Raiders and Rebels Read online

  Raiders and Rebels

  The Golden Age of Piracy

  Frank Sherry

  This book

  is for

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  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Illustrations

  Our Lady of the Cape

  1 The Opening Gun: The Cruise of the Amity

  2 A Brilliant Time, a Brutal Time

  3 A Seaman’s Lot

  4 The Very Model of a Pirate Villain

  5 The Outlaw Nation

  6 The Rage of Rich Men Balked

  7 On the Account: A Pirate’s Life

  8 The Trusty and Well-beloved Captain

  9 A Voyage to Wapping

  10 Counterstroke and Intermission: The War Moves West

  11 Republic of Rogues

  12 Nemesis of Pirates: Woodes Rogers

  13 Blackbeard Himself

  14 Rogers at Bay

  15 The End on New Providence

  16 King of Madagascar

  17 Where White Men Die

  18 The Black Captain

  19 Demon’s Destiny

  20 Saga’s End

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Searchable Terms

  About the Author

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  The era covered in this narrative—roughly from 1690 through the 1720s—has sometimes been called “The Golden Age of Piracy.” This is because, during those decades, the world experienced the most intense outbreak of seaborne banditry ever recorded.

  This book is an attempt to give an account of the main events of that enormous eruption of piracy—and to portray the often-out-sized personalities who played the chief roles in it.

  Although our present-day knowledge of the pirates of that era derives from relatively few original sources, there has been no dearth of scholarly books in the past on pirates and piracy. I have naturally relied upon many of them in assembling the facts of my own narrative—and they are acknowledged fully in the bibliography accompanying this book.

  I have, however, made it my particular task in this account to try to lay bare the chain of cause and effect that created the piracy—and shaped the pirates—of that explosive epoch. I have also sought to relate the incidents of the great pirate outbreak to the vast historical movements that were taking place during the decades covered in these pages. In brief, I have tried to present the pirate outbreak—accurately, I believe—as a series of linked events, a coherent story, rather than as a jumble of outlandish characters who all just happened to be engaged in outrageous acts of piracy in the same period.

  I have also endeavored to suggest in this account that there were often reasons other than mere lust for wealth that caused men and women to choose the pirate life.

  Finally, I should point out that the reader need not possess any special knowledge of, or interest in, the sea or its lore in order to gain a full appreciation of the story told in this volume. For although this story is incidentally about ships and the sea, it is primarily about human beings in conflict with themselves, with each other, and with their times. It is also a tale made all the more fascinating because it really happened.

  Illustrations

  Daniel Defoe

  Privateer Captain Thomas Tew, from a nineteenth-century book illustration

  King Louis XIV of France

  King William III of England

  Gin Lane by William Hogarth

  Sir Henry Morgan

  Eighteenth-century French map of the coast of Africa and Madagascar

  The Black Flag

  Aurangzeb, the Great Mogul of India

  The crew of Bartholomew Roberts in a drinking orgy on Africa’s Guinea Coast

  Pirates torturing a ship’s officer

  The Royal Governor of America, Richard Coote, the Earl of Bellomont

  Sir Edward Russell, First Lord of the Admiralty, and Sir John Somers, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal

  Newgate Prison in London

  Captain Kidd’s body as it hung near the Thames

  Nineteenth-century illustration of pirates fooling victims

  A swift ship with a shallow draft

  A 1728 portrait of Woodes Rogers and family, by William Hogarth

  Charles Vane, as portrayed in Daniel Defoe’s chronicle on pirates

  Blackbeard

  Stede Bonnet

  Orgy of pirates on Ocracoke Island off North Carolina

  Blackbeard’s death

  Calico Jack Rackam

  Anne Bonny

  Mary Read

  Edward England as portrayed in Defoe’s chronicle on pirates

  An eighteenth-century English map of Africa’s Guinea Coast

  Cape Coast Castle

  Howell Davis

  Captain Chaloner Ogle of the H.M.S. Swallow

  An eighteenth-century print of Bartholomew Roberts known as “Black Bart”

  An eighteenth-century engraving of Edward Low

  Our Lady of the Cape

  Approximately four hundred miles due east of Madagascar, the French-ruled island of Réunion lies like an emerald chip in the vastness of the Indian Ocean.

