2. Bernhard Klein and Gesa Mackenthun, eds., Sea Changes: Historicizing the Ocean (London: Routledge, 2004).
3. Walter Benjamin, “The Storyteller,” in Illuminations: Essays and Reflections (New York: Schocken, 1969). This and the following four paragraphs quote from this work.
4. Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England (1845; repr. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 123.
5. Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (1851; repr. New York: Norton, 1967), 470.
6. Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700–1750 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), chap. 4.
7. Definitions of “strike” from the Oxford English Dictionary and William Falconer, Dictionary of the Marine (London, 1769).
8. Samuel Robinson, A Sailor Boy’s Experience Aboard a Slave Ship in the Beginning of the Present Century (1867; repr. Wigtown, Scotland: G.C. Book Publishers, 1996), 6.
9. Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 2004), 38–42.
10. Rediker, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 93, 157, 185–86, 249.
11. William Dampier, A New Voyage Round the World (1697; repr. New York: Dover, 1968), 303. See also Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 71; Margaret Cohen, The Novel and the Sea (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 45; Gary C. Williams, “William Dampier: Pre-Linnean Explorer, Naturalist, Buccaneer,” Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences 55 (2004): 146–66.
12. Dampier, New Voyage, 507.
13. Edward Ward, The Wooden World Dissected: In the Character of a Ship of War: as also, the Characters of all the Officers, from the Captain to the Common Sailor . . . (London, 1697),71.
14. Rediker, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 12; Jane Caplan, ed., Written on the Body: The Tattoo in European and American History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Ira Dye, “The Tattoos of Early American Seafarers, 1796–1818,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 133 (1989): 520–54; Simon P. Newman, “Reading the Bodies of Early American Seafarers,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 55 (1998): 59–82.
15. Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16 (1986): 22–27.
16. John Cremer, Ramblin’ Jack: The Journal of Captain John Cremer, 1700–1774, ed. Richard Reynall Bellamy (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936), 90.
17. George Barrington, A Voyage to Botany Bay (1795), available through Project Gutenberg at http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/0607421h.html.
18. Spooner’s Vermont Journal, Nov. 29, 1785; Columbian Magazine, or Monthly Miscellany, Sept. 1786; Andrew Swinton, Travels in Norway, Denmark, Russia, in the Years 1788, 1789, 1790 and 1791 (Dublin, 1792), 2–5; “Natural History of that Most Extraordinary Sea-Animal, called the Kraken,” The New Wonderful Magazine, and Marvellous Chronicle (London, 1794), 313–15.
19. Rediker, Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 157.
20. Information of Philip Brand, July 1729, High Court of Admiralty Papers 1/56, ff.32–33, National Archives of Great Britain, Kew Gardens.
21. Philip Edwards, The Story of the Voyage: Sea-Narratives in Eighteenth- Century England (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 2.
22. Dampier, New Voyage, 4.
23. William Brandon, New Worlds for Old: Reports From the New World and Their Effect on the Development of Social Thought in Europe 1500–1800 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1986).
24. Cohen, Novel and the Sea, 107–12.
25. Green, Dreams of Empire, 71–72.
26. Cohen, Novel and the Sea, 7, 93. See also David Fausett, The Strange Surprising Sources of Robinson Crusoe (Amsterdam: Editions Rodopi B.V., 1994).
27. Williams, “William Dampier,” 163; Green, Dreams of Empire, 90.
28. Jeremy Lewis, Tobias Smollett (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), chap. 2; Green, Dreams of Adventure, 374; Nathan Comfort Starr, “Smollett’s Sailors,” American Neptune 32 (1972): 81–99. The quotation appears in Roderick Random (1748, repr. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2012), 135.
29. Wayne Franklin, James Fenimore Cooper: The Early Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), chap. 2; quotations at 90, 100. Cooper also served subsequently in the United States Navy but had little direct experience of life at sea. On Cooper’s Atlantic influence, see Cohen, Novel and the Sea, chap. 4.
30. See Rediker, Slave Ship, chap. 10.
31. Julius Sherrard Scott III, “The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution,” PhD diss., Duke University, 1986. For a spin-off article, see Julius Scott, “Afro-American Sailors and the International Communication Network: The Case of Newport Bowers,” in Jack Tar in History: Essays in the History of Maritime Life and Labour, ed. Colin Howell and Richard J. Twomey (Fredericton, New Brunswick: Acadiensis Press, 1991).
