THE BUCCANEERS TURN PIRATE
On 25th May 1682, Sir Thomas
Lynch returned to Jamaica as
governor of the colony.424
Of the four acting governors since
1671, Lynch stood apart as the one
who had endeavoured with singleness
and tenacity of purpose to clear
away the evils of buccaneering. Lord
Vaughan had displayed little
sympathy for the corsairs, but he
was hampered by an irascible temper,
and according to some reports by an
avarice which dimmed the lustre of
his name. The Earl of Carlisle, if
he did not directly encourage the
freebooters, had been grossly
negligent in the performance of his
duty of suppressing them; while
Morgan, although in the years 1680
and 1681 he showed himself very
zealous in punishing his old
associates, cannot escape the
suspicion of having secretly aided
them under the governorship of Lord
Vaughan. The task of Sir Thomas
Lynch in 1671 had been a very
difficult one. Buccaneering was then
at flood-tide; three wealthy Spanish
cities on the mainland had in turn
been plundered, and the stolen
riches carried to Jamaica; the air
was alive with the exploits of these
irregular warriors, and the pockets
of the merchants and tavern-keepers
of Port Royal were filled with
Spanish doubloons, with emeralds and
pearls from New Granada and the
coasts of Rio de la Hacha, and with
gold and silver plate from the
Spanish churches and cathedrals of
Porto Bello and Panama. The old
governor, Sir Thomas Modyford, had
been popular in his person, and his
policy had been more popular still.
Yet Lynch, by a combination of tact
and firmness, and by an untiring
activity with the small means at his
disposal, had inaugurated a new and
revolutionary policy in the island,
which it was the duty of his
successors merely to continue. In
1682 the problem before him,
although difficult, was much
simpler. Buccaneering was now
rapidly being transformed into pure
piracy. By laws and repeated
proclamations, the freebooters had
been offered an opportunity of
returning to civilized pursuits, or
of remaining ever thereafter
outlawed. Many had come in, some to
remain, others to take the first
opportunity of escaping again. But
many entirely refused to obey the
summons, trusting to the protection
of the French in Hispaniola, or so
hardened to their cruel, remorseless
mode of livelihood that they
preferred the dangerous risks of
outlawry. The temper of the
inhabitants of the island, too, had
changed. The planters saw more
clearly the social and economic
evils which the buccaneers had
brought upon the island. The
presence of these freebooters, they
now began to realize, had
discouraged planting, frightened
away capital, reduced the number of
labourers, and increased
drunkenness, debauchery and every
sort of moral disorder. The assembly
and council were now at one with the
governor as to the necessity of
curing this running sore, and Lynch
could act with the assurance which
came of the knowledge that he was
backed by the conscience of his
people.
One of the earliest and most
remarkable cases of buccaneer
turning pirate was that of "La
Trompeuse." In June 1682, before
Governor Lynch's arrival in Jamaica,
a French captain named Peter Paine
(or Le Pain), commander of a
merchant ship called "La Trompeuse"
belonging to the French King, came
to Port Royal from Cayenne in
Guiana. He told Sir Henry Morgan and
the council that, having heard of
the inhuman treatment of his fellow Protestants
in France, he had resolved to send
back his ship and pay what was due
under his contract; and he
petitioned for leave to reside with
the English and have English
protection. The Council, without
much inquiry as to the petitioner's
antecedents, allowed him to take the
oath of allegiance and settle at St.
Jago, while his cargo was unloaded
and entered customs-free. The ship
was then hired by two Jamaican
merchants and sent to Honduras to
load logwood, with orders to sail
eventually for Hamburg and be
delivered to the French agent.425
The action of the Council had been
very hasty and ill-considered, and
as it turned out, led to endless
trouble. It soon transpired that
Paine did not own the cargo, but had
run away with it from Cayenne, and
had disposed of both ship and goods
in his own interest. The French
ambassador in London made complaints
to the English King, and letters
were sent out to Sir Thomas Lynch
and to Governor Stapleton of the
Leeward Isles to arrest Paine and
endeavour to have the vessel lade
only for her right owners.426
Meanwhile a French pirate named Jean
Hamlin, with 120 desperadoes at his
back, set out in a sloop in pursuit
of "La Trompeuse," and coming up
with her invited the master and mate
aboard his own vessel, and then
seized the ship. Carrying the prize
to some creek or bay to careen her
and fit her up as a man-of-war, he
then started out on a mad piratical
cruise, took sixteen or eighteen
Jamaican vessels, barbarously
ill-treated the crews, and
demoralized the whole trade of the
island.427
Captain Johnson was dispatched by
Lynch in a frigate in October 1682
to find and destroy the pirate; but
after a fruitless search of two
months round Porto Rico and
Hispaniola, he returned to Port Royal. In December
Lynch learned that "La Trompeuse"
was careening in the neighbourhood
of the Isle la Vache, and sent out
another frigate, the "Guernsey," to
seize her; but the wary pirate had
in the meantime sailed away. On 15th
February the "Guernsey" was again
dispatched with positive orders not
to stir from the coast of Hispaniola
until the pirate was gone or
destroyed; and Coxon, who seems to
have been in good odour at Port
Royal, was sent to offer to a
privateer named "Yankey," men,
victuals, pardon and naturalization,
besides £200 in money for himself
and Coxon, if he would go after "La
Trompeuse."428
The next news of Hamlin was from the
Virgin Islands, where he was
received and entertained by the
Governor of St. Thomas, a small
island belonging to the King of
Denmark.429
Making St. Thomas his headquarters,
he robbed several English vessels
that came into his way, and after
first obtaining from the Danish
governor a promise that he would
find shelter at St. Thomas on his
return, stood across for the Gulf of
Guinea. In May 1683 Hamlin arrived
on the west side of Africa disguised
as an English man-of-war, and
sailing up and down the coast of
Sierra Leone captured or destroyed
within several weeks seventeen
ships, Dutch and English, robbing
them of gold-dust and negroes.430
The pirates then quarrelled over the
division of their plunder and
separated into two companies, most
of the English following a Captain
Morgan in one of the prizes, and the
rest returning in "La Trompeuse" to
the West Indies. The latter arrived
at Dominica in July, where forty of
the crew deserted the ship, leaving
but sixteen white men and twenty-two
negroes on board. Finally on the
27th the pirates dropped anchor at
St. Thomas. They were admitted and
kindly received by the governor, and
allowed to bring their plunder
ashore.431 Three days later
Captain Carlile of H.M.S. "Francis,"
who had been sent out by Governor
Stapleton to hunt for pirates,
sailed into the harbour, and on
being assured by the pilot and by an
English sloop lying at anchor there
that the ship before him was the
pirate "La Trompeuse," in the night
of the following day he set her on
fire and blew her up. Hamlin and
some of the crew were on board, but
after firing a few shots, escaped to
the shore. The pirate ship carried
thirty-two guns, and if she had not
been under-manned Carlile might have
encountered a formidable resistance.
The Governor of St. Thomas sent a
note of protest to Carlile for
having, as he said, secretly set
fire to a frigate which had been
confiscated to the King of Denmark.432
Nevertheless he sent Hamlin and his
men for safety in a boat to another
part of the island, and later
selling him a sloop, let him sail
away to join the French buccaneers
in Hispaniola.433
The Danish governor of St.
