The Pirate as Social Bandit
 Victims of good
movies and bad
scholarship for years
 Acts more interesting
than motivations and
causes
 One avenue is to view
them through lens of
Hobsbawn’s
 “Social Bandits”
 Portraying pirates as predatory
individuals
 Insulates readers from boarder
socio-economic conditions
 Already seen how battle for
empire brought forth the
privateer
 Pirates also a ‘logical’ by
product of 17th & 18th C
 I am a free Prince, and I have as much
authority to make War on the whole world,
as he who has a hundres Sail of Ships at
Sea, and an Army of 100,000 me in the
field
 And this my conscience tells me
 Sam Bellamy?
 Snivilling puppies, who allow Superiors to
kick them about deck at Pleasure; and pin
their faith upon a Pimp of a Parson; a
squab who neither practicces nor believes
what he puts upon the chuckle-headed Fools
he preaches to
 Historian Eric Hobsbawm describing Social




Banditry
1. a “universal and unchanging
phenomenon”
2. an “endemic peasant protest against
oppression and poverty”
3. its goal “a traditional world in which men
are justly dealt with, not a new and perfect
world”
4. with a “cry for vengeance”
1.universal and unchanging phenomenon
 Is this a description of piracy?
 Common themes to date
 Relationship to empire
 Used to help create
 Condemned when empire is complete
 Profit motivation
 Position outside of communities – yet also linked
to communities
 Attempts to create community
2.Peasant protest against
oppression and poverty
 Pirates are not peasants
 Yet do represent a protest against oppression
and poverty
 We have seen how
 poor treatment by captains
 Illegal capture and forced labor through press gangs
 Low or non existent payment for work
 All figured in the move to piracy
3.Traditional world in which
men are justly dealt with
 The use of Round Robin to share
commitment
 Egalitarianism on board
 Regulations which control behavior
rather than control position or rank
 Closer parity in distribution of
property
4.cry for vengeance
 Seen in naming practices
 Blackbeard
 ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’
 Stede Bonnet
 ‘Revenge’
 John Cole
 ‘New York Revenge’s Revenge’
 Also in public declarations of
intended retribution
 Black Bart’s flag
Pirate flags
 Rallying points of solidarity
 Most common symbol for pirates of the ‘golden
age’
 Both today and at the time
 Symbol of pirate community
 Two main background colors
 Red or Black
 Red possibly the first
 From the French jolly red – jolly roger
 Also a symbol of ‘no quarter given’
 i.e. no surrender
 Symbolism on flag
 Most common
 Human skull
 Or “deaths head”
 Appropriated from the
logs of ‘legal’ captains
 Shifted, in part, to a
symbol of liberty
 signified a fatal, yet
accepted and chosen,
end
 Other symbols found
 Heart
 Truth? Death?
 Weapon
 Tool of trade
 Threat of violence
 Hour glass
 Limited time – theirs and yours
 Or lost time
 A symbol to fear
 Sign of
consciousness within
pirates that they
were preyed upon
 A mark of
commonality
 Symbols of commonality
 Pirate strong holds
 Madagascar
 Port Royal, Jamaica
 Nassau, Bahamas
 Another such location was
 Sierra Leone
 April 1719 Pirate Captain Thomas Cocklyn and
crew were at anchor in the Sierra Leone river
 When a ship began to approach
 Nervous at first then they saw her “black flag”
 “immediately they were easy in their minds”
Group identity and Revenge
 Charles Vane
 “would give no quarter to Bermudians” and “cut
away their masts upon account of one Thomas
Brown who was detained in these Islands upon
suspicion of Piracy”
 Sept 1720 Black Bart Roberts
 “had the audaciousness to insult H.M. Fort”
avenging the execution of “their comrades at
Nevis”
 Roberts then sent word to the Governor that
“they would Come and Burn the Town [Sandy
Point] about his ears for hanging the pirates
there”
 Before the execution of pirates in
Bermuda in January 1724
 Governor Charles Hope wrote to the
Board of Trade in London that he had
“difficulty” gathering evidence because
residents
 “feared that this very execution wou’d
make our vessels fare the worse for it,
when they happened to fall into pirate
hands”
 Threats worked!
