But, undeterred by forecastle superstitions, the girls, whenever they had a mind to go to sea, went. In Von Archenholtz’ “History of the Pirates” you read of Ann Bonny and Mary Read, two English women, as may be judged from the names, joining the buccaneers, “not from licentious motives to gratify their pleasures, but solely by a thirst of plunder, and as co-partners in their dangers as well as in their profits.” To appreciate the courage of Mary Read and Ann Bonny it is necessary to understand the kind of lives the buccaneers led—moral, physical, and intellectual. The typical pirate of the Antilles—in those times—was a bruised and battered rogue, dressed in a shirt and a pair of pantaloons, both made of coarse linen cloth, dyed with the blood of animals he had killed. His unstockinged feet were protected by boots formed from hogskins, and his head was covered with a round cap. He tied a raw hide girdle round him, hung a sabre upon it and filled it with knives. He also carried a firelock that shot two balls, each weighing an ounce.[[29]]
[29]. Bailey says the word Bucanier is said to be derived from the inhabitants of the Caribee Islands who used to cut their prisoners to pieces “and laid them on hurdles of Brazil wood erected on sticks, with fire underneath, and when so broiled or roasted to eat them, and this manner of dressing was called bucaning. Hence our Buccaneers took their name, in that they, hunting, dressed their meat after their manner.”
Such was the dainty figure whom Ann Bonny and Mary Read made a comrade of, themselves retaining the apparel of their sex, to which they added long sailors’ trousers. With hair dishevelled, hangers at their waists, pistols on their breasts, and hatchets in their hands, they must have been objects nicely calculated to excite whatever of romantic enthusiasm there yet lingered in the bosoms of the cut-throats whose troop they had joined for love of blood and gold.
A more heroic female sailor, despite a fierceness that, though warrantable enough, makes an historical tigress of her, offers in the famous Jean de Belville, who vowing vengeance for the murder of her husband, De Clisson, at Paris, in 1343, fitted out a squadron of ships and swooped down upon the coast of Normandy, firing every castle that a torch could be put to, and reddening the seaboard with burning villages. She is represented to have been one of the finest women in Europe, and a sense of her beauty joining with perception of her wrongs and the brilliant loyalty of her very scheme of revenge, does unquestionably give a high quality of majesty to that posture of ferocity in which she is pictured by the historian.
In one of the old Dutch books of voyages—whether De Weert’s, Van Noort’s, or Schouten’s I cannot be sure—mention is made of a discovery, when the ship was off the Horn, of one of the crew as a woman. Even in these days of science, of canned meats, condensing apparatus, ice-houses, steam-winches, double-top-sail yards, clipper keels, and short voyages, a woman would find seafaring a calling bitter enough. But think of one of the sex a member of the crew of the Dutch ship of the seventeenth century, on a voyage of discovery, struggling against the western sleet-laden tempests of the bleak, iron melancholy Horn! Ships were butter-boxes in those times,[[30]] sawed-off old wagons, as broad as they were long, with running gear that worked like drawing teeth, and a discipline composed of keel-hauling, fixing to the mast by driving a knife through the hand, and marooning, or, in other words, setting the culprit ashore on an uninhabited island, with a day’s provisions, and without the means of obtaining more if more was to be had. That men died by the scores in those days of scurvy, months of bitter bad meat and foul water, pestiferous ’tween-deck atmosphere, supplemented by the barbarous ignorance of the chirurgeons, is readily intelligible; but that a woman should have managed to exist under such conditions all the way from the Texel to the Straits Le Maire, doing the sailors’ work, and eating the sailors’ food, and living in the sailors’ quarters, is little short of a miracle and an amazing instance of female endurance.