Thomas, whose name was Adolf Esmit,
had formerly been himself a
privateer, and had used his
popularity on the island to eject
from authority his brother Nicholas
Esmit, the lawful governor. By
protecting and encouraging
pirates—for a consideration, of
course—he proved a bad neighbour to
the surrounding English islands.
Although he had but 300 or 350
people on St. Thomas, and most of
these British subjects, he laid
claim to all the Virgin Islands,
harboured runaway servants, seamen
and debtors, fitted out pirate
vessels with arms and provisions,
and refused to restore captured
ships and crews which the pirates
brought into his port.434
The King of Denmark had sent out a
new governor, named Everson, to
dispossess Esmit, but he did not
arrive in the West Indies until
October 1684, when with the
assistance of an armed sloop which
Sir William Stapleton had been
ordered by the English Council to
lend him, he took possession of St.
Thomas and its pirate governor.435
A second difficulty encountered
by Sir Thomas Lynch, in the first
year of his return, was the
privateering activity of Robert
Clarke, Governor of New Providence,
one of the Bahama Islands. Governor
Clarke, on the plea of retaliating
Spanish outrages, gave letters of
marque to several privateers,
including Coxon, the same famous
chief who in 1680 had led the
buccaneers into the South Seas.
Coxon carried his commission to
Jamaica and showed it to Governor
Lynch, who was greatly incensed and
wrote to Clarke a vigorous note of
reproof.436
To grant such letters of marque was,
of course, contrary to the Treaty of
Madrid, and by giving the pirates
only another excuse for their
actions, greatly complicated the
task of the Governor of Jamaica.
Lynch forwarded Coxon's commission
to England, where in August 1682 the
proprietors of the Bahama Islands
were ordered to attend the council
and answer for the misdeeds of their
governor.437
The proprietors, however, had
already acted on their own
initiative, for on 29th July they
issued instructions to a new
governor, Robert Lilburne, to arrest
Clarke and keep him in custody till
he should give security to answer
accusations in England, and to
recall all commissions against the
Spaniards.438
The whole trouble, it seems, had
arisen over the wreck of a Spanish
galleon in the Bahamas, to which
Spaniards from St. Augustine and
Havana were accustomed to resort to
fish for ingots of silver, and from
which they had been driven away by
the governor and inhabitants of New
Providence. The Spaniards had
retaliated by robbing vessels
sailing to and from the Bahamas,
whereupon Clarke, without
considering the illegality of his
action, had issued commissions of
war to privateers.
The Bahamas, however, were a
favourite resort for pirates and
other men of desperate character,
and Lilburne soon discovered that
his place was no sinecure. He found
it difficult moreover to refrain
from hostilities against a neighbour
who used every opportunity to harm
and plunder his colony. In March
1683, a former privateer named
Thomas Pain439
had entered into a conspiracy with
four other captains, who were then
fishing for silver at the wreck, to
seize St. Augustine in Florida. They
landed before the city under French
colours, but finding the Spaniards prepared for them, gave
up the project and looted some small
neighbouring settlements. On the
return of Pain and two others to New
Providence, Governor Lilburne tried
to apprehend them, but he failed for
lack of means to enforce his
authority. The Spaniards, however,
were not slow to take their revenge.
In the following January they sent
250 men from Havana, who in the
early morning surprised and
plundered the town and shipping at
New Providence, killed three men,
and carried away money and
provisions to the value of £14,000.440
When Lilburne in February sent to
ask the Governor of Havana whether
the plunderers had acted under his
orders, the Spaniard not only
acknowledged it but threatened
further hostilities against the
English settlement. Indeed, later in
the same year the Spaniards
returned, this time, it seems,
without a commission, and according
to report burnt all the houses,
murdered the governor in cold blood,
and carried many of the women,
children and negroes to Havana.441
About 200 of the inhabitants made
their way to Jamaica, and a number
of the men, thirsting for vengeance,
joined the English pirates in the
Carolinas.442
In French Hispaniola corsairing
had been forbidden for several
years, yet the French governor found
the problem of suppressing the evil
even more difficult than it was in
Jamaica. M. de Pouançay, the
successor of d'Ogeron, died toward
the end of 1682 or the beginning of
1683, and in spite of his efforts to
establish order in the colony he
left it in a deplorable condition.
The old fraternity of hunters or
cow-killers had almost disappeared;
but the corsairs and the planters
were strongly united, and galled by
the oppression of the West India
Company, displayed their strength in
a spirit of indocility which caused
great embarrassment to the governor.
Although in time of peace the freebooters
kept the French settlements in
continual danger of ruin by
reprisal, in time of war they were
the mainstay of the colony. As the
governor, therefore, was dependent
upon them for protection against the
English, Spanish and Dutch, although
he withdrew their commissions he
dared not punish them for their
crimes. The French buccaneers,
indeed, occupied a curious and
anomalous position. They were not
ordinary privateers, for they waged
war without authority; and they were
still less pirates, for they had
never been declared outlaws, and
they confined their attentions to
the Spaniards. They served under
conditions which they themselves
imposed, or which they deigned to
accept, and were always ready to
turn against the representatives of
authority if they believed they had
aught of which to complain.443
The buccaneers almost invariably
carried commissions from the
governors of French Hispaniola, but
they did not scruple to alter the
wording of their papers, so that a
permission to privateer for three
months was easily transformed into a
licence to plunder for three years.
These papers, moreover, were passed
about from one corsair to another,
until long after the occasion for
their issue had ceased to exist.
Thus in May or June of 1680, de
Grammont, on the strength of an old
commission granted him by de
Pouançay before the treaty of
Nimuegen, had made a brilliant night
assault upon La Guayra, the seaport
of Caracas. Of his 180 followers
only forty-seven took part in the
actual seizure of the town, which
was amply protected by two forts and
by cannon upon the walls. On the
following day, however, he received
word that 2000 men were approaching
from Caracas, and as the enemy were also rallying in
force in the vicinity of the town he
was compelled to retire to the
ships. This movement was executed
with difficulty, and for two hours
de Grammont with a handful of his
bravest companions covered the
embarkation from the assaults of the
Spaniards. Although he himself was
dangerously wounded in the throat,
he lost only eight or nine men in
the whole action. He carried away
with him the Governor of La Guayra
and many other prisoners, but the
booty was small. De Grammont retired
to the Isle d'Aves to nurse his
wound, and after a long
convalescence returned to Petit
Goave.444
In 1683, however, these
filibusters of Hispaniola carried
out a much larger design upon the
coasts of New Spain. In April of
that year eight buccaneer captains
made a rendezvous in the Gulf of
Honduras for the purpose of
attacking Vera Cruz. The leaders of
the party were two Dutchmen named
Vanhorn and Laurens de Graff. Of the
other six captains, three were
Dutch, one was French, and two were
English. Vanhorn himself had sailed
from England in the autumn of 1681
in command of a merchant ship called
the "Mary and Martha," alias
the "St. Nicholas." He soon,
however, revealed the rogue he was
by turning two of his merchants
ashore at Cadiz and stealing four
Spanish guns. He then sailed to the
Canaries and to the coast of Guinea,
plundering ships and stealing
negroes, and finally, in November
1682, arrived at the city of San
Domingo, where he tried to dispose
of his black cargo. From San Domingo
he made for Petit Goave picked up
300 men, and sailed to join Laurens
in the Gulf of Honduras.445
Laurens, too, had distinguished
himself but a short time before by
capturing a Spanish ship bound from
Havana for San Domingo and Porto
Rico with about 120,000 pieces of
eight to pay off the soldiers. The
freebooters had shared 700 pieces
of eight per man, and carrying their
prize to Petit Goave had compounded
with the French governor for a part
of the booty.446
The buccaneers assembled near
Cape Catoche to the number of about
1000 men, and sailed in the middle
of May for Vera Cruz. Learning from
some prisoners that the Spaniards on
shore were expecting two ships from
Caracas, they crowded the landing
party of about 800 upon two of their
vessels, displayed the Spanish
colours, and stood in for the city.
