Seawolves by Eric J. Graham

Author:Eric J. Graham [Graham, Eric J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780857905529
Publisher: Birlinn Ltd

CHAPTER 7

The Scots & the Pirate Crews

The exact number of men and women who went ‘a-pirating’ during the ‘Golden Age’ (the thirty years after 1694) will never be known. At the height of their activity in the Caribbean, when Woodes Rogers arrived to reform or evict the Brethren of the Coast from New Providence in 1718, there may have been as many as 2,400 on that one island.

Some eight years later, after this tidal wave of terror had run its course across half the globe, the numbers sailing under the Black Flag had irreversibly slumped to around 400. Most of them were holed up on the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. During the intervening eight years, about the same number had met their end swinging from the gallows or the yardarm.

The ‘high period’ lasted only ten years. It started with the Lord Archibald Hamilton’s treasure hunters departing for New Providence in 1716 and ended with the hanging of the last of the Brethren, William Fly, in Boston in 1726. This intense and spectacular period in maritime history has captured the public’s imagination ever since.

Defoe’s General History of Pyrates (written under his pseudonym of Captain Charles Johnson) is by far the greatest source to have survived from the period. The first edition (1724), relating bloodthirsty tales replete with details of pillage, rape and murder, was an immediate best-seller. It focused, understandably, on the dare-devil deeds of a handful of the most ruthless and bloody pirate captains. The Scots included in his rogues’ gallery are William Kidd of Dundee and John Gow of Orkney.

Of the lives of the rank-and-file crew members, however, very little is known. Indeed, most were careful to nurture the cover of anonymity behind which they intended to slip back into peaceful society with their ill-gotten loot. The few names that were recorded were those unfortunate enough to have been caught and interrogated by officials (usually clergymen or surgeons) prior to being hanged. The great pirate historian of modern times, Philip Gosse, gleaned these names, along with those mentioned in the Calendars of Newgate Prison, and added them to Defoe’s principal characters. The outcome was his The Pirates’ Who’s Who, first published in 1924. From this representative sample it would appear certain that the Celts (Welsh, Irish and Scots) contributed a disproportionately high number of villains, relative to the size of their seafaring populations.

With many pirate companies disbanding to take the pardon and individual pirates retiring with their loot without being caught, it is very rare to find piracy trials of large crews. Of the handful from the ‘high period’, the first was that of ‘Major’ Stede Bonnet and his thirty-one crew tried in Charleston in 1718.

Bonnet was a well-off Barbadian gentleman planter who seems to have been drawn into piracy by the spirit of high adventure the year before. He bought his own vessel, the Revenge, intending to be a legitimate privateer against the Spanish and join those plundering the wrecks of the Spanish plate flotta. Events, however, quickly carried him over that fine line that separates privateering from piracy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.