Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates

Robert C. Ritchie

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 1989
• ISBN:
  9780674266711
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Primordi della storia moderna

The legends that die hardest are those of the romantic outlaw, and those of swashbuckling pirates are surely among the most durable. Swift ships, snug inns, treasures buried by torchlight, palm-fringed beaches, fabulous riches, and, most of all, freedom from the mean life of the laboring man are the stuff of this tradition reinforced by many a novel and film.It is disconcerting to think of such dashing scoundrels as slaves to economic forces, but so they were—as Robert Ritchie demonstrates in this lively history of piracy. He focuses on the shadowy figure of William Kidd, whose career in the late seventeenth century swept him from the Caribbean to New York, to London, to the Indian Ocean before he ended in Newgate prison and on the gallows. Piracy in those days was encouraged by governments that could not afford to maintain a navy in peacetime. Kidd's most famous voyage was sponsored by some of the most powerful men in England, and even though such patronage granted him extraordinary privileges, it tied him to the political fortunes of the mighty Whig leaders. When their influence waned, the opposition seized upon Kidd as a weapon. Previously sympathetic merchants and shipowners did an about-face too and joined the navy in hunting down Kidd and other pirates.By the early eighteenth century, pirates were on their way to becoming anachronisms. Ritchie's wide-ranging research has probed this shift in the context of actual voyages, sea fights, and adventures ashore. What sort of men became pirates in the first place, and why did they choose such an occupation? What was life like aboard a pirate ship? How many pirates actually became wealthy? How were they governed? What large forces really caused their downfall?As the saga of the buccaneers unfolds, we see the impact of early modern life: social changes and Anglo-American politics, the English judicial system, colonial empires, rising capitalism, and the maturing bureaucratic state are all interwoven in the story. Best of all, Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates is an epic of adventure on the high seas and a tale of back-room politics on land that captures the mind and the imagination.

ONE

The Sea Peoples

During the winter and spring of 1701 gaunt crosstrees dangling rotted bodies studded the banks of the River Thames. Each blackened corpse attested to one more pirate who had fallen into the clutches of the High Court of Admiralty. Past this grisly scene teemed the traffic of the great river: colliers from Newcastle, red-sailed Thames luggers, broad-beamed Indiamen struggling to complete their long and arduous voyages, hosts of weather-beaten snows, pinks, brigantines, and other craft that carried the trade of England’s growing empire. Their crews could hardly fail to see the gruesome exhibits at the margins of the river, and the sailors no doubt made uneasy jokes about the local “bird food,” or tried to ward off the evil eye, or muttered “There but for the grace of God…”

The Lords of the Admiralty had mounted the horrible display to remind sailors of the consequences of signing on as a pirate, and to comfort and reassure the merchant community of London, which was alarmed at the frightening surge of piracy in the Americas, Africa, and Asia. After such a sight no one could doubt the determination of the government to remove robbers from the sea-lanes and allow commerce to flow unimpeded, bringing wealth to merchants and revenue to the state. Most of the dead were Frenchmen from the crew of Captain Louis Guittar, whose ironically named ship, La Paix, had been taken off the coast of Virginia after a long fight with the Shoreham, a navy patrol ship.¹ The captain and twenty-three of his men had been “pushed off” (hanged) in one day, a spectacle that drew a particularly large crowd. Afterward four corpses, including that of Guittar, were strung along the Thames bank.

Toward the end of May another group of bodies washed back and forth in the tides, and while most of the corpses were those of simple seamen whose lives went unnoticed outside the records of the High Court of Admiralty, the exception was Captain William Kidd, whose body decorated Tilbury Point. Kidd’s reputation was enhanced at the time of his hanging by two pamphlets known as broadsheets, which gave an account of his dying moments, and a ballad celebrating his career.² This publicity fed a public that doted on scandalous lives, particularly those that ended in some gruesome way. Kidd was already renowned in London (somewhat unjustifiably) as a ferocious pirate, and his name even today is a byword for piracy. He represents the heroic age of buccaneering so beloved in popular culture.

William Kidd is also a transitional figure. The very success and geographic expansion of piracy in the seventeenth century could not continue in an era of thriving imperial trade. The roistering buccaneer did not suit the hard-headed merchants and imperial bureaucrats, whose musty world of balance sheets and reports came into violent conflict with that of the pirates. Eventually the imperial powers would reform their methods of handling piracy and create new means of suppression. Not that piracy was wiped out, but the large groups of European deep-sea marauders ceased to exist. The means created to achieve this task would be useful later as the European powers, particularly the English, expanded their empires. Kidd’s misdeeds helped to bring about the new policy; thus his life represents a turning point in the history of empire as well as in the history of piracy.

