The Golden Age of Piracy

The Truth Behind Pirate Myths

Benerson Little

• Publisher: Skyhorse
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781510713024
• eBook ISBN: 9781510713048
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

For thousands of years, pirates have terrorized the ocean voyager and the coastal inhabitant, plundered ship and shore, and wrought havoc on the lives and livelihoods of rich and poor alike. Around these desperate men has grown a body of myths and legends—fascinating tales that today strongly influence our notions of pirates and piracy. Most of these myths derive from the pirates of the "Golden Age, " from roughly 1655 to 1725. This was the age of the Spanish Main, of Henry Morgan and Blackbeard, of Bartholomew Sharp and Bartholomew Roberts.The history of pirate myth is rich in action, at sea and ashore. However, the truth is far more interesting. In The Golden Age of Piracy, expert pirate historian Benerson Little debunks more than a dozen pirate myths that derive from this era—from the flying of the Jolly Roger to the burying of treasure, from walking the plank to the staging of epic sea battles—and shows that the truth is far more fascinating and disturbing than the romanticized legends.Among Little's revelations are that pirates of the Golden Age never made their captives walk the plank and that they, instead, were subject to horrendous torture, such as being burned or hung by their arms. Likewise, epic sea battles involving pirates were fairly rare because most prey surrendered immediately.The stories are real and are drawn heavily from primary sources. Complementing them are colorful images of flags, ships, and buccaneers based on eyewitness accounts.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

PART I

“For Some Body Must Be Beaten”—Pirate Violence

CHAPTER 1

Death’s Head and Marrow Bones

“There are no Men of War belonging to this River; nay, there’s no Vessel but mine, no variety of Ensigns or Colours. Deaths Head and Marrow Bones, is the only Flag in a Sable Field.” 1

—A Pacquet from Parnassus, 1715

The pirates—and they were pirates, even if they pretended otherwise—knew they could not wait forever. It was nearly too late, almost three hours past midnight. In a couple hours more, the sun would begin to rise and with it the local population. Worse, the sun would be in the filibusters’ eyes, making it more difficult to make their way ahead even as it became easier for them to be seen from shore. And if they were spotted this soon, they would have no chance to plunder the countryside of desperately needed provisions or to capture prisoners to guide their way and serve as hostages.

Indecisively they had waited in their several canoes, and much too long, these men who usually knew when it was wise to hesitate and when it was wise to seize the moment. They were seventy in all, nearly all of European extraction, mostly French, but for the half-dozen Africans. Far behind them lay their ship, a small Dutch-built pink or small flute known by the Spanish as an urqueta, named La Chavale (La Cavalle, the Mare), formerly known as the Saint-Nicolas of Vlissingen, with just enough men aboard to manage the sails. Immediately ahead lay waves breaking all across the river bar. It was a dangerous crossing even in the best of circumstances, and these men in their small, low-sided dugout canoes had to do so in the darkness of the early morn of December 4, 1688.2

They had been long from home, rapaciously cruising a part of the Spanish Main only rarely touched by the pirates of the Caribbean. Strictly speaking, these indomitable intruders were filibusters—the French equivalent of the English buccaneers, men who sailed under their own rules and drifted among legitimate privateering, outright piracy, and the murky area in between. From the Caribbean these sea thieves had sailed in July 1686, in their small vessel of one hundred tons and six guns, having first barely escaped capture at Samana Bay, Hispaniola, in late June by the HMS Falcon and HMS Drake, a pair of English men-of-war that pounded their thirty-six gun intended consort, the Golden Fleece. Commanded by Joseph Banister, an indebted sea captain who turned bold pirate (he made a daring escape under the guns of Port Royal by night in January 1685, receiving only three shots in his hull), their consort was so badly damaged that her captain burned her, then, along with a few of his crew, set sail with these Frenchmen.3

Soon they captured a small Spanish bark. Banister and his men parted company aboard the prize and cruised to the Mosquito Coast, only to be soon captured and delivered to Port Royal in a striking manner by the captain and crew of the HMS Drake. As the governor of Jamaica put it, “Captain Spragge returned to Port Royal, having succeeded in the task that I assigned to him, with Captain Banister and three of his consorts hanging at his yard-arm, a spectacle of great satisfaction to all good people and of terror to the favourers of pirates, the manner of his punishment being that which will most discourage others, which was the reason why I empowered Captain Spragge to inflict it.”4

From Hispaniola the French pirates sailed to New York and then toward Brazil and Africa, where just south of the equator they barely escaped alive from a fight with an English East Indiaman of fifty to sixty guns that battered them mercilessly, leaving many pirates dead and most of them wounded. On the coast of Africa, the pirates repaired their ship and tended their wounded. Soon after, they sailed first to the coast of Brazil, then south to the Strait of Magellan and into the South Sea.

