In New York’s early days, some people thought pirates were dastardly criminals, while others considered them to be good business partners. It all depended on who got a share of the treasure…and who had to walk the plank.
THE PIRATE’S LIFE FOR ME
In the late 1600s, pirates were a common sight in New York’s saloons, where they could spend their stolen doubloons and pieces of eight. They also did business with local merchants, who traded with or sold them ships and provisions. One colonial governor of New York, the Earl of Bellomont, said that the eastern area of Long Island was a “great receptacle for pirates…The people there have many of them been pirates themselves, and naturally are not averse to the trade.”
Gradually, New York began to take a dimmer view of piracy, and by the 1700s, the Jolly Roger welcome mat was pulled. Still, pirates continued to plunder the bustling shores of New York.
THOMAS TEW
One of the reasons so many pirates flocked to New York was that they could pass as legal “privateers,” sailors hired by the government (British, at the time) to attack and rob ships belonging to enemy governments. Privateers were perfectly respectable and often very wealthy. So impersonating a privateer was the perfect cover for a pirate. So goes the story of pirate Thomas Tew and Governor Benjamin Fletcher, who helped Tew perpetuate his charade.
Not much is known about Thomas Tew before he showed up in Bermuda in 1692 with enough money to buy a share in the eight-gun sloop Amity and sail as a privateer for the British. His commission was to take only enemy French ships, but out at sea, Tew convinced his crewmates that there was more money to be made in pure piracy. Sailing to the Red Sea, Tew captured an Indian ship filled with jewels, silks, gold, and silver. By 1694, when Tew arrived in Rhode Island to reunite with his wife and daughters, he was an extremely rich man.
Tew visited New York, enjoyed its high society, and met with Governor Benjamin Fletcher. Though nearly every governor of the colony of New York made quiet deals with pirates, Fletcher was open about it, accepting “gifts” in return for protecting them from legal problems. Fletcher made no secret of his friendship with the pirate Tew, whom he described as “a pleasant fellow” and “a man of courage and activity.” Fletcher even gave Tew a gold watch to encourage him to dock his ship in New York instead of Rhode Island. Fletcher also gave Tew an “official” privateering assignment…and paid him 300 pounds to do it.
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Tew rounded up another crew and sailed back to the Red Sea, where he tried to take another ship. This didn’t go so well, and Tew was shot and killed. But by then, the jig was up anyway: Before the English government learned of Tew’s death, it put out a warrant for his arrest, calling him a “wicked and ill-disposed person.” England also removed Governor Fletcher from his post.
CAPTAIN WILLIAM KIDD
New York’s most famous pirate was Captain William Kidd, though for most of his career, Kidd actually was a privateer. He made a fine living taking French ships for the English government, and he had a sloop called Antigua and money in his pockets when he showed up in New York in 1690. In 1691 Kidd married the rich widow Sarah Oort and soon became one of New York’s most prominent citizens. He owned land and homes, and even a pew in Wall Street’s Trinity Church.
Then, in 1696, the King of England gave Kidd a commission to catch pirates (including Thomas Tew). Kidd sailed out of New York on the Adventure Galley, a 284-ton ship with 34 cannons. The voyage was difficult; pirates were elusive, and Kidd’s crew grew mutinous. Finally, either because the crew forced him to, or because he wanted to return home with something to show for his time at sea, Kidd turned pirate himself. He plundered ships off the Indian coast, including one called the Quedagh Merchant, which gave him a fortune in gold and jewels.
When Kidd returned to New York around 1699, he found that times had changed. The Earl of Bellomont was now governor, and he arrested Kidd for piracy. In 1701 Kidd was tried and hanged in London; his corpse was covered with tar and hung out over the River Thames as a lesson to pirates. But his story still wasn’t over.
