Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/669

 plain course of betaking themselves to Algiers or Salee. But there were many who prowled nearer home. Sir William Monson, in his Naval Tracts, tells how he was sent in 1605 to hunt pirates out of the Shetlands and the Hebrides. He found none at sea near Scotland, but some unemployed, whom he shipped and used as guides and informers, on the coast of Ireland. At Broad Haven he discovered an Irish gentleman of the name of Cormat (presumably Cormac) living in some dignity. His house was “the well-head of all pirates,” and their captains were the lovers of his daughters. Monson found agents of merchants of London and of Galway, who came to buy the goods which the pirates had to sell at a bargain. He put that interesting family under the gallows, and frightened them into turning king’s evidence. It was his boast that he had cleared the Irish coast of pirates, but we know that they were common late in the reign of Charles I., and that under the name of “sea Tories” they abounded during the Civil War both in Ireland and in the Scilly Isles. Their existence was prolonged by the weakness of the government, which when piracy became very rampant took the disastrous course of offering pardon to all who would come in by a certain date. As a matter of course many did, and when their booty was spent returned to their piratical trade. Monson says that the pirates he caused to be executed had already tasted of the king’s mercy. While there wx ere friendly harbours to anchor in, purchasers to be met and a very fair prospect of a free pardon, piracy was not likely to cease.

As the 17th Century drew on the law and the police became too strong for such persons as Mr Cormat at Broad Haven, and his pirate friends. But the pirate class did not cease. It was only driven to a wider field of operations-to a field which in fact stretched from the Red Sea to New England. On this wide portion of the earth’s surface everything combined to favour the pirate. In the West Indies there was a “well-head” of immense capacity. Spain was forced late and reluctantly to recognize the legitimacy of any foreign settlement. She would rather put up with the lawless adventurers known as the “Brothers of the Coast” and the “ Buccaneers ” than co-operate with foreign governments to suppress them. Even when she renounced her full pretensions, several of the islands remained unoccupied except by the lingering remnants of the native races. Swine and cattle had been let loose on many of them, and had multiplied. The turtle was abundant and succulent. There was no want of food. A population with predatory instincts had been formed in the early days of hostile settlement and buccaneering. Jamaica was full of the so-called “ private men-of-war ” whose doings are prominent in the correspondence of the early governors, who were not uncommonly their associates. Add to this that the commercial policy of Spain denied to her colonists the right of trading with foreigners, and yet that she could not supply their needs herself. Hence arose a smuggling trade which had affinities with piracy. The lawless trader was not liable to be asked awkward questions, as to the origin of his cargo by the Spanish American who purchased it on the sly for money or by barter. Nor were any questions asked him when he brought his cargo to Jamaica, San Domingo, the Carolinas, New England or even Europe. In the decay of Spain her navy was not to be feared. But it vias not the commercial policy of Spain alone which helped the pirate. Great Britain, and France also, insisted that their colonists should trade exclusively with or through them. The colonists were always ready to buy “good cheap” from the smuggler, and never ask him whether the East Indian produce—tea, silk, spices and so forth—he offered for sale were purchased or plundered in the Red Sea or on the coast of Malabar or of Coromandel. Add to all this that the police and patrol work of regular navies was but superficially done even in peace, and hardly at all in war, and that in the British colonies there was no judicial machinery for trying pirates till the 11th and 12th years of William III (1700, 1701), and it will be seen that all the conditions favoured the pirate. In the East the decadence of the Mogul Empire was plunging India into anarchy, and it had no navy. Yet a large native trade existed, conducted by “Moors,” as they were called, and Madagascar, a great “no-man’s-land," afforded ample anchorage and food. To get possession of a ship, to sail to the East, to plunder the “Moors” to sell the booty in New England or the Carolinas, to spend the produce in riotous living, and go to sea on the same errand again, was the round of life of the large class of known pirates, who formed a recognized element of the population of Massachusetts and New York at the end of the 17th century. These are the men we know best, for they were encouraged by the tolerance shown them to come into the light. Others are buried in, or only dimly visible in, obscurity. Some trace of these latter may be found in the Letter Books of the Old Providence Company, a puritan society formed in the reign of Charles I., of which Pym and the earl of Warwick, afterwards the Parliamentary admiral of the Civil War, were governors. It was founded to colonize Old Providence on the coast of Honduras, a place not to be confused with another pirate haunt, New Providence in the Bahamas. It took to plain piracy and was suppressed by the Spaniards in 1638. Warwick made a regular business and large profits by fitting out “ privateers,” which were in fact pirates on the “ Spanish main,” not the seas of America, as some have thought, but the coast of the mainland.

The lives of the later and better known pirates may be illustrated by the career of Captain Avery, or Every (alias Bridgman), whose renown was great at the end of the 17th century, and who has the credit of having inspired Defoe’s Life, Adventures and Piracies of Captain Singleton. Avery was mate of a Bristol ship hired by the Spaniards in 1694 to serve as a coastguard vessel in South America. She was called the “Charles II.,” commanded by one Captain Gibson, and mounted 40 guns. While the “Charles II.” was lying at Corunna, in company with another vessel also hired by the Spaniards, waiting for the payment of wages which was delayed, Avery persuaded part of the two crews to seize her and sail with her on a piratical voyage to the East. The enterprise was carried out without bloodshed or, apparently, coercion of those who were unwilling to go. Avery and his crew sailed to Madagascar, a regular haunt of the pirates. Many of them ended by remaining for life among the natives. The adventurers in the “ Charles II.,” who had already made some small prizes, English and Danish, were joined at the island by others of the same character who had come from the West Indies. From Madagascar they went to the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, to lie in wait for the trade from India. Several prizes were taken, and finally a large and valuable ship, belonging “ to the Great Mogul and his subjects ” was captured about ten miles from Surat. Avery and his crew now hastened to New England to sell their booty. The '° Charles II. ” was disposed of as a privateer at Providence, and the pirates bought a sloop in which they sailed along the coast of the English colonies, selling their spoil, with the consent of the colonists and the connivance of the officials, who were bribed. In an evil hour for themselves they decided to come to England. The Indian governments, exasperated by the piracy practised at the expense of their subjects, were threatening reprisals on the East India Company. The Company made complaints to the government at home, and energetic measures of repression were taken. Avery himself escaped capture, but several of his men were brought to trial, condemned and executed. It is to be noted that when first tried, on the 19th of October 1696, they were acquitted. They were, however, re-tried on other counts, on the 31st of October. The charge of Lord Chief Justice Holt to the jury, and the address of Sir Charles Hedges, the admiralty judge, shows that they felt both the importance and the uncertainty of securing a verdict. The cruise of Avery is not only a typical example of a piratical venture, but it is an important date in the history of the policing of the sea. The English government was roused to a sense of the necessity for strong measures to repress piracy. All the steps taken were not according to knowledge. The extraordinary private venture of Lord Bellamont and his associates who sent out (q.v.), a man of piratical antecedents,