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Nassau - Haven of the Caribbean Pirates

Nassau - Haven of the Caribbean Pirates

by Cherie Pugh

Cherie Pugh discovered the true story of the Nassau pirates when sailing through the Caribbean on a traditional wooden ship. She found the court records of their trial in London, and spent years researching and writing

“Mary Read – Sailor, Soldier, Pirate”.

This ultimate pirate yarn is now available as an ebook or paperback from www.womanpirate.com

After Queen Anne’s war, European, and particularly British soldiers and sailors, were left to beg for their bread all over the far-flung European colonies. Many of those stranded in the Caribbean were forced to cut logwood in the jungles, the desperate life uniting them into tight-knit brotherhoods. When they took to the sea as pirates, they were united by the Welsh Captain Henry Jennings, who led them in an attack on a Spanish salvage camp, and made off with a fortune.

[For more information on the pirate life, see my article

“The Real Pirates of the Caribbean”]

But the war with Spain was over, and the pirates were now outlaws, with the Navies of all the European powers against them. So Jennings led them to Captain Mission's old pirate base: the port of Nassau on the island of Providence in the Bahamas. This stood directly in the line of trade from Europe to the American colonies and Africa, the triangle of goods, sugar and slaves that made England rich, and built her western cities, such as Bristol and Liverpool. As every ship had to sail the 'trade winds' in this direction, every ship would have to run the pirate gauntlet. Those merchants rich enough paid heavily for Naval protection, and their ships sailed in convoys.

Jennings united the pirates under Captain Mission's code. He insisted on the honour of the Brethren of the Sea, claiming they were the only true gentlemen, those well-born being but a pack of wolves that gorged on the helpless and weak. The pirates came from the 80% of Britain that lived in desperate poverty and lawlessness, and having suffered from terrible injustice, they chose not to tolerate it.

Each pirate company aboard each ship elected a captain, to lead them when 'chasing or being chased' and a quartermaster, who was to protect the rights of the men from the captain. When in Nassau, these captains and quartermasters formed the Nassau council, that heard complaints, and attempted to keep the peace, not just between the pirates, but between the pirates and islanders and the occasional Governor appointed by the British government.

Those pirates such as Edward Teach, or Blackbeard as he styled himself, who could not conform to humane standards, were not welcome in Nassau. Indeed, Blackbeard and his crew were based on Saint Thomas, and then the American mainland.

Some of the pirates, such as Captain Cockram of Harbour Island, married island women, founded families, and made significant contributions to their small settlements. Captain Cockram compiled an accurate chart of the Bahamas from notes and scraps of navigator's maps, and presented his life's work to the ungrateful Governor Woodes Rogers. He was also involved in building the small forts that saved the islanders when they were attacked, and in organising the islanders' effective defense.

John Haman designed and built the pirate ships at Harbour Island in the Bahamas, and he based his designs on the sloops of the Malacca pirates, 'fast to attack, faster to run', which were themselves based on the Arab dhow. Shallow draughted and agile, the pirate sloops were much more suited to sailing the treacherous reefs and shallows of the Caribbean. Their fleets of small, quick sloops and schooners, all with the new bird-wing sails and longer prows, glided across the water under the lightest of breezes. Despite, or because of, their smaller size, they easily outran, out-sailed and out-fought the clumsy, square-rigged, massive Navy ships. The Dutch had provided an effective defense against Spanish invasion using small, lightly-armed fishing boats against huge Spanish galleons, and these lessons were not lost on the pirates. Thousands of them flourished in the Caribbean by 1715, in companies of hundreds of men, in fleets of fast ships.

The British Navy found itself totally at a loss, too far from home, with ill and dispirited crews, who were only kept in line with a discipline so harsh it caused mutinies. The poor, starving sailors, most shanghaied by their own governments, probably dreamed of being captured by pirates, and becoming rich and free, and they could certainly not be relied upon to fight with the desperation of the pirates. And as the navy commanders made fortunes from convoying merchant ships, sometimes demanding up to a quarter of the cargo, and further contributing to the demise of trade in the area, their commitment to the actual destruction of the pirates might be questioned.

When King George lost patience with his Navy's inability to deal with the pirates, he cleverly offered an unconditional Pardon to the pirates first. Within a few months, half the Nassau pirates had gone home, glad to end a long exile away from their families. Governor Bennett of Bermuda sent his own son to sail straight into Nassau harbour, and invite the pirates to Bermuda to take the Pardon. Henry Jennings immediately set sail for Bermuda, hundreds of pirates with him.

