The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down

by Colin Woodard

  The pirate population on the island was estimated at 500 to 700, suggesting that a great number of those who had left Nassau to accept pardons in other colonies had come back. Another 200 nonpirates were also on the island, people who, in the words of one of Rogers's officials, "had made their escape from ye Spainards" during the war and now "lived in the woods destitute of all neccessarys." Rogers set all of these people to work clearing a thick layer of vegetation the pirates had allowed to smother buildings, yards, and fields. Others were recruited to assist the soldiers in arming and repairing the fort and in setting up a separate battery to guard the harbor's eastern entrance. The last vessel in Rogers's fleet, the supply ship Samuel, finally arrived, safe and sound in the harbor, her capacious hold filled with food and supplies. After the first week of his governorship, Rogers was likely optimistic for success.

  Reports of piracy in the surrounding waters shattered the mood. First came a message from Charles Vane, who had detained two inbound vessels and said that he would join with Blackbeard, planning, as Rogers described it,"to burn my guardship and visit me very soon to return the affront I gave him on my arrival in sending two sloops after him instead of answering him." Shortly thereafter, on August 4, a Philadelphia mariner named Richard Taylor arrived with more ominous news. Taylor had been captured in the southern Bahamas by Spanish privateers who, despite the peace, had proceeded to sack the English villages on Catt Island and Crooked Island. The leader of the privateers had told Taylor that a new Spanish governor had arrived in Havana "with orders from King Phillip to destroy all the English settlements in the Bahama Islands"; he had five warships and upward of 1,500 men to accomplish this task. If the English surrendered, Taylor explained, the Spanish governor had instructions to deport them to Virginia or the Carolinas,"but in case of resistance to send them to Havana and thence [as prisoners] ... to Old Spain."

  Facing simultaneous threats from Charles Vane and the king of Spain, Rogers knew he needed to complete his fortifications as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, his labor supply began to disappear. First, the soldiers, sailors, and colonists he brought with him fell ill by the dozens. The unidentified disease—and the putrid stench that had hung over the town for weeks—was blamed on the huge piles of rotting animal hides the pirates had abandoned on the shore. Although the illness had broken out two weeks before Rogers's arrival, he wrote it was "as if only fresh European blood could ... draw the infection"; longtime residents "quickly became free" of contagion while the newcomers were "seized so violently that I have had above 100 sick at one time and not a [single] healthful officer." Eighty-six of Rogers's party died, as did six crewmen from the Rose and Milford and two of the locals who served on Rogers's governing council. Rogers himself came down with "intestine commotions and ... contagious distempers" and, by mid-August, was unable to attend council meetings. Most of the island's cattle also perished, striking a blow to the food supply.

  Longtime Nassau residents resisted not only the illness, but Rogers's efforts to put them to work. "Most of them are poor and so addicted to idleness that they would choose rather almost to starve than work," Rogers reported home. "They mortally hate it, for after they have cleared a patch that will supply them with potatoes and yams and very little else [and] fish being so plentiful and either turtle or [iguanas available] on the neighboring islands, they eat [them] instead of meat and covet no stock or cattle; thus [they] live poorly [and] indolently ... and pray for nothing but [ship]wrecks or the pirates ... and would rather spend all they have in a punch house than pay me [a tax] to save their families and all that is dear to them." The locals proved unreliable militiamen as well. "These wretches can't be kept to watch at night and when they do they come very seldom sober and rarely [stay] awake all night, though our officers or soldiers very often surprise their guard and carry off their arms and punish, fine, or confine them almost every day," the governor complained. "I don't fear but they'll all stand by me in case of any [invasion] attempt, except [one by] pirates. But should their old friends have strength enough to designe to attack me, I much doubt whether I should find one half to join me."

