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The Real Pirates of the Caribbean - Heroes of Justice and Democracy

The Real Pirates of the Caribbean – Heroes of Justice and Democracy

by Cherie Pugh

Cherie Pugh discovered the true story of the Nassau pirates when sailing through the Caribbean on a traditional wooden ship. She found the court records of their trial in London, and spent years researching and writing her novel

“Mary Read – Sailor, Soldier, Pirate”.

This ultimate pirate yarn is now available as an ebook or paperback from www.womanpirate.com

The real pirates of the Caribbean were mostly desperate British sailors, abandoned by their government after they had fought and won Queen Anne’s war. From 1702 to 1713, England, Holland and Germany challenged the might of Catholic France, in a terrible war waged in Flanders and Spain. This war, fought nominally over the succession to the Spanish throne, raised England to a super power, won her entrance to the immensely profitable slave trade, and ended the centuries old dominance of France. Yet England now required no more than skeleton crews to sail her ships back, and her well-trained sailors were left begging for bread in all her scattered colonies. Other European powers also abandoned soldiers and sailors, and there were many Dutchmen, Frenchmen and Spaniards who had deserted their posts, and were now without a home.

Many of the sailors stranded in the Caribbean were forced to cut logwood in the jungles, the desperate life uniting them into tight-knit brotherhoods, sworn to protect each other through malaria, Indian attack and starvation. When the captain of a trading ship tried to cheat Charles Vane's Company, Vane killed him, and commandeered the ship. And all over the Caribbean, the brethren followed suit, and returned to the sea as pirates.

At the same time, a massive fleet sailed from Cartagena on the Spanish Main, carrying the treasure stripped from South America during the years of the war. Now that peace had been declared, the Spaniards decided to take the immense risk of getting it home. Yet they had barely set sail when a terrible cyclone smashed into them, leaving corpses and gold littering the beaches of Florida.

The pirates heard about the treasure when Captain Henry Jennings rescued a drowning Spanish sailor. When the gallant Welshman refused to throw him back overboard, despite the mutterings of his crew, the grateful Spaniard revealed the fate of the treasure fleet. Jennings then united the pirates, and led them in an overwhelming attack on the Spanish salvage camp. They sailed off together with a fortune.

Jennings then led them to Captain Mission's old pirate base - the port of Nassau on the island of Providence in the Bahamas. Because of the trade winds, the Bahamas stand directly in the line of sail from Europe to the New World colonies, and every merchant ship would have to run the pirate gauntlet. Nassau harbour, with its reefs and shallows and extreme tides was also too dangerous for a large, square-rigged Navy ship to enter.

Urged by Jennings, the pirates united under Captain Mission's code, which insisted on the honour of the Brethren of the Sea. The pirates claimed they were true gentlemen, and those well-born were but a pack of wolves that gorged on the helpless and weak. Mostly poor sailors, most had been shanghaied by their own government, that required hundreds of men for each ship in their navy, yet in never managing to feed them properly, due to the corruption of the Navy commanders, killed thousands of their own men every year, many times more than were ever killed in battle.

It is within a cultural disdain for the life of the ordinary man or woman, that the pirates evolved. These men came from the 80% of Britain that lived in desperate poverty and lawlessness, and having all suffered from injustice, they chose not to tolerate it, or perpetuate it. If they captured a ship captained by a tyrant, the pirates would encourage the crew to 'tickle' him, before dropping him into his ship's boat, keeping his ship for his crew to share. To them, this was justice. The pirates also released slaves from the ships they captured, for they abhorred slavery as much as any Quaker.

The Caribbean pirates lived by strict rules, chosen by themselves, and clearly expressed in their Company Articles. Marcus Rediker, in “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea - A History of Anglo-American Seafaring...” examines six surviving sets of signed Articles which all insist on one man, one vote. Their officers were openly elected, and could be challenged by any of the crew. The quartermaster's role was to defend the rights of the crew against the captain, who could only give orders when they were 'chasing or being chased'. Every man had an equal share in the plunder, except the captains and quartermasters, who had a share and a half.

They expelled any man who stole from the Company, even to the value of a piece of eight; any who took an open flame below deck near the gunpowder; any who raped a “prudent” woman found aboard a prize; or who bought boy or bawd aboard for amusement.

I have found the court records of two women aboard pirate ships, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Mary Read masqueraded as a man for most of her life, including her time with captain Jack Rackam. Anne stole two sloops for Rackam's crew, dressed in trousers when attacking, and though living openly as a woman pirate, and Rackam's wife, was manifestly good for business. Even so, it is probable that the two women contributed to Rackam's downfall.

[For more information on these fascinating women, see my coming article

“Mary Read and Anne Bonny - Pirate Women of the Caribbean”]

As they had sworn binding oaths not to spill each other's blood, the pirates marooned any who broke their rules. A man could be made the 'Prince of an island' that was no more than a strip of sand in a blinding sea. With no water, food or shade, he would die in agony within three days. Or he might be left on a verdant isle with all he needed, and the likelihood of another ship dropping in for water.

Perhaps the lasting achievement of the Nassau pirates was the introduction of the bird-wing sail to Europe. John Haman built the pirates' small fast ships at Harbour Island, basing his designs on the sloops of the Malacca pirates, 'fast to attack, faster to run'. The pirates easily outran the square-sailed Navy ships, and their agile sloops could easily negotiate the dangerous reefs and shallows of the Caribbean on much lighter breezes. It was not until the Navy adopted these sloops, that they threatened the pirates at all.

[For more information on Nassau, see my next article

“Nassau – Pirate Haven in the Caribbean]

By 1715, pirate fleets of small, quick sloops dominated the trade between England, Africa and the Caribbean. They kept themselves well-armed, making their own powder and grenades, and stealing all the large and small armament they needed. Sailing up to a merchantman, King Death flying from the mainmast, drums and trumpets blaring, their sloops crowded with hundreds of armed men with blackened faces cursing like the Devil, and promising mercy only upon instant surrender, they must have seemed truly terrifying. The small, under-paid, starving crew would indeed surrender instantly, knowing the pirates' reputation for fairness to the ordinary sailor, whose sea-chests they never touched.

When their holds were full, the pirates sold their stolen goods openly at auction on the docks of the corrupt colonial governors, who disliked buying expensive, highly-taxed goods from Europe.

At its height, the Brethren of the Sea was a close-knit organisation of thousands of well-trained sailors, in companies of hundreds of men, in large fleets of fast sloops. Openly devoted to the ethics of justice and democracy, they committed a great deal of theft, but little murder. That they have been slandered as psychopaths is an ongoing injustice.

[For more information on the British Government's slaughter of these pirates,

see my coming article “The End of the Pirates of the Caribbean”]

The ultimate pirate yarn is now available as an ebook or paperback from

www.womanpirate.com

About the Author

While sailing in the Caribbean I re-discovered the story of the Englishwoman, Mary Read, who lived as a man and ended a pirate; and her young American friend, Anne Bonny, who lived openly as a woman rover.
I found their Court Records at the Public Records Office in Kew, “The Trials of Captain Jack Rackam and Other Pirates”, by Robert Baldwin, 1721, as well as all the Colonial records on the pirate settlement of Nassau.
Re-creating the life of Mary Read has been a labour of love, as well as the work of half a lifetime. Learning about the real pirates of the Caribbean made it worth it.
If you want to read "Mary Read: Sailor, Soldier, Pirate", go to www.womanpirate.com