Pirates: A History
Page 21
…and wore Mens Jackets, and long Trouzers, and Handkerchiefs tied about their Heads; and that each of them had a Machet [heavy knife or cutlass] and Pistol in their Hands, and cursed and swore at the Men, to murther the Deponent [Thomas]; and that they should kill her, to prevent her coming against them [as a witness]; and the Deponent further said, that the Reason of her knowing and believing them to be Women then was, by the largeness of their Breasts.
This has given rise to much speculation about Read and Bonny cross dressing, but the two French buccaneers testified that ‘when they [Read and Bonny] saw any Vessel, gave Chase, or Attacked, they wore Men’s Cloaths; and, at other Times, they wore Women’s Cloaths…’ Presumably therefore, there was no attempt to disguise themselves as men onboard Rackam’s ship, which would have been very difficult or impossible on a small sloop, but in times of action, the two wore men’s clothes, either because it was easier to be active and fight in that manner, or because it gave the illusion of there being more men onboard than there actually were.17
Another matter of interest is that Anne Bonny appears to have been the more prominent of the two women pirates in action, perhaps because of her relationship to John Rackam, or because that was her nature. According to witnesses, it was Anne Bonny particularly who handed gunpowder to the men – in other words, acting as what would in the Royal Navy be called a powder monkey – handing pre-packaged charges of gunpowder to the gunners onboard. And it was Anne Bonny in particular who on another occasion ‘had a Gun in her Hand’ when a sloop was taken, although the witness went on to say, ‘That they were both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do any Thing on Board.’ It is curious also that the charges against Anne Bonny always include the alias ‘Bonn’, while she also used the alias ‘Ann Fulford’, but neither of these names appear in Johnson. And as discussed elsewhere (Chapter 6) the name Mary Read occurs in a 1708 proposal to bring the pirates back from Madagascar, although there is no means of proving this was the same Mary Read from Rackam’s crew. In any case, the two women pirates were found guilty and condemned to hang, but both pleaded that they were quick with child, which would excuse them from immediate hanging since an unborn child was obviously innocent. Bonny’s pregnancy was no doubt a result of her relationship with Jack Rackam, while Read’s pregnancy probably stemmed from her relationship with a forced sailor on Rackam’s ship, who was acquitted of piracy, and to whom she claimed to be married ‘in conscience’. As a result, the women were inspected, and the pregnancies confirmed, although Johnson says that Read was very obviously pregnant at the time.18
As a result of their pregnancies, Bonny and Read were sent to jail rather than to the gibbet. It is known that Mary Read died in prison on 28 April 1721, perhaps of fever associated with child birth. Anne Bonny appears to have escaped the death sentence after giving birth, and was reprieved from time to time, according to Johnson. One tradition has it that Bonny’s father purchased her release, and she moved to the Carolinas, presumably with her child, where she married a planter. Johnson also relates that the day that Rackam was due to be hung, Rackam was permitted to visit Bonny, yet she provided little comfort for him, saying that ‘she was sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a man, he need not have been hanged like a dog.’ There was some justice in the remark, together with the idea that Rackam is now famous more for the presence of Bonny and Read onboard his ship than for anything he achieved himself. This is the more significant because there were extremely few western women pirates – and that both should serve together by chance on one ship is a remarkable coincidence.19
Bartholomew Roberts (Active 1718–1722)
The opposite may be said of the pirate Bartholomew Roberts, probably the most successful of all western pirates, who did not need any romantic attachments to build his reputation. Indeed, he was a rather austere and sober individual, who issued a series of strict regulations for his crews, including one which stated, ‘No Boy or Woman to be allow’d amongst them. If any man were found seducing any of the latter Sex, and carried her to Sea, disguised, he was to suffer Death…’ In contrast to Rackam, it was Roberts’ discipline, audacity, and instinct for when to attack and when to leave an area that enabled him to succeed where others failed. But above all, it was Roberts’ toughness in controlling his very large crew, including his clever management system of creating a privy council of ‘half a dozen of the greatest bullies’ onboard to support him, which enabled Roberts to successfully pirate for four long years before being killed by the Royal Navy in 1722.20
