CHAPTER XVI.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF PIRATES.

[Sidenote: Pompey and the pirates.]

[Sidenote: Piracy on the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea.]

At no other time in the world’s history has the business of piracy thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth. Its golden age may be said to have extended from about 1650 to about 1720. In ancient times the seafaring was too limited in its area to admit of such wholesale operations as went on after the broad Atlantic had become a highway between the Old World and the New. No doubt those Cretan and Cilician pirates who were suppressed by the great Pompey were terrible fellows. After the destruction of Carthage they controlled the Mediterranean from the coast of Judæa to the Pillars of Hercules, and captured the cargoes of Egyptian grain till at times Rome seemed threatened with famine. Roman commanders one after another went down before them, until at length, in the year B. C. 67, Pompey was appointed dictator over the Mediterranean and all its coasts for fifty miles inland. The dimensions of his task are indicated by the fact that in the course of that year he captured 3,000 vessels, hung or crucified 10,000 pirates, and made prisoners of 20,000 more, whom he hustled off to hard labour in places far from the sound of surf. Nevertheless those ancient pirates worked on a much smaller scale than the buccaneers of America. In the Indian Ocean adjacent stretches of the Pacific there has always been much piracy until the recent days when French and English ships have patrolled those waters. The fame of the Chinese and Malays as sea robbers is well established. So too with those vile communities north of Sahara which we used to call the Barbary States, their eminence in crime is unsurpassed. From the fifteenth century to the first years of the nineteenth, piracy was one of their chief sources of revenue; their ships were a terror to the coasts of Europe, and for devilish atrocity scarcely any human annals are so black as those of Morocco and Algiers. But as these Mussulman pirates and those of eastern Asia were as busily at work in the seventeenth century as at any other time, their case does not impair my statement that the age of the buccaneers was the Golden Age of piracy. The deeds done in American waters greatly swelled, if they did not more than double, the volume of maritime robbery already existing.

[Sidenote: The Vikings were not pirates in the strict sense.]

[Sidenote: Blackstone on the crime of piracy.]

If we look into mediæval history for examples to compare with those already cited, we may observe that the Scandinavian Vikings, such men as sailed with Rolf and Guthorm and Swegen Forkbeard, are sometimes spoken of as pirates. If such a classification of them were correct, we should be obliged to assign the Golden Age of piracy to the ninth and tenth centuries, for surely all other slayings and plunderings done by seafaring men shrink into insignificance beside the operations of those mighty warriors of the North. But it is neither a just nor a correct use of language that would count as pirates a race of men who simply made war like all their contemporaries, only more effectively. The warfare of the Vikings was that of barbarous heathen, but it was not criminal unless it is a crime to be born a barbarian. The moral difference between killing the enemy in battle and murdering your neighbour is plain enough. If there is any word which implies thorough and downright criminality, it is pirate. In the old English law the pirate was declared an enemy to the human race, with whom no faith need be kept. “As therefore,” says Blackstone, “he has renounced all the benefits of society and government, and has reduced himself afresh to the savage state of nature by declaring war against all mankind, all mankind must declare war against him, and every community hath a right by the rule of self-defence to inflict that punishment upon him which every individual would in a state of nature have been otherwise entitled to do for any invasion of his person or property.”[303] Pirates taken at sea were commonly hung from the yard-arm without the formality of a trial, and on land neither church nor shrine could serve them as sanctuary. It was also well understood that they were not included in the benefit of a general declaration of pardon or amnesty.

[Sidenote: Character of piracy.]

The pirate thus elaborately outlawed was anybody who participated in violent robbery on the high seas, or in criminal plunder along their coasts. The details of such crimes were apt to be full of cruelty. The capture of a merchant ship with more or less bloodshed was usually involved, and such bloodshed was wholesale murder. If provisions were less than ample, the survivors were thrown overboard, or set ashore on some lonely island and left to starve, and this often happened. Murders from sheer wantonness were not uncommon, and the sack of a coast town or village was attended with nameless horrors. On the whole we cannot wonder that public opinion should have branded the skippers and crews who did such things as the very worst of criminals. One can see that in old trials for piracy, as in trials for witchcraft, the dread and detestation were often so great as to outweigh the ordinary English presumption that an accused person must have the benefit of the doubt until proved guilty. Desire to extirpate the crime became a stronger feeling than reluctance to punish the innocent. The slightest suspicion of complicity with pirates brought with it extreme peril.

[Sidenote: To call the Elizabethan sea kings “pirates” is silly and outrageous.]

