WEST INDIES
JANUARY-APRIL 1721
‘HE PUT ON A ROUGHER DEPORTMENT AND A MORE MAGISTERIAL CARRIAGE ... AND IF ANY SEEMED TO RESENT HIS USAGE, HE TOLD THEM THEY “MIGHT GO ASHORE AND TAKE SATISFACTION OF HIM ... AT SWORD AND PISTOL, FOR HE NEITHER VALUED NOR FEARED ANY OF THEM”’
BY THE STANDARDS OF the early eighteenth-century Caribbean, Martinique was a formidable island. Eyeing it warily from Antigua, Governor Hamilton estimated it contained 5,000-6,000 men able to bear arms as well as 300-400 regular troops. The coast was guarded by a number of forts and Roberts was smart enough not to attempt the sort of frontal assault he had employed at Trepassey and St Christophers. Instead he used trickery in order to gain his revenge for the governor’s pursuit of him at Carriacou.
Martinique was a popular destination for Dutch slave ships. Officially they were banned, the authorities anxious to preserve a monopoly for French traders. But such was the demand they always found a market. It was the custom of the Dutch to appear off Martinique flying a Dutch flag, and then to withdraw to Dominica to the north. The planters of Martinique would surreptitiously fit out sloops to follow them and engage in illicit trade.
Roberts knew this and imitated them, raising a Dutch flag, sailing along the coast of Martinique, and then pulling away to Dominica. Once there he cast anchor and scanned the horizon. Sure enough, the French took the bait, and soon a steady stream of sloops was making its way from Martinique. It was only when they drew close enough to see the grinning pirates crowding the decks that the French realised their mistake, and by then it was too late. Gleefully the pirates gobbled up prize after prize, ordering them, as soon as they had been secured, to lie still at anchor as if trading so as not to alarm new arrivals. In all they took fifteen vessels, Roberts telling his captives ‘they were a parcel of rogues’ and that he ‘hoped they would always meet with such a Dutch trade as this was’. They also took a number of English vessels which happened to be in the area.
On 18 January the pirates spotted a rather more formidable prize - the Puerto del Principe from Flushing in Zeeland, which turned out to be a real Dutch slave ship. Weighing in at somewhere between 250 and 300 tons it carried seventy-five men and was well armed with 22 guns. It had on board seventy to eighty slaves as well as substantial quantities of sugar, cocoa, ivory and cotton. The pirates anticipated a rich haul and quickly moved in, raising their new flag and firing their gun to signal the Dutch to surrender. But the Dutch were not prepared to give in without a fight. They returned fire, and when the pirates pulled alongside preparing to board they managed to run out fenders to push them away. Roberts’ men were not used to such effrontery. This was the first ship to offer resistance since the Sagrada Familia off Brazil fifteen months before and the pirates responded with a ferocious bombardment. A number of the Dutch crew were killed before they finally surrendered.
According to the Governor of Bermuda, Benjamin Bennet, writing to London a month later, the pirates then embarked on a grotesque orgy of torture and murder quite unlike anything that had gone before under Roberts’ captaincy. ‘What men the pirates found alive on board they put to death after several cruel methods,’ Bennet claimed. They then subjected their captives from the French sloops to even more horrific treatment. They were ‘barbarously abused ... Some they almost whipped to death, others had their ears cut off, others they fixed to the yard arms and fired at them as a mark.’ They sank fourteen of the fifteen sloops, sparing just one so it could return to Martinique with its ‘poor tormented’ crew to tell the story. These passages have been regularly quoted by historians ever since and have done much to shape an image of Roberts as a brutal sadist. But they are almost certainly untrue.
