Under the Bloody Flag

by John C Appleby

  The complaints heard by the council included an example of sharp practice by an experienced captain, which may have been commonplace. It concerned the seizure of a Dutch vessel off Santo Domingo in the Caribbean, by Captain Thomas West. The prize was laden with a rich cargo of ginger and other commodities, valued at £15,000, which was returned to England. But the High Court of Admiralty was unable to proceed with the case, because the bills of lading and other documents from the vessel had been dispersed by West to others, who he refused to identify, ‘albeit his examinacion was taken upon oathe’.112

  The range of grievances which came to the attention of the council reveals the opportunism and tactical versatility of the captains of many men-of-war. Nor was unlawful plunder or sharp practice restricted to the wilder element among the promoters of reprisal ventures. The council heard repeated complaints from Dutch, German and French traders against captains serving under Cumberland. In December 1597 it ordered the restoration of the cargoes of two Hamburg vessels, only to discover that some of the goods had been sold secretly. With little sign of any lessening in the disorder, special commissioners were appointed to deal with the spoil of friends and allies, though they had little success in limiting the damage at sea, particularly when it was the result of ventures involving high-ranking or well-connected officials. During the closing years of the war persistent allegations of unlawful plunder were heard by the council against Sir John Gilbert, captain of the fort at Plymouth, the son of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and the nephew of Ralegh, with whom he sailed to Guiana in 1595. Gilbert was involved in reprisal venturing with Ralegh and Cecil, and occasionally as an associate with Richard Drake, an esquire of the Queen’s stable. At various times between 1600 and 1603 he was embroiled in suits before the High Court of Admiralty involving the plunder of Scottish, Dutch, German and Italian goods. In September 1601 he sought the assistance of Cecil in a case which had dragged on for three years, involving a contested claim to booty ‘for more than I am worth’.113 Cecil, unlike his father, was also engaged in several irregular ventures to the coast of Spain and into the Mediterranean as a partner with the Lord Admiral.

  These ventures demonstrated the way in which powerful officials effectively subverted or ignored the regulations governing the sea war, exploiting their own and the Queen’s resources in voyages for public and private purposes. During 1597 Captain Martin Bredgate was sent out in the Truelove on a trading voyage to Barbary, with instructions from Cecil to seek ‘intelligence and purchase’ along the Spanish coast.114 The vessel had been recently constructed for Cecil and the Lord Admiral, who authorized Bredgate to dispose of prizes in north Africa if they were not worth returning to England. Bredgate’s associates included Richard Gyfford, who was involved in several subsequent ventures in the Mediterranean promoted by Cecil and others, which aroused angry complaints of piracy.

  It was within the Mediterranean that the slippage between disorderly privateering and piracy became an acute problem, provoking anger from neutral traders. English predators of varying shades of legality made a distinct contribution to a long-standing pattern of war, slave raiding, commerce and corsair enterprise, in which the hostility between Christendom and Islam was qualified by other rivalries. The opportunistic incursions of raiders cruising along the coasts of Spain and Portugal, initially restricted to the western Mediterranean, were overtaken during the later 1590s by more purposeful and aggressive raiding by men-of-war who ranged further east, attracted by the prospect of rich, vulnerable prizes of dubious legality, trading with Turkey and the Levant. The activities of these adventurers were facilitated by access to the ports of north Africa, where rulers welcomed potential allies against Spain. In exchange for a levy or tax, the regents of the Barbary ports provided English rovers with overseas bases and markets, creating the means for a flourishing trade in plunder and prisoners.

  These borderland encounters represented a new departure for the development of English depredation. While access to overseas havens had far-reaching implications, encouraging the growth of Mediterranean piracy after 1604, the association with Turkish rulers and their agents provoked moral opprobrium, engendered by fears of English rovers and pirates ‘turning Turk’.115 Closer contact with Barbary failed to break down such suspicion and hostility, which were reinforced by the growing use of sermons and collections in London and elsewhere in support of the redemption of captives in Turkish imprisonment. The Turkish connection thus helped to weaken support and sympathy for piracy within England in the aftermath of the war with Spain.

  Among the earliest English adventurers to venture into the Mediterranean during the war was Edward Glenham. An ambitious but inexperienced captain, Glenham sold his estate in Suffolk to support a venture to the Canary Islands, which led to a raid on the Azores. Thereafter the voyage became increasingly disorderly and piratical. The capture of a rich Venetian vessel laden with sugar within the Mediterranean may have laid the basis for Glenham’s subsequent indictment for piracy. A second voyage of 1594 was another failure. Short of supplies, Glenham put into Algiers where he ‘unnaturally’ left eight of his men ‘in pawne for victualles’.116 But he died too poor to redeem them. Consequently, the council authorized a collection for their redemption, though they remained in captivity at least until 1600, by which time several had been released after converting to Islam.

