Hollywood has largely moulded the general perception of pirates. This image is highly romanticised and often light-hearted, and the setting is, invariably, the Caribbean. In this account, following in the tradition of Daniel Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson, the wanton savagery of piracy and the injustices of the system that both nurtured and persecuted those who chose to join the ‘Brethren of the Coast’ are left unsanitised.
The principal story-line follows their trail of destruction and mayhem out from the Caribbean, along the coasts of the Americas, Africa and into the Indian Ocean. In its course, the growing network of Scots abroad and their early involvement in the slave and Far Eastern trades are revealed.
With the exception of the last chapter, this book examines the Scots engagement with the ‘Golden Age of Pirates’ (1690s–1720s) which, like the Wild West in American history, lasted only a few decades. Events revolved around a handful of highly dramatic characters, most of whom originated from the pirate nest of New Providence in the Bahamas and so knew each other. Their wicked lives and audacious exploits mesmerised the hedonistic society of Hogarth’s London and shocked the good burghers of Edinburgh. It also spawned a new industry – the journalism of crime.
The timing of the first great outbreak of global piracy was not accidental. The eviction of Catholic James and the installation of Protestant William and Mary on the English and Scottish thrones – the Glorious Revolution of 1688 – sparked the Second Hundred Years War with France and her bullion-rich ally Spain. With their government’s blessing, hundreds of vessels took out a privateering commission with the Admiralty to capture, as legal prize, the shipping of the enemies of King William and (after 1702) Queen Anne. The richest prizes sought were the Spanish bullion galleons returning from the New World and East Indiamen carrying the luxuries of the Far East.
Chasing French East Indiamen took them round the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. There they encountered the Great Mogul’s fleets carrying bejewelled pilgrims to and from Mocha (the landing port for Mecca). Given such a temptation, it was, as Captain Kidd found to his cost, but a small step to lose irreversibly the protective status of a legal privateer and acquire that of a hunted pirate.
During the short periods of peace, many ships’ companies chose not to return to the harsh world of serving for a pittance on a merchantman or navy vessel. They chose instead to continue to raid wherever and whomsoever they pleased. Their actions quickly threatened the fragile European treaties and agreements made with foreign potentates. To appease their critics the government was forced on a number of occasions to take drastic action to destroy their nests.
This succeeded in scattering them further afield. Unfortunately for the Scots, this coincided with their first great push to break into the world markets. It follows that Scots featured in every aspect of the piracy story from serving as a ‘Blade’ (fighting man) onboard a pirate ship, to the captains pursuing the pirates (including several of the colonial Governors sponsoring the chase). The Scots were, therefore, highly instrumental in shaping the course of pirate history.
Piracy trials heard before the High Courts of Admiralty sitting in Edinburgh and London provide the core source of this book and offer an array of insights into this brutal (and at times astounding) world of rogue mariners sailing in the times of Robinson Crusoe.
The order in which they are examined follows closely that of their appearance in the early editions of Captain Charles Johnson’s General History of Pyrates – the incomparable contemporary source on the Golden Age of Piracy. The first edition (1724) related, in great detail, the life and times of the New Providence pirates (1715–25). The later 1726 edition added the tale of Orcadian pirate John Gow along with short biographies (real and imaginary) on the earlier wave of Indian Ocean pirates (1695–1705). This chronological back-tracking also mirrors my own ‘voyage of discovery’ which started as a young student at the foot of Captain Macrae’s mausoleum in my native Ayrshire.
Concluding this study with the last piracy trial heard in Scotland was simply irresistible. Had the updating of Johnson’s Pyrates continued after 1730, I am sure that Heaman and Gautier would have joined the pantheon of pirates in the 1822 edition.
It is intended that, by starting with the New Providence Pirates, the reader will readily acquire an understanding of the origins, ways and lifestyle of the Black Flag pirates. This is not so forthcoming with the short accounts of the earlier Indian Ocean pirates who did so much damage to Scottish trading aspirations in the East.