The unfortunate inhabitants mistook
them for their own people, and even
lighted fires to pilot them in. The
pirates landed at midnight on 17th
May about two miles from the town,
and by daybreak had possession of
the city and its forts. They found
the soldiers and sentinels asleep,
and "all the people in the houses as
quiet and still as if in their
graves." For four days they held the
place, plundering the churches,
houses and convents; and not finding
enough plate and jewels to meet
their expectations, they threatened
to burn the cathedral and all the
prisoners within it, unless a ransom
was brought in from the surrounding
country. The governor, Don Luis de
Cordova, was on the third day
discovered by an Englishman hidden
in the hay in a stable, and was
ransomed for 70,000 pieces of eight.
Meanwhile the Spanish Flota of
twelve or fourteen ships from Cadiz
had for two days been lying outside
the harbour and within sight of the
city; yet it did not venture to land
or to attack the empty buccaneer
vessels. The proximity of such an
armament, however, made the
freebooters uneasy, especially as
the Spanish viceroy was approaching
with an army from the direction of
Mexico. On the fourth day,
therefore, they sailed away in the
very face of the Flota to a
neighbouring cay, where they divided
the pillage into a thousand or more
shares of 800 pieces of eight each. Vanhorn alone is said
to have received thirty shares for
himself and his two ships. He and
Laurens, who had never been on good
terms, quarrelled and fought over
the division, and Vanhorn was
wounded in the wrist. The wound
seemed very slight, however, and he
proposed to return and attack the
Spanish fleet, offering to board the
"Admiral" himself; but Laurens
refused, and the buccaneers sailed
away, carrying with them over 1000
slaves. The invaders, according to
report, had lost but four men in the
action. About a fortnight later
Vanhorn died of gangrene in his
wound, and de Grammont, who was then
acting as his lieutenant, carried
his ship back to Petit Goave, where
Laurens and most of the other
captains had already arrived.447
The Mexican fleet, which returned
to Cadiz on 18th December, was only
half its usual size because of the
lack of a market after the visit of
the corsairs; and the Governor of
Vera Cruz was sentenced to lose his
head for his remissness in defending
the city.448
The Spanish ambassador in London,
Ronquillo, requested Charles II. to
command Sir Thomas Lynch to
co-operate with a commissioner whom
the Spanish Government was sending
to the West Indies to inquire into
this latest outrage of the
buccaneers, and such orders were
dispatched to Lynch in April 1684.449
M. de Cussy, who had been
appointed by the French King to succeed his
former colleague, de Pouançay,
arrived at Petit Goave in April
1684, and found the buccaneers on
the point of open revolt because of
the efforts of de Franquesnay, the
temporary governor, to enforce the
strict orders from France for their
suppression.450
De Cussy visited all parts of the
colony, and by tact, patience and
politic concessions succeeded in
restoring order. He knew that in
spite of the instructions from
France, so long as he was surrounded
by jealous neighbours, and so long
as the peace in Europe remained
precarious, the safety of French
Hispaniola depended on his retaining
the presence and good-will of the
sea-rovers; and when de Grammont and
several other captains demanded
commissions against the Spaniards,
the governor finally consented on
condition that they persuade all the
freebooters driven away by de
Franquesnay to return to the colony.
Two commissioners, named Begon and
St. Laurent, arrived in August 1684
to aid him in reforming this
dissolute society, but they soon
came to the same conclusions as the
governor, and sent a memoir to the
French King advising less severe
measures. The king did not agree
with their suggestion of compromise,
and de Cussy, compelled to deal
harshly with the buccaneers, found
his task by no means an easy one.451
Meanwhile, however, many of the
freebooters, seeing the determined
attitude of the established
authorities, decided to transfer
their activities to the Pacific
coasts of America, where they would
be safe from interference on the
part of the English or French
Governments. The expedition of
Harris, Coxon, Sharp and their
associates across the isthmus in
1680 had kindled the imaginations of
the buccaneers with the
possibilities of greater plunder and
adventure in these more distant
regions. Other parties, both English
and French, speedily followed in
their tracks, and after 1683 it
became the prevailing practice for
buccaneers to make an excursion into
the South Seas. The Darien Indians
and their fiercer neighbours, the
natives of the Mosquito Coast, who
were usually at enmity with the
Spaniards, allied themselves with
the freebooters, and the latter, in
their painful marches through the
dense tropical wilderness of these
regions, often owed it to the timely
aid and friendly offices of the
natives that they finally succeeded
in reaching their goal.
In the summer of 1685, a year
after the arrival of de Cussy in
Hispaniola, de Grammont and Laurens
de Graff united their forces again
at the Isle la Vache, and in spite
of the efforts of the governor to
persuade them to renounce their
project, sailed with 1100 men for
the coasts of Campeache. An attempt
on Merida was frustrated by the
Spaniards, but Campeache itself was
occupied after a feeble resistance,
and remained in possession of the
French for six weeks. After reducing
the city to ashes and blowing up the
fortress, the invaders retired to
Hispaniola.452
According to Charlevoix, before the
buccaneers sailed away they
celebrated the festival of St. Louis
by a huge bonfire in honour of the
king, in which they burnt logwood to
the value of 200,000 crowns,
representing the greater part of
their booty. The Spaniards of
Hispaniola, who kept up a constant
desultory warfare with their French neighbours, were
incited by the ravages of the
buccaneers in the South Seas, and by
the sack of Vera Cruz and Campeache,
to renewed hostilities; and de
Cussy, anxious to attach to himself
so enterprising and daring a leader
as de Grammont, obtained for him, in
September 1686, the commission of
"Lieutenant de Roi" of the coast of
San Domingo. Grammont, however, on
learning of his new honour, wished
to have a last fling at the
Spaniards before he settled down to
respectability. He armed a ship,
sailed away with 180 men, and was
never heard of again.453
At the same time Laurens de Graff
was given the title of "Major," and
he lived to take an active part in
the war against the English between
1689 and 1697.454
These semi-pirates, whom the
French governor dared not openly support yet
feared to disavow, were a constant
source of trouble to the Governor of
Jamaica. They did not scruple to
attack English traders and fishing
sloops, and when pursued took refuge
in Petit Goave, the port in the
cul-de-sac at the west end of
Hispaniola which had long been a
sanctuary of the freebooters, and
which paid little respect to the
authority of the royal governor.455
In Jamaica they believed that the
corsairs acted under regular
commissions from the French
authorities, and Sir Thomas Lynch
sent repeated complaints to de
Pouançay and to his successor. He
also wrote to England begging the
Council to ascertain from the French
ambassador whether these governors
had authority to issue commissions
of war, so that his frigates might
be able to distinguish between the
pirate and the lawful privateer.456
Except at Petit Goave, however,
the French were really desirous of
preserving peace with Jamaica, and
did what they could to satisfy the
demands of the English without
unduly irritating the buccaneers.