Roberts was Welsh, born in the village of Newydd Bach, near Fishguard Bay, around the years 1680–1682. His original name seems to have been John Robert, which he changed to Bartholomew Roberts, probably at the time his ship was taken by Howel Davis in 1719 and he decided to become a pirate. His shipmates nicknamed him ‘Black Barty’, because he was a dark featured individual, no doubt a typical Welshman in this respect. Roberts was second or third mate of the Royal African Company slave ship the Princess when the ship was captured by Davis. Roberts’ rank is significant because it suggests that he, like many others who became pirate captains, believed they were unlikely to reach higher rank in merchant or slave ships. Indeed, according to Johnson, the reason that Roberts threw in his lot with Davis’ crew was ‘preferment’, meaning that he aspired to higher rank and command. In other conversations reported by Johnson, which may have been invented by Johnson, but which probably did reflect Roberts’ views, Roberts underlined his attitude when he frequently drank the toast, “‘D –n to him who ever lived to wear a halter.”’ Similarly, Roberts explained why he became a pirate, as he:
‘…frankly owned, ‘twas to get rid of the disagreeable superiority of some masters he was acquainted with’ … ‘In an honest service’, says he, ‘there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labour; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who could not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst is only a sour look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one, shall be my motto.’21
So it was that Roberts joined Davis’ crew at Annabon on the Ivory Coast of Africa in June 1719. A few weeks later, Davis was killed at Principe Island in the Gulf of Guinea. The island was owned by the Portuguese, and Davis planned to deceive the governor in order to take the Portuguese fort without trouble and ransack the place, as well as enjoy the local ladies, including the wife of the Portuguese governor. Somehow the governor was warned, and set a trap of his own by inviting the unsuspecting Davis to the fort for dinner. As Davis and a troop of pirates happily walked up to the fort for dinner they were ambushed, and Davis was shot in the stomach. As he tried to get away, he realised he was being followed, and in a last gesture, fired shots from the two pistols he held, and then collapsed and died. Johnson wrote that Davis’ end was ‘like a game cock, giving a dying blow that he might not fall unrevenged.’22
The pirates wanted to revenge themselves on Principe for Davis’ death and for the ambush which also killed more of their number. Because Roberts had visited Principe previously they accepted his advice on how to achieve the destruction of the fort. This was done by using broadsides from their ship, the Royal Rover, from a location that the guns of the fort could not cover. The fort was demolished, as well as the small town of Principe, plus some ships in the harbour. With honour satisfied, the crew of the Royal Rover turned to the election of a new captain. Somewhat surprisingly, Roberts was elected, despite having been with Davis’ crew for only six weeks. Clearly the pirates onboard the Royal Rover recognized a sensible, courageous, and tough leader in Roberts, and they were not disappointed. Soon after Roberts took over command, the Royal Rover captured two ships, which supplied essential stores and a number of recruits. Then Roberts advised a cruise to Brazil, where he suggested there would be Portuguese trading ships that would be easy to capture. With the Brazil voyage, Roberts established himself as very much an Atlantic pirate, at ease in
the West Indies, off Brazil, or on the west coast of Africa, all areas that he already knew from his slave trading days. The Brazil voyage also established Roberts as a cool and audacious captain, with good judgement.23
Although the first nine weeks off Brazil produced no prizes, Roberts’ crew was rewarded by the sight of forty-two Portuguese ships lying in the harbour roads of Bahia De Los Santos – the Bay of All Saints. These ships were guarded by two seventy gun Portuguese men of war, so that the Royal Rover, with her twenty guns, would be opposed by 1,000 men and 500 cannon. But Roberts evidently had a low opinion of the Portuguese as defenders of their ships, and thought the fleet vulnerable. Silently, at night, the Royal Rover slipped in amongst the fleet and came up beside a merchant ship. A quick rush aboard her was sufficient to secure the ship. But Roberts really wanted to know from the captain of his prize which was the richest ship in the fleet, and promised to let the captain go if he would point out such a vessel, or he would suffer instant death if he refused. The captain quickly pointed to a Portuguese ship of forty guns and 150 men. The Royal Rover maneuvered beside the new target, called the Sagrada Familia (Holy Family), but they were observed, and the Sagrada prepared to defend herself. Roberts’ crew quickly fired a broadside and boarded her with the usual intimidation of shouts and waving cutlasses. With the loss of only two pirates, Roberts became master of the new prize. According to Johnson, Roberts determined to keep the Sagrada, and prepared to defend her against the two Portuguese men of war. Yet these two Portuguese ships were not keen to fight, in fact one waited too long for the other to come up, and it was relatively easy for Roberts in the Sagrada to sail off, accompanied by the Royal Rover. The Sagrada proved to have a very valuable cargo – sugar, skins, tobacco and 90,000 moidores (Portuguese gold coins), together with jewelry, including a rich cross set with diamonds, ready to be presented to the King of Portugal.24