  Here, on Sunday, April 26, 1721, a Portuguese merchant ship, Nossa Senhora Do Cabo—Our Lady of the Cape—rode at anchor under a blazing tropical sun.

  The Cabo, a sturdy vessel of 700 tons—160 feet long and 34 feet at the beam—had taken shelter in the island’s peaceful harbor after losing her mainmast in a storm.

  The Cabo, armed with twenty-one cannon, and carrying a crew of 130 tough sailors and gunners, was normally a formidable craft and a swift sailer. Minus the spire of her mast, however, she seemed a clumsy cripple on the glittering, almost transparent, water of the harbor.

  Before the storm had interrupted her journey, the Cabo had been bound from the Portuguese colony of Goa, on the southwest coast of India, to Lisbon, a voyage of more than a hundred days that would take her more than 12,500 miles, across the Indian Ocean, around the Cape of Good Hope, and then northward home.

  While riding the ocean currents east of Madagascar, however, the Cabo had run into a fierce gale that had fractured her mast. She had limped into the nearest safe anchorage for repairs.

  Now, even though it was the Sabbath, the ship’s carpenters and crew labored urgently in the steamy heat to rig a new mast. Their haste stemmed from the fact that the Cabo was carrying a most eminent and powerful passenger who was extremely anxious for the Cabo to get under way again as soon as possible.

  This passenger was His Excellency Dom Luis Carlos Ignacio Xavier de Meneses, Count of Ericeira and Marquis of Lourical, who was returning to Portugal after many years of service as viceroy of Goa.

  The retiring viceroy had good reason for his anxiety, for the Cabo was not only carrying her own rich cargo of Oriental silks, textiles, spices, and porcelains, she was also carrying Dom Luis’s personal fortune: chests brimming with diamonds, exotic Indian art, and precious illuminated manuscripts. Dom Luis calculated that the diamonds alone would command a worth of more than £500,000—an enormous sum in the purchasing power of the day. The art treasures and manuscripts were beyond price.

  In addition to his own diamonds, Dom Luis carried a consignment of gems destined for the coffers of the Portuguese king, as well as a smaller number intended for a consortium of merchants in Lisbon.

  For Dom Luis, who had obtained this wealth through a series of shrewd purchases made during his tenure as viceroy, the chests of diamonds were the keys that would unlock a future of glory and ease. The king, he anticipated, would delight in his treasures from India, and would subsequently bestow his warmest favor on Dom Luis and his family
. With the royal patronage secured, Dom Luis planned to make his name great in Portugal. He would sell most of his own diamonds and with the proceeds rebuild his family’s estates, which had fallen into disrepair. He would live the rest of his days surrounded by magnificence. The realization of this vision of the glorious future, however, depended upon the Cabo’s reaching home safely. Until he saw Lisbon again with his treasure intact, the former viceroy of Goa could not rest easy.

  It was for this reason that Dom Luis himself—a proud slim figure in a scarlet waistcoat belted with a jeweled sword—watched fretfully from the quarterdeck as the repairs to the Cabo proceeded on that humid April Sunday.

  It was for this reason, too, that Dom Luis felt an upsurge of anxiety when one of the Cabo’s crewmen suddenly called out that two strange sails had appeared on the horizon.

  Nervously Dom Luis popped open his glass and examined the two strangers. Clearly they were making for the island. As the newcomers approached, Dom Luis could see that one of them was an East Indiaman—a merchant vessel like the Cabo—while the other was a mere brig.