Most pirates started out as members of a single company sailing under an elected captain. Their first vessel was usually a small sloop, cut to take more cannon and swivels (a type of small cannon) and manned by around thirty Blades. If they were successful in taking a larger vessel, they invariably transferred their accumulated armaments to her, thereby dramatically increasing their chance of taking a plate galleon or an East Indiaman.
This ‘trading up’ in vessels and firepower occasionally led to the creation of a pirate flotilla, manned by hundreds of Blades and commanded by the ‘aristocrates’ of piracy – who referred to themselves as the members of the ‘House of Lords’. Such a force was more than a match for a solitary East Indiaman or a rag-tag garrison of a remote slaving fort. The destruction and carnage they were capable of inflicting was immense and had the directors of the various Royal Companies and the marine insurers of London clamouring at the doors of the Board of Trade and the Admiralty for naval counter-measures.
Given the anarchic nature of pirate associations, these deadly flotillas had a short lifespan, as their captains invariably quarrelled, usually after a drunken carousal, and then sailed away taking their company with them. Not even the most feared and ruthless captain, such as Bartholomew ‘Black Bart’ Roberts, could hold a flotilla of them together for more than a few months at a time.
A pirate captain faced the eternal quest for a treasure-laden prize, one that would provide his men with the means to bribe their way into a retirement of luxury ashore. Few achieved this goal. For many, the daily struggle was to find smaller prey to loot for provisions to feed their large extravagant crew and the marine stores to maintain their vessel.
A pirate captain’s control over his crew was tenuous at the best of times. Only during the heat of battle was the captain’s authority unchallenged. On all other occasions, the pirates’ notion of a floating democracy gave the grumbling factions below decks the right to challenge him on a whim. This situation led the more determined captains to draw up Articles of Regulation with which to curb the excesses of his men – particularly with gambling, drink and women.
Their rate of squandering of provisions, goods, vessels and life was staggering high. Disease and drunken violence ensured that few pirates lived beyond the age of 30. To maintain their numbers and fighting capability, all captains resorted to taking men off captured vessels – particularly skilled sailors. These ‘forced’ men were made to work the ship under threat of death and often alongside enslaved Africans. Many succumbed to the reign of terror and turned pirate by signing the Articles.
It is one of the quirks of pirate history that most sought to emulate the great pirate, Captain Avery, and retire back to Britain. Once there, they could vanish into the sprawling metropolis of London as rich men. To minimise the risk of being identified and hanged, it was necessary to make a landing from a small vessel on deserted beach in a remote part of Britain. After scuttling the vessel, the company would then split up into small groups and walk to the nearby towns. There, with a little prudent spending, they could transform themselves into gentlemen before heading for London.
The west coast of Scotland provided the conduit for the retiring rump of ‘Black Bart’ Roberts’s crew, the most determined and vicious group in pirate history. A number of them, however, found themselves in Edinburgh Castle dungeons, having given themselves away by their drunken and riotous behaviour on the road from Inverary to Greenock.
Their trial in Edinburgh (1720) provides the student of the Golden Age of Piracy with a unique insight into the New Providence captains and their crews. It also fills in previously missing details of Davis and Roberts’s extensive cruises off the Caribbean, African and Brazilian coasts. These were by far the most devastating and bloodiest of the era. One of their casualties was Scotland’s aspiration to join in the slave trade.
Of the other two Black Flag piracy trials heard before this court that against Captain Green and the crew of the Worcester (1705) has the greatest significance to the course of Anglo-Scottish relations. Indeed, the execution of Green and two of his officers on Leith Sands – to the jeers of a mob of 80,000 – triggered the Act of Union of 1707.
The myriad of documents generated by these piracy trials and disputes over slaving voyages are matched with the personal letters and printed broadsheets and newspapers which abound in the archives and libraries of Scotland and beyond. In collating these sources one crosses the path of the greatest writers on pirates: Daniel Defoe, Robert Louis Stevenson and Walter Scott. These literary connections are explored throughout the course of the narrative.
In this second edition the chapter on Robert Louis Stevenson & the Pirates has been revised to include extracts from his letters that relate to his use of Johnson’s Pyrates and other authors on pirates.