Women at Sea: Lilac Chen Part II

Last we spoke of Lilac Chen, the unfortunate girl from China circa 1893, she was on her way to San Francisco without anyone asking her whether sailing across wave to an entirely alien world was something she might care to do. A slave, Lilac had no choice in the matter. And so, we pick up her story as told by her from the standpoint of her own salvation by a missionary in San Francisco named Miss Cameron:

Oh, God has just been wonderful. Just think, I was in such close waters for damnation myself! This woman, who brought me to San Francisco,, was called Mrs. Lee, and she kept the biggest dive in San Francisco Chinatown. Oh, she had a lot of girls, slave girls, you know. And every night, seven o'clock, all these girls were dressed in silk and satin, and sat in front of a big window, and the men would look in and choose their girls who they'd want for the night. Of course, I  didn't know anything, never heard about such things, you know. And whenever police or white people came, they always hid me under the bed and pushed a trunk in front of me and then after the police had left they let me come out again. And I saw these girls all dressed in silk and satin, and they were waiting for their business, see. But I didn't know anything.

When this woman needed money, she had to sell me to another party. Everywhere I had been they were very kind to me, except this last place she sent me. Oh, this woman was so awful! They say she was a domestic servant before and was cruelly treated. She used to make me carry a big fat baby on my back and make me to wash his diapers. And you know, to wash you have to stoop over, and then he pulls you back, and cry and cry. Oh, I got desperate, I didn't care what happened to me, I just pinched his cheek, his seat you know, just gave it to him. The of course I got it back. She, his mother, went and burned a red hot iron tong and burnt me on the arm. Then someone reported me to the home. But they described me much bigger than I was so when they came they didn't recognize me. And then the woman who had reported to the mission said, "Why didn't you take her? She's the girl." They said, "She looked so small," and then they came back again. But even then, they weren't sure that I was the one, so they undressed me and examined my body and found where the woman had beaten me black and blue all over. And then they took me to the home. Oh, it was in the pouring rain! I was scared to death. You know, change from change, and all strangers, and I didn't know where I was going. Away from my own people and in the pouring rain. And they took me, a fat policeman carried me all the way from Jackson Street, where I was staying, to Sacramento Street to the mission, Cameron House. So I got my freedom there. *

Lilac became an integral part of Miss Cameron's work, helping the American missionary and rescue worker to find girls even less fortunate than herself and rescue then from where they were "... sold to work in the dives, or as domestic servants, and bring them to Cameron House so they could be free... When we went on a raid we always took several of our own girls with us to help. Generally I would follow Miss Cameron as interpreter and she and I would go into the house through a door or a window... Poor Miss Cameron, she never knew about these dives, you know. Scottish people, especially the refined, never discussed these things... So nobody told her, she was so innocent. These slave girls used to have terrific sores, and she had to dress the sores, you know. She never wore gloves, you see, and really, it's just the providence of God kept her from these diseases."

Lilac's admiration for Miss Cameron shines through like the innocence Lilac managed somehow to keep through all her harrowing, horrific experiences. Perhaps the saddest and most poignant fact that comes from the story of Lilac Chen is that children like her exist, and are being abused, neglected and exploited, even as I type these words. Slavery and its horrible consequences are not issues for historical research, they are very real matters of global economics that should be addressed far more explicitly than our current climate of "look the other way and we'll all feel good" journalism allows.

Thank goodness there are still people who will march into dives and rescue those who go unnamed, unknown and under-served.

* All quotes from the book Victorian Women Edited by E. O. Hallerstein, L. P. Hume and K. M. Offen, Stanford University Press c 1981

Header: Chinese Slave Prostitute via National Women's History Museum online

History: Inquisition of the Galleys

Galley slavery has been a high seas reality since ancient times. Everyone from war captives to convicts and heretics have been used by both navies and pirates as labor to move ships along the water. The lives and futures of these unfortunate men were usually bleak. Though galley sentences might be limited, few survived their ordeal and those who did were either denied release or so broken by their experience that they were left few options for the future.

In Europe, France and Spain were particularly attached to condemning criminals to galley service. Under Philip II of Spain (reigned 1554 to 1598), the policy was taken to the New World under the so called "Inquisition of the Galleys." Major Arthur Griffiths describes Philip's policy in his book In Spanish Prisons:

Philip wished to extend the sway of the Inquisition and planned a naval tribunal to take cognisance of heresy afloat. He created the Inquisition of the Galleys, or, as it was afterwards styled, of the Army and the Navy. In every sea port a commissary general visited the shipping to search for prohibited books and make sure of the orthodoxy of crews and passengers.

Those unfortunate enough to be deemed "unorthodox" would be brought before a local tribunal. Conviction was often a foregone conclusion and the captive would be forced into the "celebration" of an auto de fe; literally "act of faith."

Griffiths goes on to quote the memoir of a Seville goldsmith named Carcel who was swept up by the Inquisition, or so he claimed. In describing his own auto de fe, Carcel speaks of his own punishment:

My offense, I found, was having spoken bitterly of the Inquisition, and having called a crucifix a mere bit of cut ivory. I was therefore declared excommunicated, my goods confiscated by the king, I was banished Spain and condemned to the Havana galleys for five years...

It appears that Carcel survived his ordeal having been able to write his remembrances down. Most of those condemned as Carcel were not so lucky given the miserable conditions and potential violence from war and piratical attack that they faced on a daily basis.

Griffiths finally notes that the Inquisition of the Galleys fell out of favor after Philip II's death. Considered an impediment to "business on the High Seas" it "fell into disuse" and was, by the mid-17th century, given no more than lip service in the New World.

Header: Convicts on a galley's benches; exhibit from the Barcelona Maritime Museum via Wikipedia

Lady Pirates: The Viking Grande Dame

Aud the Deep-Minded, whose name is spelled Unn by some chroniclers, is a curious case. While her life and times are pretty well known, particularly in Iceland where she is considered a founding mother, she has become a bit of a political football among modern historians. Finding pagan heroines is a particular delight among late 20th century feminist scholars, and Aud is the darling of many. The fact that her mother, Yngvid or Ingvid Ketilsdotter was of Celtic descent and a Christian is basically overlooked by those who put forward the pagan Aud. It seems that many of these historians are trying to explain Aud's "freedom" as a Viking leader by making her pagan. This is a large leap that overlooks quite a few things about the early Church and, in particular, Celtic Christianity. To my mind the issue is neither here nor there. Aud was clearly a strong-minded, resiliant woman who lived through treachery and tragedy and came out on top.

Born in Scotland's Outer Hebrides in 855, Aud was the daughter of a powerful Viking chief who spent his life annexing parts of mainland Scotland to his kingdom. At a young age, Aud was married to another Viking chief in what might have been her mother's native country, Ireland. Olaf the White was ruler of Dublin when he and Aud celebrated their nuptials. They had a son, Thorstein the Red, and Olaf, much like Aud's own father, spent his days conquering native tribes. According to Vicki Leon in Uppity Women of Medieval Times, Olaf and Aud nulified their marriage by mutual agreement. Other historians claim Olaf met his end in battle. Either way, Aud returned to her parent's home bringing young Thorstein with her.

The middle portion of Aud's life was quiet and seemingly blissful. She raised Thorstein who eventually took over his grandfather's holdings. She settled into the role of wise woman, mother-in-law and eventually grandmother to Thorstein's brood of eight or so children. But tragedy struck when Thorstein's subordinates fomented a rebellion. The Red Chief was assassinated and Aud took her daughter-in-law, grandchildren and a small band of loyal vassals to a secluded long house by the North Sea. Here, while continuing to pay tribute to her son's murderers, Aud quietly built a small fleet of viking ships in secret.

Only one ship was completed before the threat from the new chiefs of the area became overwhelming. Aud packed up her family and considerable wealth and set out for the Orkneys.

It seems that Aud's family was well connected and most probably distantly related to many of the Viking chiefs in the area. At her first stop, Aud negotiated a marriage for one of her granddaughters, Groa or Grainne, to the son of a chieftain. Not satisfied with the area as a potential settlement, Aud - who was unquestionably in command of not only her ship but the entire expedition - moved on to the Faroe Islands. Here, another granddaughter's marriage was arranged to another chieftain's son. All the same, Aud was not ready to settle in. She set her sights on a place where her growing band could spread out: Iceland.