When we thus recall what the crime of piracy really was, we cannot fail to see how reprehensible is the language sometimes applied, by writers who should know better, to the noble sailors who in the days of Queen Elizabeth saved England from the Spanish Inquisition.[304] Had it not been for the group of devoted men among whom Sir Francis Drake was foremost, there was imminent danger three hundred years ago that human freedom might perish from off the face of the earth. The name of Drake is one that should never be uttered without reverence, especially by Americans, since it is clear that but for him our history would not have begun in the days of Elizabeth’s successor. His character was far loftier than that of Nelson, the only other sea warrior whose achievements have equalled his. His performances never transgressed the bounds of legitimate warfare as it was conducted in the sixteenth century. Among his contemporaries he was exceptionally humane, for he would not permit the wanton destruction of life or property. To use language which even remotely alludes to such a man as a pirate is to show sad confusion of ideas. As for Elizabeth’s other great captains,--such as Raleigh, Cavendish, Hawkins, Gilbert, Grenville, Frobisher, Winter, and the Howards,--few of them rose to the moral stature of Drake, but they were very far above the level of freebooters. It seems ridiculous that it should be necessary to say so. Their business was warfare, not robbery.

[Sidenote: Features of maritime warfare out of which piracy could grow.]

[Sidenote: Privateering.]

It is nevertheless undeniable that naval warfare in the days of Elizabeth stood on a lower moral plane than naval warfare in the days of Victoria, and things were done without hesitation then that would not be tolerated now. Wars are ugly things at best, but civilized people have learned how to worry through them without inflicting quite so much misery as formerly. Three centuries ago not only were the usages more harsh than now, but the methods of conducting maritime warfare contained a feature out of which, under favouring circumstances, piracy afterward grew. There can be no doubt that the seventeenth century was the golden age of pirates because it came immediately after the age of Elizabeth. The circumstances of the struggle of the Netherlands and England against the greatest military power in the world made it necessary for the former to rely largely, and the latter almost exclusively, upon naval operations. Dutch ships on the Indian Ocean and English ships off the American coasts effectually cut the Spaniard’s sinews of war. Now in that age ocean navigation was still in its infancy, and the work of creating great and permanent navies was only beginning. Government was glad to have individuals join in the work of building and equipping ships of war, and it was accordingly natural that individuals should expect to reimburse themselves for the heavy risk and expense by taking a share in the spoils of victory. In this way privateering came into existence, and it played a much more extensive part in maritime warfare than it now does. The navy was but incompletely nationalized. Into expeditions that were strictly military in purpose there entered some of the elements of a commercial speculation, and as we read them with our modern ideas we detect the smack of buccaneering.

[Sidenote: Fighting without declaring war.]

To this it should be added that fighting between hostile states occurred much more frequently than now without a formal declaration of war. There were times in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when the hatred between the commercial rivals, Venice and Genoa, was so fierce that whenever their ships happened to meet on the Mediterranean they went to fighting at sight, yet those bloody scrimmages did not always lead to war. In the youth of Christopher Columbus it was seldom that Christian and Turkish ships met without bloodshed, on the assumption that war was the normal state of things between Crescent and Cross. So when the Dutch were contending against Philip II. the English often helped their heroic cousins by capturing Spanish ships long before war was declared between Philip and Elizabeth. Such laxity of international usage made it easy to cross the line which demarcates privateering from piracy.

[Sidenote: Lack of protection for neutral ships.]

It should also be remembered that the ships of neutral nations had no such protection as now. The utmost that is now permitted the belligerent ship is to search the neutral ship for weapons or other materials of war bound for an enemy’s port, and to confiscate such materials without further injury to person or property. In the sixteenth century it was allowable to confiscate the neutral ship bound for an enemy’s port, sell her cargo for prize money, and hold her crew and passengers for ransom. The milder doctrine that any kind of goods might be seized, but not the ship and her people, had been propounded but was not yet generally accepted.

[Sidenote: Spanish treasure.]

All the circumstances here mentioned were favourable to the growth of piracy. At the same time the temptations were unusually strong. There was a vague widespread belief that America was a land abounding in treasure, and there were facts enough to explain such a belief. Immense quantities of gold and silver were carried across the Atlantic in Spanish ships, to say nothing of other articles of value. This treasure was used to support a war which threatened English liberty, and therefore English cruisers were right in seizing it wherever they could. But it only needed that such cruising should fall into the hands of knaves and ruffians, and that it should be kept up after Spain and England were really at peace, for this semi-mediæval warfare to develop into a gigantic carnival of robbery and murder. And so it happened.

[Sidenote: Origin of buccaneering.]

It was toward the end of the sixteenth century, in the course of the great Elizabethan war, that the West Indies witnessed the first appearance of the marauders known as “Brethren of the Coast.” They were of various nationalities, chiefly French, English, and Dutch. They all regarded Spain as the world’s great bully that must be teased. The Spaniards had won such a reputation for tyranny and cruelty that public opinion was not shocked when they were made to swallow a dose or two of their own medicine. After peace had been declared, any foreign adventurers coming to the West Indies were liable to be molested as intruders, and their ships sometimes had to fight in self-defence. Wherefore the more unscrupulous rovers, expecting ill-treatment, used not to wait for it, but when they saw a good chance for robbing Spaniards they promptly seized it. This they called, in the witty phrase of a French captain, _se dédommager par avance_, or recouping one’s self beforehand.

