by Travers, Tim
The next year, 1756, the Bombay Council of the East India Company decided to put an end to the Angrian pirates. A large fleet was assembled, consisting of eighteen Company ships under James, six Royal Navy ships under Rear Admiral Watson, and an army force of 1,800 European soldiers and 600 native troops under Robert Clive, including Maratha soldiers. The East India Company anticipated that Tolaji would attempt to bribe his way out of trouble, so part of their instructions read:
It is probable that Torlajee may offer to capitulate, and possibly offer a sum of money, but you are to consider that this fellow is not on a footing with any prince in the known world, he being a pirate in whom no confidence can be put, not only taking, burning, and destroying ships of all nations, but even the vessels belonging to the natives, which have his own passes [dastaks], and for which he has annually collected large sums of money. Should he offer any sum of money it must be a very great one that will pay us for the many rich ships he has taken…
The Company also wanted Tolaji dead or alive, to put an end to his piracy. And the Company was very keen to take Gheria by force of arms, because if the fort and Tolaji simply surrendered, the Marathas stood to gain a large part of Tolaji’s wealth, whereas if the British and the Company forces compelled the surrender, then the Company stood to gain the maximum possible. This was the way it turned out, since a tremendous cannonade by 150 heavy guns over two days first of all burnt the entire Angrian fleet of some sixty-five ships, and secondly produced a huge explosion in the fort which caused a white flag to be raised on the second day. Tolaji himself surrendered to the Marathas, and was imprisoned for the rest of his life, while the Company hauled away a vast fortune including £130,000 in gold, silver and jewels.21
This action signaled the end of Angrian piracy after fifty years. However, since the Angrians, and especially Kanhoji Angrey, operated in alliance with the Marathas, it can be argued that some or most of this represented privateering rather than piracy. On the other hand, from the point of view of the East India Company, the Angrians were pirates.
Malaysia and the Philippines
The same ambivalence over the question of who was a pirate relates to South East Asia, where pirates or robbers had operated for centuries as a normal and even accepted way of life. After the Europeans arrived, and particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the old native state system was destroyed by the Europeans, who then used the suppression of piracy and local rivalries as an argument to justify the expansion of European, and especially British, influence in the region.22 Generally speaking, during the period from the 1830s to the 1860s, British, Dutch, Spanish, and other European powers managed to suppress what was called piracy by the Europeans, but which would be given other interpretations locally. A bewildering variety of pirates/rebels/robbers/local rivals operated in the Indonesian, Malay and Philippine areas – the Ilanuns in Mindanao (Philippines) and north-east Borneo; the Balanini in the Sulu chain of islands; the Dyaks in Sarawak and the Borneo area; the Bugis from Sulawsesi and Singapore; the Achin from north Sumatra; and the Malays of Johore (Singapore and north), from the Riau-Lingga islands, and Borneo and Brunei. Imperial and economic reasons motivated the European presence in this whole area, as well as lurid tales of piracy and mayhem against European ships, which required action. In regard to the last point, for example, a series of stories angered the European powers. One of these stories, if true, has Captain Gregory of the Dutch ship Maria Frederika being captured by Ilanun pirates in the early nineteenth century. The Ilanun took the ship to their stronghold at Tungku on the north east coast of Borneo, where Gregory and his first mate were buried in sand to their chests. Then an elderly chief with a white beard, carrying a heavy two handed sword, advanced on Gregory, swung the sword and cut Gregory’s head from his body. The first mate died more slowly. Another story relates to Captain Ross of the ship Regina who was captured and tied to the mast of his ship, where he watched his son being drowned by the captors. Ross himself lost his fingers as they were cut off piece by piece, then there were further cuts, and he was finally burnt to death as the ship was put to the torch.23
Malays