The group was growing, curiously enough, because along the way Aud's ship was making raids on coastal towns. Taking much needed provisions was a priority but Aud's men captured locals as well and particularly young men who could do heavy labor such as rowing aboard ship. These slaves, often called "bondsmen" in the Icelandic chronicles, would later found some of the great families of Iceland.

It appears that at least two of Aud's brothers had gone to Iceland either before or after the death of her father. Why one of them did not take over as chief but Aud's son did remains a question and may have something to do with a family dynamic that included a chief wife (Aud's mother?) and one or more concubines or "bondswomen". At any rate, Aud again seems to have headed toward a place where she had connections.

The cruise could not have been pleasant as the ship was packed with people, provisions and probably livestock as well. But it was by now a familiar trip for Vikings of both sexes, and Aud seems to have had no trouble getting her polyglot band to the land of ice. Aud's navigation skills were not up to the jagged coast; her ship ran aground on a reef not far from her brother's land and slowly sank into the frigid water.

Most of Aud's people and all of her grandchildren managed to get safely to shore - with or without the help of her brother Helgi, who was in no way thrilled to see his now elderly sister. Aud packed up her people and moved them to her other brother's domain where she announced that she would need a boat in order to claim her own lands. Icelandic tradition says that she did just that, spending weeks sailing around the coast and lighting huge bonfires on patches of land that she claimed as her own. When she was done she freed her "bondsmen" and parceled out the lands she claimed to each member of her expedition. Where her bonfires had once burned, Aud had stone crosses erected, some of which stand to this day.

While a flury of building and livestock raising ensued around her, Aud went back to being a wise woman and grandmother. She could not, it seems, give up matchmaking, however. Aud personally saw to the marriages of all her remaining grandchildren. She died, in fact, at the wedding of her youngest grandson. Well into her sixties when she passed, most say quietly in her sleep after drinking a good bit of ale, Aud left instructions that she be buried below the high tide line on the coast of Iceland. She was clearly a woman who loved the sea enough to want to be near it for eternity.

Header: A Viking woman's dress via Fossil Science; photograph by Annika Larsson

People: The Devout Buccaneer

Today’s pirate is of the boucanier variety.  Known only by his surname, as Captain Daniel, the historians who have written about him agree that he was from France.  His exploits seem to have occurred in the French islands of the Caribbean and it is possible, from one specific connection, to speculate that he may have dealt in slaves.  However, only one story of Captain Daniel has come down to us in tact.  Fortunately, it’s a good one.

In Philip Gosse’s The Pirate’sWho’s Who, Gosse quotes the now famous Pere Labat who was the Procurator General of the Antilles by 1696.  This priest, who lived many years in the Caribbean, owned a large sugar plantation and devised new ways of harvesting and processing the cane.  He kept a large number of slaves, the bulk of whom he is said to have treated with uniform brutality (for more on the life of a slave on Caribbean sugar plantations, see this excellent post by my friend Leah Marie Brown).  With that, or perhaps because of it, he was particularly fond of the buccaneers who sailed in and out of his island’s ports, and wrote of them in his book A New Voyage to the Islands of America, published in 1722.

Gosse tells us that Daniel put in to “one of the Saintes” in the Caribbean in search of “wine, brandy and fowls.”  Though the locals were at first skittish about the pirates rummaging around their town for supplies, Daniel was adamant that he had no intention of doing violence upon them.  Apparently to show his good will, he invited the town’s elite to board his ship and be his guests.  One of those herded onto the pirate vessel was the local priest. 

While the provisions were being loaded aboard ship, Daniel showed his guests around.  At some point, apparently focusing his attention on the terrified priest, he asked that the man say Mass for his guests and his crew.  A request “which the poor priest dared not refuse.”  Going on to quote from Harling, who is probably paraphrasing Labat, Gosse gives us a clear picture of what happened next:

So the necessary sacred vessels were sent for and an altar improvised on the deck for the service, which they chanted to the best of their ability.  As at Martinique, the Mass was begun with a discharge of artillery, and after the Exaudiat and prayer for the King, was closed by a loud “Vive le Roi” from the throats of the buccaneers.  A single incident, however, somewhat disturbed the devotions.  One of the buccaneers, remaining in an indecent attitude during the Elevation, was rebuked by the captain and instead of heeding the correction, replied with an impertinence and a fearful oath.  Quick as a flash Daniel whipped our his pistol and shot the buccaneer through the head, adjuring God that he would do as much to the first who failed in his respect to the Holy Sacrifice.  The shot was fired close by the priest who, as we can readily imagine, was considerable agitated. “Do not be troubled, my father,” said Daniel; “he was a rascal lacking in his duty and I have punished him to teach him better.”

Presumably, Mass went on and afterward the offender’s body was tossed into the sea.  The guests, who surely had a story to tell for years to come, were thanked and excused.  The priest was paid for his service, Gosse says, in “some goods out of [the pirates’] stores and the present of a negro slave.”

This last point makes me wonder about the Labat connection.  The Procurator General’s ill treatment of his own slaves meant he would have needed a steady supply of new ones coming in.  Did men like Daniel help the priest turned planter out with human chattel at lower prices than the market had set?  I have no proof of such dealings with buccaneers, but it would explain Labat’s soft spot for the violent freebooters who roamed the Caribbean when he was there.

Header: Looting Buccaneers by Howard Pyle via Wikipedia

Booty: Family Tree

When I was in elementary school we used to climb on the dinosaur about once a week and roam over to my mother's parent's home.  It was always something I looked forward to; not one of those horrible "eat your Brussels sprouts" experiences.  Gran and Grandpa were really wonderful people.  In many ways, they were far more easy going than my own parents.

One of the things I liked best about Gran's house (and it was always "Gran's house") was the two over-sized volumes of Norman Rockwell works that were always kept in the spare room.  They were books Gran bought when Rockwell was at the height of his popularity as the Saturday Evening Post illustrator and they doubtless cost her dear.  The fact that she and Grandpa allowed me to look through them, and then Grandpa left them specifically to me, has always been a wonderment in my life.  One I am thankful for indeed.

My favorite illustration, of all the amazing art in both books, has always been the one above.  Entitled "Family Tree", it shows the ancestry of the charming red-headed mite pictured at the very top of the branches.  I would literally stare at this painting for an hour, taking in all the detail, memorizing the faces and the fashions and - as you already guessed - marvelling at the detail of those ships.  Oh, those ships.

How I wished my family could be like this one, with pirates and prospectors, Native Americans and saloon girls.  I got lost in those faces and imagined something far less "white bread" for me and mine.

I think it was this painting, at least in part, that drove me to genealogical research, which helped me find those less "white bread" people in my family (pirates! African-Americans! smugglers! whores!) and ultimately led me to my historical novels and thus right here to Triple P.

In fact, when I look at that painting now, it is surprising how very close it comes to portraying my own family.  There's my husband's ancestors on the right, staunch backbones of the U.S. from hardworking, square-jawed Pennsylvania stock.  Then there's my antecedents on the left, rogues and trailblazers; people who always needed more space and a bigger sky.  We even have a red-headed mite to put at the top of the tree, although ours is - thankfully - a girl.

Happy Friday, Brethren.  Find what inspires you today, or tomorrow, and chase that horizon no matter what.

Header: Family Tree by Norman Rockwell courtesy of Curtis Publishing Co. (click to enlarge; you'll be glad you did)

Home Ports: An End to the Wickedest City

On June 7, 1692, all Hell broke loose in what was at the time said to be the "very seat of Satan".  Virtually the entire island of Jamaica was rocked by an earthquake that today would be considered off the scale.  And the worst damage came to the town of Port Royal which, in almost Biblical fashion, quite literally sank into the sea.

According to those who lived through the disaster, the weather had been hot and literally without a breeze for several weeks.  When I lived in Southern California, we often referred to these kinds of conditions as "earthquake weather" and Port Royal's unfortunate experience seems to hold true to that superstition.  Even here in Alaska, our earthquakes tend to come as the weather warms; the devastation of Anchorage in 1964 occurred in an unusually warm spring.