Roberts’ crew sailed to the appropriately named Devil’s Island, Guiana, with their prize, and enjoyed their newly acquired wealth in carousing and trading with the locals. But it was here that Roberts nearly came to grief. When a brigantine carrying supplies sailed past, Roberts embarked forty of his best men and sailed after her without any preparations. Not only did Roberts miss the brigantine, but adverse currents carried Roberts and his men away from the coast for several days, leaving them desperately short of water and food. Worse, when a boat was sent away to get help from the Royal Rover, the news came back that Roberts’ lieutenant he had left behind in charge, Walter Kennedy, had simply sailed away with the Royal Rover, and had given away the Portuguese prize. Perhaps Kennedy did not expect Roberts to return, but neither did he send a boat to search for him. Kennedy was a tough and especially unpleasant character who did not live much longer. Meanwhile, Roberts and his men survived by tearing up the planks of the cabin to make a makeshift tub, held together with rope yarns, to fetch water for the desperate crew.25
Suitably refreshed, Roberts and his crew of 40 sailed for the Windward Islands, where they captured a few smaller ships at Guadeloupe to provide much needed supplies, and managed to avoid ships sent by the governors of Barbados and Martinique to capture them. As a result, Roberts designed a pirate flag with himself standing on top of two skulls, designated ABH and AMH, standing for A Barbadian Head, and A Martinican Head. In 1720, Roberts was able to carry out part of this threat, and hung the governor of Martinique from the yard arm. At about this time also, Roberts devised a set of rules for his crew, which aimed to produce a certain amount of discipline onboard, perhaps having Walter Kennedy in mind. Feeling some pressure in the West Indies, and with summer beginning, Roberts sailed for Newfoundland, and put into the cod fishery port of Trepassey (on the south coast of Newfoundland), in June 1720. Here Roberts essentially copied his feat of sailing among the Portuguese ships of Bahia, by sailing in amongst the fishing fleet, and cowed twenty-two ships into surrender, but this time in daylight ‘with their black colours flying, drums beating, and trumpets sounding.’ Roberts did not expect resistance, nor was there any. To confirm his reputation, and perhaps to punish those whom he saw as cowards, Roberts had the admiral of Trepassey brought onboard and flogged. Leaving Trepassey, Roberts burned all of the ships in harbour, with the exception of one galley into which he transferred several cannon and made her his new flagship, optimistically renaming her the Fortune. With this larger ship Roberts captured several French ships and others off Newfoundland, once more transferring to an even larger ship, which was named the Good Fortune.26
Finally, Roberts sailed for the West Indies, where more ships were taken, usually by a mixture of audacity and brutality. Next they headed to the African coast of Guinea, and on the way took a French ship which they named the Royal Fortune. Somehow they missed their navigation aim of stopping at the Cape Verde islands to refit, and were forced back to the West Indies, suffering terribly from want of water and food, so that men dropped away daily. The staggering crew actually made land at Surinam before recovering and heading for the West Indies again, where another ship was easily taken, which they renamed the Ranger, and so created a reasonably large fleet. Roberts then took time out to cheat the merchants of Martinique, pretending to want to trade like the Dutch interlopers, whose sign to the merchants that the Dutch wanted to trade was to fly a jack. Then it was on to Guadeloupe and Hispaniola, taking ships along the way by fighting or scaring them into surrender. At the latter place, as they were cleaning their ships and carousing, a certain Harry Glasby, a sober and reluctant recruit to Roberts, was nevertheless made captain of the Royal Fortune, but tried to desert, along with two others.27
Glasby and the two others were chased and caught, and brought to pirate justice. According to Roberts’ rule number 7, ‘To desert the Ship, or their Quarters in Battle, was punished with Death, or Marooning.’ Part of the reason for the strictness of this rule concerning desertion was that the pirates feared the deserter would alert the authorities and bring them all to ruin. So Glasby was tried, along with the other two, but just before judgement was announced, one of the judges, Valentine Ashplant, who was afterwards hung at Cape Coast Castle, stood up to defend Glasby, ‘By G—, Glasby shall not die; d—n me if he shall.’ Ashplant may have known Glasby before, but in any case, he concluded his defense of Glasby by saying, ‘…I hope he’ll live and repent of what he has done; but d—n me if he must die, I will die along with him.’ To back up his defense, Ashplant produced a pair of pistols which easily convinced the pirate judges to acquit Glasby. Not so lucky were the other two deserters, who were quickly tied to the mainmast and shot dead.28