They were in the same position as
Lynch in 1671, who, while anxious to
do justice to the Spaniards, dared
not immediately alienate the
freebooters who plundered them, and
who might, if driven away, turn
their arms against Jamaica. Vanhorn
himself, it seems, when he left
Hispaniola to join Laurens in the
Gulf of Honduras, had been sent out
by de Pouançay really to pursue "La
Trompeuse" and other pirates, and
his lieutenant, de Grammont,
delivered letters to Governor Lynch
to that effect; but once out of
sight he steered directly for
Central America, where he
anticipated a more profitable game
than pirate-hunting.457
On the 24th of August 1684 Sir
Thomas Lynch died in Jamaica, and
Colonel Hender Molesworth, by virtue
of his commission as
lieutenant-governor, assumed the
authority.458
Sir Henry Morgan, who had remained
lieutenant-governor when Lynch
returned to Jamaica, had afterwards
been suspended from the council and
from all other public employments on
charges of drunkenness, disorder,
and encouraging disloyalty to the
government. His brother-in-law,
Byndloss, was dismissed for similar
reasons, and Roger Elletson, who
belonged to the same faction, was
removed from his office as
attorney-general of the island.
Lynch had had the support of both
the assembly and the council, and
his actions were at once confirmed in England.459
The governor, however, although he
had enjoyed the confidence of most
of the inhabitants, who looked upon
him as the saviour of the island,
left behind in the persons of
Morgan, Elletson and their
roystering companions, a group of
implacable enemies, who did all in
their power to vilify his memory to
the authorities in England. Several
of these men, with Elletson at their
head, accused the dead governor of
embezzling piratical goods which had
been confiscated to the use of the
king; but when inquiry was made by
Lieutenant-Governor Molesworth, the
charges fell to the ground.
Elletson's information was found to
be second-hand and defective, and
Lynch's name was more than
vindicated. Indeed, the governor at
his death had so little ready means
that his widow was compelled to
borrow £500 to pay for his funeral.460
The last years of Sir Thomas
Lynch's life had been troublous
ones. Not only had the peace of the
island been disturbed by "La
Trompeuse" and other French corsairs
which hovered about Hispaniola; not
only had his days been embittered by
strife with a small, drunken,
insolent faction which tried to
belittle his attempts to introduce
order and sobriety into the colony;
but the hostility of the Spanish
governors in the West Indies still
continued to neutralize his efforts
to root out buccaneering. Lynch had
in reality been the best friend of
the Spaniards in America. He had
strictly forbidden the cutting of
logwood in Campeache and Honduras,
when the Spaniards were outraging
and enslaving every Englishman they
found upon those coasts;461
he had sent word to the Spanish
governors of the intended sack of Vera Cruz;462
he had protected Spanish merchant
ships with his own men-of-war and
hospitably received them in Jamaican
ports. Yet Spanish corsairs
continued to rob English vessels,
and Spanish governors refused to
surrender English ships and goods
which were carried into their ports.463
On the plea of punishing interlopers
they armed small galleys and ordered
them to take all ships which had on
board any products of the Indies.464
Letters to the governors at Havana
and St. Jago de Cuba were of no
avail. English trade routes were
interrupted and dangerous, the
turtling, trading and fishing
sloops, which supplied a great part
of the food of Jamaica, were robbed
and seized, and Lynch was compelled
to construct a galley of fifty oars
for their protection.465
Pirates, it is true, were frequently
brought into Port Royal by the small
frigates employed by the governor,
and there were numerous executions;466
yet the outlaws seemed to increase
daily. Some black vessel was
generally found hovering about the
island ready to pick up any who
wished to join it, and when the
runaways were prevented from
returning by the statute against
piracy, they retired to the
Carolinas or to New England to
dispose of their loot and refit
their ships.467
When such retreats were available
the laws against piracy did not
reduce buccaneering so much as they
depopulated Jamaica of its white
inhabitants.
After 1680, indeed, the North
American colonies became more and
more the resort of the pirates who
were being driven from West Indian
waters by the stern measures of the English
governors. Michel Landresson,
alias Breha, who had accompanied
Pain in his expedition against St.
Augustine in 1683, and who had been
a constant source of worriment to
the Jamaicans because of his attacks
on the fishing sloops, sailed to
Boston and disposed of his booty of
gold, silver, jewels and cocoa to
the godly New England merchants, who
were only too ready to take
advantage of so profitable a trade
and gladly fitted him out for
another cruise.468
Pain himself appeared in Rhode
Island, displayed the old commission
to hunt for pirates given him by Sir
Thomas Lynch, and was protected by
the governor against the
deputy-collector of customs, who
endeavoured to seize him and his
ship.469
The chief resort of the pirates,
however, was the colony of Carolina.
Indented by numerous harbours and
inlets, the shores of Carolina had
always afforded a safe refuge for
refitting and repairing after a
cruise, and from 1670 onwards, when
the region began to be settled by
colonists from England, the pirates
found in the new communities a
second Jamaica, where they could
sell their cargoes and often recruit
their forces. In the latter part of
1683 Sir Thomas Lynch complained to
the Lords of the Committee for Trade
and Plantations;470
and in February of the following
year the king, at the suggestion of
the committee, ordered that a draft
of the Jamaican law against pirates
be sent to all the plantations in
America, to be passed and enforced
in each as a statute of the province.471
On 12th March 1684 a general
proclamation was issued by the king
against pirates in America, and a
copy forwarded to all the colonial
governors for publication and
execution.472
Nevertheless in Massachusetts, in
spite of these measures and of a
letter from the king warning the
governors to give no succour or aid
to any of the outlaws, Michel had
been received with open arms, the
proclamation of 12th March was torn
down in the streets, and the Jamaica
Act, though passed, was never
enforced.473
In the Carolinas, although the Lords
Proprietors wrote urging the
governors to take every care that no
pirates were entertained in the
colony, the Act was not passed until
November 1685.474
There were few, if any, convictions,
and the freebooters plied their
trade with the same security as
before. Toward the end of 1686 three
galleys from St. Augustine landed
about 150 men, Spaniards, Indians
and mulattos, a few leagues below
Charleston, and laid waste several
plantations, including that of
Governor Moreton. The enemy pushed
on to Port Royal, completely
destroyed the Scotch colony there,
and retired before a force could be
raised to oppose them. To avenge
this inroad the inhabitants
immediately began preparations for a
descent upon St. Augustine; and an
expedition consisting of two French
privateering vessels and about 500
men was organized and about to sail,
when a new governor, James Colleton,
arrived and ordered it to disband.475
Colleton was instructed to arrest
Governor Moreton on the charge of
encouraging piracy, and to punish
those who entertained and abetted
the freebooters;476
and on 12th February 1687 he had a
new and more explicit law to
suppress the evil enacted by the assembly.477
On 22nd May of the same year James
II. renewed the proclamation for the
suppression of pirates, and offered
pardon to all who surrendered within
a limited time and gave security for
future good behaviour.478
The situation was so serious,
however, that in August the king
commissioned Sir Robert Holmes to
proceed with a squadron to the West
Indies and make short work of the
outlaws;479
and in October he issued a circular
to all the governors in the
colonies, directing the most
stringent enforcement of the laws,
"a practice having grown up of
bringing pirates to trial before the
evidence was ready, and of using
other evasions to insure their
acquittal."480
On the following 20th January
another proclamation was issued by
James to insure the co-operation of
the governors with Sir Robert Holmes
and his agents.481
The problem, however, was more
difficult than the king had
anticipated. The presence of the
fleet upon the coast stopped the
evil for a time, but a few years
later, especially in the Carolinas
under the administration of Governor
Ludwell (1691-1693), the pirates
again increased in numbers and in
boldness, and Charleston was
completely overrun with the
freebooters, who, with the
connivance of the merchants and a
free display of gold, set the law at
defiance.
