Pirates of the Slave Trade by Angela C. Sutton

Author:Angela C. Sutton [Sutton, Angela C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633888456
Publisher: Globe Pequot
Published: 2023-10-17T08:00:00+00:00

THE BATTLE OF CAPE LOPEZ

A merry life, and a short one.—Bartholomew Roberts, 1722

February 5, 1722

The fateful morning at Cape Lopez was warm and muggy like most winter mornings on the water in West Africa. Captain Bartholomew Roberts was awake though most of his crew still snored. There were so many souls onboard now, more than two hundred, that the ship itself sounded like it was snoring, though that also could have been the creaking of all the hasty adjustments the carpenters had nailed in place to transform the Royal Fortune into the ultimate weapon at sea.

Roberts was filled with frustration. He missed having refined and intelligent men like Captain Howell Davis around to plan with. At least Davis had been able to hold his liquor. How was he supposed to plan the next, most important part of their journey with a ship full of sailors who contained more brandy than a Christmas pudding?

His former lieutenant Walter Kennedy had been a big drinker, too. Ever since the Irish pirate had disappeared with half of Black Bart’s crew in the Caribbean, leaving his loyal men with nary a drop of water or crumb of biscuit, the stress of leadership had been wearing away at Roberts and both paranoia and resentment had grown steadily. Roberts no longer accepted Irish men onboard his ship (later, one of his crew explained to the naval officers that being Irish “was against pyrates rules to accept of, because they had been formerly cheated by one Kennedy an Irish Man who run away with their Money”) and he no longer ate with the crew, choosing instead to allow just a handful of trusted men in his mess.18 His lieutenant, James Skyrme of the Ranger, adopted the same practice, keeping a tight inner circle while the newer recruits were left to their own devices and to the cruel leadership of the quartermasters.

This drastic change in leadership style was not without consequences. After Black Bart’s crew had burned the Porcupine at Ouidah and Black Bart ransomed each ship for eight pounds of gold, a handful of the crew under James Skyrme discovered that one of the slave ships they ransomed used to be a French privateer and sailed well enough to go anywhere in the world. New ships like that were hard to come by in Africa, where slave traders preferred larger berths and cheaper voyages to faster sails. The pirates thought back to Black Bart’s second Royal Fortune, which had been a French naval ship taken at Sierra Leone, and how they had taken full advantage of its power in their exploits. Black Bart was on his third Royal Fortune (the ship formerly known as Onslow, which had been carrying English soldiers to Cape Coast Castle and had stopped to water at the Sestos River when the pirates took her), so Skyrme’s pirates thought it only fair that they upgrade their Ranger to a better ship, too.

Without conferring with Black Bart, who had already taken eight pounds ransom for

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