There is not a single reference to this slaughter in any of the other numerous sources we have for this period - including statements from French captives themselves, who began arriving back in Martinique as early as 19 January. In a letter describing Roberts’ activities, written on 28 January, Governor de Feuquières makes no mention of the massacre. And the Dutch authorities, in a lengthy letter to the British describing the attack, also seemed unaware of it. It was never mentioned at any of the subsequent trials of members of Roberts’ crew, despite the fact that it would have been one of the worst crimes they ever committed. And, Captain Johnson, who, as a general rule, was quite happy to revel in tales of pirate atrocity, makes no reference to it whatsoever. Governor Bennet was located over 1,000 miles to the north and was relying on secondhand sources. His letter is inaccurate in a number of other respects - for example, he places the capture of the Puerto del Principe at St Lucia - and Johnson doubtless rejected his account as highly unreliable hearsay.
It’s possible wild rumours were sparked because some of the prisoners disappeared. If so, there may well be a more obvious explanation for this - rather than being slaughtered, they had joined the pirates. Roberts’ crew was expanding fast at this time and we know of at least one man from the Puerto del Principe who was with them later.
From Dominica Roberts headed north to Guadeloupe to complete his humiliation of the French authorities, taking the Puerto del Principe and two of the captured sloops with him. They drew fire as they passed the island’s forts, but it had little effect and they were able to seize a sloop and a large ship, whose crew fled ashore at the sight of the black flag. The sloop they burnt, but the ship they took with them to plunder at leisure, finding it contained a substantial cargo of sugar. A few days later they were reported chasing shipping off St Thomas at the eastern end of the Leeward Islands. They then disappeared from view.
The impact of this raid was devastating. Trade in the Windward and Leeward Islands had been brought virtually to a halt and for the French it was an abject humiliation. Roberts had brazenly plundered shipping in the very heart of the French Caribbean for more than a week, and then waltzed away scot free. He was a plague that could no longer be tolerated. On 21 January 1721 Governor de Feuquières wrote to the British authorities in Barbados proposing that the two nations combine ‘to purge our seas from such a cursed race’. It was a highly unusual move that reflected the threat Roberts now posed. And, for de Feuquières, it must have been a difficult letter to write. ‘Unfortunately for us we are without any ships of war to enable us to send in chase of those villains,’ he admitted. He even had to ask the authorities in Barbados to pass on his message to Governor Hamilton in the British Leeward Islands because Roberts had left him with no ‘ships in a condition to undertake the voyage’. All he could offer was ‘good soldiers’ and a vague promise of ‘all that is in my favour to contribute to the extirpation of those villainous robbers’.
Nevertheless, on Barbados his proposal was received favourably. Governor Lowther had been removed and replaced in control by Samuel Cox, former president of the island council, who was rather more resolute. ‘Common humanity’, but also self-interest, demanded that they take action, Cox wrote to London a few days later. ‘We may soon expect him to windward of this island, which might be attended with fatal consequences.’ The British were in a stronger position to help than they had been a few weeks previously. De Feuquières had seen HMS Rose and HMS Shark, finally returning after six months in New England, sail past Martinique a few days before and was hoping his letter would catch them at Barbados. In fact they had already left for their home base in the Leeward Islands when it arrived. But a few days later Captain Thomas Durrel of HMS Seahorse sailed into Bridgetown.
Durrel had been sent by the authorities in Boston to escort New England shipping northwards in response to repeated reports that the region was ‘very much infested by pirates’ and that ‘the trade of the place did not care to venture without a convoy to protect them’. He was an enthusiastic and diligent officer and immediately offered to sail after Roberts. But, on examining de Feuquières’ letter, he hesitated. HMS Seahorse, like HMS Rose, carried just 20 guns and was no match for the pirate force described by the French Governor. The island council would need to supply him with ninety well-armed men, at their own expense, he told them. Even then, he would have to sail to Martinique to see what assistance the French had to offer before he could even think of confronting the pirates.
The request for reinforcements proved problematic. The expedition against Roberts the previous February had involved considerable expense for no reward and the merchants of Barbados were not keen to stump up funds again. The island council was forced to borrow money. Then, when Captain Durrel attempted to recruit, Bridgetown miraculously emptied of sailors. They ‘had armed themselves and had gathered into a great body and gone up the country, whereby the intent of the press warrants ... was in great measure frustrated’, Durrel irritably reported on 31 January. Given Roberts’ strength, the reluctance of local men to take part in the expedition was not surprising - particularly if there were wild rumours circulating of a massacre on Dominica. In the end the militia had to be mobilised to force men aboard.
