If A Pirate I Must Be...

by Richard Sanders

  Immediately afterwards they took a Dutch ship called the Flushingham close to Axim. They forced one man, a Philip Haak. He was a ‘decrepit little fellow, unfit for their purpose,’ his captain said, but he was a trumpeter, which they needed, and they were deaf to his pleas to be released. ‘They killed all the fowls’ aboard the ship, ‘and fell to drinking very hard ... prophanely singing at supper time Spanish and French songs out of a Dutch prayer book.’

  The two pirate ships were now within 50 miles of HMS Weymouth, which was at Cape Three Points. From his captives Roberts now knew of the presence of the two warships on this stretch of the coast. But he had also been informed of their sickly condition. He decided to gamble. He had been planning to sail along the coast as far as Whydah. This was peak season at Africa’s richest slave port and he knew he was assured a rich crop of prizes, particularly Portuguese vessels carrying Brazilian gold. He was not prepared to abandon his plan, but he decided to veer away from the coast and make direct for Whydah across open sea, leapfrogging the two warships lying in his path. The raid there would be his parting shot, a final spectacular. Afterwards he would head south, careen, and leave Africa for safer waters.

  He made extraordinarily fast time. After abandoning the King Solomon at Axim on 8 January the Royal Fortune and the Ranger covered the 400 miles to Whydah in just three days. On 11 January the great port loomed into view. As throughout West Africa there were no jetties or harbour walls - just one long strip of sand against which the surf ceaselessly thundered. The town itself was set back a little way from the coast, and there was no fort, the local king refusing to allow one. The only indication of the torrent of human misery that flowed through this spot was a cluster of tents on the beach, used by ships’ captains as a base from which to conduct trade. A double sand bar made this the most dangerous port on the entire coast and, once ashore, the captains preferred to stay there, sending slaves out to the ships whenever the surf abated slightly. Accidents were common and huge sharks roamed the waters. ‘Whenever the dead are committed to the sea, which happens almost every day while ships are in this road,’ a visitor in 1727 recalled, ‘the sharks give such due attendance that the corpse can no sooner touch the water than it is immediately torn to pieces and devoured before our faces.’

  The sea was slightly calmer in January than in other periods, which encouraged trade, and the pirates encountered twelve slaving ships. Five were Portuguese, four English and three French. The French in particular were formidable vessels, each containing 20 to 30 guns and more than 100 men. Some of the pirates were itching for a fight. ‘Damn you - give the French ship a broadside and board him at once!’ a new recruit seized just days before from the King Solomon shouted at Roberts. But it was unnecessary. Not only the captains but the bulk of the crews were ashore and all of the ships quickly surrendered - except one, a small Royal African Company sloop called the Whydah, that managed to slip away.

  This was a rich haul - more than they had taken in the entire previous week in the waters west of Cape Coast Castle. The pirates set about plundering them of supplies and anything else useful aboard while Roberts opened negotiations with the captains to ransom the ships and their cargoes. It was a lengthy process, letters having to be sent back and forth by canoe through the crashing surf. But they eventually agreed on a ransom of eight pounds of gold dust per ship which, when multiplied by eleven, was worth around £5,600. Some of the foreign captains requested receipts and the pirates were happy to oblige. The documents they were given were reproduced by Captain Johnson:

  THIS is to certify whom it may or doth concern, that we

  GENTLEMEN OF FORTUNE, have received eight Pounds of

  Gold-Dust, for the Ransom of the Hardey, Captain Dittwitt

  Commander, so that we Discharge the said Ship. Witness our

  Hands, this 13th of Jan. 1722 - Batt. Roberts, Harry Glasby.

  Others were written out by Little David and Thomas Sutton, the pirates’ gunner, who jokingly signed themselves ‘Aaron Whifflingpin’ and ‘Sim. Tugmutton’. It was all most civilised and good-humoured. But the master of one ship refused to pay - Captain Fletcher, of the English interloper Porcupine. Roberts’ response was blunt. His ship would be burned.

  Roberts was now in a hurry. While the process of ransoming had dragged on his men had intercepted a letter from General Phipps at Cape Coast Castle to the local Royal African Company agent. It informed him of the pirates’ presence on the coast and told him that, at that very moment, HMS Swallow was making all speed for Whydah.