If you click on the contemporary broadsheet above, it is easy to see how the earthquake mangled the city selectively.  Areas closer to the port were built on sandy ground which liquefied during the unbearably long six minute earthquake.  Houses collapsed, people were pulled down into the newly formed quicksand, and violent geysers of sand and water erupted hurling wreckage, animals and people up into the air only to send them crashing back to the rolling earth again.  Further back, on what could be called the high ground of the city - indeed High Street, the home of most of Port Royal's elite merchant class, was located there - a limestone bedrock prevented the liquefaction of the earth.  One can see that some homes, despite being built of brick in the English fashion, remained standing.  Three forts, including Morgan's Fort at the far right, also survived.

As the water receded from the sand, being pulled back toward the Caribbean to unleash the next round of terror, people were literally trapped in the now hardened sand.  Stephan Talty in his engrossing account of the life of Henry Morgan Empire of Blue Water quotes an eye witness:

That watery hiatus closed again the next moment, catching hold of some people by the Leg, of others by the middle of the Body, and of others some by the Arm, etc., detaining them in dismal torture, but immovably fixed in the ground, till they, with almost the whole Town besides, sunk under Water. 

And, as the anonymous writer noted, the "Water" was the next horror to hit Port Royal.  The tsunami that hurtled over those who were still alive was three stories high and traveling at an estimated sixty miles an hour.  Ships, becalmed in the harbor due to the recalcitrant weather, were forced up onto land.  In a happy accident Talty tells us that one, HMS Swan, fell upon the city but managed to remain upright.  Over two hundred citizens clamored aboard her and were saved from the following sea. 

Finally the lower part of the city simply collapsed into Port Royal Harbor.  Homes, storage warehouses, churches, people and livestock sank like stones.  Many were trapped in the structures with which they had sunk but many others floated up to the surface of the harbor. Over the course of the following week, corpses bobbed listlessly in the harbor, slowly rotting in the unrelenting heat.

Pestilence and anarchy fell over the city.  Port Royal, once labelled the "wickedest city in the world" for the number of pirates and whores who called it home, became even more wicked after the wrath of God apparently struck her down.  Once again it was the buccaneers, who had fallen out of favor now that Port Royal was full of "respectable" merchants trading in luxury goods, sugar cane, rum and human chattel, who gave the city a bad name.  Edward Ellyn, the receiver general of Jamaica, wrote home to England about the post-disaster environment that surrounded the survivors:

... Most of the seaman, English and Spaniards, contented themselves with what was floating in the water, tho' some instantly entered and riffled standing houses.  But the following nights and days those villains... robbed all houses, broke in pieces all scriptores, boxes, trunks, chests of drawers, cabinets and made spoil of all of value in the town, threatening to kill several inhabitants, if any durst be so hardy as to say, "This house is mine."  Our enemies could not have treated us worse than the seamen.

Even Cotton Mather, that scion of Puritan self-righteousness, saw fit to put his two cents in.  Calling the Jamaica earthquake an omen, he wrote "Behold an accident speaking to all our English America."  Get right with God, he said, or face the same fate.

Many of the British in Jamaica chose to head for home, or the North American mainland, rather than deal with the wreckage.  Others, in true colonial spirit, simply moved up and over.  They rowed across the bay and began to rebuild, eventually founding the city of Kingston.  Others clung stubbornly to Port Royal, but the great pirate capital would never be the same.  Today she is a tourist attraction more than anything else; a beloved sort of Mecca for those who crave the closeness of things touched and roads walked on by our buccaneer ancestors.

But what of Henry Morgan, arguably the most famous of Port Royal's citizens?  Dead and buried almost four years prior to the earthquake, Morgan's coffin spewed forth from the earth during the six minute tremor.  Carried out to sea, it was lost for ever in the blue waters.  And maybe that was the way it should have been all along.

Header: English broadsheet reporting the effects of the 1692 Jamaica earthquake via Wikimedia  

People: The Pirate Governor

For those who study the histories of seafaring and piracy, the story of Henry Morgan quitting the buccaneering life and becoming the Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica seems very novel indeed.  A wicked, cruel man by any account, Morgan turned his ferocity on the men with whom he had once sailed, and hanged old mates not long after shaking their hands.  Another, and lesser known pirate-turned-Governor went in the opposite direction, harboring pirates and protecting them from his own Danish government.  Or so it would seem.

Adolph Esmit was a real person.  We know from records on the island of St. Thomas, now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands, and from Waldemar Westergaard's exhaustive The Danish West Indies under Company Rule that Esmit was Governor of the island from 1683 to 1684 and then again from 1687 to 1688.  According to The Pirate's Who's Who by Philip Gosse, Esmit was also a freebooter in his own right, and something of a rebel to boot.

Other than his birth in Denmark and his travels to the Danish West Indies in the late 1670s, there is very little information about Esmit's early life.  He was married to a woman named Charity who some historians speculate may have been an English Puritan.  Regardless of her religious background, Charity was willing to separate from her husband and plead his case for inauguration as Governor of St. Thomas in Copenhagen.

Esmit probably started out as an able seaman aboard merchant ships sailing for the Danish West India Company.  Eventually, it seems, he was captaining his own slave ship.  It was not unusual for slavers to turn pirate and there are hints that is exactly what Esmit and his crew did.  In need of a home port, he put in at St. Thomas some time in 1682 where his brother Nicolai was Governor.

By land, Esmit seems to have become very popular with the largely English population of the island.  He was a big spender, making local merchant's happy.  Within a year of his arrival at St. Thomas, he began to foment an uprising against his brother's leadership and eventually managed a sort of bloodless rebellion.  Adolph ousted Nicolai and, with Charity's aforementioned help, managed to secure an official inauguration as Governor in 1683.

Henceforth, St. Thomas became a buccaneer haven.  Governor Esmit would welcome fugitives from other island governments, harboring them and claiming that he had libeled their ships and goods when other Governors complained.  A particular case in point was that of Point Goave buccaneer Jean Hamlin who took refuge from Jamaican Governor Lynch at St. Thomas.  When asked, Esmit refused to release either Hamlin or his ship to the English.

It appears that Esmit even built and fitted out ships specifically for piracy on the high seas.  Whether or not he distributed letters of marque is in question, but his actions soon drew not only local attention but that of the Danish government.

A replacement Governor, Gabriel Milan, arrived at St. Thomas in 1684.  Rather than packing Esmit off to Denmark as he had been ordered, he imprisoned the former pirate and tried to extort money from him.  How Esmit managed to wriggle out of this sticky situation is unclear, but by 1687 he was again the official Governor of St. Thomas.

At this point, Esmit's renown as a friend of local buccaneers began to erode his credibility with the Danish government and, probably through the auspices of the Danish West India Company, Esmit was again deposed.  This time he was returned to Copenhagen to give an account of his service and, most probably, to face a prison sentence or worse.

Though history does not say exactly how, Adolph Esmit managed to avoid this final reckoning.  According to Westergaard, who calls Esmit "shift, shrewd, vain and at times boastful," the old buccaneer managed to escape to Courland, a small Duchy near Lithuania.  Here he and his wife may have lived out their days under aliases.  What actually became of the, beyond that, can be left only to educated speculation and/or fictional fantasy.  I'll let you chose for yourselves, Brethren.

Header: Iron Men and Wooden Ships, woodblock print by E.A. Wilson

History: Rome and Piracy in the Mare Nostrum

In 67 BC [Pompey the Great] was granted an imperium, under the terms of a new anti-piracy law, the lex Gabinia de piratis persequendis. The imperium gave Pompey 6,000 talents (units of currency), control of 500 ships, 120,000 Roman troops, and the right to tax and raise militia in cities up to 50 miles (80km) inland. His mission was to completely eradicate piracy in the Mediterranean Sea. ~ from The History of Pirates by Angus Konstam.


On paper, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus’ attack on piracy in what the Romans referred to as the mare nostrum – our sea – was a resounding success. Cicero, the famous orator and advocate, sang Pompey’s praises to the hinterlands, and over 2,000 years later we’re still listening. Generally, historians have played along with the idea that Pompey, while still a hero before his fall from grace in bitter civil war against Julius Caesar, quite literally put a halt to piratical activity in the Mediterranean. In particular, he captured and relocated the worst of the freebooting lot: the Cretans and the Cilicians.