[30]. Few features of those chronicles of adventure which are included in the collections of Hakluyt, Purchas, Churchill, Harris, and others are more interesting than the descriptions given of the tonnage, arms, and crews of the vessels which discovered the Indies, penetrated the great South Sea, gave names to capes and headlands of the vast but still shadowy continent of New Holland; coasted the bleak shores of Newfoundland, and searched the ice of the Frozen Ocean for the North-west Passage. Of course, the measurements of those days are not the measurements of these. A tun might signify a capacity for different kinds of freight without reference to cubical dimensions. The capacity of some vessels in those days was measured by the number of pipes of wine which could be stowed in them. Even in recent times there is a considerable difference between old and new measurements, the old representing less than the new. Nevertheless it is impossible to read about the ships in which the early navigators sailed—it is impossible to think of their tub-like forms, their enormous top-hamper, the astonishing clumsiness of their yards and gear, their castellated poops and rampart-like quarters, without wondering how on earth such structures managed to roll in safety over the stormy ocean, and to push their way, however slowly, against opposing winds and adverse tides. Certain expressions have changed their meaning, and on reading the old voyages one is often puzzled with names given to craft which, to modern experience, do not in the least degree correspond with their titles. For instance, the galley in our times is known as a long rowing boat, mounting so many oars. But in former days by the term galley was meant a vessel whose complement of men was one thousand or twelve hundred. She mounted a good show of ordnance, had three masts and thirty-two banks of oars, every bank containing two oars, and every oar being handled by five or six men. Equally perplexing are those names of shallops, skiffs, pinnaces, lighters, and so forth, which are met in abundance in the old stories, and which express fabrics very different indeed from the kinds of craft they now designate. For Drake’s glorious voyage five ships were equipped. The Hind was one hundred tons, the Elizabeth eighty tons, the Marigold thirty tons, the Swan fifty tons, and the Christopher fifteen tons. The captain of this fifteen-ton pinnace was Thomas Moon, and we hear of her disappearing in great storms and reappearing in fine weather, to the general joy of the rest of the fleet. Such an old skipper as this must have made noble company over a mug of strong beer, and would have been able to tell of things even more wonderful than trees with oysters growing upon them. Schouten, who discovered and named Cape Horn, put to sea in vessels which in these days would class amongst small, inferior coasters; yet the Unity managed to carry nineteen pieces of cannon and twelve swivels and a company of sixty-five men. How those ancient mariners contrived to stow themselves away in their dark ’tweendecks and black forecastles, how in their little holds they could find room for sufficient provisions and water to last them for months, not to mention the gunpowder and cannon balls which they carried, surpasses modern marine comprehension. Among the ships William Funnell writes about, in a narrative that is commonly taken to be William Dampier’s, was the Cinque Ports galley, for ever memorable as the craft in which Alexander Selkirk sailed. This vessel, that was equipped for a buccaneering cruise in little known waters against towering and powerful galleons, was ninety tons, a burthen which in these days would about fit a pleasure yacht intended for the blue skies and summer seas of the holiday period. Or take Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s expedition, which included the Golden Hind of forty tons, the Swallow of forty tons, and the Squirrel of ten tons. “The resolution of the proprietors was that the fleet should begin its course northerly, and follow as directly as they could the trade-way to Newfoundland.” Think of a ten-ton boat starting on such an expedition as this! Yet Sir Humphrey took command of her when her master deserted, with this sequel: that when off Cape Race homeward bound, “the storms and swellings of the seas increasing, he (namely, Sir Humphrey) was again pressed to leave the frigate (that is, the Squirrel), but his answer was, ‘We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land.’ About midnight, the Squirrel being ahead of the Golden Hind, her lights were at once extinguished, which those in the Hind seeing cried out ‘Our general is lost!’ and it is supposed she sank that instant, for she was never more heard of.” Lord Byron exclaims:
“Columbus found a new world in a cutter,
Or brigantine, or pink, of no great tonnage,
While yet America was in her non-age.”
The conjecture—it seems no more—of Washington Irving that Columbus’ ships were undecked boats “not superior to river and coasting craft of more modern days,” is disproved by Lindsay in his “History of Shipping.”