Pirates and Privateers

A History of Piracy

Tom Bowling

• Publisher: Pocket Essentials
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781843448167
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Storia mondiale

From Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island to Errol Flynn in Captain Blood on to today's Pirates of the Caribbean, the romantic image of pirates in modern Western popular culture has long been with us. But of course pirates come in many guises, and not all of them as charming as Johnny Depp. Pirates are outlaws who move quickly, a form of lawlessness based on the application of immense short term power by mobile forces which fade away, similar to guerrilla warfare. In Pirates and Privateers Tom Bowling offers a lively history of piracy, from ancient times through the 'privateers' such as Morgan, with their Letters of Marque (an early example of State-sponsored terrorism), to the still real and flourishing threat of contemporary pirates that patrol the less well-regulated shipping lanes of the world today.

Becoming a Pirate

In his introduction to Athanase Postel’s autobiographical Memoires d’un Corsaire et Aventurier (Editions La Decouvrance) Michel Lefevre lists various types of corsair activity⁴: petit corse which is coastal and might be undertaken in small ships, harassing another nation’s trade vessels and profiting, of course, from its actions (Channel Islanders were famous for making the petit corse as a sort of seasonal respite from the long haul to the fishing grounds of the Terre Neuve); grand corse which implies travelling long distances in bigger ships (Postel himself went on privateer raids on the British fishing fleets of Iceland and Nova Scotia during his career); and corse d’etat, state corsairs, which are no more and no less than privateers in the general sense we know of them – ships armed, fitted out and crewed at the expense of individuals or groups of individuals to do the state’s work of war. The great difference between a privateer and a ship of a state’s navy is, of course, that the privateer wouldn’t usually expect to be so precisely placed in the military chain of command as, say a Royal Navy frigate. There would be no point in asking a privateer to patrol and blockade Brest for years on end as the British Royal Navy under Lord Howe did during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The privateer can only exist from the profits raised by his raiding and there are unlikely to be profits to be made from containing the French Revolutionary navy in Brest. Real money would flow instead from raiding their great trading ships. So privateers or corsairs follow the money.

Lefevre distinguishes usefully between corsairs and ‘archipirates’. The latter is a term he uses for the classic ‘Spanish Main’ type pirates. Unlike corsairs, classic pirates wouldn’t give a damn for any state permission to carry on their business – in fact one of their characteristics is that they establish parallel societies. They have rules entirely of their own devising.⁵

A corsair or privateer, on the other hand, will have a state sanction or other signed and sealed official permit in some form – usually described as ‘letters of mark’ – allowing him to raid other shipping. Corsairs did not consider themselves pirates. They stayed inside rules of war, such as existed in their period, and expected to be treated as prisoners of war if captured in their turn. The best a pirate could hope for was the noose.

Athanase Postel went from being a military cadet in Boulogne under the revolutionary government of 1794 to crew member of a corsair raiding British fishing fleets and coastal trade, more or less as a standard step in his career as a military sailor. No such route was available in England and not many French 12-year-olds would want to follow it, but some did, driven by a taste for adventure. Louis Garneray (Mes Voyages, Aventures et Combats, Editions La Decouvrance) was the son of a Parisian portrait painter. The family’s only connection to the sea was a cousin who was a cadet and, after a conversation with this cousin, Louis travelled from Paris to Dunkirk in search of an adventure. He found a post on a sailing ship and ended up striding the decks of a frigate in the Indian Ocean beside Robert Surcouf, the most famous corsair of the revolutionary war period. Surcouf is a romantic figure, a man who ran the British ragged in the Indian Ocean and made himself immensely rich into the bargain. ‘La Grande Corse’ with Surcouf in the Indian Ocean fully satisfied the young Garneray’s need for adventure. However romantic a figure he cut, Surcouf had his dark side too. Before the revolution he had been a slaver, transporting unfortunate Africans to a life of misery in America and the Caribbean. Surcouf enriched himself from slavery and enriched his home port, St Malo, from his later adventures as a corsair in the Indian Ocean. (However, he retired to Redon. Perhaps the adulation in the northern port disturbed him. Redon, although it is a salt port, is 40 kilometres inland.)