[Sidenote: Illicit traffic.]

It was not all the people of Spanish America, however, that frowned upon foreigners. Among those who came were sundry small traders of the illicit sort. Like all semi-barbarous governments, the court of Spain pursued a highly protectionist policy. The colonists were not allowed to receive European goods from any but Spanish ports, and thus the Spanish exporters were enabled to charge exorbitant prices. Many of the colonists therefore welcomed smugglers who brought European wares to exchange for cargoes of sugar or hides. To suppress this traffic, the authorities at San Domingo patrolled the coasts with small cruisers known as _guardacostas_, and when they caught the intruders they pitched them overboard, or strung them up to the yard-arm, without the smallest ceremony. In revenge the intruders combined into fleets and made descents upon the coasts, burning houses, plundering towns, and committing all manner of outrages. Thus there grew up in the West Indies a chronic state of hostilities quite independent of Europe. It came to be understood among the intruders that, whether their countries were at peace or war with one another, all persons coming to the West Indies were friends and allies against that universal enemy, the Spaniard. Thus these rovers took the name of “Brethren of the Coast.”

[Sidenote: Buccaneers and “flibustiers.”]

As the consequence of more than a century of frightful misrule the beautiful island of Hispaniola, or Hayti, had come to be in many parts deserted. Many good havens were unguarded, and everywhere there were immense herds of cattle and swine running wild. Some of the brethren, mostly Frenchmen, were thus led to settle in the island and do a thriving business in hides, tallow, smoked beef, and salted pork, which they bartered with their sailor brethren for things smuggled from Europe. They drove away the Spaniards who tried to disturb them, and amid perpetual fighting the island came to be more and more French. Presently, from 1625 to 1630, they took possession of the little islands of St. Christopher and Nevis, and built strong fortifications at Tortuga. About this time they began to be called “boucaniers” or “buccaneers.” To cure meat by smoking was called by the Indians “boucanning” it. La Rochefort says of the Caribs that they used to eat their prisoners well boucanned. In the days before cattle came to the New World, Americus Vespucius saw boucanned human shoulders and thighs hanging in Indian cabins as one would hang a flitch of bacon. The buccaneers were named for the excellent boucanned beef and pork which they sold. For their brethren on shipboard another name was at first used. The English word “freebooter” became in French mouths “flibustier,” in spelling which a silent _s_ was inserted after the _u_ by a false analogy, as so often happens. In recent times “flibustier” has come back into English as “filibuster,” a name originally given to such United States adventurers as William Walker, making raids upon Spanish-American coasts in the interests of slavery. In the first use of the epithets, if you lived on shore and smoked beef you were a _boucanier_; but if you lived on ship and smuggled or stole wherewithal to buy the beef you were a _flibustier_. Naturally, however, since so many of these restless brethren passed back and forth from the one occupation to the other, the names came to be applied indiscriminately, and whether you called a scamp by the one or the other made no difference.

[Sidenote: The kind of people that became buccaneers.]

Those “Brethren of the Coast” were recruited in every way that can be imagined. Cutthroats and rioters, spendthrifts and debtors, thieves and vagabonds, runaway apprentices, broken-down tradesmen, soldiers out of a job, escaped convicts, religious cranks, youths crossed in love, every sort of man that craved excitement or change of luck, came to swell the numbers of the buccaneers. Graceless sons of good families usually assumed some new name. Yet not all were ashamed of their lawless occupation. Some gloried in it, and deemed themselves pinks of propriety in matters pertaining to religion. One day, when a certain sailor was behaving with unseemly levity in church while a priest was saying mass, his captain suddenly stepped up and rebuked him for his want of reverence, and then blew his brains out. It is told of a Frenchman from Languedoc that his career was determined by reading a book on the cruelties of the Spaniards in America, probably “The Destruction of the Indies,” by Las Casas. This perusal inflamed him with such furious hatred of Spaniards that he conceived it to be his sacred mission to kill as many as he could. So he joined the buccaneers, and murdered with such exemplary diligence that he came to be known as Montbars the Exterminator. Another noted freebooter, Raveneau de Lussan, joined the fraternity “because he was in debt, and wished, as every honest man should do, to have wherewithal to satisfy his creditors.”[305]

[Sidenote: Deeds of Olonnois.]