With this makeshift court out of the way, Roberts sailed for the island of Desirade (or Deseada), off Guadeloupe, a favourite haunt, where they might trade for provisions. Roberts’ fleet now included another Good Fortune, a Rhode Island brigantine captured previously off Dominica after a bloody fight, which left some of the Rhode Island crew dead. A further excursion in the West Indies produced more ships captured, almost always for provisions. In fact, one of the most neglected aspects of the history of piracy is logistics, and Roberts, with a crew of around 300, always had to be thinking of restocking with food, water and clothes, to say nothing of sails, gear and cables. Having secured these provisions, Roberts headed for the African coast of Guinea in 1721, which he knew very well as a former slaver, intending to buy cheap gold dust. Along the way, the Good Fortune, with seventy men aboard, conspired to leave Roberts’ fleet, some of the men hoping to give up piracy. The immediate reason for the departure was that a fight had taken place onboard, in which Roberts killed a man who had insulted him, as Roberts was now finding that he had to be tough to keep the frequently drunk pirates in line.29
The pirates arrived at Sierra Leone in June 1721, and learnt that two Royal Navy pirate hunters, the Swallow and the Weymouth, with fifty guns apiece, had left the month before and would not be back until December. With this threat thought to be removed, Roberts’ men took two more ships, which were renamed the Ranger and yet another Roy
al Fortune. The latter ship originally contained a clergyman, whom Roberts’ crew wanted to keep, saying that all he had to do for a share of prize money was to make punch and say prayers. But the clergyman refused, and the pirates allowed him to depart with his belongings, which apparently included several valuable items not actually belonging to him, while he left behind three prayer books and a bottle screw. This contact with a clergyman did not result in a change in behaviour, since at Old Calabar, a centre of the slave trade, the pirates fought a battle with the local inhabitants, and set fire to the town. Then along the coast a slaver named the King Solomon was sighted, and Roberts decided to take her by sending a long boat with around twenty men to board the ship. As was normal pirate practice, Roberts called out, ‘who will go?’, and the required number of brisk pirates volunteered. These brisk men volunteered partly because it gave them a reputation for courage, and partly because it provided them with a complete set of new clothes, which they were allowed to take for themselves out of a prize. The King Solomon was easily taken because her crew refused to fight – as must have happened most of the time – because there was no reason for sailors to defend with their lives what did not belong to them, and for which danger they would get little reward.30
The next port of call was Whydah, another slave trading port. Here a particularly unpleasant incident took place. Roberts’ idea of forcing each ship in harbour to pay a ransom of eight pounds of gold dust worked well, except for one ship, the Porcupine, whose captain would not pay. Thereupon, Roberts sent a boat to the Porcupine in order to transport the slaves before burning the ship. Roberts’ boat was under the command of a rather vicious pirate called John Walden, whose ironic nickname was ‘Miss Nanny’ on account of his toughness. Walden found that it would take too much time to unshackle the miserable slaves, so he set fire to the Porcupine. Some of the eighty slaves managed to break loose from the slaver and jump overboard, only to be eaten by sharks, while the rest were burnt to death or drowned. Following this nasty affair, Roberts intended to sail for the island of Annabon to refit, but contrary winds blew them south towards Cape Lopez. And it was here at Cape Lopez Bay that Captain Ogle, in the British man of war, Swallow, finally caught up with Roberts’ fleet of three ships. Believing that the Swallow was a Portuguese sugar trader trying to escape from them as she tacked to avoid a sand bar, the Ranger set out after her, and too late discovered the truth. The Swallow opened fire at close quarters, and over a period of one and a quarter hours killed ten pirates and wounded twenty, as well as bringing down the Ranger’s top mast. The crew of the Ranger held a vote about boarding the Swallow, but this was not seconded, even though there was plenty of manpower aboard the Ranger – 113 men, including twenty Africans. So, lack of discipline, damage and confusion aboard the Ranger, and lack of leadership, all led to the only alternative – surrender. Some pirates crowded around the Ranger’s powder store and fired a pistol into it, rather than be captured, yet the amount of powder was too small and only produced a minor explosion and severe burns for these half dozen pirates. The pirate captain of the Ranger was one Skyrme, who fought on although he lost a leg in the engagement. Another captured pirate was William Main, boatswain of the Royal Fortune, who happened to be onboard the Ranger.31