If A Pirate I Must Be... Page 5

  Gay was not alone in using pirates as a vehicle for a political critique. Captain Johnson pointed out that the careers of Blackbeard, Edward England, Howel Davis and others coincided with the scandal of the South Sea Bubble, when thousands of investors lost a fortune in savings. ‘Whatever robberies they had committed,’ he commented, ‘they might be pretty sure they were not the greatest villains then living in the world.’ Many modern historians have seen pirates as protorevolutionaries, consciously challenging the conventional values of their day. And, as Roberts looked around him on the Royal Rover, one of the most striking features of Davis’s crew was that almost a third of the men were black. This was common on pirate ships and has led some historians to portray them as pioneers of racial equality.

  But, as the astute Welshman no doubt quickly observed, if all pirates were equal, some were more equal than others. This was true even among the whites. Davis’s crew was divided into two groups - the ‘Lords’ and the ‘Commons’. Drawn from the more experienced pirates, the Lords advised Davis on important questions. They received the same share of loot as the rest of the crew, but were granted certain privileges, such as the freedom to go ashore whenever they liked, and the right to talk directly to the captains of captured ships. This feature was unique to this particular crew. But in most pirate crews there was a pecking order, with the longest-serving pirates at the top, and the newest recruits at the bottom. Blacks came lower still. Pirates, like the ancient Athenians, were a slave-owning democracy.

  The Africans Roberts observed working aboard Davis’s ships did not sign the pirate articles, they took no share of the loot, and they were not permitted to bear arms. They ‘were kept in an underling way’, a witness said. As the Buccaneer Exquemelin’s sliding scale for injury insurance suggests, most pirates saw blacks primarily as commodities. And this view was shared by the Admiralty, which almost always sold the blacks captured aboard pirate ships as slaves, rather than try them as pirates.

  Davis’s men were no more humane in their treatment of Africans than the brutal slave traders and plantation owners they preyed upon. A couple of weeks before Roberts was captured they seized a group of nine or ten local people in retaliation for the murder of some of their men ashore. They hanged them by their feet from the yard-arm. Then, inviting men from Cocklyn and La Bouche’s vessels aboard to join in the sport, they used them as target practice, firing their muskets at them ‘as if they set themselves apart to study cruelty’, according to one report. For variation they slung the survivors into the sea and carried on shooting at them until they were all dead. Such were the men Roberts now found himself among. They were democratic and egalitarian through not abstract idealism but self-interest. Their rules were designed to protect their new-found liberties. But they were not a universal code of brotherhood.

  But, if the presence of large numbers of blacks aboard did not spell liberty and equality, Roberts quickly realized that, for him, it meant something far more tangible - less work. The Africans in Davis’s crew were ‘trained up’ and capable of doing ‘the work of the ship’, according to witnesses, indicating that some, at least, could go aloft and do the work of skilled sailors. This probably spared a proportion of the crew from the tyranny of the watch system. It’s likely the privilege was closed to new recruits. But, for a man like Roberts who, in twenty years, had probably never enjoyed an unbroken night’s sleep while at sea, the prospect represented an almost unimaginable luxury.

  Beneath the talk of brotherhood and equality Roberts was also beginning to see other, more concrete, benefits to pirate life. It was certainly an easier, more comfortable existence than that aboard the slavers. But he soon realised that the true appeal, for many, was the raw power it placed in the hands of common men.

  This was something William Snelgrave had observed at first hand in Sierra Leone. Cowering in his cabin one day while Davis’s men looted his ship he became aware of a figure entering the room - one ‘more sober than the rest’, Snelgrave recalled. He helped himself to ‘a good hat and wig ... whereupon I told him ... I hoped he would not deprive me of them, for they were of no service to him in so hot a country.’ He was brutally cut short by a blow on the shoulder with the flat of the pirate’s broadsword. The pirate grabbed him and hissed in his ear, ‘I give you this caution, never to dispute the will of a pirate, for supposing I had cleft your skull asunder for your impudence, what would you have got by it but destruction?’