Who commanded them has been the subject of some speculation, and, as we will discover, his identity might possibly give us some insight into pirate flags. To the Spaniards in the South Sea, he was generally known as a Dutchman or Fleming, possibly a Frenchman, named Francisco Franco.5 This is surely the Hispanicization of the Dutch Frans Franco or the French Francis François. However, there are no other records of a filibuster by this name.

It might therefore be tempting to hope it was the veteran filibuster Pierre Lagarde, who had spent three years as the quartermaster of the famous Sieur de Grammont aboard the Hardy, formerly the Saint Nicolas, the ship of the famous Nicolas Van Horn, who fought a duel with the even more famous Laurens de Graff. After all, Lagarde and Banister, whose ship was destroyed at Samana, had been together at Île-à-Vache not two months before these French pirates arrived at Samana. Lagarde, commanding his “fregattela”—little frigate—named La Subtile, was also at Île-à-Vache a few months before that, hoping to sail to the South Sea and join Frenchmen already there. Unfortunately, Lagarde was giving a deposition in Martinique in January 1687 at the same time the French pirates were en route from Newfoundland to Brazil.6

To discover who Franco might really have been, we begin by taking a close look at the highly detailed journal of the voyage. From the handwriting it is clear that François Massertie, a Frenchman, was the author, although he identifies himself as such only very late in the voyage. Could he have been the captain? Francisco Franco could be a double wordplay on François. However, if Massertie were the captain, he only commanded after the original captain and a few of the crew departed on their own in a captured barque. This man, who doubtless commanded at Acaponeta, was very likely deposed by vote of the crew, and, rather than serve in a common capacity, chose to set sail on his own, along with eight of his most loyal followers—quite a bold act for nine men to set out sea roving in a small vessel in a Spanish ocean.7

So who else might have taken the nom de guerre of Francisco Franco? François Le Sage (or Lesage) is a likely candidate. He was yet another famous Dutch filibuster. Two years earlier he tried to sail into the South Sea, as the Pacific was then commonly known, but was turned back by weather and raided slave ships on the Guinea Coast of Africa instead. However, the ruthless Le Sage was apparently not in command of the South Sea voyage, for he is believed to have been in the service of the Compagnie de l’Orient at the time.8 Nonetheless, part of his crew may have desired to attempt the South Sea again.

And there is indeed a connection to Le Sage: several French scholars believe the captain was the famous Michel Andresson, a Dutch or French filibuster commonly known as “Captain Michel,” sailing under the false name of Guillaume Mimbrat after being accused of piracy. Governor Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy of Saint-Domingue had confiscated his ship, La Mutine, formerly the La Paz captured off Cartagena in 1683, and Andresson, along with many of his former crew, joined Le Sage on his attempt to sail into the South Sea. After capturing several Dutch prizes on the African coast, Andresson and his followers returned to the Caribbean aboard one of them. Buccaneers often used false names, and perhaps Andresson pretended to be Francisco Franco before he was turned out of office and set sail with eight followers, eventually crossing the Pacific and sailing into the South China Sea as far as Siam (Thailand).9

Andresson is an ideal candidate. A bold and experienced captain, he participated in the sack of Veracruz in 1683, was with Laurens de Graff when French filibusters under his command captured three Spanish ships sent to capture them off Cartagena in the same year, and a year later plundered two rich Dutch ships off Havana, Cuba. Such a captain would have been quite familiar with the conventions and tactics of buccaneers and filibusters, including their use of flags at sea and ashore.10

Under the command of Franco, whoever he was—but we will assume quite reasonably that he was the famous Michel Andresson—these dangerous men licked their wounds, then sailed around Cape Horn and into the South Sea. North they now cruised, sometimes plundering, sometimes escaping by the skin of their teeth from the valiant crews of Spanish men-of-war, as far as La Paz in the Gulf of California, where they made a winter base and translated its name as Port de Paix (Port of Peace), perhaps also after the French port of the same name on the northern shore of Hispaniola across from the island of Tortuga.