On 2 February Durrel finally set sail for Martinique, only to find the wind had switched direction and that he was confronted with a ‘great ... rolling ... sea’ driving him back towards Barbados. He wrestled with this for a couple of days but was forced to limp back into Bridgetown on 5 February with the rigging around his bowsprit flapping loose and his main top-mast badly damaged. Cox conveyed the sorry news to Governor de Feuquières. The New England fleet could wait no longer and two weeks later Durrel set sail for Boston.
But by now de Feuquières had managed to communicate with Governor Hamilton in the Leeward Islands. Hamilton had been fuming in impotent rage ever since Roberts’ brazen attack on St Christophers four months previously. With HMS Rose and HMS Shark now finally back on station, he saw the French offer as a perfect opportunity to rid himself of the man he by now referred to as ‘the great pirate Roberts’. De Feuquières had sent an aide, Monsieur Malherbe, to coordinate measures and by 19 February he and Hamilton had drawn up a detailed memorandum of understanding between the two nations. ‘It is agreed that the two governments will send a sufficient quantity of forces to run by sea after the pirates to take them, to fight and destroy them, or at least put them to flight,’ it began. It was agreed any booty captured would be divided proportionate to the number of men each side provided and that any ship failing to lend assistance to its ally would be ‘chastised and punished’. The French were now in a slightly stronger position and contributed a ship and two sloops. Combined with HMS Rose and HMS Shark this made a ramshackle flotilla of five small vessels. But between them they just about outgunned Roberts’ two ships.
On 20 February Hamilton summoned Captain Whitney of HMS Rose, the larger of the two British men-of-war, to a meeting at St John’s in Antigua. HMS Rose was at anchor off the island. But, to Hamilton’s fury, Whitney failed to show up. When, by midday, there was still no sign of him Hamilton fired off an angry note asking him to explain his absence. Whitney wrote back saying he was busy with his accounts, but that he would be happy to sail with the French if Hamilton would be so kind as to inform him ‘where the pirates are’ - a response that must have had Hamilton tearing his hair out. At the same time Whitney casually informed him that he was about to sail to St Christophers to take in water.
Whitney had already had one unsuccessful encounter with pirates when he’d been driven from the harbour at New Providence in the Bahamas in July 1718. He’d also quarrelled repeatedly with Captain Woodes Rogers, the Governor there. He was not one of the more diligent Navy officers in the Caribbean and was perhaps less than enthusiastic about confronting the Caribbean’s most formidable pirate for little apparent gain.
Hamilton responded by issuing a direct order to Whitney to proceed, in company with HMS Shark, to Martinique. ‘I don’t question but you will observe the order and do everything for His Majesty’s Service,’ he wrote. Whitney was forced to obey. But when he arrived in Martinique on 1 March, to his enormous satisfaction he found the French had changed their mind. ‘Affairs have changed face,’ Governor de Feuquières told him. Roberts, he believed, was now off Saint Domingue (modern Haiti) 750 miles to the north-west, and ‘no longer disposed to do you any harm or us any harm’. There was no reason at all to think Roberts had abandoned his hostility to the French and the British. But a number of French Navy vessels had now arrived in the region. Two frigates were on their way to cruise off Saint Domingue and de Feuquières also mentioned a large ship called the Dromadaire which he said was cruising to windward of Martinique with 400 men on board. Their presence freed him from his humiliating dependence on the British and he was happy to suspend what he called ‘the little armed expedition’ they had planned.