In regard to the Malays, William Dampier is often cited as declaring the Malays to be a peaceable people in 1689. He thought that they were provoked into piracy by the Dutch, who prevented their trading. However, in 1687, in the Gulf of Thailand, William Dampier’s ship encountered a Malay boat. Dampier remarked that the Malays had a reputation as ‘desperate fellows, and their vessels [were] commonly full of men who all [wore] cressets or little daggers by their sides’. And when some men from Dampier’s ship went onboard the Malay bark, the Malays killed half a dozen of them, although the Malays might have been apprehensive of the armed European sailors.24 Regardless, after Raffles founded Singapore in 1819, the local chief Temenggong of Johore, from whom Singapore had been acquired, was strongly suspected of piracy. Up until that time, a local writer noted that:
…no mortal dared to pass through the Straits of Singapore. Jinns and satans even were afraid, for that was the place the pirates made use of to sleep and to divide their booty. There also they put to death their captives and … themselves fought and killed each other in their quarrels on the spoil … All along the beach there were hundreds of human skulls, some of them old, some fresh with the hair still remaining, some with the teeth still sharp, and some without teeth. In fine, they were in various stages of decay.25
It seems that the Malays settled in various parts of South-East Asia, including Borneo. According to the account of a nineteenth-century European resident of Sarawak, the Malays went out in fleets of ten to thirty war boats or prahus. These prahus were ninety feet long, and carried a large gun in the bow, with three or four swivel guns on the sides, plus some twenty to thirty muskets onboard. Each prahu was rowed by sixty to eighty oars on two decks, and carried around eighty to a hundred men. On top of the rowers was a flat bamboo roof, which protected the ammunition and provisions, and provided a platform from which to fight. Their method was to send out small scout boats during the south-west monsoon season when trading ships were plentiful. After a trading ship was sighted, the main prahus would dart out from creeks and rivers and board the victim with blood curdling yells. After taking captives and transferring the cargo, the prahus would burn the captive ship to avoid detection, and return to their river lairs. By the time of the north-east monsoon, the Malays would retire to their settlements and await the next season.26
In regard to Singapore, it is argued that Raffles used the Malay piracy threat to justify the elimination of Thai influence in the region, and to expand British power on the peninsula. Thus the 1824 Treaty of London, produced mainly to divide spheres of influence between the Dutch and the British in the area, also contained a clause for the suppression of piracy, and by the 1840s the Malay chief, Temenggong Ibrahim, was persuaded to abandon what was partly a political fight between locals, and turn to trade instead.27
Balanini and Ilanuns
Turning next to the Balanini, based on the island of Jolo in Sulu Sea, these sea going peoples resented European intrusion, tried to stay independent, and had spent many years in the islands of the Philippines capturing slaves for their huge Sulu slave markets. According to the Royal Navy Captain Keppel (later Admiral), in the 1840s, the Balanini operated large boats, to which were attached smaller sampans, carrying ten to fifteen men armed with muskets and small three pounder brass cannon. Their tactic was to take small boats by surprise, with the idea of selling the captives as slaves. A favourite device was for two or three Balanini to show themselves in full view, while the rest of the crew crouched hidden in the bottom of the boat. An unusual weapon was a long pole with barbed iron points by which the Balanini hooked their unhappy victims. However, by the 1850s they were under attack by the Spanish, although some years later, the Spanish were still assaulting Sulu, in 1871 and 1876. In the end, the Balanini pirate base of Tungku in north-east Borneo was only erased in 1879 by HMS Kestrel. Then there wer
e the Ilanuns, in Mindanao and north Borneo, who were much feared for their raids using their large prahus of several tons. These prahus had short masts, sported bow pieces and swivel guns, and were rowed by many slaves with a crew of fifty to a hundred. Together with the Balanini, these boats embarked on very wide ranging sea raids, so that the months of August to September were known as the ‘Lanun Season’. However, a considerable number of the Ilanun raiders were eliminated in 1862 by the Sarawak screw steamer Rainbow, with the assistance of the government gun boat, Jolly Bachelor, which had earlier served with Admiral Keppel.28