  Word had reached Cape Coast Castle that Roberts was once more in the area on 9 January, at about the same time the two pirate ships were passing the fort, some miles out to sea, on their way to Whydah. By chance HMS Swallow had arrived at Cape Coast Castle the previous day. As more detailed information arrived over the following thirty-six hours Captain Ogle rightly guessed that Roberts would be unable to resist raiding Whydah before he left the coast. HMS Weymouth was still to the west and, in any case, in no fit state to confront the pirates. And so, the following evening, 10 January, HMS Swallow set off alone in pursuit. General Phipps could scarce contain his excitement. Captain Ogle ‘can not well miss of them’, he gloated to a friend in London. ‘I shall have the satisfaction of sitting upon his court martial in my laced suit.’

  On learning of Ogle’s approach, Roberts called his men together. As ever after the seizure of a prize, many were drunk. Some, at least, were eager for a fight even with a fully armed British man-of-war and Roberts knew he would have to be careful how he handled them. Reading out Phipps’ letter, he said he knew that they were ‘brave fellows’, but that on this occasion discretion was the better part of valour. There was some drunken posturing from a small number. But the majority agreed that they should leave as quickly as possible.

  Roberts now dispatched a small group to burn the Porcupine. The party was led by a pirate called John Walden. Known as ‘Miss Nanny’ for the ‘hardness of his temper’, he had been taken off Newfoundland in the summer of 1720 and was a pirate in the mould of Little David - cruel and quick tempered. Walden was under firm orders to take off the last of the Porcupine’s crew and the eighty slaves who were chained in pairs below decks. But the pirates’ haste now led them to commit what was, by some distance, the most barbaric crime they ever committed.

  With Walden was the Porcupine’s mate, clutching the keys to the slaves’ shackles in his hand. While the pirates took off the remaining crew and began to smear the decks with tar, he was sent below to unchain them. But he was nervous, fumbling. The pirates became impatient and beat him, but this only slowed him further. Eventually Walden had had enough. He ordered everyone out and set the ship ablaze - with the slaves still chained below deck.

  As the pirates’ boat pulled away the slaves’ screams echoed across the water. Still chained together in twos, some managed to stagger up on deck and hurl themselves into the sea - only to be instantly devoured by sharks and torn limb from limb alive in front of the pirates’ eyes.

  Just what Roberts made of this as he watched from the Royal Fortune we don’t know. He, after all, had been a slaver, and, whatever camaraderie might have developed with the slaves in his own crew, it was in his bones to view Africans first and foremost as commodities rather than human beings. The atrocity was against his orders. But there is no record of Walden or anyone else being disciplined for their actions. And before the pirates left Whydah Roberts had to tolerate a second act of insubordination, this time from an element of the Ranger’s crew.

  A group of the Ranger’s men were ransacking a 20-gun French vessel as the pirates prepared to leave. It was a former privateer from St Malo and, as they plundered it, the pirates admired its sleek design. It was larger than their own ship and, by the time the order came to depart, a decision had been made: they would seize it, despite the fact Roberts had already received a ransom from the French captain. Roberts was aware the Ranger’s men were seeking to build up their own strength, independent of
the Royal Fortune. But there was little he could do about it.

  As night fell on Saturday, 13 January 1722, the two pirate ships pulled away from Whydah, taking the French prize with them, leaving the Porcupine blazing in their wake. Captain Ogle arrived in HMS Swallow twenty-four hours later.

  Roberts had got away with it again. He had sailed into the very jaws of two of the most powerful British warships ever sent in pursuit of pirates, and yet had managed to pillage shipping along a 500-mile stretch of coast, leaving them twisting and turning in his wake, bewildered by the speed of his movement, and sailed away unharmed having taken a total of nineteen prizes. For all the simmering tensions within his own crew, he must have felt invincible. There was even a bonus. As they pulled out into open sea the pirates came across the Whydah, the small Royal African Company sloop which had escaped them two days before, enabling them to indulge once more their detestation of the company and its ships. They plundered it and Miss Nanny was again given license to set it alight. Watching the flames take hold, one of the Liverpool men asked James Philips, an Old Stander, the ‘reason of such wicked practice that served no purpose among them’. ‘It was for fun,’ Philips replied.

