Real Pirates of the Caribbean

Pirates, Corsairs and Buccaneers

by Georges Fery

Early in the 16th century, pirates known in French as flibustiers, in English as privateers and buccaneers, and in Dutch zee-roovers, began to appear in the West Indies. Corsairs, also known as privateers, were often commissioned by their respective governments. The name corsair was commonly used in the Mediterranean basin, while that of buccaneer was attached to the Caribbean Sea. However, in later times both names applied to those stalking preys in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. During the next century, they would wage general warfare against the common enemy of their respective nations, Spain, for profit and country. A loose association of smugglers, buccaneers or cattle-hunters, and corsairs or privateers (patented or not), infested the Caribbean Sea through the 17th century.  They attacked Spanish settlements on the islands and the mainland of the Americas and invaded the South Sea either by crossing the Isthmus of Panama, as did John Oxenham in 1575, or passing through the Strait of Magellan, as Sir Francis Drake did on his Golden Hind on 20 Aug. 1578.

At their best, corsairs and pirates were a league of offense against Spain. This federation was founded upon national antagonism, competition in trade, conquest and differences in religion, Protestant England, and Holland with the Huguenots in France, arrayed in opposition to Catholic Spain, the instigator of the Inquisition. By right of discovery, conquest, and settlement, Spain claimed not only all the islands of the West Indies, but also most of the mainland of the Americas. Fifty years before the 1607 settlement at Jamestown by the English, Spain had already conquered two empires: the Aztec in Mexico and the Inca in Peru. When the pilgrims landed in New England in 1620, America was Spanish from Florida to Arizona, south through Mexico, Central America and the Antilles to Chile and the Rio de la Plata in South America.

When Christopher Columbus, on his first voyage in 1492, claimed the West Indies for Spain, the country applied to Pope Alexander VI to endorse the claim. To avoid controversy between two Christian kingdoms, the Pope issued, on May 4, 1493, a “Bull of Donation and Line of Demarcation” between Spanish and Portuguese possessions and discoveries. The line ran from the North Pole to the South Pole, 100 leagues west of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. All discoveries east of the line belonged to Portugal, and all those to the west, essentially the entire New World, to Spain.

Spain prohibited settlements by other nations within its dominion, and foreign ships were not allowed to trade with its people. Spanish traders in the West Indies were required to pay a high license to the crown and Spanish colonists were taxed enormous import duties. As a result, home factories could not keep up with the needs of a large emigration to the colonies. So Spanish settlers welcomed the foreign smugglers and bought much-needed supplies from them without paying the heavy taxes imposed by the crown. This situation opened the door to unsavory characters, namely the Brethren of the Coast, who were not bound by any civil agreement but their own.

With the support and encouragement of rival European powers, this association of pirates and buccaneers became strong enough to sail for mainland Spanish America, known as the Spanish Main.

In their Articles and Regulations, the Brethren of the Coast swore not to desert or conceal any booty. Under the clear understanding of no prey-no pay, the rewards for everyone were specified. Preferential shares were set aside for the maimed and wounded. The loss of a right arm was rewarded with 600 pieces-of-eight, or six slaves, while the left arm was only worth 500 pieces-of-eight, or five slaves. The right leg was valued at 500 pieces, the left at 400 pieces-of-eight. Compensation for the loss of one eye was the same as the loss of a finger, 100 pieces-of-eight, or one slave. The agreements were well observed; corsairs and buccaneers were civil to each other, and good order and discipline were the rule aboard ship. A pirate ship recognized only two officers: the captain and the quartermaster, though other specialized ranks did exist. As the captain, the quartermaster was also elected by the crew, and acted as a spokesman for the pirates. The quartermaster was also likely to be a sailor and a navigator, while the captain was more of a battle leader.

Corsairs, or Privateers, were seamen who had been issued a “letter of marque” from their state. The letter stated the terms in which the privateers could “legitimately” attack ships from nations that were at war with the power that issued the letter without fear of retribution from that power. Of course, the victimized nation often considered privateers as pirates and, in case of capture, did not extend to them the rights of war prisoners.

Contrary to Pirates and Corsairs, Buccaneers were not seafarers, but poachers or hunters living in wilderness areas near the sea. They lived by killing wild or domesticated animals, for their meat and selling the hides for weapons, rum, and other goods. The buccaneers were less organized than either pirates or corsairs since they were not constrained to a ship. Their social structure was the mates’ pair: two buccaneers (often an experienced one and a newcomer) bound themselves as mates, sharing all properties. If one of the pair died, the other would inherit all properties, and select a new mate. They often joined pirates for ground operations for they were great hunters and exceptional snipers. There is still a controversy about their degree of association with the Brethren of the Coast.

