By the early part of the 1720’s however, the British Royal Navy got enough control over American waters to finally start ridding the oceans in that area of pirates. They employed multiple tactics, including offering pardons to pirates who would give up the practice of raiding vessels, and the opposite extreme of highly publicized executions of notorious pirates who refused to stop. These strategies appeared to work. According to David Cordingly’s seminal book on the subject, Under The Black Flag, the number of pirates operating in the Caribbean and North American waters declined drastically: the number drops from two thousand pirates in 1720 to about two hundred pirates by 1726. Those still interested in piracy as a career were not stupid; they moved to other locations where the British Navy presence was not as pronounced, or they simply retired. Since Savannah was not established until 1733, it appears unlikely that the Pirate’s House was a haven for bloodthirsty buccaneers. Pirates were becoming increasingly extinct, and had been for at least the last fifteen years prior.
A pirate presence was unlikely from 1733 forward, but that doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist in Savannah. After all, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So I checked the archives, which sounds a lot easier than it actually proved to be. After an exhaustive search of available records which took several months, the only account linking Savannah and piracy which turned up was in the journal of Peter Gordon, who was one of the original colonists in 1733. His story, occurring before Savannah was even established, describes the colonists’ ship the Anne running across a strange and suspicious-looking vessel. Gordon writes, “...We were alarmed by a sloop who as soon as he perceived us standing along shore, emediately (sic) changed his course and bore down upon us, which... made us conclude that he must... be a pirate...” Gordon related that the craft was flying colors which appeared Spanish, and the craft veered away soon after being fired upon. Gordon also noted that “the pilote (sic) whome we hade on board said he hade some knowledge of him that he hade been a pirate, and that he certainly would have plundered us hade he not found we were too strong for him.” In a humorous aside, Gordon also commended the women of the Anne, taking notice of their bravery in that they asked to be permitted to load the weapons and even to fight alongside the men, but “some of our men who hade been noted the whole voyage for noisy bullying fellows, were not to be found on this occasion but skulked either in the hold or between decks.”
If this is the only recorded instance of a pirate being sighted near Savannah, the odds of ‘bloodthirsty buccaneers’ being in Savannah in 1794 are unlikely, but not impossible. Also clouding the issue was the fact that while piracy was very much against the law, privateering was acceptable to the English government, as long as the privateers attacked French or Spanish shipping.
The famed Jean Lafitte (c. 1776- c. 1826), a privateer, pirate, and double agent for both the Americans and Spanish, is thought to have visited Savannah. Lafitte’s connection to the area is shadowy, but that is not unusual since he was engaged in mostly-illegal activities—the last thing he’d want to do would be to write down his dealings. So although records are unclear it would not be a huge leap of logic since we were such a major seaport. The building which currently houses the Pirates House is occasionally referred to as once belonging to the famous privateer, but there is absolutely no historical basis for that claim. Lafitte did indeed own a house which later became known as the Pirate House, but it is one located in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi (and curiously enough, that house, though now destroyed, also had a much-debated tunnel leading to a body of water). Equally spurious in nature is the claim that Lafitte married a local girl (who according to some accounts reformed his wayward ways). Lafitte did indeed marry, but it was to a girl from Galveston, Texas named Madeline Regaud.
Savannah is connected to privateers, however. The newspapers of the time were full of accounts of problems with the freelancers trying to recruit crews from the local populace. In fact, there is a stone in Colonial Park Cemetery that exists as a testament to the brutality of privateers—Jacob R. Taylor was killed in 1811 by a French privateer crew. Two French privateer craft, La Vengeance and La Franchise, were anchored in the Savannah harbor. According to Jacob’s friends, the crew of one of these vessels attacked and stabbed the unarmed Mr. Taylor as he strolled the streets of the city. The funeral for Taylor nearly turned into a riot when friends of his ran into some crewmen of the French vessel.
The question of whether or not pirates really did inhabit the old bar on East Broad Street is not an easy one to answer. Technically, the answer is: probably not. However, since most people’s concept of a savage pirate is actually closer to the true definition of a privateer, and since first English and later French privateers did sail Savannah’s waters, then the answer in the spirit of the law is yes. True piracy, though, was seeking less-civilized waters, such as the Indian and Pacific Oceans, even before Savannah was founded.
The Tunnel: Rumor or Reality?
A time-honored legend at the Pirate’s House is one of the infamous basement tunnel, long since sealed, that ran from the sublevel of the house to the seaport. It has been suggested that via this passageway, unscrupulous sea captains would arrange for sailors to be shanghaied, a practice also known by more formalized titles: conscription or impressment. It is also said that many men fell prey to this barbaric practice, including one Savannah policeman walking the dreaded beat of ‘Foley’s Alley.’ This same kidnapped policeman awoke aboard a strange vessel bound for China and was forced to work as a privateer. It supposedly took him two years to finally make his way back to Savannah. The tunnel was discovered during renovations in 1962, and is reputed to have been sealed for safety reasons at that time.
How much of this is fact and how much is fiction? What we have are two separate issues: was there a secret tunnel, and were men shanghaied (conscripted) out of the old tavern which is currently the Pirate’s House?