 Upon capture of a ship, pirates often enquire
 “into the Manner of the Commanders
Behaviour to their Men, and those against
whom Complaint was made” were “whipp’d
and pickled”
 Bart Robert’s crew had an official for this task
 George Wilson was “Dispencer of Justice”
 Pirate Philip Lyne caught in 1726 admitted
that he “had killed 37 Masters of vessels”
 1719 capture of Captain William Snelgrave
 spent 30 days as captive on board a pirate
ship
 When attacked Snelgrave ordered his
men to arms
 They refused
 Pirate quartermaster infuriated by the
command
 “endeavoured to beat out” Snelgraves
“brains” with a pistol butt
 Snelgrave’s men however cried out
 “for God’s sake don’t kill our Captain,
for we never had a better man”
 After questions asked
 beating stopped
 Moreover Pirate captain reprimanded
quartermaster to
 “remember their reasons for going a
pirating were to revenge themselves on
base Merchants and cruel commander of
Ships”
 Snelgrave reported similar incident during capture
 Pirates captured decrepit schooner belonging to
the Royal Africa Company
 One pirate urged it be burnt
 he had been ill treated while working for the RAC
 Another pointed out that
 Burning the ship would help the company because it was
worth so little and
 “the poor People that now belong to her, and have
been on so long a voyage, will lose their Wages,
which I am sure is Three times the Value of the
Vessel”
 Crew released and allowed to return to England
 In July 1717, Thomas Fox, A Boston ship
captain was taken by pirates who
 “questioned him whether anything
was done to the Pyrates in Boston
Goall”
 Promising that “if the Prisoners
Suffered they would Kill every Body
they took belonging to New England”
 The prisoners were pirates of the ship
Whydah
 One of whom was African-American
"NOBODY CAN GIVE YOU
FREEDOM. NOBODY CAN GIVE
YOU EQUALITY OR JUSTICE OR
ANYTHING. IF YOU'RE A MAN,
YOU TAKE IT” (MALCOLM X)
African Americans and the Sea
 Expectations of predominantly white
audiences
 conditioned early fictional depictions of
pirates of African descent.
 stock characters who could be conveniently
killed off
 Used to exploit fear and prejudice by being
portrayed as particularly demonic creatures
 Understanding black participation not
an easy task.
 “multi-culturalism”
sprang not from
idealistic sentiments
of the "brotherhood
of man”
 but from a
pragmatic spirit of
revolt against
common oppressors.
 Pirates as social bandits
 Outlaws
 less divided by
 national
 religious
 and racial differences
 Than ‘traditional’ Europeans caught
in a web of institutionalized dynastic,
national, religious and racial hatreds.
 Pirate crews international in
composition
 The crew of The Whydah
included
 English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, and
British colonials and
 French, Dutch, Spaniards, Swedes,
Native Americans, AfricanAmericans and Africans
 Treatment of captive Africans was unpredictable.
 After a slave ship had been robbed, her human
cargo
 sometimes left in chains
 freed to take what vengeance they chose on former
captors
 set at liberty on shore
 joined the pirate crew
 Twenty-five blacks liberated from an unidentified "Guinea
Ship“ joined the Whydah
 impressed into service
 sold to unscrupulous colonial merchants and captains
 became targets for piratical rage
 Most pirates of African descent former
colonial slaves
 Pirates Christopher Winter and Nicholas
Brown raided Jamaican sugar plantations
for slaves
 Judging from surnames, blacks in
Blackbeard's crew were freemen born in
British colonies
 Having once experienced bondage
 such recruits would presumably
ferociously resist re-apprehension.
 Freedom within pirate crew
 Depended on courage to seize it
 Confronted by far worse prospects within
18th-century colonialism
 not surprising that some blacks enthusiastically
embraced
 “visions of invincibility, with dreams of easy
money and the idleness such freedom
promised, and with the promise of a life
unfettered by the racial and social ideology
of the plantation system”
 KJ Kinkor
 Although statistics are sparse
 at least 5000 pirates active between 1715 and
1726
 perhaps 25-30% of them were black
 See handout
 No crew described as all-white
 Neither race nor nationality are mentioned
in the Articles of any crew.
 Blacks received shares of booty and the right to
vote
 Rewards and incentives based on an
individual's ability to function effectively
 rather than on skin color.
