when captured, by mutiny, or by desertion from the Royal Navy.
Whenever pirates took a prize, they made it a practice to give the crew of the captured ship the opportunity of enlisting in the outlaw brotherhood. Usually the ordinary seamen volunteered with alacrity, glad to escape from bullying discipline. But these potential pirates were not automatically accepted. They first had to submit to an interview by the quartermaster, who explained the pirate ship’s articles to them, and he could accept or reject candidates as he saw fit. For the most part, however, likely-looking able-bodied seamen were admitted to the brotherhood without much bother.
Mutineers were men who—like Henry Every’s crew—had seized the ships of their masters for their own use. They were usually the toughest and most incorrigible of all pirates, since they were almost always wanted men, often not eligible for pardons, and usually subject to hanging if caught.
Recruits to the black flag from the Royal Navy were usually deserters from warships, who became pirates because it was the only alternative open to them. So acute was the problem of desertion among naval personnel in this era that some Royal Navy commanders did not permit their men to go ashore at all, but kept them virtual prisoners on board their ships for years at a
time. (Even when they were not allowed to go ashore, however, the Royal Navy seamen were allowed a variety of creature comforts in port. These included the attentions of prostitutes who were rowed out to the anchored ships in boatloads.)
The chief causes of desertions from the Royal Navy were, first, the harsh discipline aboard men-of-war and, second, the resentment that many seamen felt at having been press-ganged into the service to begin with. In addition, some navy men felt strongly about the navy’s unfair division of prize money, with officers getting most of it and the common sailors only a relative pittance.
The fact that throughout this era the pirate brotherhood never lacked for recruits testifies to the irresistible pull that the free pirate life exerted on untutored sailors. For, in most other respects, life aboard a pirate ship was as hard as that on any ship in the age of sail.
Physical conditions aboard a pirate vessel were certainly no better than those aboard other wooden ships. Pirates, like all sailors of the age, had to put up with wet bunks, overcrowding, filthy food, sickness, vermin, boredom, and—often—danger. Sailing ships were dark and damp. The smell of bilge water and rotten meat filled their holds. The sea constantly leaked in, even in good weather, and in heavy weather seas often washed down the hatchways. The fo’c’sle, where the ordinary sailors lived, was always wet. It was also gloomy with candlelight and smoke, and fetid with the overpowering odor of men crowded together in a small area. Because pirate crews were always large (to ensure that the ship would always dispose of enough force to overcome even the most determined foe), there were often as many as two hundred men or more crammed into vessels that were ordinarily no larger than 130 feet long and 30 to 40 feet at the beam.
Disease was a constant companion. Despite almost medieval attempts to drive away the “humors” and “pestilential airs” that were believed to cause illness—usually by fumigation with pans of burning brimstone, or by sloshing the decks with vinegar and salt water—nothing could really defeat such afflictions as typhus, malaria, and the various forms of dysentery that were often epidemic. Rats, cockroaches, and other vermin that bred in the bilge—and in the wet refuse that piled up in out-of-the-way corners of the ship—also helped to spread sickness. Scurvy, caused by a lack of vitamin C, was also a plague, as were yellow fever and venereal disease.
Food aboard a sailing ship of that time was barely edible whether a sailor served aboard a pirate or aboard an honest ship. Biscuit was the staple food, along with salt beef. But the biscuits were usually rotten with mold while the beef was alive with worms and maggots.
Because there existed no way to store food and keep it both nutritious and palatable, seafarers in the days of sail sought supplies of fresh meat and vegetables at every port where they were available. Pirate vessels tried to provide fresh meat by hunting wild pig and sea turtles at any likely island or beach. Sometimes, to ensure freshness, they would take live animals aboard ship, keeping them tethered below until they were ready to use them. This was often impractical, however, given the limited space aboard a wooden ship. Madagascar pirates made it a practice to buy fresh fruit and cattle from natives or traders whenever possible.
Pirate cooks did develop one distinctive dish, which they called “salmagundi.” Basically it was a salad concoction consisting of any marinated or cooked meats that happened to be available, tossed together with an array of pickled vegetables, eggs, anchovies—even grapes. The whole thing would then be seasoned with garlic, pepper, salt, vinegar, and oil. (There were apparently as many recipes for salmagundi as there were pirate cooks. The origin of the name is unclear. It has been suggested that it was a corruption of an old French word, salmigondis, a strongly seasoned stew. Some cookbooks say that whatever the origin of the name, the basic idea of salmagundi was invented in sixteenth century England where it was also known as Grand Salad.)
It was rare, however, that pirates got to enjoy fare as savory and nutritious as salmagundi when they were under sail. Usually they had to make do with biscuit and salt beef, just as they had in honest service.
Pirates—and all sailors—also had to endure long stretches of endless sea and sky, or weeks becalmed, cooped up with the same men, doing and saying the same things, day after day, week after week. (Pirates, at least, could fight off this boredom with liquor and music and, if the articles permitted, gambling.)
