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Pirates
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PAGE CONTENTS:
Pirate Trivia
Anne Bonny, Pirate
The Barbary Pirates
Pirate Trivia
The last
person hanged in the U.S. for being a pirate was Capt. Nathaniel Gordon, in New York City on March 8, 1862. Gordon had been
smuggling slaves into the US.
Captain
William Kidd (1645-1701) was commissioned as a privateer by the British to defend their ships, but instead turned
to piracy and was tried and hanged for it by the English.
The name "Jolly Roger" is thought to have come from joli rouge (pretty
red), a wry French description of the bloody banner flown by early privateers.
The skull and crossbones motif first
appeared around 1700 when French pirate Emanuel Wynne hoisted his fearful ensign in the Caribbean -- embellished with an hourglass
to show his prey that time was running out.
Blackbeard was a fearsome sight with an outrageously long bushy black
beard braided with colorful ribbons that covered most of his face and chest. He was a huge man with bulging alcohol-induced
red-veined eyes and a snarl.
Los Cabos, of the southern Baja Peninsula, was favored by earlypirates
because of its safe harbors.
Port Royal Facts:
* Its large natural harbor could shelter up to 500
ships.
* It was conveniently located near the major shipping routes between Central and South America and Europe.
* One in four buildings was a tavern or brothel.
* Its shops were full of choice merchandise from around the
world, thanks to the pirates.
The Pirate Code of Black Bart Roberts
1. Every
man shall have an equal vote in affairs of moment. He shall have an equal title to the fresh provisions or strong liquors
at any time seized...
2. Every man shall be called fairly in turn by the list on board of prizes. But if they defraud
the company to the value of even one dollar, they shall be marooned. If any man rob another, he shall have his nose and ears
slit, and be put ashore where he
shall be sure to encounter hardships.
3. None shall game for money either with
dice or cards.
4. The lights and candles shall be put out at eight at night, and if any of the crew desire to drink
after that hour they shall sit upon the open deck without lights.
5. Each man shall keep his piece, cutlass and pistols
at all times clean and ready for action.
6. No boy or woman to be allowed amongst them. If any man shall be found
seducing any of the latter sex and carrying her to sea in disguise he shall suffer death.
7. He that shall desert
the ship or his quarters in time of battle shall be punished by death or marooning.
8. None shall strike another on
board the ship, but every man's quarrel shall be ended on shore by sword or pistol...
9. No man shall talk of breaking
up their way of living till each has a share of 1,000. Every man who shall become a cripple or lose a limb in the service
shall have 800 pieces of eight from the common stock and for lesser hurts proportionately.
10. The captain and quartermaster
shall each receive two shares of a prize, the master gunner and boatswain, one and one half shares, all other officers one
and one
quarter, and private gentlemen of fortune one share each.
11. The musicians shall have rest on the Sabbath
Day...
Merchant Sailor's Worst Fear : A Cannon
and Ammo
Cannon balls weighed up to 32 pounds and packed enough power to reduce
planking to shreds.
Chain shot (two cannon balls connected with a chain) worked like a mace, cutting down masts and
turning the ship into a sitting duck.
Grape shot (miniature bullet-sized cannon balls) was packed into a cannon barrel
to clear the deck of crew without causing excess damage to the ship.
It's believed that pirates thought that piercing their
ears and wearing earrings improved their eyesight.
Copyright 2006 by NextEra Media. All rights reserved. Feel free to
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Anne Bonny, Pirate
by Jone Johnson Lewis
Born about 1700 - Died after November, 1720
by one account, she died April 25, 1782
trial for piracy:
November 28, 1720
She was born in Ireland, to unmarried parents. Her father
was William Cormac, a lawyer, and her mother was Peg Brennan, a housemaid She was known as a cross-dressing
female pirate; lover of Mary Read, another cross-dressing pirate; mistress of Captain Jack Rackham.
After having a child with his housemaid, and an ensuing scandal, William
Cormac separated from his wife and took his daughter, Anne, and her mother to South Carolina. He worked as a trader, eventually
buying a plantation. Anne's mother died, and Cormac had his hands full with a daughter who was, by most accounts, uncontrollable.
Stories have her stabbing a servant and defending herself against an attempted rape. When Anne married James Bonny, a sailor,
her father disowned her. The couple went to the Bahamas, where he worked as an informant turning in pirates for a bounty.