  The pirate’s name was Walter Kennedy and he would loom large in Bartholomew Roberts’ life over the next few months. The exchange captures the arrogance of a large, powerful pirate crew at this moment in April 1719 with the entire West African coast at their mercy. For a merchant captain like Snelgrave, accustomed to wielding absolute power, it was terrifying. But for a low-ranking seaman like Roberts, accustomed to a life of impotence and humiliation, the impact was very different. The promise of unlimited alcohol may have held little appeal to his sober, disciplined personality. But power did.

  By the time the Royal Rover pulled away from High Cameroon towards the end of June 1719 the seductive magic of pirate life was already starting to have its effect on the austere Welshman.

  3

  LEADERSHIP

  PRINCES ISLAND

  JULY 1719

  ‘IT IS MY ADVICE THAT, WHILE SOBER, WE PITCH UPON A MAN OF COURAGE... WHO BY HIS COUNCIL AND BRAVERY SEEMS BEST ABLE TO DEFEND THIS COMMONWEALTH’

  AS THE PIRATES PONDERED THEIR next move they knew there was not a single warship within 2,000 miles. The West African merchants had repeatedly petitioned the government for protection, most recently in February of that year, only to be told the Admiralty could not spare the ships. If they wished Davis and his men had a free run. But the coast was already in a state of alarm. ‘There is an account that the pirates have done so much mischief on the coast of Guinea by plundering and destroying of ships that the company’s forts are crowded with seamen, who will be glad to go on board ships without wages, that will give them passage for England,’ reported the Weekly Journal in London. They knew there would be fewer and fewer ships putting to sea and another rampage along the coast would bring diminishing returns. They also faced competition from Cocklyn and La Bouche who were still in the region. They decided to seek fresh pastures - but not yet. First they would need to stock up for a long voyage and to do this they headed to Princes Island in the Bight of Biafra. It was a fateful decision.

  On the mainland of Africa, European authority extended no further than the dilapidated forts clinging to the coastline. But the three islands of St Thomas, Princes and Annobón, nestling in the great bend of Africa, were fully fledged Portuguese colonies. They tended to be the final port of call for ships after they left the coast and before they headed across the Atlantic. Princes was the second largest of the three and rivalled the main island, St Thomas, as a trading centre. It offered an abundance of fruit and fresh meat and slavers were able to top up on supplies of yams, maize, rice, millet, beans and plantains, used to feed the slaves during the middle crossing. For sailors weary with the endlessly crashing surf of the West African coast there was also the luxury of a bay.

  The main town of St Antonio, where the pirates arrived at the start of July 1719, was a familiar sight to a slaver like Roberts. A neat, trim little settlement, it consisted of around 300 houses, built of clapboard with lattice windows and long balconies, laid out in two broad streets. There were two churches and a small fort on the right of the bay. All around stood high mountains, covered in dense jungle. The trees came right down to the waterside and, as the pirates entered the bay, they could hear the incessant screeching of brightly coloured parrots. ‘Blue ... with fine scarlet tails’, they could ‘talk and whistle distinctly, sooner than any others’, according to a French visitor, and were much coveted by passing seamen - both slavers and pirates. The locals trapped and sold them. Like Long John Silver in Treasure Island, a number of the men in Davis’s crew probably kept parrots as pets, perched permanently on
their shoulders. The woods around St. Antonio also swarmed ‘with apes and monkeys ... full of tricks, and pleasant gestures and motions’. These too the locals caught and sold, despite their nauseous smell, receiving in return ‘haberdashery wares, or old linen rags, or sailors’ clothes, especially old hats’. An English surgeon who visited Princes Island in 1721, was also offered the bark of a local tree which he was told had the ‘peculiar property of enlarging the Virile Member’. He was sceptical about whether this was ‘in the power of any vegetable’ but admitted he had seen ‘sights of this kind among the negroes very extraordinary’.