32. Niklas Frykman, “The Wooden World Turned Upside Down: Naval Mutinies in the Age of Atlantic Revolution,” PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 2010. See also Niklas Frykman, Clare Anderson, Lex Heerma van Voss, and Marcus Rediker, eds., Mutiny and Maritime Radicalism in the Age of Revolution: A Global Survey (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Chapter Two
1. The work has been published as Barlow’s Journal of His Life at Sea in King’s Ships, East & West Indiamen, & Other Merchant Men from 1659 to 1703, ed. Basil Lubbock (London, 1934) (hereafter cited as BJ ). All subsequent references are to the published version. The quotations in this paragraph are on pages 29 and 228.
2. Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Merchant Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteen Centuries (London: Newton Abbot, 1962), 14–21. The Royal Sovereign, which Barlow declared to be “the best ship in England,” held 102 cannon and as many as one thousand men. See BJ, 124; A. G. Course, Seventeenth Century Mariner (London: F. Muller, 1965), Appendix I, 241–42.
3. Robert Muchembled, Popular Culture and Elite Culture in France, 1400–1750, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1985), 3–4.
4. BJ, 21, 11, 15.
5. Ibid., 15, 17, 19, 20, 23, 28, 29; Course, Seventeenth Century Mariner, 17.
6. BJ, 31.
7. Ibid., 31–32, 28, 34, 213, 153.
8. Ibid., 33, 162, 226, 61.
9. Ibid., 19, 60, 32, 41, 21, 426.
10. Ibid., 90, 115. Barlow explained, “He that is bound must obey,” 47.
11. Ibid., 128, 339, 90, 61. This passage goes on to say, “I had always a mind to see strange countries and fashions, which made me bear the extremities with the more patience.”
12. Ibid., 61, 68; Charles A. Le Guin, “Sea Life in Seventeenth-Century England,” American Nepture 27 (1967): 116.
13. Ibid., 204, 61, 28, 162, 204, 252, 263, 544. See Keith Wrightson, English Society, 1580–1680 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 228, 223. It should also be noted that by the 1690s, when the economic situation improved, Barlow was beginning to make better money as a mate, and this made him less likely to leave the sea.
14. Ibid., 21.
15. Ibid., 162, 214, 161, 69; Le Guin, “Sea Life,” 113, 115.
16. BJ, 54, 162. For other comments on pursers, see 51, 127–28, 151–52, 159.
17. Ibid., 548, 123, 164, 358, 462.
18. Ibid., 83, 358, 540, 365, 219, 528, 374, 506–7.
19. Ibid., 135, 165, 119, 107, 61.
20. Ibid., 95–96, 146.
21. Ibid., 351, 280, 308, 162–63, 242, 19.
22. Ibid., 16, 107, 162–63, 174–75.
23. Ibid., 507, 436, 305, 529. See also E. P. Thompson, “The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 50 (1971): 76–136.
24. BJ, 553, but see 310, 424, 540.
25. Ibid., 42, 44, 47.
26. Ibid., 341, 350, 365.
27. Ibid., 57, 153, 314, 318, 458, 405.
28. Ibid., 166, 9
0.
29. Ibid., 339, 60, 146, 175.
30. Christopher Hill, “Pottage for Free-Born Englishmen: Attitudes to Wage Labour,” in Change and Continuity in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 234–38.
31. See Peter Linebaugh’s treatment of this problem in “All the Atlantic Mountains Shook,” Labour/Le Travail 10 (1982): 99.
Chapter Three
1. Henry Pitman, A Relation of the Great Sufferings and Strange Adventures of Henry Pitman, Chyrurgion to the Late Duke of Monmouth (London: Andrew Sowle, 1689). The pamphlet is reprinted in Stuart Tracts, 1603–1693, ed. C. H. Firth (New York: Cooper Square, 1964), 431–76.
2. N. A. T. Hall, “Maritime Maroons: Grand Marronage from the Danish West Indies,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 42 (1985): 491–92.
3. For more on the early history of Barbados, see Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972); and Hilary McD. Beckles, White Servitude and Black Slavery in Barbados, 1627–1715 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989).
