Pirate Breed

Buccaneers moved south from the Carribean

This Naval History continues on from: "Scurvy"

Until the appearance of the buccaneers in the South seas of the Pacific, towards the end of the seventeenth century, the story of English enterprise in that part of the world is a blank.

This in itself tells us that the British themselves became involved in buccaneering and piracy. But, the English buccaneers were by no means the only ones in the Pacific.

There were numerous clashes between men like Dampier and their rivals the French, for though French corsairs appeared in those seas a few years later than the English, when they came, they came in greater numbers.

Pirates were noted for their ruthlessness and merciless attitude towards friend or foe as they pleased, in their greed for wealth. Buccaneers, on the other hand were seen as robbers at sea and plunderer's on land. They pillaged and plundered but usually they only killed their enemy's or in their own self defence.

Drake's was the first English ship to sail across the ocean but he was not the first Englishman, Magellan did it seventy years earlier in the names of Spain.

Sir John Narborough's expedidtion was a follow up of Drake's discoveries, his ship "Sweepstake" was well manned, well armed and well victualled, carrying 4.5 tons of brandy instead of beer, her cargo was knives, cloth and tobacco when she sailed from England in 1669.

Scurvy

Expeditions to the South Seas

The most valuable result of the voyage was a new chart of the Straits of Magellan - it was so accurate that it enabled mutineers of the "Wager" to make their way back rowing a longboat.

Narborough soon found himself on the tracks of his predecessors. At St. Julian he found the bones which he supposed were those of Drake's mutineers that were put ashore. Through the Straits he used the only chart made by an English sailor, John Davis of Dartmouth.

The real revival of interest in these waters was due to the migration of buccaneers from the Carribean. These free-booters, sea-rovers (rogues of every nationality except Spain, England's traditional enemy) were descended from the pirates of the Carribean area.

Their behaviour might not have been quite so excentric as that of the Romantic villains of the "Big Screen." Nevertheless, they were reared in the same nursery; many of them were tried for piracy, and most of their ships were seizes from countries we were at peace with.

Their unruly habits, their drinking of rum, the firing of their guns and the way they deposed their captains at will and acted mutinously whenever they enclined, mark them as belonging to the true pirate breed.

The true pirate plundered friend and foe alike; the buccaneer, tough indeed a sea-robber, usually confined his depredations for his enemy's.

Privateers sailed with a licenced Commission

Bucaneers are not to be confused with genuine privateers, who carried a government commission ratification document in their cabins, they were also responsible to the ship-owners for their conduct.

To the privateer the buccaneers were "a hellish company" though that did not deter him from employing their skill as navigators.

It often happened that a ship which sailed from England; a commissioned private man-of-war was transformed into a pirate ship as soon as her commander reached latitudes in which he felt secure that he was away from the eyes of the owners or the government.

Legally, the distinction between pirate and privateer depended on whether a state of war or peace existed at any given moment, and whether the voyage had been sanctioned by the government or not. But to these who sailed the South Seas, these were questions of merely academic importance.

Of course the buccaneers tried to pose as anything but what they really were. One captain who touched Guam described his band of cut-throats as "employed by some gentleman of France" upon discovery of those unknown Parts of the World.

Forged or stolen commission documents often eased the situation but fabricated excuses could be dispensed with when one found oneself in a strong position of power.

Buccaneers grew stronger and confident

When the Governor of Panama asked to see Captain Sawkins' commissioned document, he replied; "We would come and visit him and bring our commission on the muzzles of our guns, at which he should read them as plain as the flames of powder could make them."

The migration of the buccaneers from the Carribean into the South Seas of the Pacific begins with the three-hundred and thirty men who crossed the narrow strip of land, dividing both waters under Captains Sawkins, Sharp and Coxon in 1680.

"being all soldiers of fortune," writes Captain Sharp, "Twas Gold was the bait that tempted a Pack of merry Boys of us."

For the next six years scores of pirates sailed up and down the coast, using Juan Fernandez and the Galapagos Islands off Peru as bases, plundering by sea and by land whenever an opportunity offered.

Constantly they broke up into fresh units, regrouping themselves under more enterprising leaders, drifting to and fro as the scent of plunder attracted them. It was not unusual to go into a safe-haven in one crew and return to sea in another ship.