Aside from looting towns and villages along the coasts, corsairs and pirates main targets were the galleons returning to Spain laden with riches from the new lands. The pirates usually attacked in small boats or canoes with which they would approach a galleon sailing through the Windward passage. They would run under the galleon guns without getting in range, while expert marksmen from among the buccaneers on board would pick off the gunners and the man at the galleon’s wheel. One of the pirates’ boats would come from the back of the ship and wedge the galleon’s rudder so that it could not maneuver, while the rest of the pirate’s crew would quickly clamber aboard. They sometimes scuttled their own boats to cut off all possibility of retreat and make themselves fight more desperately. It seems that they were very successful, since by the middle of the 17th century, relentless attacks upon Spanish commerce, had driven individual ships from the Caribbean, and came close to paralyzing Spain’s trade with her colonies.

Merchantmen would now only sail under convoy with the plate-fleets (also referred to as treasure fleets), one of which sailed yearly from San Juan de Uloa in Veracruz, loaded with treasures and goods from Mexico and the Philippines. (The cargoes from the Philippines were first carried overland across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec from the port of Acapulco to San Francisco de Campeche on the Gulf of Mexico.) The convoys were also transporting gold and silver from Peru, stored in Portobello on Panama’s Atlantic Coast, where they had been carried by heavily armed mule trains from Panama City.

Pirates and buccaneers’ main base of operation was on Tortuga Island (Ile de la Tortue). It was so named by Columbus and is located about six miles off the northwest coast of present-day Haiti. There they built a fort and storage houses and cultivated the land. For a long time, it would be the stronghold of the brethren and a haven for pirates and smugglers of all nations. The advantages of the island were its proximity to the wild cattle and bucans in Hispaniola. It was easily defended and a prime location over the Mona Passage, the route taken by Spanish galleons of the plate-fleets sailing back to Spain. Other pirates’ stronghold dotted the Antilles in Trinidad, Antigua, Curacao, Jamaica, and the Bahamas, to name a few.

On Tortuga Island pirates and buccaneers gathered supplies and planned their raids, divided the spoils, and gambled away their pieces-of-eight. Rum, women, music, and dancing were the rewards of hardship and daring. When supplies ran low, and the pirates had lost their money and were in debt to rum-sellers, they clamored to go to sea again, or to be led against some Spanish settlement. Then each man was required to furnish his own weapons and powder.

As the galleons ventured only in powerfully armed convoys, the pirates often targeted the Spanish coastal and inland settlements. The first pirates and buccaneers who looted the town of San Francisco de Campeche, on the Yucatan coast, was the English Lewis Scott. In 1654, French flibustiers and English buccaneers (they often worked together) marched overland to plunder Nueva Segovia in present day Nicaragua. Captain John Davis went up to Lake Nicaragua and sacked Granada and Leon. On his return from this expedition, Davis was made admiral of eight vessels; he then took and looted Saint Augustine in Florida, in the face of a garrison of two hundred Spanish soldiers.

Perhaps what distinguished the pirates and buccaneers was their use of permanent bases in the West Indies. During the mid-17th century, the Bahama Islands attracted some 1500 pirates who took over Charles-town’s harbor, later renamed Nassau. They made their living by raiding the Spanish settlements on the coast of Cuba and the Windward Passage. In 1683, twelve hundred French flibustiers, led by Van Horn, Grammont, and Laurent de Graaf, sailed six vessels to Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. By raising Spanish colors, they entered the harbor without opposition, shut the people in churches, took a lot of plunder and slaves, and escaped without any significant fighting. Among the corsairs and buccaneers who left their name in history are John Hawkins, Francis Drake, William Parker, Laurencillo, Grammont, Diego el Mulato, Rock Brasiliano, Robert Surcouf and Edward Mansfield (or Mansveldt), admiral of the Brethren of the Coast.

The most infamous of them all, however, was the Welsh ruffian Henry Morgan who, together with the Dutchman John Esquemeling, marched across the isthmus to sack the city of Panama in 1671. It took three weeks for the pirates to loot the city and burn it to the ground, with few exceptions. They retreated through the Chagres River valley, driving 175 beasts of burden laden with loot, and 600 prisoners held for ransom. Back at the captured fort of San Lorenzo on the Atlantic coast, Morgan had his men searched for hidden jewels, and any they found were added to the common booty to be shared. Once the share-out had taken place, there were only 200 pieces-of-eight to each man. Fearing his men’s wrath for so much greed among thieves, he secretly went aboard his ship the following night with his closest followers. Taking along the best and fastest vessels, the old scoundrel sailed back to England, and with his fortune and found favor at court. When his men next saw him, he was deputy governor of Jamaica – Sir Henry, a gentleman of consequence who took righteous delight in hanging pirates.