History has a way of remembering the truth; although it tends to wait a very, very long time to reveal its best kept secrets. That seems to be the case with the shift in perception about Pompey’s success as a pirate hunter, as this wonderful piece by Philip Souza for History Today illustrates.

The piracy of the Cilicians in particular was an ongoing thorn in the side of the Republic of Rome. The problem was that, as a Republic with nothing more solid than the political aspirations of praetorian Senators to move legislation forward, defending outlying provinces against piracy was often put on the back burner. If something truly heinous occurred, it was usually a provincial Governor or praetor who took the hit for the mess. As Souza notes:

For merchants piracy was more than just an economic hazard. It was not only the cargo that would be vulnerable to pirates, they might easily kill the crew and any passengers, or sell them as slaves, or if they were wealthy or important ransom them.

On average, it was only in the final instance of the wealthy and/or politically connected being held for ransom that Rome took any real note of piratical activity. That was, until the pirates of the eastern Mediterranean struck the Romans right where they lived: in the breadbasket. Souza continues:

So why were the Romans prepared to take such drastic action [in 67 BCE]? The main explanation seems to be sheer self-interest. While pirates regularly harassed the provincial subjects and allies, but left Rome and Italy relatively untroubled, the Romans were content to profess concern but take little action. In the early 60s BD, however, pirates were striking at targets on the Italian coast. Places like Brundisium, Caieta and even Ostia, at the mouth of the river Tiber, were attacked. The harbours, cities, roads and villas of Italy ere easy pickings… One thing which no one could ignore in Rome was a threat to the grain supply.

Since the plebs lived by the bread made from the grain, and also saw to the popularity or utter downfall of their politicians, the Senators knew they had to do something. Thus Pompey, already a noted general with an able military mind and endless political ambition, was tapped to put a halt to the piratical invasions of Rome proper.

I won’t go into detail here as the Brethren are much better served by reading Souza directly. This quote from Cicero, whom Souza refers to as a Roman “spin doctor”, sums it up nicely:

[Pompey] himself, however, set out from Brundisium and in 49 days he had brought Cilicia into the Roman Empire.

Souza quickly adds:

Close scrutiny of the sources leaves the distinct impression that Pompey was in a hurry and not at all concerned about doing a good job.

Even after “resettlement” – to ports that seemed made for piratical activity no less – the Cilicians and Cretans returned to their old ways. Though generally they were more subtle after Pompey’s campaign and they studiously avoided the Italian coasts, they continued to be brazen in their kidnap and ransom strategies. Selling prisoners as slaves continued to be a prime source of income as well but Rome was willing to look the other way on this issue in particular as it was, essentially, a slave-run economy.

It was not until the rise of the Empire and the rule of Augustus that pirates were well and truly subdued in the mare nostrum. In fact Augustus, in a shrewd political move that was typical of the Roman government’s manipulation of the “pirate issue”, turned his arch-rival Sextus Pompeius (son of Pompey the Great) into a “pirate” in the Roman press. Once Sextus’ uprising and blockade of Rome had been ended, Augustus spread the word with inscriptions on monuments throughout the Empire:

I made the sea peaceful and freed it of pirates.

Header: The Slave Market by Gustave Boulanger c 1882

Ships: America's Flagship

NOLA Navy Week is approaching fast, and in a curious coincidence (or if I am less humble a case of great minds thinking alike), the inimitable Edward Branley came out with an excellent piece on USS Wasp yesterday. That just as I was preparing this post on another ship in the United States Navy’s early fleet: USS Constellation. Though it does not appear that Constellation will be among the 10 tall ships featured at the event beginning April 17th, she is certainly among the brightest lights in navy history.


Constellation was named not for any group of stars in the sky but for the 13 stars in the blue canton of the first U.S. flag. She was the first of the navy’s original six frigates to be launched, on March 27, 1794, and the first to be commissioned. She also was the first ship to see action in the first war participated in by the U.S. as a country, and the first to take a prize. A lot of firsts, and that said without hyperbole.

In construction and size, Constellation did not differ vastly from her five sister frigates. She was heavy hulled, made of the white oak that could only be found in North America and that so confounded the United States’ enemies at sea. Fans of the movie Master and Commander will remember the discussions about “Yankee built” Acheron, with Tom Pullings remarking “you have to wonder about her hull.” Such was the case with most of the frigates that came out of the shipyards on America’s Atlantic coast at the time.

Constellation was built in Baltimore, displaced 1,265 tons, was 41 feet at her beam and 164 feet in length. She carried a compliment of 340 men and 36 guns. She was a fast sailer too; the crew of the French ship La Vengeance, whom she defeated in a 5 hour firefight during the Quasi-War, nicknamed her “Yankee Racehorse.”

Thomas Truxtun, a leading light in the new navy, was Constellation’s first commander and he whipped her crew into shape immediately. Truxtun was a veteran of the Continental Navy and he held dear the Royal Navy traditions of honor, conduct, gunnery and – where necessary – discipline. He expected great things of himself, his crew and his ship, and all delivered.

Truxtun and Constellation won the first battle in the United States’ so called Quasi-War with France. The war began in 1798 and was almost exclusively engaged with issues of free trade on the high seas. On February 9, 1799, Constellation defeated and captured the frigate L’Insurgente, said to be the best sailer in the French navy. Coincidently, yesterday’s subject, brilliant naval leader David Porter, was aboard Constellation as a Midshipman at the time.

Constellation continued her successes, serving admirably in both Barbary Wars and the War of 1812. In 1840 she circumnavigated the globe, and became the first U.S. ship to enter ports in China. Here she helped to facilitate the tea trade that would see clipper ships following in her wake for decades to come.

Back home, time was beginning to tell. Constellation was now almost 60 years old and an overhaul was out of the question. She was broken up, but some of her timbers were used to build a sloop of war in 1854. Given the same name, this ship saw action not only in war but in humanitarian efforts as well.

In the 1859, Constellation was put on the West African station where she was tasked with intercepting slave ships, freeing the people therein and breaking up the African slave trade. The History Channel has an excellent documentary available on Constellation’s West African mission. After service as a Union vessel in the Civil War, she was sent to Ireland with humanitarian aid for those stricken by the famine. You can read more about that at the Naval History Blog.

Sloop of war Constellation was eventually used exclusively as a training ship and she is now permanently docked in Baltimore where she is a maritime museum. A subsequent aircraft carrier, port of call San Diego, was also named Constellation.

The true flag ship of the original U.S. Navy thus lives on, not only in memory but in service as well. As President Ronald Reagan told her crew in 1981: “Let friend and foe alike know that America has the muscle to back up its words, and ships like this and men like you are that muscle… you are America’s Flagship.”

Header: USS Constellation by Antoine Roux c 1805

Women at Sea: Medieval England's Legal Stews

In Roman influenced countries of the Middle Ages such as Spain, France and Italy, prostitutes were considered a necessary evil. No doubt due to actual experience to some degree but also due to the legacy left by the Romans, the officials of these Latinate countries feared that men who did not have legal access to women would turn to rape and sodomy. This was probably overstating the case since most people have a moral compass that prevents them from doing violence and then, as now, homosexuality was a “born this way” issue more than an “any port in storm” sort of thing. That having been said, legalized prostitution in the form of regulated brothels was common on the Continent by 1300.


Not so in England, where the Roman ethic that kept women as prisoners of their fathers, brothers and husbands did not quite saturate into the soil. While women were not “free” per se they were certainly less restricted in society than they were in Europe. Legalized, regulated brothels were uncommon enough to be nonexistent in 1300. But that changed mid-century and, though the institutionalization of prostitution was not far reaching at the time, it did seem to have a very specific reason for appearing. The so called “stews” sprang up in port towns that welcomed and catered to the newly successful merchant Leagues such as the Hanseatic League and the Cinque Ports conglomerate. Sailors and merchants drove the trade in places like Southampton, Sandwich and especially Southwark across the Thames from London.