Sea-tramps by nature, they were never satisfied with one captain or one place for long. Some, like flotsam, drifted across ocean for no other reason than the desire to see what lay on the other side. Some travelled around the world several times.

There was a moment when this international party was nearly a thousand strong. They ruled the South Seas, but it was only for a brief period. For sheer imprudence their letter to the Governor of Panama deserves some attention.

A threatening intimidating warning

From the Commanders of the whole of the South Seas.

Feb. 22. 1685.

'If you refuse this last demandand and thinke that the imprisonment of three or foure Englishmen is more advantageous to you that the likes of soe many of your Countrymen as are already and what else should fall into our hands, then you may keep them.'

'And we will send you the heads of these for a beginning; and then doe our Countrymen the least hurt in their lives or bodies and by the helpe of God wee will colour your Land Rivers and Sea with Spanish blood of men women and children the whole time that wee remaine in these seas, turning our former mercy into cruelty, showing mercy nor giving quarter to any.'

'Wee will bring our ships near your walls that you may have the pleasure of seeing them (the Spanish prisoners) hanged at our yardarms.'

'Wee will make you know that wee are the Commanders of the whole South Seas, so consider what to choose for wee waite your sentence of life or death with impatience, of death you shall certainly have the heads by Monday morning.'

Exactly whatever happened all those years ago we will never really know; for the letter is the only remaing evidence available about that situation.

The pirates sailed without charts, by guess and by God or perhaps, with the luck of the devil. Experience turned them into skilful and knowledgeable navigators; and since their aim was to plunder, they preferred the more frequented trade routes, only disappearing into hidden havens when danger threatened.

William Dampier's introduction to buccaneers

If ever a man was born a rolling stone it was William Dampier, bred to trade in a Somerset village, he turned his back on the modest livelyhood to go to sea.

After service in the Dutch wars he accepted a post of manager of a West Indian plantation, but threw it up to join the hard-drinking band of log-cutters. In this nursery of buccaneers he easily found the opportunity to cross the narrow strip of land to join the sea-rovers of the South Seas.

Then he went round the world, not once but three times. It took him eight-years from 1683 to 1691 to make his first voyage. Having left the original band, led by Sharp, he shipped with buccaneers Captain Davis, Cawley and Cook to join his comrades in the Pacific.

He tactfully omits to mention that the ship he was on was the "Batchelours Delight," a lovely ship of fourty-gun, it was a piratical seizure, and its crew were all buccaneers.

In casual buccaneering fashion, he decides to change ships shifting to the "Cygnet" under Captain Swan, to gain some knowledge of northern parts, he admitted, "I came into these seas a second time more to endulge my curiosity than to get wealth.

They roamed the Seas searching for prey

Sailing in a haphazard manor, chance must have compelled them to make fresh discoveries, Captain Davis discoverd an island and named it after himself.

When a search was carried out to find the island said to have been seen by the English buccaneer, Captain Davis, in 28 degrees South. However, much to the astonishment of the admiral, "we could not find the land."

Upon which they came to the conclusion that the English buccaneers, "must have been rovers from the thruth as well as rovers after the goods of the Spaniards."

Macmillan Brown's, theory was according to him, "Davis Land really had existed but it was now submerged"; these conclusions have been the subject of much criticism.

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The Captain's getting drunk regularly

They reached a land flowing milk and honey for a sailor. Idleness bred drunkenness, and the drunkenness led to dallying with the natives women.

Dampier's dislike for a mad crew and his taste for wondering, forced him to associate with those mutineers who planned to seize the ship and sail her away.

Being a navigator he was welcomed into the fold and with the mutineers slipped anchor and sailed away, leaving the majority of the crew and a drunken Captain Swan to the mercy of the natives, who eventually killed them all.

At that date pirates were being regularly executed at home in England, and law-abiding privateers, were steering clear of buccaneers and their likes.

The pirates favourite custom was to capture a prize and then demand a ransom in Gold or Silver at the point of a gun, for the return of the vessel; sometimes they succeeded, but often the Spaniards merely shrugged their shoulders and watched the pirates burn their ships in dissapointment.

The continuation of this Naval History will be: "William Dampier"

Pirate Breed

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