Black Bart

 

 

Bartholomew Roberts became resigned to his fate early in his pirate career, when he renounced the life of a lowly sailor in the merchant navy to join Howell Davis’ band of sea dogs. He is known to have said ‘in honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labour. In this (a life of piracy) plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power... No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto’. Many a pirate, then and now, would no doubt drink to that.

 

 

Captain Kidd and Blackbeard are probably the most famous pirates of all time. But the pirate who was the most successful, with a staggering total of 470 captured ships to his name, was a Welshman named John Roberts. Early in his career, Roberts adopted the name Bartholomew, but it was only after his death that he came to be known as Black Bart, a reference not just to his dark eyes and hair, but to his devilish soul.

 

A naval ‘tar’

John Roberts was born in 1682, the son of George Roberts and his wife, who lived in the village of Little Newcastle – Casnewydd Bach in Welsh - near the seaside town of Fishguard in West Wales. The area was a Welsh-speaking one, and Roberts grew up with Welsh as his first language. This was later to prove useful when he met the pirate captain Howell Davis, and the pair were able to converse in Welsh without the other pirates knowing what they were talking about.

At the age of 13, young John decided to become a sailor, and joined the merchant navy. Once there, he soon became acquainted with the miserable pay and conditions. However, undeterred, he quickly learned the ropes, and soon became an extremely skilled seaman, showing a particular flair for navigation. But there was little chance of promotion for an ordinary sailor like him, and he soon realized that if he stayed in the navy, he was going to have to work for a pittance.

 

A merry life and a short one

In 1719, Roberts found himself aboard the Princess, whose cargo was live human beings – slaves. While the boat was at anchor off the Cold Coast of West Africa, it was attacked by pirates, led by one Captain Davis. The crew were captured and forced to join the pirate band. Initially, Roberts was less than enthusiastic about his new situation, but after a while, it became clear to him that he had fallen into a better way of life. According to Captain Johnson’s report of him, he reasoned that, ‘in honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labour. In this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power … No, a merry life and a short one shall be my motto’.

On becoming a pirate, Roberts changed his name, becoming Bartholomew Roberts (the name may have been inspired by a notorious English buccaneer, Bartholomew Sharp). The new recruit soon became a favourite with Captain Davis, not only because he hailed from the same area in West Wales, but because he proved to be an excellent navigator. He was also, as it transpired, a courageous fighter and a merciless disciplinarian, able to command respect from the drunken, rowdy bunch of thieves and vagabonds who made up the crew.

 

Bloody revenge

Hoisting a British flag, the pirates made their way to Principe, Portugal, where they posed as naval officers and were lavishly entertained by the Portuguese Governor. Davis then plotted to kidnap the Governor, but his plan was discovered. The Governor invited Davis and his men to call on him for drinks and ambushed them as they made their way to his house. Davis took a bullet through the stomach and died an agonizing death, firing his pistols as he took his last breath. The pirates fled, regrouped and decided to make Roberts their captain. He accepted, reflecting that ‘since he had dipped his hands in muddy water and must be a pirate, it was better being a commander than a common man’.

On taking over command, Roberts’ first action was to return to Principe, bombard the fort, kill all the male inhabitants and ransack the town, in revenge for Davis’ killing. He then set sail for Brazil, attacking some slave ships on the way, until he came upon the Lisbon fleet. Although there were over 40 ships in the fleet, some of them heavily armed, Roberts managed to rob the richest of them and sail away with a heap of gold coins and jewellery worth thousands of pounds.

 

The black flag

Soon after, however, one of Roberts’ deputies ran off with one of his ships, leaving him in the lurch. In response, Roberts issued an edict to all his men to the effect that if any of them ever robbed him again, they would have their nose and ears slit. He also made a number of other rules, such as forbidding robbery and gambling and warning that any pirate found guilty of rape would be put to death. In a rare moment of kindness, he also ruled that pirates who lost a limb in the course of their duties should receive compensation of ‘eight hundred pieces of eight from the common stock.’

Before long, Roberts was back in action attacking shipping around Martinique and Barbados. His reputation as a merciless pirate was enhanced when, in one instance, he hanged the Governor of Martinique from the yardarm of his ship. He then moved on to Senegal and Sierra Leone, plundering slave ships, so terrorizing them that when they saw his flag, they immediately surrendered. Fully aware of the power of self-promotion, Roberts had several black flags made, one showing him standing by a death’s head with an hourglass, and another of him with his feet planted on two skulls labelled AMH and ABH – a Martiniquan and a Barbadian.

 

Sudden death

By this stage in his career, Roberts was obviously enjoying his life as a pirate. He dressed in glamorous clothes stolen from the treasure ships. A tall, dark-haired man, he wore red damask waistcoats and breeches, a red feather in his hat, a diamond and gold necklace and ornamented pistols and swords. However, his liking for finery did not alter his behaviour as a captain: he remained a skilful sailor, a gifted strategist, a courageous fighter and a strict disciplinarian. Unlike many pirate captains of the day, he planned his attacks in minute detail, and was able to keep order among his men, which may have been why he was so much more successful than the rest of the freebooters. Certainly, the fact that he disliked drunkenness, and is said to have preferred to drink tea rather than beer, must have helped him to keep a clear head.

However, even the best pirate captain could not stop his crew from drinking, especially from carousing when they had just ransacked a ship, and this is what eventually proved to be his undoing. On 10 February 1722, a naval ship, the HMS Swallow, chased Roberts’ ship and shot at it. Roberts, standing on deck in his finery, was killed instantly. As the battle raged, the shocked crew – determined not to deliver him to the enemy – wrapped up his body in the ship’s sail, weighed it down, and threw it overboard. It sank into the depths, and never resurfaced.

Roberts had envisaged that he would end up on the gibbet, but in the event, his death was a sudden one, aboard his own ship, in battle. Undoubtedly, it was what he would have chosen for himself. Afterwards, he became a legendary figure as Black Bart, the most successful pirate of his generation.