 Blacks also found as leaders of
predominantly white crews
 Diego de los Reyes commanded a ship operating
with Dutch pirates and privateers in 1630-40’s
 Ipseiodawas and John Mapoo, commanders in
Henry Morgan’s 1668 expedition against
Portobello, probably zambos of the Mosquito tribe
 Diego Grillo, a runaway slave from Havana,
commanded a ship in Morgan's expedition against
Panama
 later defeated three separate warships sent to take him
Leading over 1000 men in one raid,
Laurens de Graff was freebooter feared
by the Spanish during the 1680's
 Hendrick van der Heul, one-time
quartermaster of Captain Kidd, was
black
 Pirate quartermaster, Abraham
Samuel, a former slave from Martinique
retired from piracy to rule his own
kingdom in Madagascar

 "Caesar“ black officer entrusted by Blackbeard to ignite
the ship's powder magazine in the event of defeat
 One historian believes that Blackbeard himself may have
been a “Tawny” mulatto
 That no known pirate crew prohibited blacks from
carrying firearms
 perhaps the bluntest possible evidence that differences in status
between whites and blacks were relatively minor.
 Linguistic evidence indicates that
some white pirates may have seen
themselves as runaway "slaves“
 i.e. maroons
 Pirate ship Rising Sun was also called
The Murrone[sic] Galley by her crew
 Two of Sam Bellamy’s vessels in
1716 were described as “maroon
periaguas”
 Fears that slaves might ally with pirates
are evidenced by at least one Caribbean
Governor's complaints that
 "the negroe men...are grown soe very
impudent and insulting of late that we
have reason to suspect their rising, soe
that we can have no dependence on their
assistance but to the contrary on
occasion should fear their joining with
the pirates”
 Hints of alliances between maroon communities
and pirate bands
 Especially Drake, Diego Grillo and Blackbeard
 Pirate crews formed alliances with unsubjugated
African tribes
 Letter Captain Condon left at St. Mary's Island
off Madagascar warning passing vessels
 "that they should use the Blacks kindly or he
would be reveng'd of them“
 A group of pirates settled and intermixed with
the Kru tribe on the coast of West Africa in the
early 1720’s
 Other evidence for the status of blacks among
pirates comes from court records.
 Traditional precedent held that servile status could
absolve an individual for crimes ordered by one "in
legitimate authority“
 During the 1718 trial of five captured blacks
from Blackbeard's crew
 Governor of Virginia asked his Council
"whether there be any thing in the
Circumstances of these Negroes to exempt
them from undergoing the same Tryal as
other Pirates”
 Council replied:
 "that the said Negroes being taken on
Board a Pyrate vessell and by what
appears equally concerned with the rest
of the Crew in the Same Acts of Piracy
ought to be Try'd in the same Manner;
and if any diversity appears in their
Circumstances the same may be
considered on their Tryal"
 All five tried, found guilty, and executed,
 Testimony implicated Tobias Knight, Secretary to
North Carolina Governor in various dealings with
Blackbeard.
 "they are (tho cunningly couched under the names of
Christians) no other than four Negro slaves which by
the Laws and Customs of all America Aught not to be
Examined as Evidence; neither is their Evidence of
any validity against a White Person whatsoever”
 Knight
 wanted it both ways
 guilty and hung
 But testimony not to be trusted
 The Council agreed and nothing happened to Knight
 Post 1700
 In trial after trial, blacks
were placed on the same
legal footing as whites
 comprise an undetermined
percentage of an estimated
400 pirates executed
during 1716-1726.
 Most went silently to the
gallows with little more
than Hendrick Quintor's
poignant comment
 "Tis a Dark Time with me”
 Beyond constraints of family, church,
class, and state
 pirates of the 17th and 18th centuries
engaged in a unique social
experiment
 A form of "social banditry" carried out
in a maritime context
 With African and African-Americans
as full-fledged participants.