In Jamaica Lieutenant-Governor
Molesworth continued in the policy
and spirit of his predecessor. He
sent a frigate to the Bay of Darien
to visit Golden Isle and the Isle of
Pines (where the buccaneers were
accustomed to make their rendezvous
when they crossed over to the South
Seas), with orders to destroy any
piratical craft in that vicinity,
and he made every exertion to prevent recruits from
leaving Jamaica.482
The stragglers who returned from the
South Seas he arrested and executed,
and he dealt severely with those who
received and entertained them.483
By virtue of the king's proclamation
of 1684, he had the property in Port
Royal belonging to men then in the
South Seas forfeited to the crown.484
A Captain Bannister, who in June
1684 had run away from Port Royal on
a privateering venture with a ship
of thirty guns, had been caught and
brought back by the frigate "Ruby,"
but when put on trial for piracy was
released by the grand jury on a
technicality. Six months later
Bannister managed to elude the forts
a second time, and for two years
kept dodging the frigates which
Molesworth sent in pursuit of him.
Finally, in January 1687, Captain
Spragge sailed into Port Royal with
the buccaneer and three of his
companions hanging at the yard-arms,
"a spectacle of great satisfaction
to all good people, and of terror to
the favourers of pirates."485
It was during the government of
Molesworth that the "Biscayners"
began to appear in American waters.
These privateers from the Bay of
Biscay seem to have been taken into
the King of Spain's service to hunt
pirates, but they interrupted
English trade more than the pirates
did. They captured and plundered
English merchantmen right and left,
and carried them to Cartagena, Vera
Cruz, San Domingo and other Spanish
ports, where the governors took
charge of their prisoners and
allowed them to dispose of their
captured goods. They held their
commissions, it seems, directly from the
Crown, and so pretended to be
outside the pale of the authority of
the Spanish governors. The latter,
at any rate, declared that they
could give no redress, and
themselves complained to the
authorities in Jamaica of the
independence of these marauders.486
In December 1688 the king issued a
warrant to the Governor of Jamaica
authorizing him to suppress the
Biscayans with the royal frigates.487
On 28th October 1685 the
governorship of the island was
assigned to Sir Philip Howard,488
but Howard died shortly after, and
the Duke of Albemarle was appointed
in his stead.489
Albemarle, who arrived at Port Royal
in December 1687,490
completely reversed the policy of
his predecessors, Lynch and
Molesworth. Even before he left
England he had undermined his health
by his intemperate habits, and when
he came to Jamaica he leagued
himself with the most unruly and
debauched men in the colony. He
seems to have had no object but to
increase his fortune at the expense
of the island. Before he sailed he
had boldly petitioned for powers to
dispose of money without the advice
and consent of his council, and, if
he saw fit, to reinstate into office
Sir Henry Morgan and Robert
Byndloss. The king, however, decided
that the suspension of Morgan and
Byndloss should remain until
Albemarle had reported on their case
from Jamaica.491
When the Duke entered upon his new
government, he immediately appointed
Roger Elletson to be Chief Justice
of the island in the place of Samuel
Bernard. Three assistant-judges of
the Supreme Court thereupon resigned
their positions on the bench, and
one was, in revenge, dismissed by the
governor from the council. Several
other councillors were also
suspended, contrary to the
governor's instructions against
arbitrary dismissal of such
officers, and on 18th January 1688
Sir Henry Morgan, upon the king's
approval of the Duke's
recommendation, was re-admitted to
the council-chamber.492
The old buccaneer, however, did not
long enjoy his restored dignity.
About a month later he succumbed to
a sharp illness, and on 26th August
was buried in St. Catherine's Church
in Port Royal.493
In November 1688 a petition was
presented to the king by the
planters and merchants trading to
Jamaica protesting against the new
régime introduced by Lord
Albemarle:—"The once flourishing
island of Jamaica is likely to be
utterly undone by the irregularities
of some needy persons lately set in
power. Many of the most considerable
inhabitants are deserting it, others
are under severe fines and
imprisonments from little or no
cause.... The provost-marshal has
been dismissed and an indebted
person put in his place; and all the
most substantial officers, civil and
military, have been turned out and
necessitous persons set up in their
room. The like has been done in the
judicial offices, whereby the
benefit of appeals and prohibitions
is rendered useless. Councillors are
suspended without royal order and
without a hearing. Several persons
have been forced to give security
not to leave the island lest they
should seek redress; others have
been brought before the council for
trifling offences and innumerable
fees taken from them; money has been
raised twenty per cent. over its
value to defend creditors. Lastly,
the elections have been tampered
with by the indebted
provost-marshal, and since the Duke
of Albemarle's death are continued
without your royal authority."494
The death of Albemarle, indeed, at
this opportune time was the greatest
service he rendered to the colony.
Molesworth was immediately commanded
to return to Jamaica and resume
authority. The duke's system was
entirely reversed, and the
government restored as it had been
under the administration of Sir
Thomas Lynch. Elletson was removed
from the council and from his
position as chief justice, and
Bernard returned in his former
place. All of the rest of
Albemarle's creatures were dismissed
from their posts, and the supporters
of Lynch's régime again put in
control of a majority in the
council.495
This measure of plain justice was
one of the last acts of James II. as
King of England. On 5th November
1688 William of Orange landed in
England at Torbay, and on 22nd
December James escaped to France to
live as a pensioner of Louis XIV.