One of the early exploits of the brethren was performed by Pierre of Dieppe, surnamed “the Great.” In a mere longboat, with a handful of men, he surprised and captured the Spanish vice-admiral’s ship, heavily freighted with treasure, set her people ashore in Hispaniola, and took his prize to France. This exploit is said to have given quite an impetus to buccaneering. In 1655 the buccaneers had grown so powerful that they gave important aid to Cromwell’s troops in conquering Jamaica. When any nation went to war with Spain, the buccaneers of that nationality would get from the government letters of marque, which made them privateers and entitled them to certain rights of belligerents. Their aid was so liable to be useful in time of need that the English and French governments connived at some of their performances. No civilized government could countenance their cruelties. One monster, called Olonnois, having captured a Spanish ship with a crew of ninety men, beheaded them all with a sabre in his own hands. Four cases are on record in which he threw the whole crew overboard, and it is said that he sometimes tore out and devoured the bleeding hearts of his victims, after the Indian fashion. In concert with another wretch, Michel le Basque (whose name tells his origin), at the head of 650 men, he captured the towns of Gibraltar and Maracaibo, in the Gulf of Venezuela, and carried off a booty of nearly half a million crowns, equivalent to more than two million modern dollars. Prisoners were tortured to disclose hidden treasure. But this precious Olonnois was soon afterward paid in his own coin: he fell into the hands of a party of hungry Indians, who cooked and ate him.

[Sidenote: Henry Morgan.]

Such incidents as these in Venezuela made many Spanish towns prefer to buy off the buccaneers, and thus a system of blackmail was established. It was for the buccaneer to decide for himself whether he deemed it more profitable to end all in one mad frolic of plunder and slaughter, or to accept a round sum and leave the town for the present unharmed. Operations on a grand scale began about 1664, under a leader named Mansvelt, who soon died and was succeeded by Henry Morgan, the most famous of the buccaneers and one of the vilest of the fraternity. This Welshman is said to have been of good family and well brought up. He made his way to Barbadoes as a redemptioner, and after serving out his term joined the pirates. He was a man of remarkable courage and resource. For cruelty no Apache could surpass him, and his perfidy equalled his cruelty. He paid so little heed to the maxims of honour among thieves that it is a wonder he should have retained his leadership through several expeditions.

One of Morgan’s early exploits was the capture of Puerto del Principe, in Cuba. Then with 500 men he attacked Porto Bello, on the Isthmus of Darien. Having taken a convent, he forced the nuns to carry scaling ladders and plant them against the walls of the citadel, perhaps in the hope that Spaniards would not fire upon Spanish women; but many of the poor nuns were killed. After the garrison had surrendered, Morgan set fire to the magazine and blew into fragments the fort with its defenders. The scenes that followed must have won Satan’s approval. With greed unsatisfied by the enormous booty, the monster devised horrible tortures for the discovery of secret hoards that doubtless existed only in his fancy. Many victims died under the infliction.

[Sidenote: Alexander Exquemeling.]

Soon afterward Morgan met in the Caribbean Sea a powerful French pirate ship and invited her to join him. On the French captain’s refusal, Morgan, with an air of supreme cordiality, invited him to come over to dinner with all his officers. No sooner had these guests arrived than they were seized and put in irons, while Morgan attacked their ship and captured it. Then came a strange retribution. Morgan put some of his own officers with 350 of his crew into the French ship; presently the officers got drunk, and through accident or carelessness the ship was blown up with all the English crew and the French prisoners. This story is told by a pious and literary Dutch buccaneer, the fraternity’s best historian, by name Alexander Exquemeling, sometimes corrupted into Oexmelin. His well-written narrative was first published at Amsterdam in 1678, entitled _De Americansche Zee Roovers_. It has been translated into nearly all the languages of Europe, and ranks among the most popular books of the last two centuries.[306] The pious Exquemeling, in recounting the explosion of the captured ship, sees in it a special divine judgment upon Morgan for treachery to guests, a kind of philosophizing which is duly ridiculed by Voltaire in his “Candide.”[307]

[Sidenote: Maracaibo and Gibraltar.]

The loss of 350 men and a ship better than any of his own was a serious blow to Morgan, but it did not prevent him from capturing those unhappy towns, Maracaibo and Gibraltar, where he shut up a crowd of prisoners in a church and left them to die of starvation. His own escape from capture, however, was a narrow one. Three Spanish galleons arrived at the entrance to the Gulf of Venezuela and strongly garrisoned a castle that stood there, so that it began to look as if the day of reckoning for Morgan had come. But he made one of his vessels into a fire-ship and succeeded in burning two of the galleons. Then it became easy for his little fleet to surround and capture the third, after which a masterly series of stratagems enabled him to slip past the castle, richer by a million dollars than when he entered the Gulf, and ready for fresh deeds of wickedness.

[Sidenote: Treaty of America, 1670.]

[Sidenote: Sack of Panama.]

[Sidenote: Morgan absconds.]