  It was at this time that Commodore Chamberlaine announced that his three men-of-war were leaving. Rogers was flabbergasted. The colony was at its most vulnerable, its defenders ill and its fortifications unfinished. The Milford, Rose, Shark and the three hundred men serving on them were essential to its defense. Chamberlaine was adamant however: He had cleaned his vessel's hull, taken his share of the loot seized from pirate prizes in the harbor, and, frankly,"had no orders" to stay any longer. Rogers had no power over naval personnel and so was forced to beg the commodore not to abandon the colony. Begrudgingly, Chamberlaine agreed to leave the twenty-gun Rose behind for three weeks longer, at which point Rogers said he "was in hopes my men and the fortification would be in a better state" to stand alone against the pirates and Spaniards. Accordingly, at nine thirty A.M. on August 16, the Milford and Shark departed for New York.

  Rogers's situation deteriorated. Over the next few days, the Bahamas were racked with lightning, thunder, and rain, and Captain Whitney, expecting a hurricane, had his men take down the Rose's topmasts. Rogers tossed and turned in his humid bedroom, with wrenching guts and a high fever. Progress on the fort moved at a snail's pace, Rogers's lieutenants barely able to get the reformed pirates to clear the scrub from around the fort, better yet to take part in the strenuous labor of salvaging cannon from the Hog Island wrecks and transporting them to the fort's bastions. The rain continued for two weeks, toward the end of which a boat arrived carrying men who, on examination, turned out to be members of Vane's company. These men confessed that Vane, in a brigantine, was headed north, but had promised to meet them around September 14 at Abaco, one of the Bahama Islands, sixty miles from Nassau. Was he headed north to join forces with Bonnet or Blackbeard? If so, was he preparing to make good on his threat to attack Nassau? On September 8, there was more bad news. A boat arrived carrying John Cockram's brother Phillip, and several other men who had been held captive by Spanish guardas costas for two months. During that time they had been forced to serve as pilots for the Spaniards as they sailed around Abaco and New Providence, gathering intelligence for an imminent invasion. They had released Cockram and his colleagues so that they could bring Rogers a message: Prove to us that you are a legitimate governor and not a pirate, or expect the worst.

  Rogers quickly drew up a letter to the governor of Havana, while his lieutentants set about loading the Buck with goods to trade in Cuba. The sloop-of-war departed on September 10, in the company of a smaller sloop, the Mumvele Trader. The Buck, however, never made it to Havana. En route, her crew—a mix of reformed pirates and Rogers's sailors—turned pirate. A number of the sailors who had come from England with the Buck apparently found piracy attractive. The motivations of one of these men, Walter Kennedy, were later recorded. Kennedy, the young son of a Wapping anchorsmith, had served in the Royal Navy during the War of Spanish Succession, where he "had occasion to hear of the exploits of the pirates ... from the time of Sir Henry Morgan ... to Captain Avery's more modern exploits at Madagascar." Inspired by these tales, Kennedy thought "he might be able to make as great a figure as any of these thievish heroes, whenever a proper opportunity offered." Kennedy seized that opportunity, apparently killing the Buck's captain, Jonathan Bass, and other resistors before sailing away to Africa.

  With the loss of the Buck, Rogers implored Captain Whitney to stay and help protect the island from Vane, who was now expected any day. Whitney delayed his departure by a week, but in the early morning hours of September 14, over Rogers's strong objection, the Rose left Nassau. Whitney promised Rogers he would return in three weeks. It was a promise he had no intention of keeping. Rogers watched as his last naval escort vanished over the horizon on a southwesterly breeze.

  A few hours later another boat came into the harbor bearing alarming news: Charles Vane had arrived at Abaco.