The new king almost immediately
wrote to Jamaica confirming the
reappointment of Molesworth, and a
commission to the latter was issued
on 25th July 1689.496
Molesworth, unfortunately for the
colony, died within a few days,497
and the Earl of Inchiquin was
appointed on 19th September to
succeed him.498
Sir Francis Watson, President of the
Council in Jamaica, obeyed the
instructions of William III.,
although he was a partizan of
Albemarle; yet so high was the
feeling between the two factions
that the greatest confusion reigned
in the government of the island
until the arrival of Inchiquin in
May 1690.499
The Revolution of 1688, by
placing William of Orange on the
English throne, added a powerful
kingdom to the European coalition
which in 1689 attacked Louis XIV.
over the question of the succession
of the Palatinate. That James II. should accept
the hospitality of the French
monarch and use France as a basis
for attack on England and Ireland
was, quite apart from William's
sympathy with the Protestants on the
Continent, sufficient cause for
hostilities against France. War
broke out in May 1689, and was soon
reflected in the English and French
colonies in the West Indies. De
Cussy, in Hispaniola, led an
expedition of 1000 men, many of them
filibusters, against St. Jago de los
Cavalleros in the interior of the
island, and took and burnt the town.
In revenge the Spaniards, supported
by an English fleet which had just
driven the French from St. Kitts,
appeared in January 1691 before Cap
François, defeated and killed de
Cussy in an engagement near the
town, and burned and sacked the
settlement. Three hundred French
filibusters were killed in the
battle. The English fleet visited
Leogane and Petit Goave in the
cul-de-sac of Hispaniola, and
then sailed to Jamaica. De Cussy
before his death had seized the
opportunity to provide the
freebooters with new commissions for
privateering, and English shipping
suffered severely.500
Laurens with 200 men touched at
Montego Bay on the north coast in
October, and threatened to return
and plunder the whole north side of
the island. The people were so
frightened that they sent their
wives and children to Port Royal;
and the council armed several
vessels to go in pursuit of the
Frenchmen.501
It was a new experience to feel the
danger of invasion by a foreign foe.
The Jamaicans had an insight into
the terror which their Spanish
neighbours felt for the buccaneers,
whom the English islanders had
always been so ready to fit out, or
to shield from the arm of the law.
Laurens in the meantime was as good
as his word. He returned to Jamaica
in the beginning of December with several
vessels, seized eight or ten English
trading sloops, landed on the north
shore and plundered a plantation.502
War with France was formally
proclaimed in Jamaica on the 13th of
January 1690.503
Two years later, in January 1692,
Lord Inchiquin also succumbed to
disease in Jamaica, and in the
following June Colonel William
Beeston was chosen by the queen to
act as lieutenant-governor.504
Inchiquin before he left England had
solicited for the power to call in
and pardon pirates, so as to
strengthen the island during the war
by adding to its forces men who
would make good fighters on both
land and sea. The Committee on Trade
and Plantations reported favourably
on the proposal, but the power seems
never to have been granted.505
In January 1692, however, the
President of the Council of Jamaica
began to issue commissions to
privateers, and in a few months the
surrounding seas were full of armed
Jamaican sloops.506
On 7th June of the same year the
colony suffered a disaster which
almost proved its destruction. A
terrible earthquake overwhelmed Port
Royal and "in ten minutes threw down
all the churches, dwelling-houses
and sugar-works in the island.
Two-thirds of Port Royal were
swallowed up by the sea, all the
forts and fortifications demolished
and great part of its inhabitants
miserably knocked on the head or
drowned."507
The French in Hispaniola took
advantage of the distress caused by
the earthquake to invade the island,
and nearly every week hostile bands
landed and plundered the coast of
negroes and other property.508
In December 1693 a party of 170 swooped down in the
night upon St. Davids, only seven
leagues from Port Royal, plundered
the whole parish, and got away again
with 370 slaves.509
In the following April Ducasse, the
new French governor of Hispaniola,
sent 400 buccaneers in six small
vessels to repeat the exploit, but
the marauders met an English
man-of-war guarding the coast, and
concluding "that they would only get
broken bones and spoil their men for
any other design," they retired
whence they had come.510
Two months later, however, a much
more serious incursion was made. An
expedition of twenty-two vessels and
1500 men, recruited in France and
instigated, it is said, by Irish and
Jacobite refugees, set sail under
Ducasse on 8th June with the
intention of conquering the whole of
Jamaica. The French landed at Point
Morant and Cow Bay, and for a month
cruelly desolated the whole
south-eastern portion of the island.
Then coasting along the southern
shore they made a feint on Port
Royal, and landed in Carlisle Bay to
the west of the capital. After
driving from their breastworks the
English force of 250 men, they again
fell to ravaging and burning, but
finding they could make no headway
against the Jamaican militia, who
were now increased to 700 men, in
the latter part of July they set
sail with their plunder for
Hispaniola.511
Jamaica had been denuded of men by
the earthquake and by sickness, and
Lieutenant-Governor Beeston had
wisely abandoned the forts in the
east of the island and concentrated
all his strength at Port Royal.512
It was this expedient which
doubtless saved the island from
capture, for Ducasse feared to
attack the united Jamaican forces
behind strong intrenchments. The
harm done to Jamaica by the
invasion, however, was very great.
The French wholly destroyed fifty
sugar works and many plantations,
burnt and plundered about 200
houses, and killed every living
thing they found. Thirteen hundred
negroes were carried off besides
other spoil. In fighting the
Jamaicans lost about 100 killed and
wounded, but the loss of the French
seems to have been several times
that number. After the French
returned home Ducasse reserved all
the negroes for himself, and many of
the freebooters who had taken part
in the expedition, exasperated by
such a division of the spoil,
deserted the governor and resorted
to buccaneering on their own
account.513
Colonel, now become Sir William,
Beeston, from his first arrival in
Jamaica as lieutenant-governor, had
fixed his hopes upon a joint
expedition with the Spaniards
against the French at Petit Goave;
but the inertia of the Spaniards,
and the loss of men and money caused
by the earthquake, had prevented his
plans from being realized.514
In the early part of 1695, however,
an army of 1700 soldiers on a fleet
of twenty-three ships sailed from
England under command of Commodore
Wilmot for the West Indies. Uniting
with 1500 Spaniards from San Domingo
and the Barlovento fleet of three
sail, they captured and sacked Cap
François and Port de Paix in the
French end of the island. It had
been the intention of the allies to
proceed to the cul-de-sac and
destroy Petit Goave and Leogane, but
they had lost many men by sickness
and bad management, and the
Spaniards, satisfied with the booty
already obtained, were anxious to
return home. So the English fleet
sailed away to Port Royal.515
These hostilities so exhausted both
the French in Hispaniola and the
English in Jamaica that for a time
the combatants lay back to recover
their strength.
The last great expedition of this
war in the West Indies serves as a
fitting close to the history of the
buccaneers. On 26th September 1696
Ducasse received from the French
Minister of Marine, Pontchartrain, a
letter informing him that the king
had agreed to the project of a large
armament which the Sieur de Pointis,
aided by private capital, was
preparing for an enterprise in the
Mexican Gulf.516
Ducasse, although six years earlier
he had written home urging just such
an enterprise against Vera Cruz or
Cartagena, now expressed his strong
disapproval of the project, and
dwelt rather on the advantages to be
gained by the capture of Spanish
Hispaniola, a conquest which would
give the French the key to the
Indies. A second letter from
Pontchartrain in January 1697,
however, ordered him to aid de
Pointis by uniting all the
freebooters and keeping them in the
colony till 15th February. It was a
difficult task to maintain the
buccaneers in idleness for two
months and prohibit all cruising,
especially as de Pointis, who sailed
from Brest in the beginning of
January, did not reach Petit Goave
till about 1st March.517
The buccaneers murmured and
threatened to disband, and it
required all the personal ascendancy
of Ducasse to hold them together.
