The rise or rather increase of piracy in the West Indies after the Peace of Utrecht, can be laid at the door of the Spanish settlements, the governors of which having gone there to make a fortune generally countenanced any proceeding that brought in profit. It is fair to say, however, that the Spanish governors were not the only ones accused of such practices. They granted commissions to great numbers of guarda costas, under pretence of preventing an interloping trade, with orders to seize all vessels within five leagues of their coasts. English ships could not well avoid coming within this limit when on their way to Jamaica. If the captains of Spanish guarda costas exceeded their authority, the sufferers were allowed legal redress, but usually found after long litigation that their vessels and cargoes had been condemned among the crew, and the captain, the only one responsible, had nothing on which to levy.
The frequent losses of the English merchants by these Spanish guarda costas was provocation enough to call forth reprisals and the opportunity offering in 1716, the West India traders at once made use of it. In 1714, several of the Spanish galleons of “the plate fleet,” were cast away in the Gulf of Florida; and in 1716 several vessels from Havana were at work with diving engines fishing up the silver. They had recovered several millions of “pieces of eight” and carried them to Havana and had taken up 350,000 pieces more, which were placed in a storehouse on shore under guard of sixty soldiers, when an English fleet from Jamaica and Barbadoes, consisting of two ships and three sloops under Capt. Henry Jennings, came upon them. Jennings landed three hundred men, drove away the guard and carried off the treasure to Jamaica. On the way he met a Spanish ship laden with cochineal, indigo and 60,000 “pieces of eight,” and his hand being in, she was plundered, after which he sailed boldly back to Jamaica with the Spaniard following him. The Governor at Havana soon sent a vessel to Jamaica to demand restitution and punishment for Jennings. As it was in a time of peace, Jennings and his men soon realized that they would not be left unpunished let alone protected. Having disposed of their cargo to good advantage and furnished themselves with ammunition, provisions, &c., they again put to sea, but this time as full-fledged pirates, robbing not only Spaniards but Englishmen and any one else they could lay their hands on.
About the same time three or four small “Spanish men of war” fell upon the logwood cutters in the bays of Campeachy and Honduras, and also took twenty-two vessels, about half of the number hailing from New England, and most of the crews of these vessels, made desperate by their misfortunes, took on with the pirates under Captain Jennings, whom they met soon after. Captain Jennings and his consorts, augmented by “the Bay men,” consulted together about some retreat where they might store their wealth, clean and repair their ships and make themselves a snug abode and fixed upon New Providence the largest of the Bahama islands. The Bahamas for some years had been under English control with a nominal governor, but were much resorted to by pirates who were hand and glove with the principal traders. When Captain Jennings arrived with his fleet it became a veritable pirate stronghold and a breeding place for most of the pirate leaders who ranged the seas during the next five or six years.
Complaints soon reached London and in such number that on Sept. 15, 1716, Capt. Woods Rogers was placed in command of a fleet of sixteen men-of-war and tenders and ordered to proceed to New Providence and receive the submission of the pirates or suppress them by force. Captain Rogers not long before had made a voyage around the world in the course of which he had taken a Spanish ship bound for Acapulco laden with the wealth of the Philippines. Before he sailed for New Providence, the King’s Proclamation for suppressing pirates, or “Act of Grace,” as it was usually called, was sent ahead so that ample opportunity might be had for consideration and submission. On its arrival at the Island a general council of the pirate commonwealth was called. What took place is described in Johnson’s “History of the Pirates,” in the following language, viz:—
“There was so much Noise and Clamour, that nothing could be agreed on; some were for fortifying the Island, to stand upon their own Terms, and treating with the Government upon the Foot of a Commonwealth; others were also for strengthening the Island for their own Security, but were not strenuous for these Punctillios, so that they might have a general Pardon, without being obliged to make any Restitution, and to retire, with all their Effects, to the neighbouring British Plantations.
“But Captain Jennings, who was their Commadore, and who always bore a great Sway among them, being a Man of good Understanding, and a good Estate, before this Whim took him of going a Pyrating, resolved upon surrendering, without more ado, to the Terms of the Proclamation, which so disconcerted all their Measures, that the Congress broke up very abruptly without doing any Thing; and presently Jennings, and by his Example, about 150 more, came in to the Governor of Bermudas, and had their Certificates, tho’ the greatest Part of them returned again, like the Dog to the Vomit. The Commanders who were then in the Island, besides Captain Jennings above mentioned, I think were these, Benjamin Hornigold, Edward Teach, John Martel, James Fife, Christopher Winter, Nicholas Brown, Paul Williams, [consort to] Charles Bellamy [lost on the back of Cape Cod, with 142 of his crew and prisoners, Apr. 26, 1717], Oliver la Bouche, Major Penner, Edward England, T. Burgess, Thomas Cocklyn, R. Sample, Charles Vane, and two or three others; Hornygold, William Burgess and LaBouche were afterwards cast away; Teach and Penner killed, and their Crews taken; James Fife killed by his own Men; Martel’s Crew destroyed and forced on an unhabited Island; Cocklyn, Sample and Vane hanged; Winter and Brown surrendered to the Spaniards at Cuba, and England lives now [1724] at Madagascar.”
Captain Rogers arrived at New Providence in June, 1717, with two men-of-war and found that all the pirates had surrendered to the pardon, except Charles Vane and his crew, who slipped their cable, set fire to a large prize and sailed out of the harbor firing at the men-of-war as they went off.
In the latter part of the seventeenth century some of the richest commerce in the world was on the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. The Orientals owned much shipping and the overland trade with Europe was increasing rapidly. The English East India Company had established a number of important factories or trading stations and Portuguese merchants had been established for some time at Goa, on the Malabar coast. Finding that the game in the West Indies promised smaller returns than the commerce of the East, many of the pirate fraternity established themselves for a time on the island of Perim at the entrance to the Strait of Babelmandeb. Here there was an excellent harbor and the advantageous location permitted the levying of toll on all vessels passing in and out of the Red Sea. The great disadvantage was a lack of fresh water. Slaves were employed to excavate the rocky formation to a great depth, but without success, and at last the nest was abandoned and the pirate settlement removed to Madagascar. This is said to have taken place not long after Captain Avery captured a daughter of the Great Mogul of India, in a richly laden ship.
Capt. John Avery, one of the greatest of the Madagascar pirates, was the son of a tavern keeper of Plymouth, England, and was variously known as Avery, Every and Bridgman, while his intimates spoke of him as “Long Ben.” He was looting shipping on the Atlantic as early as 1693, when he took two heavily armed Danish vessels at Princess Island, on the West Coast of Africa, and he is said to have been in the West Indies before that time. During the winter of 1693-4, while in command of the “Fanny,” of forty-six guns and one hundred and thirty men, he made his most famous capture, a ship carrying a daughter of the Great Mogul on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Other vessels in his pirate fleet were the “Dolphin,” Captain Want, of Philadelphia; the “Portsmouth Adventure,” Captain Faro, and the “Pearl,” Capt. William Mues, both hailing from Newport, R. I.; and the ship “Amity,” of New York, commanded by the notorious Capt. Thomas Tew,[170] who eventually lost his life by a cannon ball while cruising in the Red Sea.