This 1862 sea fight between these two British ships and six large Ilanun prahus and several smaller sampans, is reported in some detail by Harriette McDougall, a Sarawak resident. This missionary lady had a very low opinion of the Ilanuns, calling them ‘pests of the human race’, and thought of them as ‘unmixed evil, because they are taught to be cruel from their childhood’. The sea fight began when three large Ilanun prahus were spotted off the port of Muka, on the west coast of Borneo. The Rainbow prepared for action by hanging planks and mattresses on the railings to absorb the rifle and musket shots of the Ilanuns, as well as providing some protection against spears and larger brass guns. This done, the tactic was to use grape and round shot against the Ilanun prahus at a distance, and then use the quicker and more agile steamer Rainbow to literally drive over the prahus one by one. However, the first prahu, seeing the danger, got into shallow water, where the Rainbow could not follow, so the Jolly Bachelor was sent to deal with this vessel. The second and third prahus were run over, and the pirates taken, killed, or escaped, while as many captives and slaves were rescued as possible. Subsequently, the rescued captives from these prahus told the captain of the Rainbow of the existence of three more prahus further out to sea. These were located, trying to use their long sweeps and sails to escape, but the Rainbow caught up with them, so that two of these were run over as before, and one was boarded. Overall, 165 captives and slaves were rescued, while only thirty-two Ilanuns were taken alive, the rest having been killed, or having escaped by swimming to the shore.29
Harrowing stories emerged from this sea fight. Some of the rescued captives were earlier attacked by the Ilanun pirates as the sea fight went against the pirates – one man ‘came onboard with the top of his skull as cleanly lifted up by a Sooloo [Sulu] knife, as if a surgeon had desired to take a peep at the brains inside! It took considerable force to close it in the right place.’ This man recovered, as did another who had a three barbed spear sticking in his back. From the prahus taken out at sea, a Chinese captive was seen swimming, holding his tail of hair in the air so that he would not be taken for a pirate. The rescued captives related how on the Ilanun prahus they were compelled to drink a mixture of salt water and fresh water, no doubt due to scarcity of drinking water. Food was a handful of rice and sago twice a day. The rescued Chinese captive said that when the Ilanuns took a ship that resisted, most onboard were killed. Those that were allowed to live were beaten with:
…a flat piece of bamboo over the elbows and knees, and the muscles of arms and legs, until they were unable to move; then a halter is put round their necks, and, when they are sufficiently tamed, they are put to the oars and made to row in gangs, with one of their own fellow-captives as overseer to keep them at work.
This resembles the galley practice of the Barbary corsairs, as does the next comment, ‘If he [the overseer] does not do it effectually, he is krissed [knifed] and thrown overboard. They row in relays, night and day; and to keep them awake, cayenne pepper is rubbed into their eyes or into cuts dealt them on their arms.’30
Harriette McDougall concluded her account by accurately pointing out two factors that enabled the Rainbow and Jolly Bachelor to succeed in their attack on the Ilanun prahus. The first was that the two ships met the Ilanuns in separate engagements – if the whole armada of six prahus and attendant sampans had been together, they might have overwhelmed the Rainbow and Jolly Bachelor. And secondly, the ammunition of the British ships only just lasted out the two engagements – at the conclusion of the second fight there was merely a little loose powder left in one barrel, and a few broken cartridges elsewhere. It seems unlikely that this one engagement, although dealing a severe blow to the Ilanuns, actually ended Ilanun activities, but no doubt it reduced their raids considerably.31
Dyaks
Borneo was also home to the sea going Dyaks from the Sarebas and Sekrang tribes. According to one source, these Dyaks, although head hunters, were really more involved in local rivalries and local piracy. But from the nineteenth-century missionary perspective of Harriette McDougall, the Sea Dyaks were definitely pirates, and this attitude was shared by Captain Henry Keppel, who hunted them down in the 1840s. According to Harriette McDougall, the Dyaks learnt piracy from the Malays, but developed their own style. The Dyaks built fast boats called bangkongs, ninety feet long and nine or ten feet broad, which drew little water. These boats could easily be disassembled, and either hidden, or carried to where they could be used, since they were only held together with rattan strips, and sealed with bark. The Dyaks would silently approach a ship at dusk or night and then overwhelm the crew with showers of spears, and either kill or capture their victims. The Dyaks were head hunters, and Harriette McDougall reported that she remembered one boat that had been recovered with only three fingers of the victims left in it, and blood on the sides of the boat where the heads of the victims had been cut off. The Dyaks raided on land as well as at sea, and often by river.