State sponsorship is what distanced the likes of Surcouf from archipirates. It’s what made the life of a corsair possible for rather proper young revolutionary mousses (French boy sailors) like Garneray and Postel. What seems to make a man an archipirate in Lefevre’s sense is that the state describes him as such. Stede Bonnet (executed in 1718) inherited land in Barbados and lived as a landowner before serving in the island’s militia and turning pirate. Perhaps he’d gone mad – people certainly thought so at his trial. In 1709, Bonnet had married Mary Allamby and joined the militia as a major. In the summer of 1717, perhaps driven by a nagging wife (Mary is accused of being this in some sources), perhaps by a taste for adventure and comradeship the militia offered, Bonnet bought a sailing vessel, named it Revenge, and travelled along the American coast wrecking, setting afire and looting vessels which fell into his path. He had become a pirate. According to Defoe/Johnson:

The Major was no Sailor as was said before, and therefore had been obliged to yield to many Things that were imposed on him, during their Undertaking, for want of a competent Knowledge in maritime Affairs; at length happening to fall in Company with another Pyrate, one Edward Teach, (who for his remarkable black ugly Beard, was more commonly called Black-beard) This Fellow was a good Sailor, but a most cruel hardened Villain, bold and daring to the last Degree, and would not stick at the perpetrating of the most abominable Wickedness imaginable; for which he was made Chief of that execrable Gang, that it might be said that his Post was not unduly filled, Blackbeard being truly the Superior in Roguery, of all the Company, as has been already related.

To him Bonnet’s Crew joined in Consortship, and Bonnet himself was laid aside, notwithstanding the Sloop was his own; he went aboard Black-beard’s Ship, not concerning himself with any of their Affairs, where he continued till she was lost in Topsail Inlet, and one Richards was appointed Captain in his Room. The Major now saw his Folly, but could not help himself, which made him Melancholy; he reflected upon his past Course of Life, and was confounded with Shame, when he thought upon what he had done: His Behaviour was taken Notice of by the other Pyrates, who liked him never the better for it; and he often declared to some of them, that he would gladly leave off that Way of Living, being fully tired of it; but he should be ashamed to see the Face of any English Man again; therefore if he could get to Spain or Portugal, where he might be undiscovered, he would spend the Remainder of his Days in either of those Countries, otherwise he must continue with them as long as he lived.

When Black-beard lost his Ship at Topsail Inlet, and surrendered to the King’s Proclamation, Bonnet reassumed the Command of his own Sloop, Revenge, goes directly away to Bath-Town in North-Carolina, surrenders likewise to the King’s Pardon, and receives a Certificate. The War was now broke out between the Tripple Allies and Spain; so Major Bonnet gets a Clearence for his Sloop at North-Carolina, to go to the Island of St. Thomas, with a Design (at least it was pretended so) to get the Emperor’s Commission, to go a Privateering upon the Spaniards. When Bonnet came back to Topsail Inlet, he found that Teach and his Gang were gone, and that they had taken all the Money, small Arms and Effects of Value out of the great Ship, and set ashore on a small sandy Island above a League from the Main, seventeen Men, no doubt with a Design they should perish, there being no Inhabitant, or Provisions to subsist withal, nor any Boat or Materials to build or make any kind of Launch or Vessel, to escape from that desolate Place:They remained there two Nights and one Day, without Subsistance, or the least Prospect of any, expecting nothing else but a lingering Death; when to their inexpressable Comfort, they saw Redemption at Hand; for Major Bonnet happening to get Intelligence of their being there, by two of the Pyrates who had escaped Teach’s Cruelty, and had got to a poor little Village at the upper End of the Harbour, sent his Boat to make Discovery of the Truth of the Matter, which the poor Wretches seeing, made a signal to them, and they were all brought on Board Bonnet’s Sloop.

Major Bonnet told all his Company, that he would take a Commission to go against the Spaniards, and to that End, was going to St. Thomas’s therefore if they would go with him, they should be welcome; whereupon they all consented, but as the Sloop was preparing t...