The British government lamented these cruel aggressions upon people whose only offence was that of having been born Spaniards, and in 1670 a treaty was made between Spain and Great Britain for the express purpose of putting an end to buccaneering. This interesting treaty, which was conceived in an unusually liberal and enlightened spirit, was called the treaty of America. As soon as the buccaneers heard of it, they resolved to make a defiant and startling exhibition of their power. Thirty-seven ships, carrying more than 2,000 men of various nationalities, were collected off the friendly meat-curing coast of Hispaniola. Morgan was put in the chief command, and it was decided to capture Panama. On arriving at the isthmus they stormed the castle at the mouth of the river Chagres and put the garrison to the sword. Thus they gained an excellent base of operations. Leaving part of his force to guard castle and fleet, Morgan at the head of 1,200 men made the difficult journey across the isthmus in nine days. Panama was not fortified, but a force of 2,000 infantry and 400 horse confronted the buccaneers. In an obstinate battle, without quarter asked or given, the Spaniards lost 600 men and gave way. The city was then at the mercy of the victors. It contained about 7,000 houses and some handsome churches, but Morgan set fire to it in several places, and after a couple of days nearly all these buildings were in ashes. By the light of those flames most hideous atrocities were to be seen,--such a carnival of cruelty and lust as would have disgraced the Middle Ages. After three bestial weeks the buccaneers departed with a long train of mules laden with booty, and several hundred prisoners, most of whom were held for ransom. Among these were many gentlewomen and children, whom Morgan treated savagely. He kept them half dead with hunger and thirst, and swore that if they failed to secure a ransom he would sell them for slaves in Jamaica. Exquemeling draws a pathetic picture of the poor ladies kneeling and imploring at Morgan’s feet while their starving children moaned and cried; the only effect upon the ruffian was to make him ask them how much ransom they might hope to secure if these things were made known to their friends. When the party arrived at Chagres, there was a division of spoil, and the rascals were amazed to find how little there seemed to be to distribute. Morgan was accused of loading far more than his rightful share upon his own vessels, whereupon, not wishing to argue the matter, he made up his mind to withdraw from the scene, “which he did,” says our chronicler, “without calling any council or bidding any one adieu, but went secretly on board his own ship and put out to sea without giving notice, being followed only by three or four vessels of the whole fleet, who it is believed went shares with him in the greatest part of the spoil.” All that can be said for him is that most of his comrades would gladly have done the same by him.

[Sidenote: Scotching the snake.]

With Morgan’s departure the pirate fleet was scattered, and plenty of strong language was used in reference to their tricksome commodore.[308] The arrival of a new English governor at Jamaica, with instructions to enforce the treaty of America, led to the hanging of quite a number of buccaneers; and a crew of 300 French pirates, shipwrecked on the coast of Porto Rico, were slaughtered by order of the Spanish governor. But such casualties produced little effect upon the swarming multitude of rovers, and within half a dozen years we find the governor of Jamaica conniving at them and sharing in their plunder. One pirate crew brought in a Spanish ship so richly freighted that there was £400 for every man after a round sum in hush-money had been handed to the governor. Then the pirates burned the ship and embarked in respectable company for England, “where,” says Exquemeling, “some of them live in good reputation to this day.”

[Sidenote: Morgan’s metamorphosis.]

But what shall we say when we find the devil turning monk, when we see the arch-pirate Morgan administering the king’s justice upon his quondam comrades and sending them by scores to the gallows! It reads like a scene in comic opera, how this dirty fellow, after absconding with a lion’s share of the Panama spoil and bringing it to Jamaica, suddenly put on airs of righteousness, wooed and won the fair daughter of one of the most eminent personages on the island, and was appointed a judge of the admiralty court. The finishing touch was put upon the farce when Charles II. decorated him with knighthood. It is not clear how he won the king’s favour, but we know that Charles was not above taking tips. After this our capacity for amazement is so far exhausted that we read with benumbed acquiescence how in 1682 Sir Henry Morgan was appointed deputy-governor of Jamaica.[309] But when we find him handing over to the tender mercies of the Spaniards a whole crew of English buccaneers who had fallen into his clutches, we seem to recognize the old familiar touch, and cannot repress the suspicion that he sold them for hard cash! He remained in office three years, until James II. ascended the throne, when the Spanish government accused him of secret complicity with the pirates. On this charge he was removed from office and sent to England, where he was for some years imprisoned but never met the fate which he deserved.

[Sidenote: Decline of buccaneering.]

Exquemeling expresses the opinion that, after the trick which Morgan played upon his comrades at Chagres, he must have thought it more prudent to be on the side of government than to stay with the buccaneers. He may also have foreseen that sooner or later the treaty of America was likely to interfere with the business of piracy. It is curious that, after all his caution, his downfall on a charge brought by Spain before the British government was due to the treaty of America. Although imperfectly enforced, that treaty seems to have marked the turning point in the history of buccaneering. The sack of Panama was the apogee of the golden age of pirates; the events that followed are incidents in a gradual but not slow decline. In 1684 the number of French buccaneers in the West Indies and on adjacent coasts was estimated at 3,000, and of other nationalities there were perhaps as many more; but their operations were on a smaller and tamer scale than those of Olonnois and Morgan.

[Sidenote: Buccaneers of the South Sea.]