Kidd had collected a treasure that included gold, diamonds, and rubies and had buried some of the loot on East Hampton’s Gardiners Island, where authorities found it. But legends persist that more of his enormous wealth was buried elsewhere. Over the centuries, treasure hunters have scoured New York, digging holes everywhere from Montauk to the Hudson River Valley. They’ll have to keep looking—so far, Kidd’s treasure remains as elusive as the pirates he hunted.
CHARLES GIBBS
In the 1760s, an island off New York became known as Gibbet Island (now Ellis Island). Condemned pirates were hanged there for their crimes, and their dead bodies were placed in a metal device called a “gibbet” to hold the corpse erect. Hung from iron chains, gibbeted pirate corpses dangled in the view of passing ships. Government officials hoped that these corpses would be a deterrent to any sailor who might get buccaneering ideas.
In 1831 Charles Gibbs (aka James Jeffers) became the last pirate executed on Gibbet Island. Born in Rhode Island, Gibbs soon decided he wanted no part of his family’s farm, and would go to sea. He joined the Navy during the War of 1812 and, after the war, sailed the Caribbean as a privateer on the schooner Maria. Eventually he led a mutiny and became the captain of the Maria, which he turned into a pirate ship and used to attack merchants in the Caribbean and along the Atlantic Coast. According to his later confessions to New York police, Gibbs made a fortune and killed almost 400 people during his career as a pirate.
Gibbs eventually lost the Maria when it ran aground, and according to some accounts, he hid out in England, where he might have stayed except that he spent all his money on liquor and gambling. When he returned to sea, Gibbs worked on merchant ships. In 1830 Gibbs and his pals signed on to the Vineyard, which left New Orleans carrying a load of Mexican silver coins. Leading another mutiny, Gibbs killed the ship’s captain and stole the Vineyard—and the silver. New York authorities caught the pirates and took them to jail, but the silver was gone. Some say that it was lost in rough seas, but legends place the treasure on Barren’s Island, under beaches in Canarsie on Coney Island, or off of Long Island Sound. It’s never been found.
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Most piracy took place on the high seas, but New Yorkers faced pirates on rivers too. In 1850 more than 400 pirates terrorized the East River. Unlike their oceangoing counterparts, river pirate gangs lived on land and did their robbing from small rowboats. The pay for a river pirate wasn’t usually great—instead of making hauls of doubloons, they often attacked ships to steal coils of rope worth a few dollars. But even if they weren’t as glamorous as ocean pirates, river pirates were just as feared as seafaring ones. They often murdered sailors who got in their way and kidnapped passengers for ransom. And sometimes they made great hauls.
One of the most unusual river swashbucklers was Sadie “the Goat” Farrell. Like most river pirates, Farrell was trying to escape poverty-stricken life. She lived in the slums of the 4th Ward, along the riverfront in lower Manhattan, where she first became a mugger. Farrell earned the nickname “Goat” because she butted her mugging victims with her head, knocking them out so her gang could rob them. (She was also famous for having only one ear. The other was bitten off by Gallus Mag, a six-foot-tall female bouncer who ran a Water Street bar called Hole-in-the-Wall. The ear went into a pickling jar behind Mag’s bar.)
In the late 1860s, Farrell decided to try her hand at piracy. Successful river pirates could make decent money, and Farrell was tough. Unlike most river pirates who lived on land, Farrell and her crew (the Charlton Street Gang) hijacked a sloop to live on. Hoisting the Jolly Roger, she sailed away from the East River waterfront and traveled up the Hudson River toward Albany, and extended her pirating territory.
For a few months in early 1869, Farrell’s ship terrorized the Hudson River Valley, robbing large estates and small farms. She and her gang kidnapped wealthy victims and were not afraid to kill, and newspapers of the day told horror stories of Farrell forcing victims to walk the plank. Finally, a group of citizen vigilantes banded together to fight her, and Farrell and the Charlton Street Gang were forced back into the streets of the 4th Ward. It wasn’t a great loss, however. Farrell made up with Mag and got her ear back from Mag’s jar—according to legend, Farrell put it into a locket and wore it around her neck.