First, let’s explore the tunnel and compare it to the historical backdrop already discussed earlier. There are two sections visible: one is inaccessible; you can just catch a peek of subterranean passage in the dining room to the south near the buffet table. There is another section to the north which is entered via stone stairs leading downward directly beneath the so-called Captain’s Room, the true oldest part of the property (claims about the Herb House notwithstanding). Like so much of the history at this location, the tunnel is possible but not plausible. I’ve been in what is described as a section of the tunnel many times, and it is by all appearances simply a dirt floor basement. I could find no evidence of a tunnel dug out to the Savannah River. Furthermore, the two sections seem to be truly separate, and not part of a cohesive tunnel. They do not appear to meet up. And even if they did join, and if the area able to be accessed is truly the beginning of the tunnel then the tunnel would be running south, not north to the Savannah River. Yes, you read that correctly: if it is indeed a tunnel, it runs the wrong way.
Second, was it a smuggler’s tunnel? Unlikely. A more plausible explanation for the unknown basement or tunnel (we will take the 1962 ‘discovery’ story at face value) is that the dugout area is part of the nearby Fort Wayne, which protected the extreme east of the city from attack from the very early days of Savannah’s founding. It is possible that we are seeing a remaining part of the British defensive network. It may well be some combination of the two. Perhaps we are looking at a powder magazine, or even a storage area for Wells’ Wharf, which was then at the far eastern end of River Street and located about a block north from the Pirate’s House.
Regarding the forcible conscription of sailors: this was a real practice, and it likely happened right here in Savannah. There are reports of this method of filling out ship’s rosters from shipping ports all over the world. There is no word that it occurred at the Pirate’s House, but I really don’t disbelieve that it did. Speaking as a researcher, the fact that I couldn’t find any substantiated reports of this does not mea
n that it didn’t happen. It was a highly illegal and immoral practice, and no one would write it down if they were involved. Sometimes as a writer you’re forced to go with your gut, and I feel that this did take place.
The man involved in securing the unwitting dupes was called a ‘crimp.’ A crimp wouldn’t need a tunnel to shanghai men (or boys), but having a basement would help, because he could lure the unsuspecting victim downstairs with promises of strong drink or other more unsavory activities. He could then secure his prey with either drugged alcohol or a simple solid whack on the back of the skull. The crimp would then sell the victim to the boarding master, whose job it was to secure able bodies to fill out the roster aboard the merchant sailing vessel.
It is doubtful that true pirates would feel the need for such an arrangement, because serving on a pirate crew was so profitable. Pirate craft needed experienced crewmen who performed jobs like carpentry, medical care and coopers (barrel makers) and not random, fairly unskilled sailors. No, it would be far more likely that a tyrannical privateer captain would engage in such practices of smuggling unconscious men to serve as crewmen; that, or the captain of a warship. Likely, many men who enjoyed a drink at the old seaman’s bar on Broad Street wound up waking up aboard ship, heads pounding either from drugs or a wallop, bound for ports unknown.
The Staff’s Ghostly Encounters
The people who work in the Pirate’s House have had numerous supernatural experiences. Included in these stories was a tale about strange voices issuing forth from the deserted downstairs. A bartender one night complained to me in confidence about hearing “men call out from down below, but those are men that aren’t there anymore.”
The Travel Channel program America’s Most Haunted Places- Savannah featured the Pirate’s House. One account was from a cook who saw an apparition one night, which from his description could be nothing but a 18th- or early 19th- century seafaring man. He was working alone in the kitchen, and the stranger walked through the area, pausing only to glare at him briefly. The sailor then walked through the door without opening it. The cook described him as looking incredibly threatening, and it was not coincidentally the last time the cook has worked alone in the kitchen. This same cook attested that one evening he was cleaning up near a piano, and suddenly saw a pair of malevolent ancient eyes glaring at him from the reflection on the piano. He wisely fled the area. The cook also will not enter the kitchen without his large gold crucifix, which he wears as a talisman around his neck, which he believes protects him from further spectral visits.
A former server named Lisa recounted her story for me one night. She had always been curious about the stories of the old tunnel under the restaurant, so one night she mustered her courage. Lisa initially tried to get a few friends to accompany her, but no one else was brave enough to go into the deserted space with her, so against her better judgment she went alone. She moved down the ancient stone stairs, and immediately felt a chill which was much deeper than the cool of the basement air. As she progressed, she felt extremely ill and woozy. Waves of nausea struck her, and finally she had to abandon her trek downstairs in an attempt to find the rumored passage. She retreated her way back up into the restaurant, but her sick feeling did not fully disappear until she left to go home. She initially thought that perhaps she had inhaled some fume or vapor that had made her dizzy and ill, but she felt it every night when she returned to work at the Pirate’s House after that night she explored the subterranean area. She began to believe that some sort of psychic energy given off by the spirits at the House perhaps was making her ill for invading the passageway. She finally quit two weeks later, and in a bit of irony began to work at the 17Hundred90 Inn and Restaurant, which has its own share of ghosts.
