Pirate tales from the law

by Arthur M. Harris

He selected four Englishmen—two, as it chanced, were from New York—and, directing the rest to meet him at dark in the woods behind Mananara, descended to the beach, where a broken-down native boat was staked. The party crossed the bay and Bowen himself went down to the water front to look at the newly arrived ships. It was now towards evening, and from the cookhouse rose a thin, blue spear of smoke on each ship where the supper was being prepared. Sailors were hanging over the bulwarks, smoking long pipes, and laughing and joking in the burring tongue of Scotland. They noticed the hulking white stranger loafing about the wharf, but made no comment, for one does not long knock about the waters of Madagascar without dulling the faculty of surprise. Bowen marked the names of the two vessels, Content and Speedy Return. This latter name he thought unfortunate in view of all the circumstances. Speedy Return? Not if Jack Bowen knew anything about the matter.

To get the full value out of this adventure, we have to know a little something about these two doomed ships and why and how they happened to be in this little port of Mananara at this particular time. If we lift the fly-blown, time-stained pages of history we get a queerish kind of a yarn in this connection. It only needs a momentary glance, and when we have taken it, we shall the more appreciate the significance of the sinister meddling of Jack Bowen, who, of course, knew nothing of what we shall know and if he had known he would not have cared two straws,—in fact, would have enjoyed his game all the more.

In June, 1695, some half a dozen years before Jack Bowen comes on the stage, a group of Scotch noblemen, with some other folk of lesser influence, procured a statute from the English parliament and a charter from the English Crown, authorizing them to incorporate an African-Indian trading company. Their chief object was to found a Scotch colony in the Isthmus of Panama, or Darien, as it was then called. Everybody was going to get immensely rich out of the venture. But the noblemen were not stingy about it; they decided to offer the stock of their corporation to the public. They evidently had a wonderful advertising manager, for an old writer tells us that when the stock was put on the market “the nobility, the gentry, the merchants, the people, the royal burghs without the exception of one, and most of the other public bodies subscribed. Young women threw their little fortunes into the stock; widows sold their jointures to get command of money for the same purpose. Almost in an instant four hundred thousand pounds were subscribed in Scotland, although it be now known that there was not at that time above eight hundred thousand pounds of cash in the kingdom.”

That is what you may call promoting,—to get half the cash of the kingdom. It was the last chance anybody ever had of that sort in Scotland.

Everything went so well that the English East India Company became exceedingly jealous and not a little fearful that a powerful rival was rising in the north to challenge its hold in the Far East. In politics, in the financial world, in every way it possibly could, the English company sought to thwart the Scotchmen and upon the whole succeeded very satisfactorily in handicapping the latter. Being Scotchmen, however, they went right ahead, “satisfied of the envy of the English and of their consciousness of the advantages which were to flow to Scotland” from the Darien colony. Six ships were built, each able to carry two hundred emigrants, and on the twenty-sixth of July, 1698, the whole city of Edinburgh streamed down upon Leith to see the Darien voyagers depart, amidst the tears and praises and prayers of relations and friends, and of their countrymen. Many seamen and soldiers, whose services had been refused, because more offered themselves than were needed, were found hid in the ships, and when ordered ashore, clung to the ropes and timbers, imploring to go without reward.

The colony, however, was a dismal and tragic failure. When the people arrived at Darien, the Dutch East India Company—instigated it was believed by agents of the English company—forbade the factors of their forts in that region to give help of any sort to the Scotchmen. Expecting to get supplies locally and being thus refused, “the colonists fell into diseases from bad food and want of food” and almost all of them faded and died. Eight months of horror lagged along and then the colony broke up, only a handful surviving to stagger to the ship for home. In the meanwhile, however, another crowd of thirteen hundred colonists had left Scotland for Darien amid the same hurrah, only to meet the same fate as had the first, and to send back as survivors only a pitiful remnant of thirty.

Scotland laid all the blame upon England in general and the East India Company in particular and deeply smoldered the already traditional hatred between the northern and southern peoples.

Withal, the Scotch African-Indian trading company kept intact, but took on the character of a more private commercial corporation. It entered in the orthodox fashion on the East India trade wherever it could circumvent the English monopoly, and to this end sent forth its young but not unpromising fleet to Indian waters, and of this fleet the Content and the Speedy Return were fair representatives.

But see what an unhappy destiny pursues this Scotch company! Here it is, trying to recuperate from the terrible disaster of Darien, just, as they say of an invalid, getting about again, when wretched, wicked and utterly reprehensible Jack Bowen is here, in far-off Madagascar, lurking about in the woods ready to inflict upon the poor company another terrible adversity!

On May 26, 1701, the Speedy Return and the Content had sailed from Glasgow for the East Indies. What great things they were to accomplish! How they were to return soon—speedily, as the name would seem to hope—laden with gold and gain! The name of John Bowen did not mean a thing in Glasgow. Such is life. They lumbered, after the fashion of the blunt ships of that age, first to Guinea, then to the Cape of Good Hope—propitious name—and there, as well as at Guinea, they discovered there was not a little profit to be had by postponing their arrival at Malabar and the Indian trade proper and diverting themselves to the slave business. In this traffic then they came over from the mainland of Africa to the island of St. Mary’s, in Madagascar, where they loaded their holds with the negroid Sakalaves sold to them by the Hovitas and other superior tribes of the island.