When the governor of the Bahamas offered amnesty to any pirate who abandoned
piracy, John Rackam, "Calico Jack," took advantage of the offer. Sources differ as to whether Anne was already a pirate before
this time, and whether she'd met Rackam and become his mistress already. She may have given birth to a child who died soon
after its birth. Anne and Rackam could not talk her husband into a divorce, so Anne Bonny and Rackam ran away in 1719, and
turned (in his case, returned) to piracy.
Anne Bonny wore mostly men's clothing while on board ship. She befriended
another pirate in the crew: Mary Read, who wore men's clothing. By some accounts, Mary revealed her gender when Anne tried
to seduce her; they became lovers anyway.
Because he'd returned to piracy after the amnesty, Rackam won the special
attention of the Bahamian governor, who issued a proclamation naming Rackam, Bonny, and Read as "Pirates and Enemies to the
Crown of Great Britain." Eventually, the ship and its crew were captured. Rackam, Mary, and Anne were supposedly the only
three in the crew who resisted the capture. They were tried for piracy in Jamaica.
Two weeks after Rackam and the other men in the crew were hanged for
piracy, Bonny and Read stood trial, and were sentenced to be hanged. But both claimed pregnancy, which stalled their execution.
Read died in prison the next month.
There are two quite different stories of Anne's fate. In one, she simply
disappears, and her fate is not known. In the other, Bonny's father bribed officials to help her escape; she is said to have
returned to South Carolina, where she married Joseph Burleigh the next year, and had five children with him. In this version
of her story, she died at 81 and was buried in York County, Virginia.
Her story was told in a book by Charles Johnson (most likely a pseudonym
for Daniel Defoe), first published in 1724.
©2007 About, Inc., A part of The New York Times Company. All rights
reserved.
The Barbary Pirates
The nation of Algiers' coastline was once home to the notorious
"Barbary Pirates."
Hailing from the old Muslim states of Morocco, Algiers,
Tunis, and Tripoli--on North Africa's Barbary Coast--the pirates terrorized Mediterranean sea lanes two centuries ago.
They attacked merchant vessels, boarded them, stole their
cargos, and held their crews captive until their home countries agreed to pay ransoms. No ransom, and your countrymen got
sold into slavery. Eventually, most countries found it easier simply to pay Barbary's "rogue states" a yearly tribute--in
effect, protection money.
The newborn United States was no exception. After the end
of the Revolution in 1783, the British Navy no longer guarded U.S. merchant ships traveling near the "nests of banditti."
As early as 1785, Algiers--the largest and most powerful of the Barbary nations--declared war, seizing two American vessels
and imprisoning 21 people. George Washington lamented, "Would to Heaven we had a navy to reform these enemies to
mankind, or crush them into non-existence."
Unfortunately, America didn't have a navy, so it paid the
protection money. A "treaty" with Algiers in 1795 cost the United States nearly $1 million--at a time when national revenues
totaled just $7 million. A treaty with Tripoli the next year cost $56,000, and one with Tunis about twice as much.
By 1801, Thomas Jefferson, starting his first term as president,
had seen enough. When Tripoli demanded to renegotiate an existing treaty for more tribute, Jefferson sent four newly built
warships instead, with orders to show American sea power to the pirates and, if possible, to "chastise their insolence--by
sinking, burning or destroying their ships and vessels wherever you shall find them."
Congress and the public supported the action and rallied
under the slogan "Millions for defense, not a penny for tribute!" No quick victory came to the navy, though. On and off skirmishes
between American warships and the pirates continued from 1801 to 1805, along with a weak blockade of Tripoli in an attempt
to curtail the pirates' activities.
Then, in 1805, the United States moved to depose Tripoli's
pirate-harboring government. U.S. Marines, working with Muslim insurgents, traveled 520 miles across the desert from Egypt
to the pirate port of Derna, east of Tripoli. They captured the fort and sent enough of a message that Tripoli quickly
negotiated a new treaty that did not require tribute. (The event still gets mentioned in the Marines' Hymn: "From the halls
of Montezuma / To the shores of Tripoli, / We fight our country's battles / In the air, on land, and sea.")
The United States had trouble with--and paid tribute to--the
other Barbary states for 10 more years. Finally, in 1815, a 10-ship squadron sent to Algiers by President James Madison forced
it to release all American captives and to accept a treaty abolishing any sort of protection money. Madison wrote to the government
of Algiers that year, explaining in certain terms the United States' new foreign policy: "It is a principle incorporated into
the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute."
--Michael Himick
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