The Sieur de Pointis, although a man
of experience and resource, capable
of forming a large design and
sparing nothing to its success, suffered
from two very common faults—vanity
and avarice. He sometimes allowed
the sense of his own merits to blind
him to the merits of others, and
considerations of self-interest to
dim the brilliance of his
achievements. Of Ducasse he was
insanely jealous, and during the
whole expedition he tried in every
way to humiliate him. Unable to
bring himself to conciliate the
unruly spirit of the buccaneers, he
told them plainly that he would lead
them not as a companion in fortune
but as a military superior, and that
they must submit themselves to the
same rules as the men on the king's
ships. The freebooters rebelled
under the haughtiness of their
commander, and only Ducasse's
influence was able to bring them to
obedience.518
On 18th March the ships were all
gathered at the rendezvous at Cape
Tiburon, and on the 13th of the
following month anchored two leagues
to the east of Cartagena.519
De Pointis had under his command
about 4000 men, half of them seamen,
the rest soldiers. The
reinforcements he had received from
Ducasse numbered 1100, and of these
650 were buccaneers commanded by
Ducasse himself. He had nine
frigates, besides seven vessels
belonging to the buccaneers, and
numerous smaller boats.520
The appearance of so formidable an
armament in the West Indies caused a
great deal of concern both in
England and in Jamaica. Martial law
was proclaimed in the colony and
every means taken to put Port Royal
in a state of defence.521
Governor Beeston, at the first news
of de Pointis' fleet, sent advice to
the governors of Porto Bello and
Havana, against whom he suspected
that the expedition was intended.522
A squadron of thirteen vessels was
sent out from England under command of Admiral
Nevill to protect the British
islands and the Spanish treasure
fleets, for both the galleons and
the Flota were then in the Indies.523
Nevill touched at Barbadoes on 17th
April,524
and then sailed up through the
Leeward Islands towards Hispaniola
in search of de Pointis. The
Frenchman, however, had eluded him
and was already before Cartagena.
Cartagena, situated at the
eastward end of a large double
lagoon, was perhaps the strongest
fortress in the Indies, and the
Spaniards within opposed a
courageous defence.525
After a fortnight of fighting and
bombardment, however, on the last
day of April the outworks were
carried by a brilliant assault, and
on 6th May the small Spanish
garrison, followed by the Cabildo
or municipal corporation, and by
many of the citizens of the town, in
all about 2800 persons, marched out
with the honours of war. Although
the Spaniards had been warned of the
coming of the French, and before
their arrival had succeeded in
withdrawing the women and some of
their riches to Mompos in the
interior, the treasure which fell
into the hands of the invaders was
enormous, and has been variously
estimated at from six million crowns
to twenty millions sterling. Trouble
soon broke out between de Pointis
and the buccaneers, for the latter
wanted the whole of the plunder to
be divided equally among the men, as had always been
their custom, and they expected,
according to this arrangement, says
de Pointis in his narrative, about a
quarter of all the booty. De
Pointis, however, insisted upon the
order which he had published before
the expedition sailed from Petit
Goave, that the buccaneers should be
subject to the same rule in the
division of the spoil as the sailors
in the fleet, i.e., they
should receive one-tenth of the
first million and one-thirtieth of
the rest. Moreover, fearing that the
buccaneers would take matters into
their own hands, he had excluded
them from the city while his
officers gathered the plunder and
carried it to the ships. On the
repeated remonstrances of Ducasse,
de Pointis finally announced that
the share allotted to the men from
Hispaniola was 40,000 crowns. The
buccaneers, finding themselves so
miserably cheated, broke out into
open mutiny, but were restrained by
the influence of their leader and
the presence of the king's frigates.
De Pointis, meanwhile, seeing his
own men decimated by sickness, put
all the captured guns on board the
fleet and made haste to get under
sail for France. South of Jamaica he
fell in with the squadron of Admiral
Nevill, to which in the meantime had
been joined some eight Dutch
men-of-war; but de Pointis, although
inferior in numbers, outsailed the
English ships and lost but one or
two of his smaller vessels. He then
manœuvred past Cape S. Antonio,
round the north of Cuba and through
the Bahama Channel to Newfoundland,
where he stopped for fresh wood and
water, and after a brush with a
small English squadron under
Commodore Norris, sailed into the
harbour of Brest on 19th August
1697.526
The buccaneers, even before de
Pointis sailed for France, had
turned their ships back toward
Cartagena to reimburse themselves by
again plundering the city. De Pointis, indeed, was
then very ill, and his officers were
in no condition to oppose them.
After the fleet had departed the
freebooters re-entered Cartagena,
and for four days put it to the
sack, extorting from the unfortunate
citizens, and from the churches and
monasteries, several million more in
gold and silver. Embarking for the
Isle la Vache, they had covered but
thirty leagues when they met with
the same allied fleet which had
pursued de Pointis. Of the nine
buccaneer vessels, the two which
carried most of the booty were
captured, two more were driven
ashore, and the rest succeeded in
escaping to Hispaniola. Ducasse, who
had returned to Petit Goave when de
Pointis sailed for France, sent one
of his lieutenants on a mission to
the French Court to complain of the
ill-treatment he had received from
de Pointis, and to demand his own
recall; but the king pacified him by
making him a Chevalier of St. Louis,
and allotting 1,400,000 francs to
the French colonists who had aided
in the expedition. The money,
however, was slow in reaching the
hands of those to whom it was due,
and much was lost through the
malversations of the men charged
with its distribution.527
With the capture of Cartagena in
1697 the history of the buccaneers
may be said to end. More and more
during the previous twenty years
they had degenerated into mere
pirates, or had left their libertine
life for more civilised pursuits.
Since 1671 the English government
had been consistent in its policy of
suppressing the freebooters, and with few exceptions
the governors sent to Jamaica had
done their best to uphold and
enforce the will of the councils at
home. Ten years or more had to
elapse before the French Court saw
the situation in a similar light,
and even then the exigencies of war
and defence in French Hispaniola
prevented the governors from taking
any effective measures toward
suppression. The problem, indeed,
had not been an easy one. The
buccaneers, whatever their origin,
were intrepid men, not without a
sense of honour among themselves,
wedded to a life of constant danger
which they met and overcame with
surprising hardiness. When an
expedition was projected against
their traditional foes, the
Spaniards, they calculated the
chances of profit, and taking little
account of the perils to be run, or
indeed of the flag under which they
sailed, English, French and Dutch
alike became brothers under a chief
whose courage they perfectly
recognised and whom they servilely
obeyed. They lived at a time when
they were in no danger of being
overhauled by ubiquitous cruisers
with rifled guns, and so long as
they confined themselves to His
Catholic Majesty's ships and
settlements, they had trusted in the
immunity arising from the
traditional hostility existing
between the English and the
Spaniards of that era. And for the
Spaniards the record of the
buccaneers had been a terrible one.
Between the years 1655 and 1671
alone, the corsairs had sacked
eighteen cities, four towns and more
than thirty-five villages—Cumana
once, Cumanagote twice, Maracaibo
and Gibraltar twice, Rio de la Hacha
five times, Santa Marta three times,
Tolu eight times, Porto Bello once,
Chagre twice, Panama once, Santa
Catalina twice, Granada in Nicaragua
twice, Campeache three times, St.