  Dom Luis sighed with relief when he made out the British flags flying from both the approaching vessels, and the plain, honest faces of their crewmen visible on deck. Satisfied that these were ships of the British East India Company, probably on their way to trade with the Great Mogul, the Portuguese viceroy prepared to fire a salute to the oncoming Englishmen, as courtesy required. Perhaps he would even invite their officers aboard the Cabo when they had anchored and refreshed themselves.

  As Dom Luis continued to observe the British ships, however, uneasiness began to creep into the pit of his stomach. He saw now that the two strangers were not anchoring after all. Instead they were bearing down menacingly on the helpless Cabo.

  Dom Luis watched with alarm as the larger ship slid smoothly into position alongside the Cabo’s port beam, while the brig ranged in close to starboard. Then alarm swelled to terror as the British ensigns that the strangers had been flying suddenly fluttered down—and black flags rose in their place, grim white skulls snapping in the wind.

  Now pandemonium broke out aboard the Cabo as her officers and crewmen, all at once aware of their mortal danger, sprinted to defend their disabled ship.

  But it was too late. A flash of orange fire, accompanied by a thunderous roar, erupted over the Cabo as the pirate vessels fired.

  The Cabo shuddered under the impact. Wooden splinters flew through the air like lethal shards. Wounded men screamed. Dense black smoke billowed over the decks. Then, shouting oaths in barbaric English and French, two hundred wild-eyed cutthroats, like demons from Hell itself, swarmed onto the Cabo’s deck from both pirate ships.

  Firing muskets at point-blank range, and slashing at all who resisted, the pirates routed the Cabo’s defenders in the first moments of the onslaught. Some of the Cabo’s crewmen deserted to the pirates. The rest—including officers—realized they were overwhelmed, and threw up their hands in surrender. The Cabo belonged to the pirates.

  But Dom Luis refused to surrender so easily. With his jeweled sword in hand, he launched himself recklessly into the midst of the outlaws, as if he no longer valued his life now that fate had demolished his dream of future splendor. With his gaudy scarlet coat flying, Dom Luis fought a desperate hand-to-hand combat against the astounded brigands who had taken his ship.

  Roaring with anger, the surprised outlaws slashed furiously at Dom Luis, who expertly parried their thrusts until his ceremonial sword shattered and he could no longer defend himself.

  Surrounded by a ring of cursing, sweating villains, Dom Luis must have expected cold steel in his heart. Instead, upon a gruff command in English, the circle of pirates around him parted, and Dom Luis came face to face with a burly, dark-visaged man who wore a tricornered hat and carried a brace of pistols in his wide belt—the pirate chieftain himself.

  With a sardonic grin and a mock bow, the pirate captain returned Dom Luis’s broken sword, making it clear to the Portuguese nobleman that his life had been spared—at least temporarily—in recognition of his gallant resistance.

  Held captive on the Cabo’s foredeck, Dom Luis could only look on in helpless anguish as the pirates began to loot their prize. Soon the decks were piled with chests of diamonds, bales of silks, barrels of spices, and mounds of Dom Luis’s precious books and works of art.

  The outlaws whooped with raucous joy at the enormous treasure they had found. Throughout the night they ransacked the Cabo, celebrating their great luck by drinking huge quantities of liquor and firing off their muskets. The captive Dom Luis must have writhed in fury when the pirates, seeing no value in his infidel manuscripts and artworks, used these priceless materials to provide a festive light for the Cabo’s deck, and as wadding for their jubilant musketry.

  Ashore in his residence overlooking the harbor, the French governor did nothing to stop the rape of the Cabo. The island, which was at best a French layover station for ships bound for India, possessed no forces sufficient to contend with the brazen pirates in the harbor. Moreover, the governor knew he had to tread carefully when it came to dealing with pirate raiders because many retired pirates lived under French pardons in his little colony and might revert to their old, dangerous ways if provoked. Finally, it was not altogether displeasing to the governor to see a Portuguese ship in these dire straits. Portugal was, after all, a rival of France in the struggle for commercial and political domination of the Indian Ocean.