Then the King sent Captain Woodes Rogers to take Nassau back from the pirates. During Queen Anne's War, Rogers had captured enough Spanish gold to finance England’s entire campaign against French domination. When he sailed his fleet into Nassau, Captain Vane met him with fireships, and forced him out again. Yet that night, Vane’s supporters melted away from him. Given their love of freedom, and Vane’s reputation for arrogance, they chose to live as Englishmen, in an English colony, with a Governor, rather than as the subjects of a pirate King. When the Governor sailed in again the next morning, Vane only stayed long enough to fire a volley at him, and then fled through the impossibly narrow eastern channel. Anne Bonny and Jack Rackam sailed with him. The pirate Mary Read remained in Nassau, still dressed as a man, and sought the Pardon.

[For more information on pirate women, see my article

“Mary Read and Anne Bonny - Pirate Women of the Caribbean”]

Governor Woodes Rogers was an ambitious Puritan, with little time for women, and none for the Brethren. He didn’t understand the pirates’ readiness to surrender, and was sure they would mutiny against him. Rogers had brought hundreds of colonists with him from war-ravaged Europe, but the rains brought fever, and he buried most of them within weeks. The Brethren would not farm, and when he insisted that they slave to erect forts against an expected Spanish attack, many returned to the sea.

After a successful cruise, Vane's arrogance and disdain for the pirate code saw him lose the leadership of his pirate fleet to the handsome and popular Jack Rackam. Under Rackam's captaincy, the pirates prospered, and after a wild revel with Tom Moody on Tortuga at Christmas, during which Anne Bonny disclosed her true identity to Rackam, he proposed that they divide their plunder and ships, and seek the Pardon.

They returned to Nassau, persuaded the Governor that they would defend his colony from any invasion by Spanish forces, and set up a trading company. As there was a new war with Spain looming, the Governor was rightfully terrified of a Spanish attack, and had to accept them. When the Spaniards finally did attack, the pardoned Brethren easily beat them off, but Governor Rogers still distrusted them.

Then the Governor heard that Jack Rackam intended to pay off Anne Bonny’s first husband, as she was now the mother of Jack's child, and he wanted to marry her. Rogers denounced Anne as a whore, threatened her with a whipping, and declared that Jack would wield the lash. Within days, Anne had tricked her way aboard the fastest ship in the harbour, one of John Haman's own sloops, and Rackam’s old crew were back on the account.

When the Naval commanders based in the colonies appealed to the local Governors for money to equip small fleets of sloops, they were finally able to challenge the pirates. When Rogers sailed into Nassau, he had sloops with him, though they did not dare follow Vane through the narrow eastern channel out of Nassau harbour. Yet Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were both captured by naval sloops that trapped them in the shallow mudflats of rivers on the American Main, and blasted them to pieces. Jack Rackam was also finally captured by a Jamaican Navy sloop, though the wild women in his crew almost fought off their attackers single handed.

[For more information on the British Government's slaughter of these pirates,

see my article “The End of the Pirates of the Caribbean”]

Any historian of the Caribbean pirates must wonder what would have happened if the pirates had refused to surrender Nassau. The ease with which half of them beat off the Spanish attack confirms that it would have been beyond the powers of the British Navy to take Nassau in their massive, square-rigged ships. If Charles Vane had not been so high-handed, and if Henry Jennings had not been so convinced that the Pardon was in the pirates best interest, they could have held the port indefinitely. That most of them chose to abandon this stronghold and return home proves that they were indeed exiles, forced into piracy to survive. That the rest found it hard to give up a life of freedom and riches is hardly surprising, in a time when to be rich and free was beyond the hope of a poor man, unless his dream came true, and he was captured by pirates.

This ultimate pirate yarn is now available as an ebook or paperback from www.womanpirate.com

About the Author

When sailing the Caribbean in a traditional wooden ketch, the Nordvag, I re-discovered the story of Mary Read, who lived as a man and died a pirate. I found her court records, and after many tears of research wrote "Mary Read- Sailor, Soldier, Pirate"
Re-creating the life of Mary Read has been a labour of love, as well as the work of half a lifetime. Learning about the real pirates of the Caribbean made it worth it.
If you want to read "Mary Read: Sailor, Soldier, Pirate", go to www.womanpirate.com

Bernie Lubell's knitting machine