  The activities of rogue adventurers like Glenham provoked alarm in Venice, whose rulers were concerned at the wider threat to their commercial interests. Alarm turned to outrage during the later 1590s as an increasing number of men-of-war invaded the Mediterranean. In December 1597, the Venetian ambassador in France complained to the English agent of piracies and violence committed by English vessels within the jurisdiction of the republic. By 1598 the Venetian ambassador in Spain warned that ‘the English, not content with piracy on the high seas, are thinking of the Mediterranean too, where they have begun to make themselves felt’.117 The danger seemed to increase with a report from Vienna, the following year, that the sultan in Constantinople had granted the English a port on the coast of Barbary for use against Spain. Though inaccurate, the use of the Barbary ports encouraged and sustained a growing number of disorderly predators who attacked friends and enemies.

  By 1600 it was claimed that there were as many as thirty English men-of-war operating in the Mediterranean. In fact the number was inflated, possibly deliberately so. It seems to have been based on the confusion between trading vessels and rovers or pirates, particularly among the Venetians, whose complaints against the ‘villanous English’ were in part provoked by the threat to their trading interests in the Levant from London traders.118 Nonetheless, such uncertainty reflected a real problem which was beginning to reach the eastern Mediterranean. Within a busy trading region, crossed by well-armed English trading vessels capable of combining trade with plunder, unlawful depredation was a tempting, at times overwhelming, opportunity.

  The voyage of the David of London during 1597 demonstrated the powerful appeal of such opportunities, encouraging opportunistic plunder, which appeared to confirm Italian suspicions that all English vessels sailing within the Mediterranean were corsairs or pirates. The ship was freighted by two London merchants, Thomas Offley and Edward Parris, for a trading voyage in the Levant. Sailing from Scanderoon to Zante in August, the English sighted and gave chase to a vessel close to the island of Crete. The latter was subsequently identified as the St John Baptist of Chios, which was bound from Ancona to Alexandria with several Italian merchants aboard. As the David gained on its quarry, a group of the company appeared to abandon the vessel, seeking to escape in a boat with a substantial amount of money. This was revealed when the English caught up with the boat, through the interpretation of one of the quartermasters who spoke some Italian. A mad scramble for booty ensued. Richard Willett, a servant of the merchants, later described how the members of the company of the David rushed to board the boat in such an unruly fashion that the master lost control, while some of the money was lost i
n the sea.119

  The master, William Greene, struggled to reassert his authority and recover the money, by searching his company as they returned aboard the David. Philip Wistbrowe, the boatswain’s mate, who was one of the first to enter the boat, admitted to acquiring a bag of money and a cap nearly full of money, while having more hidden up his sleeve, though it was recovered by Greene. Although Wistbrowe managed to retain some of the booty, which he hid in a jar of water in the gunner’s room, it was later discovered by the master. The St John Baptist was rifled of any remaining money and allowed to depart with water, wine and some biscuit.

  According to the quartermaster, who acted as an interpreter for his English companions, the master of the St John Baptist voluntarily confessed that most of the money was owned by Spaniards, except for 3,712 dollars which belonged to merchants of Florence. This was contradicted by one of the merchants aboard the plundered vessel, who insisted that only 1,500 ducats were Spanish owned; Florentine traders owned the rest. Faced with threats from the English that they would sink the vessel, however, the merchant admitted that he advised the master to say that the money was Spanish for fear of being cast overboard.120

  One of the most striking features of this encounter, which was related in detail before the High Court of Admiralty, was the apparent disunity among the company of the David over the spoil of the St John Baptist and its boat. A servant acting for the owners of the English ship instructed the quartermaster to inform their victims ‘that they were merchants & used continuall trade in Italy & therefore would not offer wronge to eany Italians or take eany thinge from them’. While it was agreed to break off from the voyage, in order to return to England with at least two of the Italian merchants, the master, Greene, remained profoundly uneasy at the behaviour of some of his men. Several members of the crew described him as growing frantic or being troubled in mind after the spoil of the St John Baptist. Greene later claimed that ten days thereafter he ‘fell sicke and was disquieted with a feare in such sorte that he could not abide the money in his chist’; indeed, ‘he was in such a hatred therewith’ that he handed it over to the servants of the merchants.121

  Even so, when the David put into Tunis during the return voyage for London, the master was among other members of the company who were ‘continually ashore & brought many things & spente much of the money in providing victuals for the ship & themselves’. At the same time the ruler of Tunis, the captain of the fort and the French consul all received gifts from the English mariners. During the stay at Tunis a warning from one of the Italian merchants, that the booty would have to be restored, provoked a dispute among the English, a group of whom were in favour of throwing their prisoners into the sea.122

  Following the return of the David to London, the council was faced with angry complaints from Florence against the unjust and illegal spoil of the St John Baptist, amounting to losses of 32,000 crowns. Although the matter was handed over to the High Court of Admiralty, the council retained a close interest in the case to ensure that the Italians received compensation. Partly in response to such actions, in February 1599 the Queen issued a proclamation instructing English men-of-war sailing into the Mediterranean not to harm friendly shipping. In addition the declaration warned that anyone caught breaking bulk or disposing of plunder before legal proceedings would be executed as pirates.123