In Common Women, Prostitution and Sexuality in Medieval England, Ruth Mazo Karras makes a good argument for the influx of seamen of all kinds being the main reason for the opening of legal brothels in England. Authorities saw a chance to not only regulate a booming trade but to profit from that regulation as well. Southwark is a particularly interesting case as its two dozen or so stews were within the jurisdiction not of secular authorities but of the Bishop of Winchester, who technically owned the land upon which they were built.

This mixture of the sacred and the profane led to particular regulations within the so called Winchester liberty that did not necessarily apply in Southampton and Sandwich. The prostitutes were expected to live off the premises of the brothel but to nonetheless pay rent to the brothel keeper for a room and victuals. The keeper, who was called a “bawd” regardless of their gender, could collect an average of 14 pence per week from the girls according to Karras. As she points out:

… [compare] the sixty shillings eight pence paid annually by each prostitute for her room to the twenty shillings per annum for tenements owned by Sir John Fastolf in Southwark.

And the ladies, at least on paper, still had to rent a place to sleep. This particular regulation was meant to ensure that the prostitutes made themselves scarce on holy days and Sundays, but it seems that this was not generally the case. The disregard paid by both prostitutes and bawds to this law meant that the Bishop could collect fines when it was broken; another hefty expense that the working girl had to pay via the bawd.

Regulations also existed to keep bawds and customers from doing violence to the prostitutes and to keep bawds from forcing women into prostitution, either by the threat of violence or debt or by out and out kidnapping. The latter seems to have happened with a frightening regularity that brings to mind the human trafficking extant in the modern sex trade. A specific complaint from the Court of Aldermen in London and quoted by Karras has a distinctly current feel:

John Barton, tailor, confessed that on Thursday last, in the highway coming from Our Lady of Willesden, he faithfully promised to one Joan Rawlyns… to bring her to a good and honest service in the city. Whereupon she, putting her trust and confidence in him, went with him throughout the city until he, unknown to her, brought her to the Stews side and there left her in a waterman’s house, and then went immediately to a bawd there and made covenant with her to set the said maiden with the said bawd…

Essentially, Barton sold Rawlyns into prostitution. It was only through the sympathy of the unnamed waterman’s wife that Joan Rawlyns managed to escape becoming a sex slave.

This later example – the case came to court in 1517 and resulted in Barton’s conviction, imprisonment, pillorying and banishment – came at around the time that the legalized brothels were being reconsidered. Despite continued and increasing merchant trade, the Protestant Reformation in England seems to have disavowed the regulated sex trade. Henry VIII issued proclamations against the stews of Southwark. Though they decreased in number, their location in the Winchester liberties meant that they did not shut down all together.

Organized brothels, whether actually regulated or simply a house where prostitutes shared rooms, continued with different levels of acceptance in Southwark into the 19th century. From famous houses like the Holland’s Leaguer to forgotten sites of assignation, London would continue to have a place for the wayward sailor to find companionship with a “common woman”.

Header: A Medieval Stew from a contemporary manuscript via Historum History Forums

People: Fly in the Ointment

Today's Golden Age pirate is famous, not for plunder, seamanship, or success, but because of his actions prior to his execution. He is mentioned briefly in Captain Johnson’s History of Pyrates, dwelled on at length in Marcus Rediker’s Villains of All Nations and written about by Cotton Mather. As is so often the case, we know next to nothing about William Fly’s background, but his death made a splash that resonates into our own time.


Fly, according to Johnson, was born to “very obscure parents” probably around the turn of the 17th to the 18th century. By 1726 he was bosun aboard Captain John Green’s brig Elizabeth headed out from New England for the coast of West Africa. Many who have written about Fly assume that Elizabeth was one of those ships involved in the so called “triangle trade” carrying rum to Africa where it would be traded for slaves. There is nothing specific in the record to confirm this, but it is certainly a possibility. What we do know for sure is that Elizabeth was involved in some sort of merchant endeavor and that Green did not run a happy ship.

Before the ship left for blue water to cross the Atlantic, Fly and his captain were butting heads. At his trial, and even before, Fly complained bitterly of the “bad usage” suffered under Captain Green by him and his mates. Fly’s comments are in line with the classic argument as to why merchant seamen turned pirate. Small crews, low wages, grueling schedules, unreasonable discipline, poor food and a host of other trials sent men over the edge to desertion, mutiny and even murder.

Fed up from virtually the start of Elizabeth’s cruise, William Fly organized a mutiny. One night in the spring of 1726, he and fellow crewman Alexander Mitchell pulled Captain Green out of his cot, dragged him up on deck and subjected him to a beating. When he was half-unconscious, they and others tossed Green over the ship’s side. Still prepared to fight for his life, Green caught part of the rigging and held on tight. One of the mutineers grabbed an ax, several of which would have been kept handy to cut away rigging in foul weather, and chopped off his captain’s hand. The first mate, Thomas Jenkins, followed the captain over the side. The final target of the men’s ire, an unnamed surgeon, was spared as “they might find him useful”. He was shackled in bilboes instead.

Fly was quickly chosen as the new captain of Elizabeth. He immediately changed her name to Fame’s Revenge and he and his men set out a-pirating. They took five prizes in all and each one appears to have been a poorly laden merchant. Fly made it his signature move to torture or in other ways punish the captains he took hostage. He notoriously whipped Captain John Fulker of the John & Hannah so viciously that the man nearly died.

It seems that William Fly was no more popular as captain than Green had been. A group of his men, possibly those pressed into service from prize vessels, rose up and took Fly’s ship. They turned it over to the authorities of Boston in June of 1726. Fly and a dozen of his crew were incarcerated and set to be tried for piracy and murder on the high seas.

At this point, the notorious Puritan minister Cotton Mather enters the picture. Sent by the judge in the case to exact confessions and guide penitence in the pirates, Mather ran into a man that he himself called “a most uncommon and amazing instance of impenitence and stupidity and what spectacles of obduration the wicked will be” in William Fly. Mather writes that, when confronted with the crimes of mutiny and murder, Fly would, no pun intended, fly into an uncontrollable rage. At one point the pirate ranted that he “… would not own myself guilty of any murder, our captain and his mate used us barbarously…” While Fly does not list specific actions, he laments that “… poor men can’t have justice done us…” no matter how badly they are treated by their nominal betters.

Fly continued his obduration straight up until his conviction and execution. While others convicted with him stood on the gallows and “preached” to the crowd – as Mather had hoped – the ills of drink and rebellion, Fly did exactly the opposite. He came to face death with a “smiling aspect” and eyed the crowd “unconcerned”.

Fly even went so far as to chastise the hangman for “not understanding his trade” and stepped forward to retie the noose with which he would be killed. He then addressed the crowd as he had Reverend Mather, saying frankly that he had “wronged no man”. He went on to say that he wanted those who commanded vessels to “… take warning by the fate of [our] captain… and to pay sailors their wages when due, and to treat them better”. It was an ominous warning from a man who had taken the ultimate step in eliminating his tormenter and was facing death because of it.

Some writers and historians, notably Rediker, have used Fly as an example of the underlying reason for piracy as a life pursuit. In this scenario, William Fly and his fellows stand as anti-heroes bucking the “barbarous” establishment. As this post at Executed Today puts it “… the radical doomed sphere of resistance pirates offered to the enormous cruelty of the developing Atlantic economy…” To my mind, this is overstating the case. From Barbary to the buccaneers, through the Golden Age and into the last days of the privateers, most of the men who went out seeking prizes on the high seas were no more freedom fighters than modern day drug dealers. They were in it for the simple reward of cash. While some men may have had good intentions, it is important to note that Fly’s short career as a sea captain turned out to be no more glorious than that of the commander he killed.

Fly’s body and those of his compatriots were gibbeted on the little island in Boston Harbor known as Nix’s Mate as a “warning to other seamen”. To this day, stories of strange lights around the island – particularly on summer nights – lead some to believe that his ghost still haunts the rocky outcropping. While that, too, is probably overstating the case it is a possibility worth imagining.

Header: Engraving from The Pirate's Own Book

Tools of the Trade: Punch, Flip and Old Grog

Recently, I was asked by a friend who is a professional editor and screenwriter to look at a piece he was working on. The screenplay was about buccaneers in the latter part of the 17th century and there were a few points my friend was unfamiliar with as far as seafaring, timeframes, dialogue and particularly the little details of historical accuracy. Of course I was eager to get my hands on the thing; the idea of a well researched, high spirited buccaneer movie (featuring real life filibuster Michele de Grammont, no less) excited me immeasurably. Sadly, reality put a damper on that enthusiasm pretty quickly.