  The Whydah’s crew was loaded on to a slaver called the Neptune, which happened to be passing, but which the pirates decided not to plunder. The pirates then made their way to Cape Lopez where they set about converting the French prize into their new second ship, naming it, like its predecessor, the Ranger.

  The plan now was to make for Brazil in the hope of repeating the capture of the Sagrada Familia over two years before. Since Kennedy’s desertion with their gold Roberts’ rampages had been confined to waters which, though rich in prizes, rarely yielded the sort of spectacular haul that would enable a pirate to retire. And retirement was what Roberts now had in mind. They planned to raid off Brazil for eight months, ‘share 600 or 700 pounds a man, and then break up’, Roberts’ confidant George Wilson told a new recruit. It was increasingly rare in this period for pirates to survive to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. Shrewd operator that he was, Roberts sensed that he had pushed his luck for long enough, and was dreaming of a life of ease, free of the constant stress of having to keep control over an unruly crew of 250 men. He would probably have made the move earlier if the Good Fortune hadn’t deserted or the Puerto del Principe hadn’t been captured, which forced him to stay longer off Africa to build up his strength.

  But Captain Ogle hadn’t finished with him yet. At Whydah he was told that Roberts was carrying substantial quantities of gold. If any extra incentive were needed he now had it, and he was determined not to let the pirates slip through his grasp. ‘I judged they must go to some place in the Bight [of Biafra] to clean and fit the French ship before they could think of cruising again,’ he wrote. There were only a limited number of places where this could be done. Ogle strengthened his crew with thirty recruits from the Porcupine and the French ship the pirates had seized. Then, on 19 January, he sailed out of Whydah planning to explore them one by one.

  He went first to Princes Island, where he had buried so many of his men four months earlier. Finding no word of the pirates he hurried quickly away. He went next to the River Gabon, but, again, drew a blank. Then, as dawn broke on 5 February, he saw the outline of the three pirate ships, riding at anchor, framed against the headland of Cape Lopez.

  He’d arrived just in time. The pirates had careened the Royal Fortune and had almost completed fitting out the new French ship. Two days later they’d have sailed for Brazil. But Ogle might be forgiven if at this moment he paused and drew breath. They’d loaded the new Ranger with 32 guns, giving Roberts 72 guns in total. The pirate crew now numbered 253 men, and Ogle believed it to be larger. Ships taken at the start of January had told him there were close to 300 men aboard the two pirate vessels, including ‘100 blacks, trained up’. Ogle had just 50 guns and a crew of no more than 250. He was confronting the most powerful, experienced pirate crew in the Atlantic and the outcome was by no means certain.

  But, for once, Roberts’ luck deserted him. There was a sandbank between HMS Swallow and the three pirate ships. As Ogle approached from the north he was obliged to veer west, out into open sea, to avoid it. Seeing this, the pirates thought he had taken fright at the sight of them, and was trying to escape. They concluded that Swallow was a merchant ship, probably Portuguese and full of sugar.

  Roberts now made a fateful decision. Sugar, of course, was one of the key ingredients of punch and they were running short. The men on the new Ranger, in particular, had had none for the past few days and this was adding to tension between the two crews. ‘There is sugar in the offing,’ he bellowed across to them. ‘Bring it in that we may have no more mumbling!’ He was handing the prize to the second ship. It was a sound piece of team management. But it meant that, from that moment, Roberts’ forces would be fatally divided.

  The Ranger was ‘on the heel’ when HMS Swallow appeared, meaning its contents had been shifted to one side, tilting it so its hull could be scrubbed. Its crew quickly righted it and, while they were doing this, Roberts took the precaution of sending across twenty of his most loyal men to bolster its crew, including his boatswain, William Main, and John Walden - ‘Miss Nanny’. He had no faith at all that, having taken the prize, the Ranger wouldn’t simply desert. He’d also been careful to make sure it was carrying none of the crew’s gold.

  With the additional men aboard, the Ranger set off in pursuit of its prize. Seeing this Captain Ogle immediately realised the pirates’ mistake. He continued out to sea, making sure he went slowly enough not to lose sight of the Ranger. Aboard the pirate ship there was wild excitement, the pirates brandishing their cutlasses and ‘swearing every minute at the wind or sails to expedite so sweet a chase’, according to Captain Johnson. One man was dancing manically around the deck. Its captain, the Welshman James Skyrm, ‘in the hurry and warmth of his passion’ slashed with his cutlass at a couple of the forced men whom he felt were showing less enthusiasm than the rest.