About this time the South Sea began to be the favourite field of work for some of the most famous buccaneers. In 1680 the first party crossed the isthmus and set sail on the Bay of Panama in a swarm of canoes, with which on the same day they captured a Spanish vessel of 30 tons. With this ship they captured another the next day, and so on till at the end of the week they were in possession of quite a fleet, comprising some ships of 400 tons. They cruised as far as the island of Juan Fernandez and beyond, capturing many ships and much treasure, but not doing much harm ashore. One of the officers, Basil Ringrose, an educated man, left a journal of this cruise, the original manuscript of which is in the British Museum. Other voyages followed until the buccaneers had visited such remote places as the Ladrone Islands, Easter Island, the coasts of Australia, and Tierra del Fuego. Among their commanders were men of far better type than those that have hitherto been mentioned; such were Ambrose Cowley, Edward Davis, the surgeon Lionel Wafer, and the celebrated William Dampier, whom we are more wont to remember as a great navigator and explorer than as a pirate. Cowley, Wafer, and Dampier have left charming narratives of their adventures, in which a mixture of scientific inquisitiveness with the love of barbaric independence is more conspicuous than mere greed. As Henry Morgan was a pirate of the worst type, so Edward Davis, discoverer of Easter Island, was of the best. He never would permit acts of cruelty or wanton bloodshed, and his loyalty and kindness to his comrades won their affection, so that his mellowing influence over rough natures was remarkable. In 1688 he took advantage of a royal proclamation of amnesty to quit buccaneering and go to England, where he was afterward counted as “respectable.”

[Sidenote: Plunder of Peruvian towns.]

As we read the journals of those remote voyages it is easy to forget for a moment that the business is piracy. We seem to see the staunch ships, superbly handled by their expert sailors, blithely cleaving the blue waters under the Southern Cross; we breathe the cool salt breeze; we watch with interest the gray cliffs, the strange foliage, the birds and snakes and insects which arouse the curiosity of the mariners; we follow them to the Galapagos Islands, which first suggested to Darwin and afterward to Wallace the theory of natural selection; we note with pleasure their description of the uncouth natives of Australia; and we remember Thackeray when we encounter oysters so huge that Basil Ringrose has to cut them in quarters.[310] In the careless freedom of life on an unknown sea with each morrow bringing its new adventures, we forget what company we are in, till suddenly the victim ship heaves in sight, the brief chase ends in a deadly struggle, the Spanish colours go down before the black flag, a few bodies are buried in the depths, and a rich spoil is divided. It is vulgar robbery and murder after all, and there was a good deal of it in the South Sea. The coast of Peru, where there were the richest towns, suffered the most. The Lima Almanacs for 1685-87, comprising an official record of events for each year immediately preceding, mention the towns of Guayaquil, Santiago de Miraflores, and five others as plundered by the pirates. When Davis divided his booty at Juan Fernandez, there was enough to give every man a sum equivalent to $20,000. Very often a pirate got more gold and silver than he could handle or carry, but it was apt to slip away easily. Many of Davis’s company quickly lost every dollar in gambling with their comrades. Our friend Raveneau de Lussan, who took to piracy in order to satisfy his creditors, tells his readers that his winnings at play, added to his share of booty, amounted to 30,000 pieces of eight, which would now be equivalent to at least $120,000; so we may hope that he paid his debts like an honest man.

[Sidenote: Effects of the alliance between France and Spain.]

The event which did more than anything else to put an end to buccaneering was the accession of a Bourbon prince, Philip V., to the throne of Spain in 1701. It was then that his grandfather, Louis XIV., declared there were no longer any Pyrenees. Ever since the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, Spain and France had been enemies. Their relations now became so friendly that all the ports of Spanish America, whether in the West Indies or on the Pacific coast, were thrown open to French merchants. This made trade more profitable than piracy, and united the French and Spanish navies in protecting it. The English and Dutch fleets also put forth redoubled efforts, and during the next score of years the decline of the pirates was rapid.

[Sidenote: Carolina and the Bahamas.]

The first English settlements south of Virginia were made at the time when buccaneering was mighty and defiant. The colony of Sir John Yeamans, on Cape Fear River, was begun in 1665, and it was in 1670, the very year of the treaty of America, that Governor Sayle landed at Port Royal. The earliest settlers in Carolina, as we have seen, were not of such good quality as those who came a few years later. They furnished a convenient market for the pirates, who were apt to be open-handed customers, ready to pay good prices in Spanish gold, whether for clothes, weapons, and brandy brought from Europe, or for timber, tar, tobacco, rice, or corn raised in America. One of the Bahama Islands, called New Providence, had been settled by the English. Its remarkable facilities for anchorage and its convenient situation made it a favourite haunt of pirates, whose evil communications corrupted the good manners of the inhabitants. Rather than lose such customers they befriended them in every possible way, so that the island became notorious as one of the worst nests of desperadoes in the American waters. The malady was not long in spreading to the mainland. The Carolina coast, with its numerous sheltered harbours and inlets, afforded excellent lurking-places, whither one might retreat from pursuers, and where one might leisurely repair damages and make ready for further mischief. The pirates, therefore, long haunted that coast, and it was rather a help than a hindrance to them when settlements began to be made there. For now instead of a wilderness it became a market where they could buy food, medicines, tools, or most of such things as they needed. So long as they behaved moderately well while ashore, it was not necessary for the Carolinians to press them with questions as to what they did on the high seas. For at least thirty years after the founding of Carolina, nearly all the currency in the colony consisted of Spanish gold and silver brought in by freebooters from the West Indies.