  Yet the piratical conduct of English rovers within the Mediterranean persisted. As the lawlessness and disorder increased, the regime was faced with mounting Venetian grievances. The coastal waters of Provence and the Aegean Sea, between Zante and Crete, were favoured haunts for the English where they plundered Venetian and French shipping laden with cargoes of sugar, spices and silk. Venetian agents at Constantinople, moreover, continued to claim that they were unable to distinguish between English trading vessels and men-of-war. According to one report, ‘all of them were hampered with artillery, and provisioned for a year, even to the water, and in order that they might be handy in fighting they were kept clear, leaving not only the quarter deck but also the main deck, where goods are usually placed, free for the artillery’.124

  The activities of disorderly men-of-war and pirates threatened English commercial and diplomatic interests in the Mediterranean. Early in 1601 the Duke of Florence was reported to have arrested English goods in Leghorn and Pisa in retaliation for the seizure of a vessel claimed by his subjects. Reports of attacks on Turkish vessels weakened the position of English merchants at Constantinople. Later in the year, further complaints concerning the spoil of a Turkish vessel led to the arrest of English merchants at Tripoli. Prominent London merchants, such as William Garway, expressed concern at the disruption and damage to their trade with the Levant.125

  In order to deal with the problem, during 1600 the regime tried to regulate English men-of-war, sailing on voyages of reprisal, which entered the Mediterranean. At the same time consuls and merchant representatives in the Levant, such as Matthew Stocker who was based at Patras, were ordered to arrest English vessels sailing without a special licence from the Queen or the Lord Admiral. In March 1602, following further complaints against disorderly spoil and piracy, the Queen sent one of her vessels into the Mediterranean to hunt for pirates. Such measures were ineffective. Indeed, they only served to emphasize the piratical conduct of men-of-war who operated independently from bases that included Patras, Coron and Modon, as well as Algiers and Tunis. Thus Stocker informed the English ambassador at Constantinople that he was unable to do anything against the captains who frequented the port, because the local ruler was their confederate and received a share of the plunder.126

  English depredation thus remained a problem within the Mediterranean until the end of the reign. It included a diverse mix of disorderly men-of-war and hard-bitten pirates or rovers who were in danger of being perceived as renegades. English merchants at Zante insisted that the sea robbers were outlaws, for whom they could not be held responsible. According to the report of March 1603 by the captain of an English ship at Zante, there were twelve men-of-war based at Tunis whose companies ‘were all exiles from England, in disgrace with the Queen, and being driven to desperation they are resolved to plunder all and sundry whom they may fall in with, even those of their own nation’.127 This peculiar and ill-fitting collection of rovers included Captain William Piers and Sir Thomas Sherley and his brother, who acquired notorious reputations in parts of the Mediterranean during the early seventeenth century. Piers came from Plymouth, reputedly of a wealthy background. He sailed in a well-armed vessel, carrying twenty ordnance, with a company of between seventy and eighty men, who included William Lancaster, ‘a man of evil fame and little or no substance’. Piers operated independently at sea from various bases. In 1603 he plundered the Veniera, near Zante, laden with a rich cargo belonging to Venetian merchants. According to the report he married a Turkish wife, who benefited from gifts of silk dresses and sequins. When taxed by one English captain, ‘that he had ruined the Levant trade and earned a halter’, allegedly he retorted ‘I may as well lose my life for a lot as for a little; and I would have done more if I could’.128

  If the career of Piers foreshadowed the emergence of a new breed of pirate who would flourish after 1604, the activities of the Sherley brothers appeared to represent the dying species of the gentleman adventurer. The poorly organized, erratic and often wild enterprises of such promoters brought little profit or honour to their leaders. Sir Thomas Sherley came from a financially troubled, landed background. During the later 1590s he turned to sea venturing in an attempt to restore his fortune, raiding the coast of Spain with a fleet of six vessels. In 1602 he ventured into the Mediterranean with his brother and several ships. Following the disintegration of the fleet, he led a desperate and abortive attack in early 1603 against the island of Kea. He was captured and imprisoned by the Turks. On his release in December 1605 he returned to England, where his financial troubles continued. Thereafter he sold his family lands, ‘married a whore’ and secured a small sinecure a
s a royal park keeper on the Isle of Wight.129

  The growing lawlessness at sea during the later years of the war was partly the result of too many predators in search of too few prizes. In 1603 one of Cecil’s captains, Joseph May, reported a striking lack of lawful prey along the coast of Spain. As there ‘was little trade by Spaniards … for the most part our English men-of-war do make their voyages upon the French. All sailors of late’, he added, ‘are fallen into such vile order that they shame not to say that they go to sea to rob all nations, and unless the captain consent thereto, he is not fit for this time’.130 During one later voyage, May’s company grew discontented and mutinous, threatening to stow him under the hatches following the seizure of a French vessel reportedly carrying a cargo worth £10,000, which he released ‘without diminishing one penny’.

  Conditions during the later 1590s reinforced an underlying trend towards the emergence of organized deep-sea piracy which depended on overseas bases and markets. This development, which was especially evident in the Mediterranean, overshadowed the lingering persistence of traditional forms of depredation around the British Isles. While local piracy, as such, was not eradicated, it was much reduced in volume and intensity, bearing the characteristics of a marginalized activity undertaken by fugitives whose activities were both elusive and fragmentary.