4. Hilary McD. Beckles, “English Parliamentary Debate on ‘White Slavery’ in 1659,” Journal of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society 36 (1988): 344–53.
5. Marcus Rediker, “Good Hands, Fast Feet, and Stout Heart: The History and Culture of Working People in Early America,” Labour/Le Travail 19 (1982): 123–44.
6. P. K. Kemp and Christopher Lloyd, Brethren of the Coast: Buccaneers of the South Seas (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1961).
7. On maroons, see Richard Price, ed., Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1973).
8. Kemp and Lloyd, Brethren of the Coast, 70.
9. On the subsequent history of the Bahamas, see Hilary McD. Beckles, A History of Barbados: From Amerindian Settlement to Caribbean Single Market (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
10. Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic
11. John Cordy Jeaffreson, ed., A Young Squire of the Seventeenth Century from the Papers (A.D. 1676–1686) of Christopher Jeaffreson (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1879), 2:61.
12. Linebaugh and Rediker, Many-Headed Hydra, chap. 1.
13. Peter Linebaugh, Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberty and Commons for All (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008).
14. Tim Severin, In Search of Robinson Crusoe (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
15. Karl Marx, “Production, Consumption, Distribution, Exchange,” in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, available online at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-poleconomy/appx1.htm.
Chapter Four
1. Alexander Spotswood to the Board of Trade, June 16, 1724, Colonial Office Papers (hereafter CO) 5/1319, National Archives of the UK.
2. Charles Johnson, A General History of the Pyrates, ed. Manuel Schonhorn (1724, 1728; repr. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1972).
3. S. Charles Hill, “Episodes of Piracy in Eastern Waters,” Indian Antiquary 49 (1920): 37; Arthur L. Hayward, ed., Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals . . . (London, 1735; repr. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1927), 37. I have, over the years, constructed a database of 778 pirates (774 men and 4 women) from documents of all varieties (as found in these endnotes). I recorded individual pirates by name, dates of activity, age, former occupation, class, family background, and miscellaneous details. Biographical data indicate that 173 of the 178 for whom a labor background is known came from one of these employments; at least 161 had been in the merchant service, and some had served in more than one of these seafaring occupations.
4. Carter Hughson, The Carolina Pirates and Colonial Commerce, 1670–1740, Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science, vol. 12 (Baltimore, 1894), 59; Patrick Pringle, Jolly Roger (New York: Norton, 1953), 181, and in High Court of Admiralty Papers (hereafter HCA) 1/54 (1717), f. 113, National Archives of the UK; Johnson, History of the Pyrates, 132, 615; W. Noel Sainsbury et al., eds., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies (London, 1860) (hereafter Cal. St. Papers), 31:10; Abel Boyer, ed., The Political State of Great Britain . . . (London, 1711–40), 21:659. Quotation from “Representation from Several Merchants Trading to Virginia to Board of Trade,” Apr. 15, 1717, CO 5/1318. Estimates of the sizes of crews are available for thirty-seven pirate ships: The mean is 79.5. I have found reference to seventy-nine crews through mention of the ship or captain. Totals were obtained by arranging ships according to periods of activity and multiplying by the mean crew size. If this mean holds, the total population would have been 6,281. Yet this figure counts some pirates more than once. For example, many who sailed with both Howell Davis and Bartholomew Roberts are counted twice. It seems that, in all, some five thousand men were involved.
5. Deposition of John Vickers, 1716, CO 5/1317; Spotswood, Council of Trade and Plantations (hereafter CTP), May 31, 1717, CO 5/1364; Johnson, History of the Pyrates, 31–34; Leo Francis Stock, ed., Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America (Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution, 1930), 3:399; Deposition of Adam Baldridge in Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents, ed. John Franklin Jameson (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 180–87; R. A. Brock, ed., The Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood . . . (Virginia Historical Society, Collections, N.S., II [Richmond, Va., 1882]), 168, 351; William Snelgrave, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade (London, 1734), 197; Abbe Rochon, “A Voyage to Madagascar and the East Indies,” in A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels . . . (London, 1814), 16:767–71; William Smith, A New Voyage to Guinea . . . (London, 1744), 12, 42. On Johnson’s credibility, see Schonhorn’s introduction to Johnson, History of the Pyrates, xxvii–xl; Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (New York: Longmans, 1932), 182; and Hugh F. Rankin, The Golden Age of Piracy (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1969), 161.