[Sidenote: Effect of the Navigation Laws.]

Nothing went so far toward making the colonists tolerate piracy as the Navigation Laws which we have already described. We have seen how they enabled English merchants to charge exorbitant prices for goods shipped to America, and to pay as little as possible for American exports. The contrast between such customers and the pirates was entirely in favour of the latter, who could afford to be liberal both with goods and with cash that had cost them nothing but a little fighting.[311] After the founding of Charleston, the dealings with pirates there were made the subject of complaint in London. In 1684 Robert Quarry, acting governor of Carolina, a man of marked ability and good reputation, was removed from office for complicity with pirates. This did not, however, prevent his being appointed to other responsible positions. His successor, Joseph Morton, actually gave permission to two buccaneer captains to bring their Spanish prizes into the harbour. Soon afterward John Boon, a member of the council, was expelled for holding correspondence with freebooters. At the close of Ludwell’s administration, it was said that Charleston fairly swarmed with pirates, against whose ill-got gold the law was powerless. Along with such commercial reasons, the terror of their fame conspired to protect them. Desperadoes who had sacked Maracaibo and Panama might do likewise to Charleston or New York. It was not only in Carolina that such fears combined with the Navigation Laws to sustain piracy. In Pennsylvania a son of the deputy-governor Markham was elected to the Assembly, but not allowed to take a seat because of dealings with the freebooters. Governor Fletcher, of New York, was deeply implicated in such proceedings, and the record of distant New England was far from stainless.

[Sidenote: Effect of rice culture.]

But at the end of the seventeenth century a marked change became visible. In South Carolina the cultivation of rice had reached such dimensions that tonnage enough could not be found to carry the crop of 1699 across the Atlantic. The colonists were allowed to sell in foreign markets such goods as were not wanted in England, and England took very little rice. Most of it went to Holland, Hamburg, Bremen, Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal. As rice was thus becoming the chief source of income for South Carolina, people began to be sorely vexed when pirates captured their cargoes. Besides this, the character of the population was entirely changed by the influx of steady, law-abiding English dissenters under Blake, and by the immigration of large numbers of Huguenots. The pirates became unpopular, and the year 1699 witnessed the hanging of seven of them at Charleston. As the colony yearly grew stronger and the administration firmer, such rigours increased, and the great gallows on Execution Dock was decorated with corpses swinging in chains, a dozen or more at a time, until the pirates came to think of that harbour as a place to be shunned.

[Sidenote: North Carolina.]

There still remained for them, however, an excellent place of refuge in the neighbourhood. In the year 1700 Edward Randolph reported that the population of North Carolina consisted of smugglers, runaway servants, and pirates. There is no doubt that for the latter it furnished a favourite hiding-place.

[Sidenote: Swarms of pirates.]

For some years after 1700 the vigorous measures of South Carolina kept her own coast comparatively safe, but the snake was as yet only scotched. Swarms of buccaneers, though far thinner than of old, were still harboured in the West Indies, and when occasion was offered they came out of their dens. In 1715, when South Carolina was nearly exhausted from her great Indian war, with crops damaged and treasury empty and military gaze turned toward the frontier and away from the coast, the pirates swarmed there again, with numbers swelled by rovers and bandits turned adrift by the peace of Utrecht in 1713. James Logan, Secretary of Pennsylvania, reported in 1717 that there were 1,500 pirates on our coasts, with their chief headquarters at Cape Fear and New Providence, from which points they swept the sea from Newfoundland to Brazil. For South Carolina there was ground of alarm lest wholesale pillage of rice cargoes should bring ruin upon the colony. But that year 1717 saw the arrival of the able governor Robert Johnson, who was destined, after some humiliation, to suppress the nuisance of piracy.

[Sidenote: New Providence redeemed.]

The next year, 1718, was the beginning of the end. In midsummer an English fleet, under Woodes Rogers, captured the island of New Providence, expelled the freebooters, and established there a strong company of law-abiding persons. Henceforth New Providence became a smiter of the wicked instead of their hope and refuge. It was like capturing a battery and turning it against the enemy. One of its immediate effects, however, was to turn the whole remnant of the scoundrels over to the North Carolina coast, where they took their final stand. For a moment the mischief seemed to have increased. One deed, in particular, is vivid in its insolence.

[Sidenote: Blackbeard, the “Last of the Pirates.”]