  ***

  After escaping fro
m the Buck on the evening of July 26, Vane's exact movements remain sketchy. His company appears to have continued sailing south with the sloop Katherine, whose original pirate captain, Charles Yeats, remained aboard, resentful and disgruntled. The pirates appear to have spent the first half of August bouncing between the southern Bahamas and the Cuban coast. On July 28 they captured a sloop from Barbados, which was given to Yeats and his men under the condition that they continue sailing in consort with Vane. Two days later, another sloop, the John & Elizabeth, fell into their clutches, and not long after that a brigantine, which Vane took command of. A London paper later reported that at about this time two London-bound ships were set upon as they left Nassau by a pirate who, based on his behavior, was very likely Vane. The London Weekly Journal reported that the pirate captain had wanted to sink both ships "with their commanders and men," but that his crew would not consent "to such an inhuman piece of barbarity." The pirates kept their captives for five days, during which time their captain promised to capture two more London ships that were expected to come to Nassau, saying he would "cut 'em into pound-pieces." While these pirates drank and cleaned their vessels at some secluded Bahama hideaway, another vessel arrived with supplies for them, plus "news [of] where other pirates cruiz'd and what Men of War [were] out in chase after them." The captain was heard to brag "that if there came two Men-of-War to attack him, he would fight 'em and if he could not escape them, he would go into his Powder Room and blow up his ship, and send [any of] them on board and himself to Hell together."

  In mid-August Vane sent several men to Nassau to gather information and provisions, which they were to bring back to him at a secluded anchorage near Abaco. Vane appears to have been biding his time, observing his enemy and hoping to eventually join forces with Blackbeard or Bonnet to attack the island; he may have even hoped that the Spaniards would attack, weakening or destroying Rogers's forces, creating a vacuum into which the pirates could return. In the meantime, he counted on old friends to buy his goods, smuggle vital provisions to his gang, and keep him abreast of happenings on New Providence.

  Toward the middle of August, his company's morale may have started to flag, because he decided to take a short cruise to Charleston in the hopes of filling the crewmen's purses. The pirates blockaded the harbor on August 30, 1718, Vane in his twelve-gun brigantine with ninety men and Yeats in a sloop—presumably the Katherine—of eight guns and twenty men. The merchants of South Carolina had to have been appalled to be at the mercy of pirates once again, as vessel after vessel fell into their clutches. Over a thirty-six-hour period, Vane and Yeats took eight in all, from the little fifteen-ton sloop Dove of Barbados to the 300-ton ship Neptune of London. From the eighty-ton brigantine Dorothy of London, Vane seized ninety slaves from Guinea and forced them aboard Yeats's sloop, which he intended to use as a floating warehouse. Yeats, however, had other plans. His sloop full of valuable human cargo, he took off in the other direction, intending to make his escape from his overbearing commander. Vane put up a chase and got off at least one broadside, but was unable to prevent his underling's escape. Yeats hid his vessel in Edisto Inlet, thirty-five miles south of Charleston, and sent a messenger to that city offering to surrender if the governor would grant his men pardon. The governor ultimately agreed.

  Vane was undoubtedly furious about Yeats's defection, but two other prizes gave him consolation. These were the fifty-ton ship Emperor and the Neptune, both bound for London with pitch, tar, rice, and turpentine. These cargoes would find a ready market in the Bahamas, but they comprised 2,900 large barrels, far too bulky to transfer to Vane's modest brigantine. Instead, Vane's company resolved to take both ships to the Bahamas, where they could plunder at their leisure. They would go to their hideaway near Abaco, where they expected their informants and suppliers from Nassau to be waiting.

  Vane's men left Charleston not a day too early, for a posse was setting out to bring them to justice. The merchants of South Carolina had fitted out two well-armed, well-manned sloops under the command of militia colonel William Rhett, a wealthy merchant who had lost a good deal of money to the pirates over the years. By the time Rhett's vessels got out of Charleston's harbor, Vane was nowhere to be seen. Rhett decided to snoop around the North Carolina coast, hoping to find the pirates in one of their hideaways. On the afternoon of September 27, he found some in Cape Fear harbor—not Vane's crew, who were halfway to the Bahamas by then, but another pirate company that just couldn't seem to catch a break.

  ***

  Poor Stede Bonnet. After Blackbeard had double-crossed him at Topsail Inlet, vanishing with the Spanish prize sloop and much of the company's treasure, Bonnet spent much of June 1718 trying to hunt him down. When he heard a rumor that Blackbeard was at Ocracoke Inlet, fifty miles up the North Carolina coast, he sailed there in the Revenge, only to find a couple of deserted, sandy islands.