‘I was very much surprised after so much noise of pirates,’ wrote Captain Whitney, with infuriating smugness, to Hamilton when he returned to Antigua a week later. He suggested the whole furore had been cooked up by smugglers, keen to distract attention from their activities, and described de Feuquières’ envoy, Malherbe, as ‘a petty fogging merchant of little account’. He concluded by demanding £28, 16s to pay for food for the soldiers he had had aboard. De Feuquières had also found Captain Whitney ‘impertinent’ and had been informed by Malherbe of the ‘repugnance’ the two Royal Navy captains felt at being ordered to Martinique. He apologised to Hamilton for the change of plans and sent him two barrels of red wine, but it can have been little consolation.
‘They write from St Christophers that Captain Roberts, who is now the most desperate pirate of all that range those seas, calls himself admiral of the Leeward Islands,’ reported a London paper a few months later. For Hamilton it was galling. ‘Your Lordships may perceive that I am confined by Captain Whitney’s capricious temper,’ he wrote to London a few weeks later, once more begging for a larger warship, with a more resolute commander, to be sent out.
De Feuquières was right that Roberts was now at Saint Domingue, or, to be more precise, Hispaniola, the Spanish-owned, eastern half of the same island. After leaving the Leeward Islands the pirates had gone initially to Isla Mona, which lay between Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. There they intended to careen. But, finding the seas too rough, they continued westwards and eventually anchored in the Bay of Samaná on the north-eastern coast of Hispaniola. It was a smart move to get away from the region where they had caused so much havoc. And, a century on from when the first Buccaneers had settled there, Hispaniola was still an ideal hideaway.
It remained an economic backwater. As in most of the Spanish Americas, sugar had never really taken a hold and many of the locals continued to live by hunting wild pigs and cattle which they sold to their French neighbours in the more prosperous, western part of the island. There were also thriving communities of escaped slaves dotted around the interior. An English visitor in 1721 portrayed Hispaniola as a natural wilderness; ‘the sea and rivers [were] full of fish and the country spread with forests of cabbage and palm trees’. In 1717 there were no more than 20,000 people in the entire colony and there were many hidden coves where pirates could take refuge without fear of discovery. The Gulf of Samaná was a particularly well-known pirate haven, and Roberts and his men were once more able to relax among golden sands and nodding palms.
They careened their vessels and spent several weeks on the island, engaging ‘in their usual debaucheries’, according to Johnson. ‘They had taken a considerable quantity of rum and sugar, so that liquor was as plenty as water, and few there were who denied themselves the immoderate use of it.’ Roberts’ reputation was now spreading and while there he received a curious visit from two sloops, whose commanders, Captain Porter and Captain Tuckerman, came to the great pirate as disciples. They addressed him, wrote Johnson, ‘as the Queen of Sheba did Solomon, to wit, that having heard of his fame and achievements, they had put in there to learn his art and wisdom in the business of pirating, being vessels on the same honourable design with himself’. They were also looking for handouts, ‘being in want of necessaries for such adventures’. Won over by the ‘peculiarity and bluntness’ of these two men Roberts gave them ‘powder, arms, and whatever else they had occasion for’. He also handed them sixteen to eighteen negroes in return for three or four men from their own crew - a revealing exchange in terms of the relative values Roberts’ men attached to white sailors and slaves. Roberts ‘spent two or three merry nights with them and, at parting, said he hoped the Lord would prosper their handy work’.
Roberts and his men referred to Porter and Tuckerman as ‘private pirates’ - men who profited by trading with pirates without indulging in direct acts of piracy themselves. They ‘said they got much more money in that private way than public pirates’, one of Roberts’ men later recalled. Tuckerman was arrested a few months later at Port Royal in Jamaica after getting drunk in the company of a number of senior military officers and firing off his guns in the harbour. The term ‘private pirates’ could well have been applied to a number of the merchant captains Roberts and his men had dealt with, including Edward Cane, who they’d taken at Cayenne, and now Benjamin Norton, whose brigantine they had seized at St Lucia and who was still with them at Hispaniola.