In addition to boredom, poor food, disease, and discomfort, there were a variety of hazards inherent in the seaman’s trade: Storms could wash men overboard. Sailors often fell from the rigging. Shipwreck was not uncommon. Fire was always a terrifying possibility.
For pirates there was another danger: combat.
Although pirates made it their business to avoid a fight whenever possible, there were occasions when a clash of arms became unavoidable. Bartholomew Roberts and his crew fought a bloody battle with black tribesmen while ashore on the west coast of Africa. A pirate captain named Charles Vane, much feared in his time, blasted his way out of Nassau harbor in the Bahamas, in defiance of a Royal Navy squadron. Henry Every lost twenty men during his battle with the Gang-I-Sawai. Tew was killed in combat. Blackbeard fought and won a fierce duel with a Royal Navy man-of-war. The pirate captain Edward England engaged in a thunderous and bloody battle off Madagascar with the East Indiaman Cassandra in which forty of his men were killed or wounded.
These are only some of the combats recorded in pirate annals.
Most pirates recognized that the day might very well come when they would have to risk their lives in a hand-to-hand struggle with other men. For this reason, each pirate carried an assortment of heavy weapons, which he handled expertly and kept in excellent condition.
Most pirates favored as personal weapons the cutlass, pistols, the boarding ax, and often a couple of grenades. A few pirates also carried a musket, but the weapon was unwieldy and for that reason rarely used. The cutlass, which took its name from the “curtal ax” used by English warriors of medieval times, was about a yard long, slightly curved, and had both a sharp edge and a vicious point, allowing its user to deliver both a thrust and a cut. Pirates usually carried two flintlock pistols that could fire a solid one-ounce ball with deadly accuracy. At a range of twenty yards they were lethal. Even beyond that range they could still cripple a man.
With such weapons pirates were fearsome adversaries who usually gave more punishment than they took. Yet, given the nature of shipboard combat at close quarters, where oak splinters from explosions flew through the air like shards of shrapnel and men slashed at each other in a fog of smoke and confusion, pirates often suffered serious maiming wounds, frequently made even worse by the primitive surgical methods of the day.
So common was it for ordinary pirates to lose a limb or an eye in combat that most pirate ship articles routinely provided compensation to crewmen for such a loss.5
Added to the dangers and discomforts inherent in pirate life was the knowledge that only a few who followed the “sweet trade” would ever really succeed in obtaining riches. Of course all pirates had heard the tales of those who had made their fortune. Every sea outlaw from Madagascar to the Spanish Main knew the story of Tew’s men and of the great score Henry Every’s crew had made. In later years pirates told about Captain Condent’s great strike in the Arabian Sea, and there was, naturally, the story of Captain Taylor, his crew, and the Cabo. But most pirates never found their Eldorado. If they were lucky enough to serve with a clever and lucky captain, they might enjoy, for a time, wealth beyond what honest seamen could earn in a lifetime, but few pirates ever amassed a fortune.
Furthermore, even when a pirate did make a big score, he was more apt than not to spend his loot wildly in debauch and in generosity, until he was once again penniless—and ready for another cruise. Pirate captains, too (with a few exceptions like Henry Every), usually failed to hang on to, or benefit from, their plunder. Most, like the ordinary seamen they sailed with, spent their money as fast as they could. (One of the most persistent myths about pirates is that they
buried their treasure. This notion apparently got started because Captain Kidd did, in fact, temporarily bury some of his loot. Blackbeard, too, let it be known he had buried a treasure. But Blackbeard, among other things, was a very great liar, and there is no evidence he ever buried anything but corpses. Stories of buried treasure were really given credence and wide circulation by such fictions as Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Gold Bug” and—of course—by R. L. Stevenson in Treasure Island. People still search for buried pirate treasure, but little is ever found, and for an excellent reason: The men of the outlaw brotherhood spent it all more than two hundred years ago.)
Not only did pirates, as a general rule, die broke, many—even the most canny and farseeing among them—also died miserably: of drink, an Admiralty rope, or wounds sustained in the pursuit of riches.
Captain England, for example, ended his days as a drunken beggar. Tew took a cannonball in his gut. Dozens of lesser captains danced at the end of a rope—as did literally hundreds of the common run of pirates.
Yet executions did not suppress piracy. Nor did the odds against success discourage it. Neither could the dangers nor the hardships of the life dissuade recruits from flocking to the outlaw nation, for the urge to live in freedom—no matter how crude its form or short its duration—burned so fiercely in the hearts of thousands of simple seamen of the day that no power of logic, no argument, no fear, could keep them from risking themselves in what was essentially a war against the world—a war that most of them knew they would lose in the end.
So compelling was the lure of the freedom available under the black flag that as the eighteenth century dawned, it seemed to many contemporaries that the outlaws of Madagascar had all but won the struggle in the eastern seas.