  As everywhere in West Africa, at least when slaving vessels were present, the waters swarmed with enormous sharks. ‘I have several times observed’, wrote one slaver, ‘how quick they ran at any of the dead slaves we threw overboard, and made but one mouthful of a young boy that was so cast overboard.’

  Visitors had little time for the locals. ‘The Portuguese are unbounded in their lusts ... They have most of them venereal taints,’ wrote one. The bulk of the island’s population of 3,000 were slaves, many imported from Brazil - a ‘malignant, treacherous race’, in the words of another visitor. Neither blacks nor whites were ‘very commendable, either for honesty or good temper’, he continued, and both would take ‘the opportunity of stealing a foreigner’s hat off his head, not only in the dusk of evening, but in the day time’. Everyone went armed and the small garrison comprised mainly of former prisoners from Portugal who had had their sentence of death commuted to service in the colonies.

  It was the sort of place where the Royal Rover was unlikely to be asked too many questions so long as it brought business. But Davis knew he had to be careful. As they approached St. Antonio a sloop came out to enquire who they were. Davis told them his was a King’s ship, characteristically embellishing the lie with the sly claim they were ‘in quest of pirates, and that he had received intelligence there were some upon that coast’. The ruse was easy to pull off. Neither officers nor men wore uniforms aboard Navy vessels at this time and Davis had doubtless taken care to have all the appropriate flags, and ordered his men to dress down so as to pass as common seamen. The authorities believed him and the Royal Rover was piloted into the harbour. Davis completed the performance by firing a salute to the fort and ordering his men to hoist out the ship’s boat, man-of-war fashion, and row him ashore.

  He was met at the quayside by a guard of honour and swaggered up to the governor’s residence with great pomp, playing his part with such verve that the governor agreed to supply him with everything he needed. A few days later the pirates were even able to plunder a French ship which came into the bay, Davis fobbing the governor off with the story that it had been trading with pirates, and that he had found several pirate goods on board.

  Roberts and the rest of the crew now set about cleaning, or careening, the hull of their new ship. Toiling in the sweltering heat, they heaved the guns out of the hold and, using winches, lowered them over the side into the long boat, which ferried them ashore. All other stores and provisions were taken out and the ship was hauled up on to the beach and, using blocks and tackles, laid gently on its side. This placed enormous stress on the superstructure and the Admiralty generally preferred Royal Navy captains to wait until they were back in dry dock in England before cleaning. But pirates had little option. In tropical waters barnacles and seaweed quickly gathered and ships were also often attacked by the dreaded teredo worm, a soft-shelled mollusc equipped with fine saw teeth which laid a million eggs a year and could quickly honeycomb the hull of a ship on a long voyage. For men who depended on speed for their lives and livelihood, it was vital to clean and carry out repairs as often as possible. They vigorously set to work with scrapers, applying flame to the more stubborn accretions, while the carpenter and his mate replaced any rotten timbers. The hull was then caulked with a combination of tallow, oil and brimstone to prevent it leaking, before being heaved upright and turned over so the whole process could be repeated on the other side. It was dirty, exhausting work. But, as in the most things, the slaves bore much of the burden and the pirates were left free to enjoy themselves.

  It was ‘the custom of the pirates’ to spend ‘their time in a riotous manner of living’ while careening, according to Johnson, and the alcohol was soon flowing freely. It had now been three months since his night of debauchery with the ‘negro ladies’ of Sierra Leone and Howel Davis was soon casting his roving eye ashore. Accompanied by fourteen of his men he ‘walked up the country towards a village where the governor and the other chief men of the island kept their wives, intending, as we may suppose, to supply their husbands’ places’, wrote Johnson. But the women fled before they got there and, frustrated, Davis and his men were forced to return to the ship. The pirates got away with this escapade because no one in the inland village realised who they were. But their sheer extravagance soon gave them away.