Ever since the waterways and seas of the world have been used for transport, there have been sea robbers ready to emulate their land-bound colleagues. There have always been those who relied on the seas to provide for their needs and who took the ocean’s bounty to include those goods brought to their doorstep; whether these came by shipwreck or by seizure mattered very little. Until recent times shipping was expensive and used only when necessary, so almost anything shipped by sea was either a luxury item or a desperately needed staple. Ships hugged the shoreline and rarely ventured into deep waters; if they did, it was for the shortest distances possible. They moved slowly from promontory to promontory, keeping a constant lookout. Every twist and turn of the coast could hide a marauding vessel waiting for the unwary or the ill prepared. A sudden flash of oars, blood-curdling shouts, a shower of projectiles, the crash of hulls were a prelude to surrender or bloody fighting. Prisoners were kept only if needed as slaves or for ransom; if they were unfortunate enough to fit neither category, they were killed. Life in general was nasty, short, and brutish; it was more so on the seas. The merchant ships were not always paragons of virtue either. They too were prepared to plunder any vessel that appeared to be weak, in distress, or in any way an easy target. A profit was a profit, no matter how it was earned.

Now and then a community decided that piracy provided a more profitable living than anything else available. It then made certain that its ships were faster and its men better armed than those of the potential opposition. Such communities created zones of great danger, best avoided by all but the most powerful. If they happened to be located near an important strait, such as Hormuz, Malacca, or Gibraltar, safe passage was achieved only via a strong ship or payment of a “fee.” Sometimes the sea peoples were unsatisfied with control of local waters. Fast ships and fighting men could be used against stationary targets; any port, town, or village might become a tempting prize. Even though wealth was transported by sea, it was accumulated in the homes and warehouses of merchants and officials, and in these communities each and every person was a potential slave. The sea peoples terrorized all those on or close to the sea.

From time immemorial the Mediterranean Sea has suffered every kind of pirate community. Its narrow waters have carried goods of all kinds between Asia and Europe, and the large populations living on its shores have generated a substantial amount of trade. Nothing traveled with much certainty—particularly after 1200 B.C., when there was a general breakdown of order. Then, as Tritsch writes, “harsh-voiced and sullen-faced [men who] loved the groans and violence of war” rose to scour the sea and act as “sackers of cities.” These men were immortalized by the Greek epic poets, who recorded their pirate deeds against a backdrop of contending gods and goddesses who furthered the goals of their special heroes while expressing malevolent displeasure with those favored by their enemies. So common was piracy to the Greeks that Aristotle and Thucydides spoke of it as a reasonable career, and Herodotus began his history of the Persian wars with an act of piracy.³ Many peoples around the Mediterranean basin practiced piracy, but the Greeks made it the stuff of legend.

As trade and commerce flourished, so did the corsairs; the checks on them were few, and some were emboldened to terrorize large areas. The Samians had a large fleet and ferocious mariners, with which they controlled the balance of power among the Greek trading leagues. Their chief goal was to ensure that no league could grow strong enough to threaten their activities.⁴

The most famous pirate league of ancient history was that of Cilicia. Its members inhabited the coastline of southern Anatolia, where the rugged interior sheltered them from land attacks. By the middle of the last century B.C. the Cilicians had a fleet of some thousand ships that roamed the Mediterranean. They defeated a Roman fleet and plundered Syracuse; Ostia, Rome’s own port, fell to them; two purple-robed praetors and their retinue were kidnapped while traveling on a coastal road; even the Roman legions risked dangerous winter voyages rather than face them. Mithradites and other enemies of Rome sought them out as allies. Scarcely a fishing boat, village, merchantman, or seashore path was free from their attacks. Even the young Julius Caesar fell victim to them, but he paid his ransom and later returned to take their goods and crucify them.

By 69 B.C. Ostia and Delos were looted; the grain ships from Africa were diverted, threatening Rome with starvation; other trade was at a standstill; and Roman politicians were on their feet demanding action. The result was the much feared revival of the powerful office of tribune and the appointment of the ambitious Pompey to fill the post of proconsul. Two years later Pompey had marshaled 270 ships, which roamed the Mediterranean seeking out the Cilicians. After securing the western end, with sixty selected ships he turned to Cilicia itself and crushed the home bases there. Subsequently the Romans built small outposts to protect shipping: each contained docks to shelter one or two galleys, and housing for the sailors and soldiers who manned them while patrolling local waters. The Pax Romana reigned at sea.⁵ As long as Roman power was in the ascendant, piracy was kept under control; but as Rome declined, a wise captain regarded every other ship with deep suspicion as, once more, fast ships went to sea filled with hard-eyed men.

After the passing of the Roman hegemony in the fifth century the corsairs again flourished in the Mediterranean, and the unbridled, widespread piracy that was the norm elsewhere prevailed. Some of the pirate groups of the time have an established place in sea lore. The Vikings, for instance, plundered trading vessels, towns, and religious houses with equal fervor. Anyone within reach of their ships feared the end of winter because it brought a surge of men in long ships seeking land and plunder. While the Vikings were the most famous pirates of the Middle Ages, they were not the only ones. The English, the French, the Dutch, the Irish, the Muslims, and the Basques were notable hunters upon the seas. They did not range as far afield as the Vikings, but they threatened any traveler from Cape Finisterre in Spain to the North Sea approaches of the English Channel.⁶

A similar threat hung over any passage in the world where shipping congregated. The sea routes between East and West were always dangerous. Between India and the Middle East were two bottlenecks: the strait of Babs-al-Mandab between the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, and the strait of Hormuz between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. In these straits, or the approaches to them, lurked constant danger. Through the Babs-al-Mandab went ships bound for Egypt and, after the expansion of Mohammedanism, pilgrim fleets sailed cautiously from as far away as Southeast Asia to the port of Jidda, the last stop before Mecca. These fleets, along with a great variety of trade goods, carried thousands of the faithful, loaded with money to pay for their travel. They made a tempting target.⁷ And the strait of Hormuz was an enormous funnel for the rich East-West trade from India to Persia.

