The Peace of Ryswick in 1697 put an end to most of the privateering in the West Indies and sixteen years later England’s wars with France, over the Spanish succession, lasting for nearly a half-century, ended with the treaty of peace signed at Utrecht. By its terms Great Britain received Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and the right to send African slaves to America. While the notable battles of this war had been fought on land yet, in many respects, it had been a conflict between naval powers and the peace released a great many men who found themselves unable to obtain employment in the merchant shipping. This was particularly true in the West Indies where the colonial governors had commissioned a large number of privateers. When adventurous spirits have been privately employed under a commission to sail the seas and plunder the ships of another nation, it is but a step forward to continue that fine work without a commission after the war is over. To the mind of the needy seaman there was very little distinction between the lawfulness of one and the unlawfulness of the other.
MAP OF THE WEST INDIES ABOUT 1720, SHOWING “THE TRACTS OF THE GALLIONS”
From Herman Moll’s “Atlas Minor,” London, 1732, in the Harvard College Library
Another training school for pirate ships also existed among the buccaneers who flourished in the West Indies during the last half of the seventeenth century. Spain at that time claimed sovereignty over all the lands lying in or about the Caribbean Sea, a territory which she looked upon as a great preserve over which to exercise absolute control and from which to extract the wealth of the mines. Manufactures were forbidden and commerce with other nations was not permitted. Clothing and supplies of all kinds, wines, oil, and even some kinds of provisions must be purchased from merchants in distant Spain. No foreigner might land under pain of death and no foreign ship was permitted to anchor in any of their harbors. Twice each year a splendid fleet left Spain, bound for Mexico and the Isthmus of Panama, laden with all kinds of merchandise required by Spanish-America. On the arrival of the galleons a great fair was held where the traders met and for forty days Porto Bello, the city of the deadly climate, was thronged by the merchants of Peru, cargadores and sailors from the ships, negroes and native Indians.
By the year 1630, small settlements had been established by the English on the islands of Bermuda, St. Christopher, Tortuga and the Barbadoes, and Frenchmen were on Hispaniola; but before many years St. Christopher and Tortuga were ravaged by Spanish fleets, the women and children murdered and all able-bodied men condemned to slavery in the mines. The limitations of English navigation laws at this time were crowding the home ports with unemployed seamen; some took to begging on the high roads, but the more adventurous found their way to the West Indies where twice each year journeyed the fleet of great ships laden with gold and silver from the mines of Mexico and Peru, pearls from Margarita and precious gems gathered from two continents. Here, too, came the scum of Europe and on the island of Tortuga a settlement grew that was frequented by lawless vagabonds coming from everywhere who lived variously by hunting, planting and piracy.
The name “buccaneer,” afterwards applied to these rovers, was derived from the hunters who smoked the flesh of the wild cattle that they killed, over a “boucane” or wood fire. Two centuries and a half later, the French half-breeds canoeing in the Canadian backlands spoke of “la boucane” when they lighted their camp fires. The hunters went to the mainland in large parties and killed the wild cattle for their hides. “After the hunt was over” writes Esquemeling,[13] the historian of the buccaneers, “they commonly sail to Tortuga to provide themselves with guns, powder and shot, and necessaries for another expedition; the rest of their gains they spend prodigally, giving themselves to all manner of vice and debauchery, particularly to drunkenness, which they practiced mostly with brandy.” The tavern keepers and the hangers-on of both sexes, watched for the return of the buccaneers, “even as at Amsterdam, they do for the arrival of the East India fleet.”
It was a Frenchman, known among his associates as “Peter the Great,” who first played the uproarious game of piracy on the Spanish fleet. With only twenty-eight men he cruised off the coast of Hispaniola in an open boat at the time of year when the galleons passed on their homeward voyage. On sighting the fleet he followed during the night and notwithstanding the fact that the Vice-Admiral had been told of the suspicious craft, so confident was he of the strength of his ship that she was allowed to straggle from the convoy. When the boatload of desperadoes ran alongside they scuttled their craft and boarded the Spaniard yelling like demons. They were dressed in their usual manner, in shirts soaked in the blood of wild cattle, leather breeches and moccasins of rawhide, and the Vice-Admiral, sitting in his cabin playing cards, may well have imagined, as in fact he cried out—“The ship is invaded by devils.”
After the news of the rich capture reached Tortuga, many of the buccaneers turned to piracy and in a few years the Spanish seas were infested with small fleets of pirate vessels which obeyed fixed laws and were governed by a single chief. Desperate men in every European port came out to join them and in time many thousand men recognized the command of the great captains of the “Brethren of the Coast,” as they styled themselves. Before the end of the first year that followed the capture of the Spanish galleon, twenty large vessels had been taken, two great plate ships had been cut out of the harbor of Campeachy and a trade in looted merchandize had sprung up between Tortuga and Europe that soon made the piratical settlement one of the richest in America.
The “Brethren of the Coast” established among themselves a code of laws the larger number of which related to captured booty. All offences against these laws were severely punished, the commonest penalty being “marooning” which consisted of landing the offender on an uninhabited key or island with only a small supply of food. The most desperate might well shrink from such an end. The invariable practice required that everything should be held in common and at the last be divided into shares according to a fixed ratio. The captain drew the largest number, of course, and the sailing master, carpenter and surgeon came next. There was also a tariff by which to indemnify those who were mutilated while fighting. For a right arm, six hundred Spanish pieces of eight were awarded or a corresponding value in slaves. The left arm was worth only five hundred pieces of eight, and a leg was of equal value. An eye was worth one hundred and a finger the same. The booty brought into the pirate rendezvous at Tortuga was enormous. Frequently pirates would land bringing in five or six thousand pieces of eight per man and a single vessel once brought in loot amounting to 260,000 pieces. Huge sums were gambled away in a single night and drunken buccaneers would sometimes buy pipes of wine and force every passer-by to drink or fight.
The success of the buccaneers before long paralyzed Spanish commerce and fewer ships were sent to the American colonies so that the “Brethren,” then numbering several thousands, began to plan attacks upon land. The first Spanish settlement assaulted was Campeachy, on the coast of Yucatan. An Englishman named Lewis Scot led this attack which resulted in much loot and the almost entire destruction of the city. Another Englishman named Davis took Nicaragua and plundered the churches of vast quantities of plate and jewels. L’Olonnais, a Frenchman, with eight vessels filled with men, fell upon Maracaibo and after much hard fighting brought away 260,000 pieces of eight and a great amount of jewels and plate. “But,” writes Esquemeling, “in three weeks they had scarce any money left, having spent it all in things of little value, or lost it at play. The taverns and stews, according to the custom of the pirates, got the greatest part.”