There were a million little details that crushed my spirits thoroughly (the hero, just as an example, wore a tricorn hat and beaded braids a la Jack Sparrow) but one that stood out was the drinking that went on in the buccaneer port of Tortuga (sadly positioned off Puerto Rico, not Haiti where the buccaneer outpost actually was). Many was the time that the protagonists reached for a mug of grog; in fact de Grammont and our hero sealed a deal over pints and pints of the stuff.

In the 1680s, for better or for worse, grog was an unknown commodity. In fact grog was probably largely unknown in the New World well into the 18th century. Grog was initially a drink of the Royal Navy and was not officially adopted by them until 1740. The mix of water and rum was a replacement for beer, which had a habit of going off pretty quickly, particularly in warm climes like the West Indies and India. As an aside here, if you are familiar with India Pale Ale you know how the Royal Navy tried to fix that; the stronger, sturdier IPA was brewed specifically for ships headed east.

This is not to say that buccaneers were not familiar with rum, or that they would in fact not have added things – including water – to it. It simply would not have been called “grog”. What the gentlemen rovers called their drinks of choice, though, is one of the more curious tidbits about the early filibusters and those freebooters who came after. At least to me.

The type of rum that was most available to many of the Caribbean islands in the 17th century was affectionately known as “kill-devil”. This was a common man’s drink composed of rum that had not been properly aged to smooth over the bitter taste of fermented sugar cane. While wealthy land owners, Governors and visiting dignitaries in the first outposts of Britain would drink rum proper which was originally called rumbullion, the working poor and the slaves who made the rum drank a less refined form of same. It was probably an addiction for most and the death of many as well.

Another popular way to drink rum was in what was called a punch. Alcoholic punches were intensely popular in Europe in the 17th century so making one with the locally bottled alcohol was not much of a stretch. Rum punch usually contained water, some form of citrus juice – lime was the most popular – and molasses or sugar. Sometimes nutmeg was grated into the beverage. Henry Morgan and his captains were getting roaring drunk on rum punch when his flagship, Oxford, exploded underneath them killing every man directly across the table from Morgan but sparing the old dog and his mates on the other side.

Bombo or bumboo was also popular and was probably virtually the same thing as rum punch. A heated version of both drinks was called rumfustian. This contained rum, beer, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and a raw egg and was then heated with a rod such as a red-hot poke from the fire. A cousin to rumfustian, flip was a popular drink in the American colonies before and during the Revolutionary War. It was made with rum, beer and molasses or sugar heated just as its relative had been. In his history of all things regarding the title …And a Bottle of Rum, Wayne Curtis states:

If grog was an emblem of the triumph of order over disorder on the open seas, rum – especially in the form of a popular drink called “flip” – was a symbol of the new order displacing the old in the colonies.

And doubtless very popular with the privateers of the era; in fact John Paul Jones was known to enjoy his flip when in port.

All that said, it is important to remember that our freebooting ancestors were not terribly picky about their alcohol, at least in general. An onion bottle full of wine or porter would have done just as well as a bowl of bumboo and the big head the next morning would have been just the same.

And so, in less wordy form, my recommendations went out to my friend and his client. I will continue to wonder about that ambitious buccaneer screenplay and hope for its great success. Especially if the tricorns and grog are ditched all together.

Header: From Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates

Update 11/22: Looking for more in depth information on rum for the pirate in all of us?  Check out Blue Lou Logan's well researched and delightful post at his freebooting blog.

People: Whydah's Pilot

The pirate ship of Black Sam Bellamy, former slaver Whydah, has become the stuff of legend thanks to the hard work of Barry Clifford and his team of treasure hunters/archaeologists. More is known about life aboard an early 18th century freebooter because of the recovered artifacts from that ship alone than arguably from any other source. What we don’t know, to my mind unfortunately, is much about the individuals who lived and died aboard her.


One exception is a man who went a pirating under Black Sam and became pilot of the Whydah after she was taken by Bellamy. Though we know very little about John Julian, what we do know speaks to how remarkably different pirate society was from the society it grew up in – and rebelled against.

National Geographic online says that Julian was part African and part Mosquito Indian. Philip Gosse, who does not mention Julian by name, says that the pilot of Whydah was “half Carib”. Which is true is lost to history but I have my own theory about Julian’s background. The future pilot probably met Bellamy while he was working in the wrecking or wracking trade, pulling up treasure from sunken Spanish galleons off the coasts of Florida that Cuba. Many South and Central American natives were employed in this trade because of their remarkable diving abilities. Particularly sought after were Guayqueries from the Island of Margarita off Venezuela, where pearl diving had long been a job these enslaved natives were tasked with. While Julian could have been Mosquito or Carib, it may be that he was an escaped slave from Margarita and therefore potentially Guayqueries. Just a thought.

What ever his origins, Julian clearly had a talent for piloting as he was the go-to pilot on each of Bellamy’s successively larger flagships. By the time Bellamy was captaining Whydah, it is certain that Julian was particularly capable as a navigator. Bellamy, who according to Gosse had a bit of a socialist bent, made it a habit to free any slaves he encountered aboard a prize. NatGeo estimates that his Whydah crew was comprised of 30 to 50 African or partially African men. John Julian was not an exception aboard Whydah.

The short but merry life of pirating came to an abrupt end for Julian and his mates when Whydah wrecked off Wellfleet, Massachusetts in a gale. Julian and ship’s carpenter Davis were the only two men to make it to shore, although Gosse counts the survivors’ number as six. Davis would hang in Boston but what became of Julian remains unknown.

A tantalizing theory proposed by NatGeo is that John Julian was sold into bondage. They go so far as to speculate that he was in fact the “Julian the Indian” recorded as a slave to John Quincy of Massachusetts. As a curious aside, this is the John Quincy who was father to the staunch abolitionist Abigail Adams. She in turn passed her hatred for slavery on to her son, future U.S. President John Quincy (pronounced Quin-zee) Adams.

NatGeo goes on to say that Julian was an “unruly slave” and eventual sold by Quincy. Julian made several attempts to escape his new master and was killed by a slave catcher while the man was trying to bring him back from one of these.

Whether or not that was actually the case, Julian’s life aboard Whydah was probably one of the best times for him. Thankfully the memory of that life, however speculative, remains as a glimpse of the freedom a man could find during the Golden Age of Piracy.

Header: Bellamy taking the Whydah via fieldmuseum.org

People: Miss Nanny

Today's pirate is a classic child of the Golden Age. He has virtually no origin story – as is so very common – and his name first hits the piratical record in 1720 when he is among the crew of a fishing vessel. Most writers agree that he was probably around the age of 21 or 22 at the time and he would quite literally find a “short life but a merry one” from then on.


The ship upon which John Walden served was called the Blessing and she was taken without resistance off Newfoundland by that famous freebooter Bartholomew Roberts. Roberts, who coined the charming phrase about short and merry lives at sea, was fond of taking men aboard him but only if they were willing to go a pirating. As we’ve discussed on more than one occasion hear at Triple P, Roberts was a fair and sober captain whose one vice seemed to be fashion and jewels. His straight forward, honest attitude probably appealed to men worn out from hard work at scant pay on merchant and fishing vessels; of course the huge, diamond and ruby encrusted cross dangling around Black Bart’s neck was probably some encouragement as well.

Walden joined the crew of Roberts’ Royal Fortune and clearly became something of a focus for the other men. Though few of the doubtless innumerable nicknames shared among pirates have come down to us in the histories, we know that Walden was known to his fellows as “Miss Nanny” (or Nanney). The reason for this moniker has been the source of more than one assumption by modern scholars, but we’ll have a look at that in a minute.

A seemingly capable sailor, Walden was also known for his hot temper and rash action. His fighting skills were more than adequate and he is mentioned in court records as being part of almost all of Roberts’ boarding parties. He was also said to be a brutal man. One fellow pirate alleged under interrogation that Walden had set fire to a ship in which a number of Africans were still in chains, burning the unfortunates alive. Whether or not this story was true, or just an attempt to deflect blame under scrutiny, is still a mystery.