Roberts generally had cosier relations with North American captains than those from England or the Caribbean. Less dependent on trade with the mother country, and still a relative backwater economically, the inhabitants, and even some of the authorities, in North America, retained a sympathy for pirates - a source of cheap, stolen property - long after their counterparts in the West Indies. New York had effectively been a pirate haven in the 1690s and, as late as 1718, the Governor of North Carolina was openly sheltering Blackbeard.
It’s highly likely Captain Norton was commander of the brigantine that Roberts had chased, on Cane’s recommendation, from Devil’s Islands back in December 1719, with such disastrous consequences. Like Cane he was from Rhode Island and was on the same stretch of coast at the time. Cane probably urged Roberts to chase Norton knowing that, once captured, he would be glad to do business. Norton was viewed with deep suspicion by the Rhode Island authorities. When he had fitted out his vessel the previous autumn for the voyage to the West Indies it was felt, by ‘common observation’ to be ‘more fit for [piracy] than trade’, a colonial official later wrote-a conclusion Roberts himself obviously reached in deciding to take over the vessel.
At Hispaniola Norton cut a potentially lucrative deal with Roberts. In return for his brigantine Roberts agreed to give him the Dutch slaver the Puerto del Principe, laden with much of its original cargo. It was agreed Norton would take the Dutch ship to New England and seek to sell the contents. The two men probably planned to meet up again so the pirates could get a cut and Roberts could add the Puerto del Principe to his fleet, possibly with Norton as commander. On 7 March Norton nosed his way out of the Bay of Samaná and headed north.
Roberts was now approaching the very zenith of his power. Even without the Puerto del Principe his two ships carried more than 50 guns and perhaps as many as 350 men between them. He was the most formidable pirate the Caribbean had seen since Buccaneer times and more than a match for any of the British warships he was likely to encounter. His name was feared along the entire Atlantic seaboard, from Newfoundland to Brazil, and the addition of the Puerto del Principe would make him all but invincible. As he relaxed on the beaches of Hispaniola, the tall, dark Welshman, now almost forty years old, knew he could ravage the shipping lanes virtually at will.
But the rapid expansion of the crew over the previous twelve months had also brought with it problems. Most of the new men were volunteers. But a number were forced. Bitter and resentful, they were constantly looking for a chance to slip away, and discontent among this group was coalescing around Henry Glasby. At Hispaniola, he tried to escape for a second time, this time taking ten other men with him.
Under cover of darkness, or perhaps during an unusually heavy drinking session, they slipped away into the jungle. Glasby had with him a pocket compass and they were doubtless aiming for the Spanish settlements further south. But the sailing master who could navigate his way so skilfully across the wide, empty oceans was soon lost in the dense, dark forests of Hispaniola. Two days passed, and they found themselves going in circles, plagued by mosquitoes, spiders and snakes. Just when it seemed they were doomed to stumble in the gloom forever they suddenly popped back out on to the beach - at almost exactly the same spot from which they had started. They were quickly spotted by a group of Roberts’ men and hauled back to camp. ‘They made such excuses for their absence as they thought might most please,’ Glasby said later, and somehow managed to talk their way out of the situation - an indication of the pirates’ desperation for a good navigator, rather than their gullibility. From this time on Glasby was a prisoner aboard the Royal Fortune, forbidden to board prizes or to go ashore, and Roberts took the precaution of keeping the long boats permanently chained up.
There was discontent too among the more willing recruits. Although Roberts had dispensed with the division between Lords and Commons, there was still a clear pecking order in the crew. The more experienced men were referred to as ‘Old Standers’, and retained the arrogance of an aristocracy. One of them, James Philips, ‘was morose and drunk, carrying his pistols sometimes about him to terrify newcomers if they offered to speak, saying they ought to serve their time first’, according to a captive. A new recruit later recalled that ‘he was allowed only a quarter share at his first coming, till he roused off his dullness and stupidity, and then received a whole share’. New men often found themselves relegated to the Good Fortune, and Glasby observed that the second ship had ‘not so liberal a share in fresh provisions, or wine’. Their subordinate status chafed, and it was an ominous sign when Thomas Anstis, the belligerent West Countryman who had temporarily supplanted Roberts at the start of 1720, was elected to replace Motigny La Palisse as captain of the Good Fortune.