  And so the pirates who had seized the Cabo collected their spoil unhindered. When they had gathered all they thought valuable, they calculated that their take would exceed £800,000—an incredible haul.1

  Impelled to generosity by good fortune, the pirate leader, a hitherto obscure English marauder named John Taylor, proposed to his crew that they grant the brave Dom Luis not only his life but his freedom by setting him ashore.

  Some of Taylor’s men objected to the proposal. They argued that in accordance with the usual pirate custom, Dom Luis, as a high-ranking noble, should be taken to the Portuguese colony of Mozambique and there be offered for a suitably high ransom. But others in Taylor’s crew argued that they had gained more than enough wealth from the Cabo—and they should now prudently make for safe waters as soon as possible.

  In the end Taylor’s crew came to a compromise, agreeing to sell Dom Luis and their other prisoners to the French governor of the island for a nominal ransom of £400. They had concluded, according to one witness, that “t’were better to take a smaller sum than to be troubled further.”

  On the morning after the Cabo’s capture, therefore, the pirate captain, with derisive ceremony—including a viceregal twenty-one-gun salute from his ship, the Cassandra, and shouts of “Vive le roi!” from his crew—put Dom Luis ashore in a longboat decorated with the ex-viceroy’s own banners.

  Then Taylor and his men, with their prize, set sail for the open sea.

  When it came time for a final tally and share-out of the spoils, Taylor and his crew reckoned that the loot from the Cabo, together with plunder from prizes taken earlier, amounted to more than £1 million. Each of Taylor’s men received more than £4,000, plus forty-two diamonds from Dom Luis’s chests—gigantic wealth at a time when honest sailors earned only £1 or £2 per month.

  Taylor and his crew were never caught.2

  Dom Luis, on the other hand, despite his gallantry, paid a hard price for the Cabo debacle. The Portuguese monarch blamed him for the loss of the ship and the diamonds and refused to receive his ex-viceroy at the royal court. Only after ten years had passed was Dom Luis allowed into the presence of his king. He never regained his fortune or his king’s favor, but he did gain an immortal place in the annals of the sea—as the victim of the largest single pirate strike ever recorded.

  The Cabo’s ordeal, aside from the immensity of the booty involved, was characteristic of hundreds of such hostile encounters that took place yearly in that turbulent time of seaborne lawlessness. For the Cabo met with her fate du
ring the longest and most intense outburst of piracy the world has ever experienced, when thousands of reckless, daring men—and a number of women as well—ranged the seas of the globe plundering the merchant fleets of the maritime countries.

  For thirty-three years—roughly between 1692 and 1725—these pirate raiders, declared enemies of the whole world, terrorized the sea-lanes, disrupted commerce, and threatened the advance of a nascent western imperialism, while fighting off all efforts to exterminate them. In effect, the pirates of that era made war against the civilized world for a third of a century.

  In the course of their war, fought over millions of square miles of ocean from Madagascar to the Bahamas to the steamy west coast of Africa, the pirate outlaws became fused into a loose-knit but powerful confederacy—a rough-and-ready republic of rebels, robbers, and rovers.

  The pirates also evolved an original and lurid style of life that has become a familiar part of the lore of the western world.

  Rum-soaked villains gripping cutlasses in their teeth as they board a helpless victim, swashbuckling captains engaged in flashing swordplay, captives forced to walk the plank, marooned traitors, swaggering earringed mates with a brace of pistols in their belts, chests of glittering gold, deserted tropic isles where for tunes in loot lie buried, the sinister Jolly Roger suddenly grinning from a mast as a swift black hull cuts through the ocean swell—all these images have become inextricably associated with the treasure-hunting pirates of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

  Yet many of these popular images are false. Few captains were swashbucklers. No pirate captives ever walked the plank. Real pirates spent their loot. They seldom buried it, even for a short time.