Fortunately for Lisa, the ghosts in 17Hundred90 have been more receptive to her presence, and several of her occurrences are recounted in that chapter. It is my opinion that perhaps in her experience at the Pirate’s House she was reliving the drugged and woozy state of many of the shanghaied men, in years now departed, which passed through the very tunnel in which she first had that feeling.
Hard-Hearted Hannah’s
For many years there was an upstairs jazz bar called Hard-Hearted Hannah’s located in the upper portion of the restaurant, which is currently being used as a gift shop. When Hannah’s was operating in the space, however, the staff experienced bizarre smells not normally associated with a jazz club. These strange smells have been described as roses, copper or even the smell of blood. Strange lights and voices have also been known to emanate from the upper floors, which in years gone by were rooms for rent to sailors.
A former server, Brittany, recounted several stories involving bizarre happenings in Hannah’s. She once was back in the prep room, and she cleaned out the coffee pots and pushed them onto one of the metal prep tables, far from the edge. She turned and walked out through the swinging door, and heard a loud crash behind her. She walked back into the prep room and found the coffeepots smashed on the floor—somehow they had hurled off of the table with enough force to crash against the far wall. There was no one on the back room, so the pots had apparently moved by themselves.
In another similar instance with another female server whom Brittany had trained was closing by herself one night. She called Brittany late that night and begged her to come back down to the restaurant. The young woman claimed that the coffeepots had jumped off of one of the back tables by themselves and smashed on the floor, and so she refused to close Hannah’s by herself because of the incident. When I asked Brittany why coffeepots would shatter on a regular basis in the old structure, she smiled, and told me her theory. “Maybe there’s a ghost of some old sailor who didn’t like us drinking coffee. Maybe he wanted us to have rum, instead.” This, of course, is just as good a supposition as any—and makes a great story: the ghost who doesn’t like to drink alone.
Brittany also said that she would see people from time to time out of the corner of her eye—people that would then disappear. “I’d just catch a quick glimpse, like someone flitting by, and then they’d be gone,” she said. She also related that there was a stairwell connecting the upper bar with the downstairs restaurant, and on several occasions she would feel a presence. “I’d suddenly have the feeling that I was not alone,” she claimed firmly. Several of the staff would refuse to walk down the stairs alone, preferring instead to take the more circuitous route of walking outside to get to the Pirate’s House kitchen.
The times of sailing adventures, pirates and privateers were incredibly violent and brutal. One can only imagine the quiet desperation of the sailors involved that has seeped into the very timbers of one of the oldest structures in Georgia. And perhaps those men who were shanghaied also left behind their energy, thinking of the port city they were taken from so brutally against their will.
Andrew Low House
329 Abercorn Street
The Andrew Low House, which today is a beautiful house museum, is located on the southwest trust lot of Lafayette Square. The residence was completed in 1849 by John S. Norris, a noted architect responsible for many of the wondrous structures erected during that time period. The house combines Greek revival elements along with unusually square proportions and deep bracketed eaves—which speak of Italianate influences. A pair of imposing cast-iron lions guard the front door.
Built for British cotton merchant Andrew Low, the house is currently run by the Colonial Dames of America in the State of Georgia. The carriage house, which today houses the Girl Scout First Headquarters, is a separate museum directed by the Girl Scouts of Savannah. Andrew originally married a local, Sarah Cecilia Hunter, but both she and their four year old son died before the house was completed. Low remarried five years later to Mary Cowper Stiles. Together, they had a son and three daughters. The son, William Mackay Low, would marry Juliette Gordon Low, also known as Daisy, eventual founder of the Girl Scouts.
Andrew Low, lik
e many English during the American Civil War period, was a Confederate sympathizer. He saw the Confederacy as a valuable trading partner with England, specifically in regards to the South’s major cash crop: cotton. After the outbreak of hostilities, Low and his wife were arrested in the North in 1862 while returning from England. Andrew Low was accused by the Union of being a Confederate collaborator and spy because of an intercepted message that identified a Confederate agent in England named Low. The couple did nothing to deny this, and the Union officials spent weeks sorting out the confusion. Andrew Low was imprisoned in Boston on suspicion of collaborating with the enemy. According to family lore, Mrs. Low, then pregnant, hid incriminating papers and letters in her coiled hairstyle to protect her husband. It turned out that John Low (the son-in-law of Andrew Low’s business partner, Charles Green) was the real agent, and the confusion enabled him to slip safely back to Savannah before the Federals realized their mistake.
The Low family was renowned for their hospitality. Prominent English author William Makepeace Thackeray recorded his feelings in a letter written in one of the guest bedrooms: “Know that I write from the most comfortable quarters I have ever had in the United States. In a tranquil old city, wide stretched, tree-planted, with a few cows and carriages toiling through the sandy road, a red river with a tranquil little fleet of merchant men taking cargo, and tranquil ware-houses barricaded with packs of cotton; a famous good dinner, breakfast, etc. and leisure all morning to think and do and sleep and read as I like. The only place I stay in the States where I can get these comforts - all free gratis- is in the house of my friend Andrew Low of the great house of A. Low and Co., Cotton Dealers, brokers.”
Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City Page 21