  Bonnet fell into despair. He had been a pirate for more than a year and had little more than what he had started out with: his sloop Revenge, a crew of forty men, and, thanks to the pardon from the governor of North Carolina, a clean legal record. As a pirate captain, he had been a total failure, his poor decisions having cost the lives of many of his men and the rest of his treasure. Any hopes he might have had to take part in a Jacobite uprising against King George had been dashed: The "true" king, known to them as James III, could barely help himself, better yet the pirates of the Americas. Bonnet had a ruinous reputation in both respectable and outlaw circles, and he could not bear the humiliation of returning to either his old life among the slave plantations of Barbados or living among his pirate peers in the Bahamas. He would have to live on the fence. While getting his pardon in Bath, Bonnet learned that the king of Denmark—one of Britain's minor allies in the War of Spanish Succession—was still at war with Spain. Perhaps if Bonnet were to go to St. Thomas, Denmark's principal Caribbean colony, he could persuade its governor to grant him a privateering commission. His company thought it a good idea; some of the pirate's former captives, like Captain David Herriot, signed up for the plan.

  When they left Beaufort Inlet, the pirates elected Robert Tucker as their quartermaster. Tucker was a mariner from Jamaica whom Blackbeard had seized from a merchant sloop some weeks earlier. Like many other captives, he found that he liked the pirate's life and had become a popular member of the crew. He had little respect for Bonnet and wasn't particularly interested in returning to being a law-abiding subject. When the crew discovered that the Revenge had but ten or eleven barrels of food aboard—Blackbeard having stolen the rest—Tucker resolved that they should simply seize more from the next merchant vessel they encountered. Bonnet was opposed to this plan and even threatened to resign and leave the Revenge, but the crew didn't seem to mind the thought of losing him, and a majority threw their votes behind Tucker. The pirates seized the very next vessel they encountered, taking provisions. Then they took another. Pretty soon they were off the Capes of Virginia taking every vessel they could lay their hands on.

  Bonnet tried to keep the company from invalidating his pardon. To conceal his identity, he insisted that he be called Captain Edwards or Captain Thomas, a ruse that didn't fool all their captives. To hide their tracks further, the pirates renamed the Revenge the Royal James in homage to James Stuart. Bonnet also insisted that the pirates give their captives "payment" for the goods they stole, so that they might later claim that they were traders, not pirates. Their first two victims received small parcels of rice, molasses, and even an old anchor cable in exchange for the barrels of pork and bread that were taken from them. After a week or two, however, most of the pirates refused to participate in this subterfuge, and some of Tucker's clique took to threatening and abusing captives instead. On July 29, off Cape May, New Jersey, Tucker boarded the fifty-ton sloop Fortune and "fell to beating and cutting people with his cutlass and cut one man's arm," according to an eyewitness. Two days later they boarded a sloop anchored in the harbor of Lewes, Delaware, and threw themselves a party in the capt
ain's cabin, eating pineapples, drinking rum punch, singing songs, and toasting the health of James Stuart, saying they "hoped to see him King of the English nation," according to one of the sloop's crewmen. Tucker was, by now, captain in everything but name, and the pirates had even taken to referring to him as their "father."

  Not all of the men aboard the Royal James wished to return to piracy, and took great risks to escape Tucker's clutches. Seven men successfully escaped on July 21 by stealing a prize sloop, which they took to Rhode Island; authorities there imprisoned them but five managed to escape before being brought to trial. When, after taking at least thirteen vessels off New Jersey, Delaware, and Virginia, the pirates returned to Cape Fear to wait out the hurricane season, several forced men fled into the woods. Unable to find food, shelter, or inhabitants in the swampy wilderness, the men had no choice but to return several days later and were put to work "among the Negroes" cleaning the Royal James. One of the captives, a mulatto, lamented to another that "he was not able to bear any longer, but was forced to comply with [the pirates], for they told him they would have no regard for the colour [of his skin] but would make a slave of him." On another occasion, a pirate told the same mulatto captive that he "was but like a negro, and they made slaves of us all of that colour if they did not join" with the pirates. In Bonnet's company, it seems, blacks could choose between slavery and piracy.