Roberts was also having difficulty with the Old Standers. Success seemed to breed insubordination. ‘’Twas with great difficulty they could be kept together under any kind of regulation, for, being almost always mad or drunk, their behaviour produced infinite disorders, every man being in his own imagination a captain, a prince, or a king,’ wrote Johnson. Roberts was forced to become increasingly dictatorial. According to Johnson, when he
saw there was no managing of such a company of wild, ungovernable brutes by gentle means, nor to keep them from drinking to excess - the cause of all their disturbances - he put on a rougher deportment and a more magisterial carriage towards them, correcting them when he thought fit. And if any seemed to resent his usage, he told them they ‘might go ashore and take satisfaction of him, if they thought fit, at sword and pistol, for he neither valued nor feared any of them.’
It was a style of leadership that was departing more and more from the traditions of pirate democracy and put him at odds with many in the crew. Around the time of the visit to Hispaniola Roberts found himself having to back these words with actions. According to Captain Johnson, a drunken member of the crew insulted Roberts. In response, Roberts, ‘in the heat of his passion, killed the fellow on the spot’ - the first record we have of Roberts personally killing anyone. The dead pirate had a mess-mate called Thomas Lawrence Jones, ‘a brisk, active young man’, who had been almost two years in the crew. When he heard of the incident, ‘he cursed Roberts, and said he ought to be served so himself’. Hearing this, Roberts attacked Jones, running him through with his sword. The wound was not fatal and Jones, in retaliation, seized Roberts, ‘threw him over a gun, and beat him handsomely’.
The incident adds another dimension to Roberts’ personality. For all his sobriety and restraint he was a man of violent passions when roused and the murder and its aftermath threw the crew into uproar. Some sided with Roberts, others against him and it was only the intervention of the quartermaster that prevented an armed confrontation. A vote was taken and, according to Johnson, ‘the majority of the company were of opinion that the dignity of the captain ought to be supported on board; that it was a post of honour, and ... should not be violated by any single member’. Jones was sentenced to receive two lashes from every member of the crew. Both Jones and the dead man belonged to the Good Fortune. The incident exacerbated tensions between the two ships and would have important repercussions.
Roberts was sitting atop a powder keg of simmering grievances. Old Standers resentful at his increasingly autocratic style, and perhaps ambitious for power themselves; Old Standers who’d simply had enough, and were keen to slip away; new recruits resentful at not being fully accepted into the pirate brotherhood; and forced men - it was a dangerous cocktail, one which confronted all pirate captains as their crews expanded. It took all Roberts’ energies to hold them together.
Strangely, the only group that Roberts didn’t need to watch like a hawk were the slaves. He’d captured a large number since returning to the Caribbean and, by this time, close to a third of the crew were black. Most were ‘French Creole negroes’, according to one captive - a description that makes clear they were not taken fresh from the holds of slavers, but were men living and working in the French Caribbean. Some may have been seized from plantations. But the majority were probably sailors, captured, already trained, from prizes. Ships in West Africa and the Caribbean at this time carried small numbers of slaves trained as mariners and these would have been ideal recruits for Roberts. With the exception of the black man shot for attempting to escape with Glasby at Carriacou, there is not a single reference to them giving him any problems.
Unlike Howel Davis, Roberts armed his slaves - reflecting not a desperation for recruits but his desire to become as powerful as possible as quickly as possible. For the slaves this must have involved some quid pro quo in terms of living conditions if the pirates were to be sure of their loyalty. It was not a life for the squeamish. But, for a slave in the early eighteenth century, it was probably as good as it got. Compared to the grind of life on the plantations it brought variety and relative freedom. And if pirates got a buzz from power, we can only guess at the emotions of the slaves, accustomed to a life of terror and grovelling servitude, and now licensed to point guns at white men and watch them quiver in fear. Living, sleeping, fighting side by side for months on end, the two races, both outcasts in their own way, surely developed some limited camaraderie. But the slaves’ great virtue was still that they were cheap, since they received no share of the booty.