The sack of Panama by Henry Morgan called the attention of pirates and buccaneers to the feasibility of crossing the Isthmus of Panama and the opportunities for plunder on the Pacific Coast. The first to follow Morgan in raiding Panama’s west coast was a Frenchman, Captain La Sonde in 1675, with 120 flibustiers who were guided overland to the town of Chepo by some aborigines from the Darien. The Frenchmen failed to take the town. In 1678, another French expedition commanded by Captain Bournano succeeded in taking and plundering Chepo. On April 5, 1680, the English captains John Coxon, Peter Harris, and Richard Sawkins, with 380 men, crossed the isthmus and reached the Gulf of San Miguel on the Pacific fifteen days later. They captured a 4,000-arroba (50 ton) Spanish vessel and sailed it to Panama Bay where, after capturing four other ships, including the ninety tons Santisima Trinidad; they blockaded the port and captured the islands in the Pearl Archipelago. After a few months, owing to disagreement among themselves, the pirates broke up in smaller parties. A number remained in the Pacific and roamed the coast from Central America to Peru, meeting with various fortunes ranging from riches to the gallows. The others crossed back to the Atlantic.

Two English women left their mark as fearsome pirates, Mary Read and Anne Bonny (also Bonney). One of their victims, Dorothy Thomas, left a description of Read and Bonny: They “wore men’s jackets, and long trousers, and handkerchiefs tied about their heads: and … each of them had a machete and pistol in their hands and they cursed and swore at the men to murder her. Thomas also recorded that she knew that they were women, “from the largeness of their breasts.” How did women conceal their gender in a male-dominated environment? Scholars have theorized that the wearing of breeches by female pirates was a way for hiding their real identity. Or perhaps, they simply served as practical clothing that solidified their working place on board the ship among the other seamen.

Read would take and sack the Yucatán cities of Bacalar and twice, the fortified San Francisco de Campeche. On trial shortly before her death, she was asked why she chose to be a pirate. She answered, “that as to hanging, it’s no great hardship for, were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate, and so infest the seas.” However, she was saved from the noose, for she died of a violent fever while in prison on 28 Apr. 1721.

On 15 Nov. 1720, pirate-hunter Captain Jonathan Barnet took Anne Bonny’s lover Captain Jack Rackham by surprise while they hosted a rum party at Negril Point off the west coast of Jamaica. Rackham and his crew were arrested and brought to trial, where they were sentenced to hang for acts of piracy, as were Jack and Bonny who received a temporary stay of executions, for Bonny claimed to be “quick with child.” On the day Rackham was to be executed, he was permitted to see Bonny before meeting with the noose. To comfort him she said that “she was sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a man, he would not have to be hanged like a dog.” Bonny disappeared from historical documents, and no record of her execution nor that of a childbirth exist.

Under English anti-piracy laws of the 17th and 18th centuries, pirates and buccaneers received justice in a summary fashion, and many ended their lives by “dancing the hempen jig,” a euphemism for hanging. On Oct. 30, 1697, a treaty signed at Rijswik, in the Netherland, put an end for a time, to the war between the rival nations in the West Indies. With no ports open to them wherein to dispose of their plunder, the loose association of sea-rovers known as the Brethren of the Coast ceased to exist. Many followed the sea as legitimate mariners or settled down as honest planters among the islands. Some still sailed about the world for booty, a few going to the Bahamas, making Providence Island their home, there to propagate a breed of common pirates to scourge the seas during the next century.

References:

Pirates et Flibustiers – Philippe Jacquin, 2002
Caribbean Sea of the New World – German Arciniegas, Knopf, 1946
Sous le Pavillon Noir – Marcel-E, Grancher, 1948
Old Panama and Castilla del Oro – Dr. C. Anderson, 1944
The People of Panama – John and Mavis Biesanz, 1955
West Country Pirates and Buccaneers – Gerald Norris, 1990

About the author:

Freelance writer, researcher and photographer, Georges Fery (georgefery.com) addresses topics, on history, cultures, and beliefs of ancient and today’s communities of the Americas. His articles are published online at travelthruhistory.com, ancient-origins.net, popular-archaeology.com and in the quarterly magazine Ancient American (ancientamerican.com), as well as in the U.K.  at mexicolore.co.uk. The author is a fellow of the Institute of Maya Studies instituteofmayastudies.org Miami, FL and The Royal Geographical Society, London, U.K. rgs.org. As well as member in good standing of the Maya Exploration Center, Austin, TX mayaexploration.org, the Archaeological Institute of America, Boston, MA archaeological.org, the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC. americanindian.si.edu, and the NFAA, Non-Fiction Authors Association nonfictionauthorsassociation.com.
Contact: Georges Fery – 5200 Keller Springs Road, Apt. 1511, Dallas, Texas 75248
T. (786) 501 9692 –gfery.43@gmail.com  and www.georgefery.com

Photo Credits:

Haunts of the Brethren of the Coast See page for author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Buccaneer: “Corsario” (Privateer) by Mexican artist Mauricio García Vega.
Map of Haiti: Rémi Kaupp, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Pyle pirates city: Howard Pyle, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Willem van de Velde de Jonge – Een actie van een Engels schip en schepen van de Barbarijse zeerovers: Workshop of Willem van de Velde the Younger, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Capture of the Pirate Blackbeard: Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Morgan at Porto Bello: Howard Pyle, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Mary Read: Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Capture of Kent by Surcouf-Garneray: Ambroise Louis Garneray, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

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