Among these corsairs one of the boldest was a fellow whose name appears in court records as Robert Thatch, though some historians write it Teach. He was a native of Bristol in England, and his real name seems to have been Drummond. But the soubriquet by which he was most widely known was “Blackbeard.” It was a name with which mothers and nurses were wont to tame froward children. This man was a ruffian guilty of all crimes known to the law, a desperate character who would stick at nothing. For many years he had been a terror to the coast. In June, 1718, he appeared before Charleston harbour in command of a forty-gun frigate, with three attendant sloops, manned in all by more than 400 men. Eight or ten vessels, rashly venturing out, were captured by him, one after another, and in one of them were several prominent citizens of Charleston, including a highly respected member of the council, all bound for London. When Blackbeard learned the quality of his prisoners, his fertile brain conceived a brilliant scheme. His ships were in need of sundry medicines and other provisions, whereof a list was duly made out and entrusted to a mate named Richards and a party of sailors, who went up to Charleston in a boat, taking along one of the prisoners with a message to Governor Johnson. The message was briefly this, that, if the supplies mentioned were not delivered to Blackbeard within eight-and-forty hours, that eminent commander would forthwith send to Governor Johnson, with his compliments, the heads of all his prisoners.

[Sidenote: South Carolina government over-awed.]

It was a terrible humiliation, but the pirate had calculated correctly. Governor and council saw that he had them completely at his mercy. They knew better than he how defenceless the town was; they knew that his ships could batter it to pieces without effective resistance. Not a minute must be lost, for Richards and his ruffians were strutting airily about the streets amid fierce uproar, and, if the mob should venture to assault them, woe to Blackbeard’s captives. The supplies were delivered with all possible haste, and Blackbeard released the prisoners after robbing them of everything they had, even to their clothing, so that they went ashore nearly naked. From one of them he took $6,000 in coin. After this exploit Blackbeard retired to North Carolina, where it is said that he bought the connivance of Charles Eden, the governor, who is further said to have been present at the ceremony of the pirate’s marriage to his fourteenth wife.[312]

[Sidenote: Epidemic of piracy; cases of Kidd and Bonnet.]

[Sidenote: Fate of Bonnet.]

While the arch-villain, thus befriended, was roaming the coast as far as Philadelphia and bringing his prizes into Pamlico Sound, another rover was making trouble for Charleston. Major Stede Bonnet, of Barbadoes, had taken up the business of piracy scarcely two years before. He had served with credit in the army and was now past middle life, with a good reputation and plenty of money, when all at once he must needs take the short road to the gallows. Some say it was because his wife was a vixen, a droll reason for turning pirate. But in truth there was a moral contagion in this business. The case of William Kidd, a few years before Bonnet, is an illustration. Kidd was an able merchant, with a reputation for integrity, when William III. sent him with a swift and powerful ship to chase pirates; and, lo! when with this fine accoutrement he brings down less game than he had hoped, he thinks it will pay better to turn pirate himself. In this new walk of life he goes on achieving eminence, until on a summer day he rashly steps ashore in Boston, is arrested, sent to London, and hung.[313] Evidently there was a spirit of buccaneering in the air, as in the twelfth century there was a spirit of crusading. And even as children once went on a crusade, so we find women climbing the shrouds and tending the guns of pirate ships.[314] Major Bonnet soon became distinguished in his profession, and committed depredations all the way from Barbadoes to the coast of Maine. Late in the summer of 1718 Governor Johnson learned that there was a pirate active in his neighbourhood, and he sent Colonel William Rhett, with two armed ships, to chase him. The affair ended in an obstinate fight at the mouth of Cape Fear River, in the course of which all the ships got aground on sand-bars. It was clear that whichever combatant should first be set free by the rising tide would have the other at his mercy, and we can fancy the dreadful eagerness with which every ripple was watched. One of Rhett’s ships was first to float, and just as she was preparing to board the pirate he surrendered. Then it was learned that he was none other than the famous Stede Bonnet. At the last his brute courage deserted him, and the ecstasy of terror with which he begged for life reminds one of the captive in “Rob Roy” who was hurled into Loch Lomond. But entreaty fell upon deaf ears. It was a gala day at Execution Dock when Bonnet and all his crew were hung in chains.

[Sidenote: Fate of Blackbeard.]

A few weeks later, while Blackboard was lurking in Ocracoke Inlet, with ship well armed and ready for some fresh errand, he was overhauled by two stout cruisers sent after him by Governor Spotswood, of Virginia. In a desperate and bloody fight the “Last of the Pirates” was killed. All the survivors of his crew were hanged, and his severed head decorated the bowsprit of the leading ship as she returned in triumph to James River.

Such forceful measures went on till the waters of Carolina were cleared of the enemy, and by 1730 the fear of pirates was extinguished. For year after year the deeds of Kidd and Blackbeard were rehearsed at village firesides, and tales of buried treasure caused many a greedy spade to delve in vain, until with the lapse of time the memory of all these things grew dim and faded away.