  Amidst the mayhem one man aboard, peering closely at the prize, began to suspect its true identity. William Guinneys, who had been forced from the Porcupine in Whydah, mentioned his suspicion to a crewmate standing next to him. But the man ‘bid him hold his tongue’. He too was a forced man and both knew HMS Swallow represented their best chance of being freed.

  Around 10.30 a.m. Ogle judged they were out of earshot of the ships back at Cape Lopez and allowed the Ranger to come within gunshot. The pirates immediately opened fire with four chase guns, simultaneously hoisting their black flag and preparing to board. At this, Ogle swung HMS Swallow around, across the Ranger’s path, opened the lower gunports and delivered a broadside.

  The effect was devastating. The Ranger was caught head on and the fire from HMS Swallow raked its decks from bow to stern, ripping through flesh and tearing off arms and legs. Stunned, the Ranger wheeled away. In the confusion, a young pirate, David Littlejohn, lowered the black flag, signalling surrender. But immediately William Main, the Royal Fortune’s boatswain, and another man rushed at him, pistols drawn, and forced him to raise it again. It was only with difficulty that other pirates persuaded them not to shoot him.

  A chaotic pursuit now ensued, the two ships exchanging cannon fire at distance. Captain Skyrm, Main and other hard-liners were all for pulling alongside HMS Swallow, throwing out grappling hooks and making a desperate bid to board. But it was clear the bulk of the crew were reluctant. At 2 p.m. the poor steering of the pirates enabled Swallow to draw close again and deliver another devastating broadside. The Ranger’s main-mast came crashing down. On the deck men slithered around in their own blood. By now nine were dead and around fourteen wounded. Captain Skyrm’s leg had been blown off, as had Miss Nanny’s. Skyrm continued to hop back and forth across the deck, screaming dementedly at his men to continue fighting. But it was clear all was lost. At 3 p.m. the Ranger struck its colours and surrendered, the men throwing their black flags overboard so they could not be
displayed in triumph over them on the gallows.

  So often the hardened pirates among the crew had said they would blow themselves up and ‘go all merrily to Hell together’ rather than be captured. Now they were true to their word. Half a dozen of the most desperate gathered around the gunpowder they had left in the steerage, and fired a pistol into it. But it was too little to do anything other than leave them hideously burned.

  HMS Swallow’s surgeon, John Atkins, heard the explosion as he was being rowed across to the Ranger to treat the wounded. Climbing aboard, he encountered a bizarre scene. The pirates were as dandily dressed as ever ‘with white shirts, watches, and a deal of silk vests’. Those unhurt remained ‘gay and brisk’. But the ship was awash with blood, and dead and hideously injured men lay all about, victims both of the battle and the explosion afterwards.

  Captain Skyrm was still raging and refused to allow Atkins to dress the stump of his leg. Atkins turned instead to William Main, whom he identified as a boatswain by the silver whistle hanging at his waist. ‘I presume you are the boatswain of this ship,’ he said. ‘Then you presume wrong,’ replied Main, ‘for I am the boatswain of the Royal Fortune, Captain Roberts commander.’

  ‘Then Mr. Boatswain you will be hanged I believe,’ Atkins retorted. ‘That is as your honour pleases,’ said Main. Main told him there were still 120 men (a figure which excluded slaves) aboard the Royal Fortune - ‘as clever fellows as ever trod shoe leather: would I were with them!’ But he denied responsibility for the explosion. The blast had blown him into the water and he complained he had ‘lost a good hat by it’.

  Atkins turned next to a pirate called Roger Ball, whom he could see from his hideous burns had been close to the seat of the explosion. Ball was sitting in a corner ‘with a look as sullen as winter ... bearing his pain without the least complaint’. He told him a pirate called John Morris had fired the pistol into the powder, but that ‘if he had not done it, I would’. Like Skyrm, Ball refused to allow Atkins to dress him. As evening fell he entered ‘a kind of delirium, and raved on the bravery of Roberts, saying, he should shortly be released, as soon as they should meet him’. Ogle’s men strapped him down upon the forecastle and he screamed and strained at the ropes all night, despite his appalling injuries. He died the following day.