Sometimes, having destroyed a village and its inhabitants, they would dress themselves in the clothes of the slain, and, proceeding to another place, would call out to the women, ‘The Sarebas are coming, but, if you bring down your valuables to us, we will defend you and your property.’ And many fell into the snare, and were carried off. If they attacked a house when the men were at home, it was by night. They pulled stealthily up the river in their boats, and landing under cover of their shields, crept under the long house … The pirates then set fire to dry wood and a quantity of chillies which they carried with them … This made a suffocating smoke, which hindered the inhabitants from coming out to defend themselves. Then they cut down the posts of the house, which fell, with all that it contained, into their ruthless hands.32
The actions of the Dyaks and other pirates caught the attention of James Brooke – Rajah Brooke (1803–868) – who had become de facto ruler of Sarawak and agent for the Sultan of Brunei. Brooke mounted an anti-pirate campaign, because he believed the pirates disrupted trade, and he persuaded Captain Keppel to come to the rescue. Keppel arrived with HMS Dido and mounted a campaign in 1843 and 1844 to eliminate the Dyaks. Keppel was horrified by the head hunting activities of the Dyaks, having examined a Dyak house, which contained ‘numerous human skulls suspended from the ceiling in regular festoons, with the thigh and arm bones occupying the intervening spaces….’33 Keppel pursued the Dyaks relentlessly up the rivers of Sarawak and north Borneo where the Dyaks had their forts and houses. Keppel’s tactics were fairly simple: pursue the Dyaks up river, although there were usually booms or felled trees laid across the rivers to halt Keppel’s boats. These boats might be steamers, paddle wheelers, pinnaces and ship’s cutters, depending on the situation. The Dyaks defended with musket and cannon fire, but they were almost always defeated by Keppel and his local allies. Keppel’s men broke up the booms with axes, and then boldly attacked in frontal fashion, using muskets, cannon, and Congreve rockets. The Dyaks either then surrendered or were killed, but also melted away into the jungle to fight another day.
Looking at just one Keppel attack, there is his typical assault on the Dyak capital of Paddi in 1843. Moving up river with the tide, Keppel was in the lead in a ship’s gig when they were swept around a bend in the river and as they hove in sight ‘several hundred savages rose up, and gave one of their war-yells. It was the first I had heard. No report from musketry or ordnance could ever make a man’s heart feel so small as mine did at th
at horrid yell: but I had no leisure to think.’ Next, Keppel and the pinnaces and cutters that followed came across a barrier across the river – two rows of trees planted in the mud and held together by rattan strips. Keppel’s small gig got through the barrier, and was in danger of being cut off, but managed to row back upstream, while the bigger boats behind cut through the rattan strips and opened a passage through the barrier. While the pinnace kept up a strong fire on the Dyak fort at Paddi on the river bank, other cutters from Keppel’s crew landed the men, who straightaway ran for the fort, ‘This mode of warfare – this dashing at once in the very face of the fort – was so novel and incomprehensible to our enemies, that they fled, panic-struck, into the jungle…’ Soon the fort at Paddi was in flames, and Keppel’s native allies were busy plundering and setting fire to neighbouring villages. After this, Keppel’s force headed further up river, now aided by an 800 or 900 strong army of rival Dyaks. These ‘friendly’ Dyaks were provided with white strips of calico on their head dresses to distinguish them from the Dyaks that were being attacked, and also given a pass word, ‘Datu’.34