Jago de Cuba once, and other towns
and villages in Cuba and Hispaniola
for thirty leagues inland
innumerable times. And this fearful
tale of robbery and outrage does not embrace the various
expeditions against Porto Bello,
Campeache, Cartagena and other
Spanish ports made after 1670. The
Marquis de Barinas in 1685 estimated
the losses of the Spaniards at the
hands of the buccaneers since the
accession of Charles II. to be sixty
million crowns; and these figures
covered merely the destruction of
towns and treasure, without
including the loss of more than 250
merchant ships and frigates.528
If the losses and suffering of the
Spaniards had been terrible, the
advantages accruing to the invaders,
or to the colonies which received
and supported them, scarcely
compensated for the effort it cost
them. Buccaneering had denuded
Jamaica of its bravest men, lowered
the moral tone of the island, and
retarded the development of its
natural resources. It was estimated
that there were lost to the island
between 1668 and 1671, in the
designs against Tobago, Curaçao,
Porto Bello, Granada and Panama,
about 2600 men,529
which was a large number for a new
and very weak colony surrounded by
powerful foes. Says the same writer
later on: "People have not married,
built or settled as they would in
time of peace—some for fear of being
destroyed, others have got much
suddenly by privateers bargains and
are gone. War carries away all
freemen, labourers and planters of
provisions, which makes work and
victuals dear and scarce.
Privateering encourages all manner
of disorder and dissoluteness; and
if it succeed, does but enrich the
worst sort of people and provoke and
alarm the Spaniards."530
The privateers, moreover, really
injured English trade as much as
they injured Spanish navigation; and
if the English in the second
half of the seventeenth century had
given the Spaniards as little cause
for enmity in the West Indies as the
Dutch had done, they perhaps rather
than the Dutch would have been the
convoys and sharers in the rich
Flotas. The Spaniards, moreover, if
not in the court at home, at least
in the colonies, would have readily
lent themselves to a trade, illicit
though it be, with the English
islands, a trade, moreover, which it
was the constant aim of English
diplomacy to encourage and maintain,
had they been able to assure
themselves that their English
neighbours were their friends. But
when outrage succeeded upon outrage,
and the English Governors seemed, in
spite of their protestations of
innocence, to make no progress
toward stopping them, the Spaniards
naturally concluded that the English
government was the best of liars and
the worst of friends. From another
point of view, too, the activity of
the buccaneers was directly opposed
to the commercial interests of Great
Britain. Of all the nations of
Europe the Spaniards were those who
profited least from their American
possessions. It was the English, the
French and the Dutch who carried
their merchandize to Cadiz and
freighted the Spanish-American
fleets, and who at the return of
these fleets from Porto Bello and
Vera Cruz appropriated the greater
part of the gold, silver and
precious stuffs which composed their
cargoes. And when the buccaneers cut
off a Spanish galleon, or wrecked
the Spanish cities on the Main, it
was not so much the Spaniards who
suffered as the foreign merchants
interested in the trade between
Spain and her colonies. If the
policy of the English and French
Governments toward the buccaneers
gradually changed from one of
connivance or encouragement to one
of hostility and suppression, it was
because they came to realise that it
was easier and more profitable to
absorb the trade and riches of
Spanish America through the peaceful
agencies of treaty and concession, than by
endeavouring to enforce a trade in
the old-fashioned way inaugurated by
Drake and his Elizabethan
contemporaries.
The pirate successors of the
buccaneers were distinguished from
their predecessors mainly by the
fact that they preyed on the
commerce of all flags
indiscriminately, and were outlawed
and hunted down by all nations
alike. They, moreover, widely
extended their field of operations.
No longer content with the West
Indies and the shores of the
Caribbean Sea, they sailed east to
the coast of Guinea and around
Africa to the Indian Ocean. They
haunted the shores of Madagascar,
the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf,
and ventured even as far as the
Malabar Coast, intercepting the rich
trade with the East, the great ships
from Bengal and the Islands of
Spice. And not only did the outlaws
of all nations from America and the
West Indies flock to these regions,
but sailors from England were fired
by reports of the rich spoils
obtained to imitate their example.
One of the most remarkable instances
was that of Captain Henry Avery,
alias Bridgman. In May 1694
Avery was on an English merchantman,
the "Charles II.," lying near
Corunna. He persuaded the crew to
mutiny, set the captain on shore,
re-christened the ship the "Fancy,"
and sailed to the East Indies. Among
other prizes he captured, in
September 1695, a large vessel
called the "Gunsway," belonging to
the Great Mogul—an exploit which led
to reprisals and the seizure of the
English factories in India. On
application of the East India
Company, proclamations were issued
on 17th July, 10th and 21st August
1696, by the Lords Justices of
England, declaring Avery and his
crew pirates and offering a reward
for their apprehension.531
Five of the crew were seized on
their return to England in the
autumn of the same year, were tried
at the Old Bailey and hanged, and several
of their companions were arrested
later.532
In the North American colonies
these new pirates still continued to
find encouragement and protection.
Carolina had long had an evil
reputation as a hot-bed of piracy,
and deservedly so. The proprietors
had removed one governor after
another for harbouring the
freebooters, but with little result.
In the Bahamas, which belonged to
the same proprietors, the evil was
even more flagrant. Governor Markham
of the Quaker colony of Pennsylvania
allowed the pirates to dispose of
their goods and to refit upon the
banks of the Delaware, and William
Penn, the proprietor, showed little
disposition to reprimand or remove
him. Governor Fletcher of New York
was in open alliance with the
outlaws, accepted their gifts and
allowed them to parade the streets
in broad daylight. The merchants of
New York, as well as those of Rhode
Island and Massachusetts, who were
prevented by the Navigation Laws
from engaging in legitimate trade
with other nations, welcomed the
appearance of the pirate ships laden
with goods from the East, provided a
ready market for their cargoes, and
encouraged them to repeat their
voyages.
In 1699 an Act was passed through
Parliament of such severity as to
drive many of the outlaws from
American waters. It was largely a
revival of the Act of 28, Henry
VIII., was in force for seven years,
and was twice renewed. The war of
the Spanish Succession, moreover,
gave many men of piratical
inclinations an opportunity of
sailing under lawful commissions as
privateers against the French and
Spaniards. In this long war, too,
the French filibusters were
especially numerous and active. In
1706 there were 1200 or 1300 who
made their headquarters in Martinique alone.533
While keeping the French islands
supplied with provisions and
merchandise captured in their
prizes, they were a serious
discouragement to English commerce
in those regions, especially to the
trade with the North American
colonies. Occasionally they
threatened the coasts of Virginia
and New England, and some combined
with their West Indian cruises a
foray along the coasts of Guinea and
into the Red Sea. These corsairs
were not all commissioned
privateers, however, for some of
them seized French shipping with as
little compunction as English or
Dutch. Especially after the Treaty
of Utrecht there was a recrudescence
of piracy both in the West Indies
and in the East, and it was ten
years or more thereafter before the
freebooters were finally suppressed. |