  ‘The people ... discovered what they were by their lavishness, in purchasing fresh provisions with goods,’ wrote Davis’s former prisoner William Snelgrave, who visited Princes shortly afterwards, and was given an account of their visit by two Capuchin friars who lived there. The governor was soon perfectly well aware of the identity of his guests but ‘he winked at it, on account of the great gains he and others ... made by them’. But, as the pirates became more brazen, his advisors warned him he was courting disaster should the court in Lisbon get wind of his complicity. He therefore ‘plotted to destroy Davis and his crew, in order to colour over what he had so basely permitted in allowing them a free trade’. For all the pirates’ extravagance, there was also a dispute about payment for a batch of supplies, which Davis apparently told the governor the King of England would pay for. The governor, it seems, preferred ready cash.

  One night, while the governor was still debating how to be rid of his unwelcome guests, a slave slipped over the side of Davis’s ship into the warm waters of the bay and, somehow evading the sharks, swam ashore. He brought news that the pirates were plotting to lure the governor and his leading men aboard and hold them hostage for a £40,000 ransom. This forced his hand. The next day, when Davis came ashore to escort him aboard the Royal Rover for ‘an entertainment’, the governor prepared an ambush.

  Davis had with him his first surgeon, his trumpeter and ten to twelve others. Arriving at the governor’s residence they were informed by his major-domo that he was at his country house but would be back soon. They were invited to make themselves at home. But they were uneasy. Outside in the street the surgeon noticed that an armed crowd had gathered. ‘I am sure we shall see no Governor today,’ he murmured to Davis. They decided to return to their boat. But as they left the major-domo called on the crowd to fire at them. The surgeon and two more were killed on the spot. The trumpeter was hit in the arm, and, seeing Snelgrave’s two Capuchin friars, ran towards them in the hope they would protect him. They took him in their arms to save him but one of the crowd cold-bloodedly shot him dead. Davis had been hit four times, including a shot through the bowels, but he staggered on towards the beach. A fifth shot brought him down. With his dying breath he managed to draw his pistols and fire at his pursuers, ‘like a game cock, giving a dying blow, that he might not fall unrevenged’, wrote Captain Johnson. According to Snelgrave, ‘The Portuguese, being amazed at his great strength and courage, cut his throat that they might be sure of him.’

  Most of the men with Davis were killed. Only Walter Kennedy, the man who had struck Snelgrave at Sierra Leone, and one other escaped, leaping into the sea from the top of a cliff. They were picked up by the ship’s boat, which Davis had left on the beach with its crew, who had rowed to safety when they heard gunfire. When they arrived back at the ship and explained what had happened there was uproar.

  Davis had been an able and popular leader and a man of great charm and charisma. The pirates’ immediate thought was of revenge. But before embarking on any military action they would need to choose a new leader. And so, characteristically, they respon
ded to disaster by filling a bowl of punch and calling a meeting.

  Many of the most senior members of the crew had been killed with Davis. But if the governor hoped he had decapitated the pirates he was wrong. As the pirates crowded around below decks in the dimly lit steerage - their customary meeting place - there were still a number of ‘Lords’ among them, experienced men who had been with the crew since the original mutiny aboard the Buck at Hispaniola.

  Walter Kennedy was one of them. He was just twenty-four but already a hardened pirate. Born at Pelican Stairs in the sailors’ district of Wapping in East London, he was of Irish descent. He’d been apprenticed to his father as an anchorsmith but when his father died he abandoned the trade. He’d worked as a pickpocket and a housebreaker before following his roving inclination to sea. He served in his teens aboard men-of-war during the wars with France and fell in love with the stories of pirates he heard from his fellow seamen. ‘Being told what lords the pirates in America were, and that they had gotten several whole islands under their own command, he coveted to be one of those petty princes,’ according to a contemporary account of his life. He shipped aboard the Buck from London with Woodes Rogers in the spring of 1718 for the Bahamas. Arriving there he found many of the former pirates had been reduced to goatherding. But one detail fascinated him. He noticed that they tied rich brocades from a looted ship between the horns of each animal to distinguish one herd from another. ‘This, notwithstanding the miserable condition which in other respects these wretches were in, mightily excited the inclination Kennedy had to following their occupation.‘