6. James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson . . . (London, 1791), 86.
7. Probably fewer than 5 percent of pirates originated as mutineers. See Johnson, History of the Pyrates, 116, 196, 215–16; Snelgrave, New Account, 203; Deposition of Richard Simes, Cal. St. Papers, 32:319; Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 25 (1968): 379, 375–76, 406; Richard B. Morris, Government and Labor in Early America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946), 246–47, 257, 262–68; Johnson, History of the Pyrates, 244, 359; A. G. Course, The Merchant Navy: A Social History (London: Frederick Muller, 1963), 61; Samuel Cox to CTP, Aug. 23, 1721, Cal. St. Papers, 32:393; Ralph Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Macmillan, 1962), 144, 154–55; The Voyages and Travels of Captain Nathaniel Uring, ed. Alfred Dewar (1726; repr. London, 1928), xxviii, 176–78; Arthur Pierce Middleton, Tobacco Coast: A Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era (Newport News, VA: Mariners’ Museum, 1953), 8, 13, 15, 18, 271, 281; Christopher Lloyd, The British Seaman,1200–1860: A Social Survey (Rutherford, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1970), 249, 264; John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies . . . (London, 1735), 261; G. T. Crook, ed., The Complete Newgate Calendar . . . (London, 1926), 3:57–58; S. Charles Hill, “Notes on Piracy in Eastern Waters,” Indian Antiquary 46 (1927): 130; Hayward, Remarkable Criminals, 126.
8. Gov. Lowther to CTP, October 23, 1718, Cal. St. Papers, 29:350; Morris, Government and Labor, 247; Lemisch, “Jack Tar,” 379; Davis, English Shipping Industry, 133–37; R. D. Merriman, ed., Queen Anne’s Navy: Documents Concerning the Administration of the Navy of Queen Anne, 1702–1714 (London: Navy Records Society, 1961), 170–72, 174, 221–22, 250; Lloyd, British Seaman, 44–46, 124–49; Peter Kemp, The British Sailor: A
Social History of the Lower Deck (London: J. M. Dent, 1970), chaps. 4, 5; Arthur N. Gilbert, “Buggery and the British Navy, 1700–1861,” Journal of Social History 10 (1976–77): 72–98.
9. Atkins, Voyage to Guinea, 139, 187; Captain’s logbook, “At Jamaica, 1720–1721,” Rawlinson Manuscripts A-299, Bodleian Library, Oxford; The Historical Register, Containing an Impartial Relation of All Transactions . . . (London, 1722), 7:344.
10. Merriman, Queen Anne’s Navy, 171.
11. Course, Merchant Navy, 84; Lloyd, British Seaman, 57; Edward Cooke, A Voyage to the South Sea (London, 1712), v–vi, 14–16; Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, ed. G. E. Manwaring (1712; repr. New York: Longmans, 1928), xiv, xxv; George Shelvocke, A Voyage Round the World (London, 1726), 34–36, 38, 46, 157, 214, 217; William Betagh, A Voyage Round the World (London, 1728), 4.
12. Rogers, Cruising Voyage, 205. See also Shelvocke, Voyage, 43, 221–25.
13. Col. Benjamin Bennet to CTP, May 31, 1718, and July 30, 1717, CO 37/10, f. 18; Johnson, History of the Pyrates, 228.
14. See note 7 above.
15. Only twenty-six in the sample of 778 are known to have been married. In pirate confessions, regrets were often expressed to parents, seldom to wives or children. See Cotton Mather, Useful Remarks; An Essay upon Remarkables in the Way of Wicked Men: A Sermon on the Tragical End, unto which the Way of Twenty-Six Pirates Brought Them; At New Port on Rhode-Island, July 19, 1723 . . . (New London, CT, 1723), 38–42; and Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy . . . (Boston, 1718), 24, 25. Quotation from John Barnard, Ashton’s Memorial: An History of the Strange Adventures, and Signal Deliverances of Mr. Philip Ashton . . . (Boston, 1725), 3.
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