Farther east lay similar stretches of treacherous waters. The Malabar coast of India was frequented by pirates ready to intercept trade as it followed the coast northward. Still farther east, in the strait of Malacca, only the brave and the foolish failed to keep watch. The Malays and the Sumatrans controlled the Indian Ocean side of the strait, and the Dyaks and Arrakans harassed those who ventured on the eastern approaches. In fact, if a vessel started a voyage in Japan bound for Persia, it could only feel safe in midocean; but because the trade routes hugged the coast, there were few locations where a captain could feel secure.

The traditional sea peoples threatened every trade artery from ancient times on. The names might change, the ships might change—but there were always those who waited for the unwary. As trade prospered, the numbers of these peoples grew; as it declined, so did they. Only occasionally, when they became too troublesome or overbearing, were they threatened by the land-based states. Pompey and the Roman assault on the Cilicians is one of several examples. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) the central government of China became alarmed by the increasing toll taken over a larger and larger area of the coast and inland waterways by the Wo-k’ou (Chinese and Japanese pirates operating off China’s coasts). It mustered its resources to crush the marauders and alleviate the conditions that caused their increase. As a result, piracy reverted to a more localized if still persistent condition.⁸ Venice at its height as a trading power suffered many raids by the Uzkoks. Eventually the government organized sufficient military and diplomatic support to isolate the Uzkoks, invade their base at Segna, and prevent them from terrorizing the Adriatic.⁹

Premodern states had to be deeply aroused before initiating such actions. Except for Venice, the major states were oriented to domination of land areas. For land and people created the wealth transported by sea, and societies were organized around the control of these resources. Military castes, whether knights or samurai, won glory and acquired social position in land battles. Deeds at sea counted for little.¹⁰ Fighting ships also cost a great deal to build and maintain; creation of a navy resulted in exorbitant financial burdens. Rulers who did not prize control of the seas felt little need to indemnify themselves in this way. In fact, they frequently used pirate ships if they needed fighting vessels or transport for their armies. Even England used “unofficial” fleets before the creation of its modern navy.¹¹ Thus the sea people flourished and declined, cooperated with or attacked, the landed empires and states in a never-ending cycle. Then in the fifteenth century the situation changed dramatically. New states, bent on control of the seas, emerged in Europe and their rise also brought a new group of pirates to the coastlines of the world.

By the fifteenth century a variety of new shipping and navigation technologies allowed the mariners of Europe to sail farther and farther away from the coast with a high degree of certainty in retracing their route. The world opened to them, and the lengthy process of European expansion began. It was accompanied by new forms of piracy. To the rest of the world the nuances of this evolution mattered little, for all Europeans came to their shores as pirates. Witness the early career of the Portuguese, who were attracted to Asia by the spices, drugs, jewels, and exotic cloth of the East. When Vasco da Gama sailed into the Indian Ocean in 1498, he confronted an ancient trade network controlled by established merchant communities. Undaunted, da Gama attacked merchantmen, pilgrim ships, and rice carriers with equal ferocity. Sailors were mutilated and men, women, and children were burned to death with their ships.¹² This savagery was initiated by the Portuguese, and the Europeans who followed them simply adopted their techniques. Such outrageous behavior was not unknown in Europe; however, a growing web of international agreements tried to restrict atrocities to wartime.¹³ These understandings were limited to European waters, and the Christians of western Europe never applied them to the Muslims who controlled much of the trade of the Indian subcontinent and the Spice Islands.

The Portuguese had their reasons. The wealthy societies of Asia had very little need for European goods such as heavy wool, olive oil, and minerals. If they wanted Asian commodities, the Portuguese had to either steal them, which in the long run was self-defeating, or pay for them with gold and silver—unthinkable as a permanent policy. The solution, developed by the Portuguese and emulated by those who followed them, was to dominate the local or native trade routes. To that end they seized ports such as Goa, Cochin, Hormuz, and Malacca. The trade between these ports, notably in Indian cloth that was exchanged in Malacca for spices, came under their control or was carried on only after duties were paid to them. The wealth generated by such trade and fees could be used to offset the chronic imbalance of payments in the East. All of the other European powers adopted similar schemes in Asia, the most odious of which was the opium trade utilized by the English to acquire an income in China.¹⁴

The great Asian empires were unable to forestall the Portuguese onslaught. By 1543 Portuguese ships had swept around Southeast Asia to make contact with China and finally Japan. Wherever they went, they attacked local shipping while negotiating concessions. Pugnacity, greed, a crusading spirit, an...