By mid-March the pirates were hungry for further plunder and left Hispaniola heading east. De Feuquières’ assessment that Roberts was ‘no longer disposed’ to do harm to either the French or the British was wrong. They headed straight back to the Leeward Islands and parked themselves to the windward of Guadeloupe. There, on 26 March, they seized the Lloyd, a richly laden merchant ship from London bound for Jamaica.
Going aboard the pirates found the captain was Andrew Hingston, whose ship they had partially burned at St Christophers six months before. Despite General Mathew’s suspicions of complicity between Hingston and the pirates at that time, it wasn’t a joyful reunion. ‘They took away most of my rigging and sails, all my anchors, blocks, provisions, powder, small arms &c,’ lamented Hingston. ‘What of the cargo was not fit for their service they threw overboard.’
They also took twelve of his eighteen-man crew. Finding that the chief mate, who was Hingston’s brother, had tried to conceal two gold rings in his pocket, the pirates strapped him to the rigging and ‘whipped him within an inch of his life’.
By now Roberts was displaying extraordinary confidence. He took the Lloyd north to the British island of Barbuda and spent five days plundering it at leisure, despite the fact that Antigua, where Governor Hamilton was based, was only 30 miles to the south. According to Governor Bennet in Bermuda he was also displaying murderous brutality. In a letter to London, Bennet claimed that, shortly before taking the Lloyd, the pirates had captured the Governor of Martinique on a French ship and ‘hanged [him] at the yard arm’. He cited Hingston as his source, though Hingston never mentioned this in his own correspondence. Bennet’s account was included in the same package of letters where he described the supposed massacre at Dominica in mid-January, and was just as untrue. The Governor of Martinique - de Feuquières - was most definitely still alive, as was his number two, the Intendant of Martinique, Monsieur Bernard. But, again, Bennet’s story has been much quoted by historians ever since as evidence of Roberts’ barbarity.
On 1 April the pirates took Hingston and the Lloyd further north and released him at sea ‘in a very sad condition’. The following day the hapless captain was captured again, this time by a French pirate in a small sloop who stole what few possessions he had left and then dumped him in the Virgin Islands. He was eventually picked up by Captain Whitney in HMS Rose, who may or may not have been embarrassed to discover that the pirate he had so casually dismissed six weeks earlier was still active and, according to Hingston, now in command of 54 guns and more than 350 men. Whitney immediately set off in pursuit - of the far smaller French pirate, who he also failed to catch.
Governor Hamilton was furious. ‘If you had followed my orders at your return from Martinique to cruise for some days to windward of these islands, you might in all probability have come up with the pirate Roberts,’ he pointed out in a letter to Whitney. Given the imbalance in their forces Whitney was doubtless relieved he hadn’t. But it seemed a further period of humiliation now awaited the authorities in the Windward and Leeward Islands. The merchants of the Leeward Islands felt so beleaguered that they sent a petition to London at this time, begging for greater naval protection: ‘The pirates are now so strong and numerous in these parts that, not only the trade to and from these islands suffers very much, but likewise all intercourse is broke off betwixt these islands to their very great damage.’
But the capture of the Lloyd was a parting shot rather than the start of a new rampage. News travelled fast in the highly mobile world of the eighteenth-century Caribbean and Roberts was doubtless aware of the three new French warships in the region. He may also have been aware that there were two fresh British warships on the way - the 40-gun Faversham, which was to replace HMS Milford on station at Barbados, and the 40-gun Launceston, which was coming out on surveying duty. He was bold but he wasn’t stupid and he knew when the time had come to move on. After releasing Hingston he continued north and he had soon left the squabbling officials of the West Indies far behind, hitching a ride on the great clockwise swirl of the Atlantic and bound once more for Africa.