Today’s lecture varies in
content from PG to X rated
Women and the Sea
 During most of maritime history in the
western world women on board ships
have been considered bad luck.
 did not however preclude a number of
women going to sea
 And a number of those women turning
pirate
 But before we turn to these women
 Women on shore
 Relatives
 Not often that these people get




mentioned
Female sailors and prostitutes more
common
But on occasion we do
Ramblin’ Jack Cramer, born in 1700,
informs us
“As to my mothers family; she was a
master ropemaker’s daughter”
 Suggesting a tie to the sea
 Fuller scene of family relationships
from same period comes from
 Edward ‘Ned’ Ward
 Ward, author of the Wooden World,
 a Publican and journalist in eighteenth-
century London
 Published a series of articles on
London in The London Spy
 compiled and published in book form in
1703
The London Spy
 “The
first figure that accosted us at our
entrance was a female Wappineer, whose
crimson countenance and double chin,
contain’d within the borders of a white
calico hood, and her Fiery-face look, in
my fancy was like a red-hot iron
glowing in a silver chafing dish.”
 The landlady of the pub and the mother
of two sailors.
 After placing their order Ward and his
companion take a seat
 watched as the landlady attacked her son
 ‘a great hulking fellow Smoaking a short Pipe
of Stinking tobacco’
 with a tirade of abuse
 Complaining that she worked as hard anyone in
the parish but she not able to
 “maintain you in this lazy life you lead”
 Eventually gave him six pence ordered him to
look for work
 After a short while alone with their thoughts
 Ward and his companion are roused as the door
swings open and in
 “steps another of the Tarpauling Factory”
 Second son returning from sea
 with a bag full of money
 The mother greats him praising him
 “In answer to which, he Innocently returns this
Compliment,
 Sure never any seafaring Son of a Whore had ever such
a good Mother as I have”
 In a continuation of this
domestic scene of bliss
 next through the door is Betty
 returning sailors sweetheart
 “and there was such a wonderful
Mess of Slip-Slop Lick’d up”
 Betty asks if he brought her
anything from the voyage
 “Yes, says he, I have sure. I can as soon
forget the points of my Compass, as
forget . . .as good as girl as ever was Kist
in a Cabbin, or lost her Maidenhead in a
Hammock”
 Common theme throughout
 a sense of rough character, of bluntness, and
of a certain crudity
 All of which wrapped up in a lose
community
 A second example of port side women seen in
the case of Elizabeth Patrickson
 Who was indicted by the Admiralty courts for
“robbery, Murder, and other maritime
offenses”
 Patrickson
 “did take one hundred pounds English
Money and various goods; and upon Nenrico
a Doctor of Law, did commit piracy, robbery
and murder”
 Full examination has shown that this “piracy”
to place at the dock side rather than on water
 Patrickson one of many women, who
lived off crime in and around the
docks
 Often left to fend for themselves
while their husbands or brothers were
away
 Crime was the only way to make ends
meet
 Mary Jones had a job making
umbrella’s
 did not make enough to pay her rent
 so she stole clothing of fellow lodgers
 Mary Dyer chanced upon an open door
 Entered and stole bed linen and bread
 Discovered hiding under the kitchen table
with a loaf under each arm as the family
returned
 Ann Wood, laundress, worked and slept in
the same room as her employers
 Stole a kettle, three flat Irons, and twenty
linen caps
 Thefts quick responses to opportunity
rather than large organized plans
 Susannah Flood robbed owner of a
house which was on fire
 Pretending to help him by saving his
goods she made of with
 3 guineas, 3 half-crowns and 7s.