The most famous tale told of Walden concerns the taking of the merchant vessel King Solomon in January of 1722. Royal Fortune met her off Africa’s Cape Appolonia and demanded she heave to and strike. Her captain, a Welshman named Traherne, instead fired upon the pirates while trying to warp his ship out of range with anchor, cable and capstan. This only infuriated Roberts, who seethed to the point of boarding the merchant once she surrendered. “What were you thinking?” he asked the Welshman. “Did you not know you faced the dreadful Roberts?”

At this point Walden raised his boarding axe and cut King Solomon’s anchor cable. “Captain,” he asked Traherne. “What signifies this trouble of yo-hoping and straining in hot weather? There are plenty more anchors in London. Besides which, your ship will surely be burned.”

If the story is true it shows Walden’s place of prominence in Roberts’ eyes. In time of battle, a pirate captain had unquestionable authority. To speak so freely in such a situation – and throw away a potentially valuable piece of equipment without Roberts’ order – Walden clearly felt comfortable in his position aboard ship.

Comfort did not save John Walden from the fate of his mates, however. Royal Fortune famously met HMS Swallow captained by pirate hunter Cholaner Ogle in February of 1722. Roberts was killed by a blast of grapeshot and, seemingly losing their will with their captain, the Royal Fortunes surrendered after tossing Roberts’ lifeless body into the sea. Some 210 plus men were taken in chains to Cape Corso on the West African coast where they were subjected to interrogations, quick trials and hanging. John Walden went to his death in the hot African sun at the stunningly youthful age of about 24.

No mention of what some modern sources now speculate about Walden came out in the course of those trials, though his temper and brutality did. Walden’s nickname and his apparent closeness to Bartholomew Roberts have led to some researchers stating that he was a homosexual and indeed Black Bart’s lover. While homosexual pirates and privateers were certainly no less present than they were in the general population at any given time, the theory has yet to be proven. As Terry Breverton says in his book Black Bart Roberts:

One noted writer on pirates believes that Miss Nanny was an 18th century term for a homosexual, but this author can find no such reference. The writer uses this to make the connection that Walden was Roberts’ lover, but again there is nothing to prove the allegation. Surely this ‘fact’ would have been noted in the interrogation and trial transcripts of over 200 men if it was the case. To this author, it seems that Roberts was asexual if anything.

Why Walden was called Miss Nanny is perhaps the most tantalizing mystery of all the things we don't know about him. Was he indeed gay? Did he have a “motherly” quality or was he the ship’s ersatz surgeon? Or did he simply have an affinity for the ship’s goat, which I must add opens up a potentially off-putting can of worms? Clearly we will never know for sure but then that’s part of the joy of this pursuit; there is always more to learn.

Header: Illustration by Howard Pyle c 1911 from his Book of Pirates

Women at Sea: Quadroons of Old New Orleans

Many men would rather live in concubinage with a woman than marry. In that way they enjoy the advantage of being well cared for, along with the option of dismissing the woman if she proves unsatisfactory or unfaithful.


This quote from the journal of Frenchman Francois Perrin du Lac sums up his personal opinion of the New Orleans tradition known as placage: placement. Perrin du Lac travelled to Louisiana in the early 19th century (his journal was published in 1805) when the system was well established so it is a certainty that he had seen it in action. His opinion, though skewed if the truth be told, does sum up certain arrangements made by the famous pirates of Barataria Pierre Laffite and his brother, Jean.

As Liliane Crete notes in her excellent history Daily Life in Louisiana 1815-1830, New Orleans and the surrounding area had a problem common to frontier settlements from the day it was founded by the French: gender imbalance. Too many white men meant heightened competition for the available white female population which, in turn, could lead to social chaos. Since most people aren’t ready for anarchy, and usually the wealthy end up with their choice of what ever is scarce, men who were not the cream of the crop (those wealthy, landowning Creoles) cast about for other alternatives. This led to arrangements between white men and black or mulatto women. Since the marriage of a white person to anyone with even “a drop of African blood” was forbidden, the couples basically set up house and lived as if they were married.

By the time of the Louisiana Purchase, the players had changed and these arrangements had become a highly formalized institution. The young women in question – most were introduced no later than their 15th birthdays – were no longer black or mulatto but quadroon (having one black grandparent) or octoroon (having one black great-grandparent). Some were so far removed from their African ancestry that they had light hair and eyes, to say nothing of their ivory complexions. They were the accomplished of their social strata and considered themselves above marrying a man of even octoroon blood. Instead, they strove to catch the eye of the wealthiest Creole gentleman they could and then, more often than not, a contract was drawn up.

In most cases, the man in question – whether he was a young bachelor or an established gentleman with a Creole wife and family – agreed to provide for the young lady who was “placed” with him. He would buy her a respectable home, often along Rue Rampart but later the Faubourg Marigny became popular as well, set up her household and recognize her children. Depending on the gentleman’s means the household might include a carriage and horses, jewels, furniture and usually one or two slaves. The children of these liaisons, though always listed in the church register as “colored”, were given the gentleman’s last name. Many of them were also mentioned in his will, some to a very generous degree. Should trouble come to this paradise the contract, usually negotiated between the gentleman and the young lady’s mother who was once “placed” herself, stipulated that he would provide for his placage family in the form of a monetary endowment.

Though it has become somewhat fashionable among even credible researchers to call the young women involved in these arrangements slaves they were, to a person, free blacks. New Orleans was a place where, as William C. Davis has noted, color lines blurred more than anywhere else in the young United States. The city and the surrounding bayous had a high population of “free people of color” from the Spanish period on. It would be ridiculous to discount the fact that some slave owners used their chattel for sexual gratification but it is just as ridiculous to imagine that they would sign contractual agreements with someone who, according to their world view, was no less a piece of property than a horse. The quadroons and octoroons were free women, and many of them owned slaves themselves. In fact some made a lucrative living later in life renting out their slaves for day jobs around the city.

The ladies were invariably remarked upon by travelers from abroad as lovely, modest and accomplished. One woman from Britain compared them to the Brahmin ladies of India. Many times they appear in literature with interesting and exotic names like Toucoutou, Zabette, Semiramee or Ti Poulette. They appeared all over town, at the Opera, where special boxes were set aside for quadroons, and at dances. It was at these dances, generally known as Black and White or later Blue Ribbon balls, that Creole gentlemen mingled with the ladies available for placage. According to Davis, it was at one of Monsieur Coquet’s soirees that Pierre Laffite met his long time quadroon companion, Marie Louise Villard or Vallars.

Louise, or Louison as she was known affectionately, was about ten years younger than Pierre and rumored to be quite lovely despite a few pock marks on her cheeks. Though no contract between Pierre and Louise’s mother Marguarite is extant, Louise was living with one of NOLA’s favorite pirates by 1806. They would spend close to twenty years together and produce a brood of at least seven children. Louise, it seems, was intrepid enough to accompany Pierre on business trips to Pensacola where she lived with him for two or three years. Pierre’s two documented New Orleans homes on Rue Dumaine and Rue St. Philip were both purchased in Louise’s name.

In the same household lived Louise’s younger sister Catherine or Catiche as she was known. She had a much less stable relationship with Pierre’s younger brother that, at the very least, produced Jean Laffite’s only documented child. Jean-Pierre Laffite was born in November of 1815 according to baptismal records at St. Louis Cathedral. He died at sixteen in the virulent yellow fever epidemic of 1832.

Both women were quite literally abandoned by the Laffite brothers when Pierre and Jean set out from Galveston for Isla Mujeres in 1820. Louise and Catherine eventually married quadroon men and lived the rest of their lives in New Orleans.

The system of placage continued into the 1820s and ’30s but slowly faded away as waves of Easterners moved to New Orleans. By the 1840s the very idea of such standardized adultery would have been abhorrent to the Victorian sensibility and it was in this era that some quadroon and octoroon families, robbed of the benefits of their former station in society, began “passing” as white. Though this sometimes worked, it could also have disastrous results as was the case with one of Pierre and Louise’s unfortunate descendants. But that is another story for another time.