And now they lay before the breakers on the shallow bar before the Acaponeta River, almost two hundred miles south of the Gulf of California on the Mexican coast. Some of the filibusters were probably seasick and dry heaving over the gunwales of the canoes, for nothing compares to a small boat or canoe in a swell to cause this illness—and even seamen of this era were known to get seasick at times, especially in small boats adrift in a short, choppy sea.11 Given the breakers and the coming dawn, Captain Franco could not wait forever. Or as Massertie put it, “Where there is the necessity, there is never too much risk!”12

Franco gave the order, and with the word of command passed from canoe to canoe, the filibusters put their backs into their oars or paddles—canoes used by pirates and other Anglo-Europeans were usually rowed, not paddled, unless they were very small—and stroked toward the bar, aiming for areas where the white foam of breaking waves did not show. Of course, it is often impossible to know on a dark night when a wave might break upon you, until it actually does. The filibusters’ arms would have been lashed inside the canoes, and their cartridge boxes well waxed to help waterproof them.13

But the pirate gods, whoever they were—Castor and Pollux, the Gemini Twins, some said, because they had been pirates, although others said they were the gods of pirate hunters because they had hunted pirates—were on their side.14 This attack would not fail as it had a year before. One canoe touched the bar, but was spared capsizing. No men were lost. Once safely past the bar, the filibusters rowed into the lagoon at the mouth of the river and made camp on a small island. The next night they rowed quietly up the river until they found the main road to Acaponeta. Quietly they went ashore, then marched, all seventy of them, for another hour, then slept until an hour before dawn.

Their arms at the ready, they marched forward, knowing well that soon the alarm would be given. At a small house in the darkness they kidnapped a man and forced him to be their guide. A troop of Spanish cavalry rode quickly by, just missing them. It made so much noise that the filibusters could not have missed hearing them coming. Onward they marched and seized a small town with no resistance. The pirates took the mayor, the wife of the chief captain, and all of the priests captive.

The next morning they marched to Acaponeta, which lay on the road from Mexico City in the south to New Mexico in the north. The countryside was alarmed: this would be no picnic. In a ragged line the filibusters surged up the road, their prisoners and stores at the center. The path led across a hot, dusty, arid region whose dull flatness was relieved by adobe houses; by palm, guava, and banana trees; and by fields of grasses, low bushes, and cassava plants. Gnats and mosquitoes swarmed around the filibusters as they strode, long-barreled buccaneer muskets in hand.

By midday, three or four hundred armed Spaniards, all mounted, lay nervously in wait behind a nearby hill, perhaps more nervously than the filibusters as they had lain in wait before the breakers at the mouth of the river. A year ago they had repulsed thirty filibusters as they tried to come ashore. But today there were seventy and they were already ashore. It would not be easy to force them back, and Franco knew what he was doing. But the Spanish had tricks up their sleeves as well. Their plan was simple: hundreds of Native Americans lay in wait along the road, and when they ambushed the pirates, the cavalry would charge while the pirates were distracted. The pirates would be cut to pieces.

But the filibusters were not fools. They knew the Native Americans were there, and it was time to send them a message. The pirates furled the white banner of France they marched under, and in its place they raised high a “red flag with a death’s head at the center and two crossed bones below the head, in white, in the middle of the red.”15

The flag meant they would give no quarter.

At Franco’s order, the pirates fired musket volleys into the grasses where the Native Americans, who had been given a cow to slaughter and eau de vie to drink as encouragement to fight, lay hiding. The hot lead balls, whizzing by ears, cutting leaves, and killing and wounding warriors, scattered the Spanish allies. Hearing the fusillade, the mounted Spanish soldiery dashed to the road in a cloud of dust, expecting that the filibusters had been attacked by surprise—but when they realized their error they reined up and retreated, keeping their distance.

The rest of the attack was anticlimactic. The Spanish cavalry, most of it probably composed of poorly trained and armed militia and volunteers, chose discretion over battlefield valor. Captain Franco led his men into Acaponeta unmolested and held it to ransom, using hostages, including the governor, as a means of additional persuasion. The Spaniards promised them...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Preface: Imagining Pirates and Piracy
• Prologue: The Image of the Pirate
• Part I: “For Some Body Must Be Beaten”—Pirate Violence
• Part II: “The Custom of the Coast”—Pirate Society
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Endnotes
• Index
• Photo Insert