 In another form of theft women
fleeced the gullible or foolish
 One salesman testified against Sarah
Lynch
 worker in a clothing shop
 “I went in after my hat; they shut the
door, and pulled up their clothes and
wanted me to do with them, and the
prisoner unbuttoned my breeches,
and took the bag of money out of my
pocket”
 Actions , falsely offering sexual
services, leads us to most commonly
discussed water front women
 Prostitutes
 “Strumpets and trulls”
 as Ned Ward referred to them
 Were to be found in every port around
the Atlantic
 In London during the 17th and 18th
Centuries Ratcliffe Highway in Wapping
was a common location
 ‘a continual street, or filthy straight
passage, with alley of small tenements
of cottages builded, inhabited, by sailors
and victuallers’
 Polyglot community
 Women from most European nations
 Flemish women were popular during the early eighteenth
century with a reputation for sexual expertise
 as well as women from Africa and Asia
 According to Daniel Defoe many prostitutes were,
like women criminals, in the ‘business’ to
supplement their income
 “This is the reason why our streets are swarming
with strumpets. Thus many of them rove from
bawdy house to service, and from service to bawdy
house again”
 Most Prostitutes in port cities like London
 downtrodden victims of society
 Facing the danger, disease, and violence of
both
 the city and the occupation they found
themselves in
 Not all where without some level of control
 A young man named Francis Place was
apprenticed in 1780
 working for a leather breeches maker in London
 Place’s new master had three daughters
 1. The eldest a common prostitute
 2. The second was kept by the captain of
an East Indiaman “in whose absence she
used to amuse herself as such women
ususaly do”
 3. The youngest had pleasant lodgings
where she was visited by a gentleman
 Non of these women were married
 For the officer and other wealthier men
 a different group of women offered their
services
 Prostitutes who worked away from the
ports and could be contacted in theatres
or pleasure gardens
 In the 1740s John Harris an employee of
the Shakespeare’s Head
 A tavern in Covent Garden frequented by Sea
Captains and directors of the East Indian
Company
 Began compiling a list of such women
 So popular – eventually published as
 Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies or Man of
Pleasure’s Kalendar
 1758 edition sold 8000 copies
 Inside were details of the Ladies and where to
meet
 Mrs. Grafton, who lived near Union Stairs in
Wapping informed people that
 “her chief and best customers are Sea officers, who
she particularly likes, as they do not stay long at
home, and always return fraught with love and
presents”
 Mrs. Grafton is
 “a comely woman, about forty, and boasts
she can give more pleasure than a dozen
raw girls. Indeed she has acquired great
experience in the course of twenty years, in
natural philosophy, in the University of
Portsmouth”
 “five shillings is her price, and she earns it
with great industry”
 A days pay for a senior captain 20 shillings
 A Sea Captain could also find a companion
described with nautical terms
 One such example is Miss Devonshire of
Queen Anne Street East who is of
 “a fine fair complexion, love tinctured
cerulean eyes, fine teeth, and genteel good
figure; a charming partner in a dance, a
very good companion by the fireside, and
dearly loves a charming glass”
 And now for the X rated section
 “many a man of war hath been her willing
prisoner, and paid a proper ransom;
 her port is said to be well guard by a light
brown chevaux-de-freize, and parted from
Bumbay by a very small pleasant isthmus
 The entry is rather straight; but when once in,
there is very good riding; and when they have
paid port customs, they are suffered to slip out
very easily
 Though generally followed by a salute from
Crown-point, which hastens their departure by
causing the floodgates to open commodiously”
 “She is so brave, that she is ever ready for
an engagement, cares not how soon she
comes to close quarters, and loves to fight
yard arm and yard arm and be briskly
boarded;
 she is best pleased when her opponent is
well armed, and would despise any
warrior, who had not two stout balls to
block up her covered way, and did not
carry metal enough to leave two pounds
behind him”
 With the prostitutes who plied
their trade in London and
other port cities of the Atlantic
world
 There was many a tearful
farewell in ports across the
land
 As a ship was preparing to sail
the Blue Peter flag was hoisted
 The signal for all men to return
to ship
One example
 Not all farewells took place as detailed in the
preceding image a second scene by the same artist
shows one series of alternatives
 However, not all sailors were allowed to
leave the ship
 Shore leave was not a right
 Particularly during time of war
 For those who remained on board it was
the custom to allow wives to visit the ship
 Along with the wives came prostitutes
 Brought out by enterprising boatmen
hoping sailors would pay their fare
 Often prostitutes
outnumbered wives
 Though to satisfy naval laws
all were classed as wives
 Women would share
hammocks
 And by many accounts
dance and drink as much
as any in the tavern
 As the Blue Peter rose
 Sailors returned
 And these women had to leave
 But what of those who didn’t?