Header: Octoroons in late 18th century New Orleans, print via slaveimages.org

History: Cais do Valongo

Brazil has a long history of slave trading. The vast plantations that cut a living out of the verdant jungle north and south of the Amazon River needed human labor to create them, cultivate them and keep them running. Though native populations were exploited to some degree – anyone who has seen the movie The Mission has an idea of how that was handled – the vast majority of agricultural labor was done by enslaved Africans.

The wealth inherent in the slave trade meant that its history is forever entangled with the history of piracy and privateering. Because Brazil continued to import Africans to the New World after other slave-exploiting economies, like that of the U.S. and Mexico, had put embargoes on the trade, her ports and the seas outside them became targets for the opportunistic freebooters. Bartholomew Roberts routinely captured slavers off the west coast of Africa and then brought them to Brazil for the sale of their cargo at a tidy profit. If he was lucky he might even be able to sell the ship he appropriated. Later, in the heyday of the privateers, the Brazilian coast was a great hunting ground. Just as Roberts had off the coast of Africa, men like William Mitchell and Louis Aury would take a slave ship headed for Brazil and divert her to the Gulf Coast of Mexico, Texas or Louisiana for the sale of the unfortunate people she carried.

The history is both rich and disgusting. Slavery made the New World a more culturally diverse place for adding the unwilling immigrants to the mix. It also created a permanent stain on the otherwise forward thinking intentions of all of our founding fathers. For me personally, it is telling that Bolivar’s revolution was the first widespread uprising in the New World to include freedom for both African and Native slaves as an unquestioned tenant of its mission. And historical slave trading by buccaneers, pirates and privateers certainly takes a bit of the “heroic” and “egalitarian” wind out of their sails. Forgetting an injustice only makes it possible to repeat it – in fact slavery is a very real horror all over the world even as I write – and so a new archaeological find in Rio de Janeiro can only add to our knowledge of a practice that makes most of us uncomfortable at best.

The Cais do Valongo, or the Valongo wharf, was one of the largest intake ports for African slaves in Brazil. For over two hundred years people were off-loaded from ships and taken to holding houses where they were washed, fed and shaved before being exposed at local auctions. Once purchased, most would be marched to the interior and their new home on a sugar, cotton or – most likely – coffee plantation. The practice, which began in the later half of the 16th century, continued until Brazil officially banned slavery in 1888.

This article from Guardian UK tells us that what may have been the hub of the wharf was unearthed in the process of giving the Rio de Janeiro port a face lift in preparation for the 2016 Olympics. It includes information on the ongoing recovery and hoped for preservation of historical finds that include the possible slave-trade wharf as well as the Empress’ wharf, which was built on or near Valongo in the 1840s to welcome Brazil’s future Empress Teresa Cristina, and a 19th century sewer system. Archaeologist Tania Andrade Lima, who has been looking for Valongo for the National Museum, is hopeful that the find is authentic and that it will be possible to “integrate the finds into the new ports design”.

Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, is quoted as saying “These are our Roman ruins,” and I think that speaks volumes. Rome was a master slaver, unrivalled before or since. As a person of mixed race and multicultural heritage I hope that none of what we as humans have done to one another, good or evil, will be forgotten. That way we can continue to do what is right, and never again build a Cais do Valongo anywhere in the world.

Header: Rugendas Slave Market, Brazil, via Virginia.edu

The Pirates Own Book: Captain White

"The Life, Career and Death of Captain Thomas White” is the 20th chapter in The Pirates Own Book by Charles Ellms. I can find very little documentation of a pirate named White in and around the waters of Madagascar during that island’s piratical heyday (the late 17th and very early 18th centuries), but the story as Ellms tells it has value in the broad sense. Though the twenty pages devoted to White’s life read more like a local travel brochure than anything else, the main theme has a ring of unusually common truth.

According to Ellms, White was born in Plymouth, England. His father is never mentioned but evidently his mother kept “a public house” so we can reasonably assume that she ran a tavern and inn which probably catered to sailors and dockworkers. Mrs. White “took great care” with her son’s education and, when he announced his intention to go to sea, she “procured him the king’s letter”. White served aboard a man-of-war and then joined the merchant service, eventually taking command of a brig. He moved to Barbados and married, but his intentions to settle down in the Caribbean never bore fruit.

Instead, while sailing off the Guinea coast of Africa, his ship was taken by French pirates. These men were the picture of barbarous terrorists. Ellms, insinuating himself into his prose on a number of occasions in this particular chapter, tells us:

…I beg leave to take notice of their barbarity to the English prisoners, for they would set them up as a butt or mark to shoot at; several of whom were thus murdered in cold blood, by way of diversion.

White himself was marked for death but saved by a friend he had made aboard the corsair. The Frenchmen, being as drunk and incompetent as they are sadistic, manage to run their ship aground and sink it off Madagascar. White finds a friend ashore in another captain named Boreman and the two, along with a Captain Bowen, take a boat from local natives and make with their remaining crews for St. Augustine Bay. Here they are welcomed by a native king who, evidently tiring of feeding them, eventually pawns them off on a passing pirate ship captained by William Read. In this way, White begins his pirating career, as Ellms says, “…before the mast, being a forced man from the beginning.”

This is probably the most historically accurate observation in the entire chapter. Pirates, privateers and those straddling the invisible fence that separated the two frequently found themselves short of men. A prize ship worth keeping would need to be manned and, in the case of legitimate commissions, sent back to the prize courts for legal libel so that its goods, and possibly even the ship, could be sold. The idea of “forcing” men into service aboard them was in no way unusual for pirates. Ellms’ White, though he is referred to as “Captain”, is actually the picture of a typical jack in the wrong place at the wrong time who ends up a pirate without his consent.

Captain Read is lucky not only in the Indian Ocean but in the Red Sea as well. At one point the pirates come into contact with a French slaver and, boarding her as friends, are asked to dine. When gunplay erupts, the French Captain and his men rather amusingly try to stab one of the pirates at table with their forks. As Ellms tells it, “… but they being silver, did him no great damage.” This is why you can’t have nice things at sea! Needless to say the French ship is taken as prize and the Captain and some of his crew are given a small boat.

The successes continue to rack up while White toils away before the mast. At one point a young sailor named Hugh Man aboard the British slaver Speaker is bribed to wet the priming on his ship’s guns so that, when Read’s ship attacks, Speaker cannot answer. The humor of both the sailor’s name and that of his ship is a puzzle. Whether or not it was intentional is something only Ellms himself could speak to.

Captain Read seems to get a little full of himself after his success with Speaker which he fits out with 54 guns, 240 men and 20 slaves. Landing at “Zanguebar” his men go off to the “public houses” while he accepts an invitation from the local governor. The entire thing is a trap. Read and his entourage are killed by the governor’s men while the rest of the pirate crew is picked off as they flee toward their ship. Some of the men manage to escape in a smaller vessel where they elect Bowen as their Captain and make for the Red Sea to continue their piracy. White is evidently among them but Ellms does not return to him immediately.

Bowen leads his crew to great success in the Red Sea where the Mogul treasure ships sailed back and forth from Arabia to India. Eventually, with over 500 pounds each, Bowen’s crew decides to disperse. On St. Mary’s Island White is elected Captain of one of the groups and he proposes returning “home”. This is the first and last mention of what must have been White’s fond desire to see his wife and Barbados again. His crew, however, is eager for further booty and they return to the Indian Ocean in search of same.

The rest of the chapter is a catalogue of prizes, each it seems more grand than the last. White eventually is back “before the mast” under Captain John Halsey but the prize taking in no way slows down. The last paragraph wraps things up with ruthless efficiency. White returned to Madagascar after becoming ill with the flux “… which in about five or six months ended his days.” White provided for a son whom he had with a “… woman in the country” and asks that the three guardians chosen for the boy see to it that he is put aboard an English ship bound for England to “… be brought up in the Christian religion.” This done and seen to, the story simply ends.

The potential numbers of nameless “Thomas Whites” throughout the historical high points of piracy – including the one we are currently experiencing – are probably beyond imagining. Perhaps at some point the prospect of wealth or the idea of adventure sparks an interest where there never was one. Or perhaps a person simply adapts and evolves, just as all living things at sea always have.

Header: Hugh Man wetting the Priming of the Guns from The Pirates Own Book via Project Guttenberg