 Suzanne Stark researched female sailors
 Using captains logs, ships musters, and
contemporary newspapers
 found details of 20 women who served in the
Royal Navy between 1650 and 1815
examples
 William Brown (female name not known)
 Joined navy around 1804
 After a row with Husband
 Served for several years on the Queen
Charlotte
 1815 discovered to be a woman
 Report on her life at sea given in the
Annual Register September 1815
 “She is a smart, well-formed figure, about
five feet four inches in height, possessed
of considerable strength and great
activity; her features are rather handsome
for a black, and she appears to be about
twenty six years of age. . . in her manner
she exhibits all the traits of British Tar
and takes her grog with her late
messmates with the greatest gaiety”
 He unveiling as a woman did not stop her career
 Later in the same year visited Somerset Place
 Navy and Pay Office
 to collect prize money earned while aboard the
Queen Charlotte
 Returned to the ship at the end of the year – still
under her assumed name
 Ships muster from December 31, 1815 to February 1,
1816 reads
 “William Brown, AB, entered 31 December, 1815,
1st Warrt.,”
 AB = Able bodied seaman
 Mary Lacy, born January 1740, Wickham, Kent,
England
 Age 19 disguised herself as a man in order to run away
from home undetected.
 Assumed name William Chandler joined the Royal
Navy in 1759
 as a carpenter's servant on the Sandwich.
 1763 started an apprenticeship in Portsmouth
dockyard
 Received her shipwright's certificate in 1770
 1771 resigned from the Navy due to rheumatism
 “A Petition was read from Mary Lacey
setting forth that in the year 1759 she
disguised herself in Men’s Cloaths and
enter’d on board His Maj. Fleet, where
having served til the end of the war, she
bound herself apprentice to the
Carpenter of the Royal William and
having served Seven Years, then
enter’d as a Shipwright in Portsmouth
Yard where she has continued ever
since.”
 “Resolved, in consideration of the
particular Circumstances
attending this Woman’s case, the
truth of which has been attested to
by the commissioner of the Yard at
Portsmouth, that she be allowed a
Pension equal to that granted to
Superannuated Shipwrights”
 Awarded her a pension of £20 a year
Hannah Snell
 June 2, 1750
 In a London pub, a
young marine
stunned his fellow
soldiers
 announcing that "he"
was really a woman
in disguise.
 For two years Hannah Snell had concealed her true
sex
 Serving in a regiment of the Royal Marines.
 Sailed to India through great storms
 Fought in mud-filled trenches at the siege of Pondicherry
and injured in the battle.
 Having recovered from the revelation, Hannah's
mates encouraged her to make the most of her
extraordinary story
 Suggested that she request a pension from the
head of the English army, the Duke of Cumberland.
 Hannah approached the Duke on 16 June
1750
 while he was reviewing troops in St. James's
Park.
 Surprised by the figure standing before him,
the Duke accepted a petition from Hannah
 Within days, news of Hannah's exploits had
trickled into the London press
 Public clamored for more information
 Eager to profit from this notoriety, Hannah
sold her story to the London publisher,
Robert Walker.
 Her appearances on stage in uniform
caused a sensation
 November 1750, the Royal Chelsea
Hospital officially recognized Snell's
military service and granted her a
lifetime pension.
 She lived for another forty years,
marrying twice and raising two sons
And finally female pirates
 History Channel Version of the two most famous
Bonny and Read
 Followed by a brief recap of life according to
Johnson
Anne Bonny
Mary Read
Anne Bonny
Mary Read
 Born in Cork, Ireland
 Born in England
 Illegitimate
 Illegitimate
 Passed off as a boy
 Passed off as her brother
 Trained as clerk
 Dressed as a boy
 Eventually taken to
 Hired out as a footboy




Carolina
Married a sailor
Kicked out of house
Went to sea
Fell in love with a pirate
 Joined army
 Married fellow soldier
 Husband Died
 Went to sea
 Captured by pirates
 Rackam and Bonny along with several
other pirates stole a sloop called the
William
 One of boats they took contained Read
dressed as Man
 Eventually read is revealed and the two
continue as pirates
 Rackam small time pirate of no notoriety
until linked with two female pirates
 Governor sent out ships to capture
Rackam
 Captain Barnet came across sloop
 Following a brief fight
 Barnet and crew boarded the
William
 Mary Read and Anne Bonny were
the only two to remain on deck
 Male pirates were hung
 Bonny permitted to see Rackam on day of





execution
“if you had fought like a man you would not
have to die like a dog”
Two women also convicted
Both ‘pleaded their bellies’
Mary Read died in jail
Anne Bonny???
 Possibly headed to Carolina married James Burleigh
 had 8 children and died in 1782 at age 84