Sailor Mouth Saturday: Iron

And, I'm back. Miss me? Just time enough today for a look at the word iron at sea and on the dock. And we're not just talking about the famous ironclads CSS Virginia (ex-Merrimack) and USS Monitor here.

So let us start, then, with ironclad vessels. Also spoken of as ironcased, coated or plated, these were the ships, emerging in the 19th century, entirely encased in iron plates. The trick of making such vessels seaworthy was one that led to the practice of putting plate on only specific parts that were more open to missiles until the dawn of the 20th century iron age ship.

By the 19th century, most ships had some iron parts. Iron work was the general name for these and any pieces of iron used in the construction of ships or equipment for ships. Iron bound blocks were those fitted with iron strops. The "iron horse" was the latter-day iron railing of the head attached most usually to the fore- or boom-sheet. A ship was said to be iron-sick when her iron work was coming loose from the timbers and her sheathing nails are rusted. A sorry condition that no right-thinking sailor would allow.

A coast may be spoken of as iron-bound when it is made up of rocks that are predominately perpendicular to the sea as they rise up from it. These are dangerous shores indeed, and should be avoided at all costs.

A ship may be said to be in irons when, as Admiral Smyth explains in The Sailor's Word Book:

... by mismanagement, she is permitted to come up in the wind and lose her way; so that, having no steerage, she must either be boxed off on the former track, or fall off on the other; for she will not cast one way or the other, without bracing in the yards.

Irons are the tools used by caulkers, of which my grandfather was proudly one, to hammer oakum into the wooden seams of a vessel. These are sometimes known as boom irons, probably for their loud racket while in use. Grandpa went deaf caulking. Irons were also, of course, the bilboes that would be fitted around a miscreant sailor's ankles to keep him both in place and in discomfort. Sailors, with their sarcastic wit, might euphemistically refer to same as "iron garters."

And a ship might be lovingly spoken of as having "iron-sides" when she seemed immune to the blasts of enemy cannon. Here in the U.S., we still know one of our first frigates, USS Constitution, as "Old Ironsides."

Thus ends another addition of SMS. Fair winds and following sees, Brethren, until next we meet...

Header: Hudson River Under the Moonlight by M. F. Hendrik de Haas via American Gallery

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

History: Instructions for Privateers

On May 2nd of 1780 the Continental Congress of the fledgling U.S.A. did something that hadn't been done by what they would have termed a "civilized nation" for close to 400 years: they issued instructions to the captains and commanders of private armed vessels carrying Continental letters of marque. This essential act of congress would be referred to in evaluating the conduct of U.S. privateers until the Civil War with only one small amendment in 1781.

The document, which you can view in high resolution at the Library of Congress website, is thoughtful and specific. There is very little "wiggle room", so to say, as there would be in a straight letter of mark - for instance this one issued during the War of 1812. The instructions include guidelines for the taking of enemy ships (only Britain is mentioned here), the treatment of persons aboard those ships, the libeling of ship and cargo and other issues of conduct.

Of particular interest here is the treatment of passengers aboard captured ships. From Article VI:

If you, or any of your officers or crew, shall, in cold blood, kill or maim, or by torture or otherwise, cruelly, inhumanly, and contrary to common usage and the practice of civilized nations in war, treat any person or persons surprized in the ship or vessel you shall take, the offender shall be severely punished.

That's a key factor that should, in theory, separate a privateer from a pirate. Aside from the proper legal libel of any captured vessel and it's cargo, the mistreatment of so called prisoners marked the rogue vs. the gentleman sailor.

The amendment of 1781 changed the following piece of Article I which excepted the capture of:

...ships or vessels, along with their cargoes, belonging to any inhabitant or inhabitants of Bermuda...

At the time the U.S. held, albeit very shakily, the capital of Bermuda, New Providence, and probably had aspirations of including the islands as a future state. Also excepted:

... such other ships or vessels bringing persons with intent to settle and reside withing the United States...

New people were a welcome commodity for the new nation. Despite this, the commanders are instructed to search these vessels and, should the man in command prove hesitant or false in his description of his ship's intent, seizure is implied to be permissible.

All in all the document, which is handsomely preserved, is a commendable attempt at keeping U.S. privateers from slipping into the habits of piracy. Over all, it seems to have had the intended effect.

Header: USS Revenge via Wikipedia ~ she is flying the famous "Don't Tread on Me" flag favored by U.S. privateers during the Revolution

Tools of the Trade: The Art of Swimming

We've spoken before about our sailing ancestor's love/hate relationship with swimming. Many who ventured out to sea, particularly in the 16th and 17th centuries, believed that it was simply better to drown quickly in the event of an unthinkable foundering or shipwreck. Knowing how to swim, the logic went, would only prolong the agony in the event that one's ship went down in the blue ocean, with no land in sight.

As their contact with Africa and the Americas increased, Europeans began to witness populations along these shores and particularly in the West Indies that all knew how to swim. Not knowing how to get around in the water was considered shameful among the locals and laughable in the case of the invaders. A new mindset was born and, though many career sailors, particularly in the Royal Navy, clung to the idea of avoiding the skill, knowing how to swim became somewhat of a rage.

Mechisedec Thevenot's L'Art de Nager, an illustrated book published in 1696, was on the cutting edge of this new wave. The book's entire title reads:

The Art of Swimming. Illustrated by proper figures. With advice for bathing. By Monsieur Thevenot. Done out of French. To which is prefixed a prefatory discourse concerning artificial swimming, or keeping oneself above water by several portable engines, in case of danger.

Quite the mouthful there. At any rate, as this wonderful post over at BibliOdyssey makes clear, the illustrations may be the best part of the book. But there is a good deal in the text that lends itself as well:

To mention some few advantages of Swimming. In case of Shipwreck, if one is not very far from Shore, the Art of Swimming may set one safe there, and to save from being drowned. In case of being pursu'd by an Enemy, and meeting a River in ones way, you have the advantage of escaping two sorts of Death, by gaining the Shore on the other side, and so escaping from your Enemy, and from being drowned in the attempt of doing it.

This quote, from the introduction, speaks specifically to the era in which Monsieur Thevenot wrote. So, too, does the caption from the illustration above entitled "To Tread Water":

By this way you remain upright in the water without making any motion with the hands, only you move the water round with your Legs from you, the Soals of your Feet being perpendicular to the bottom; you may make use of this if you are cast into the water bound hand and foot.

Considering that tossing captives, bound hand and foot, into the sea was a favorite piratical torture, this kind of advice could potentially be invaluable.

Click over to BibliOdyssey, which is a wonderful spot on the web for those of us obsessed with both books and history by the way, and see more of Monsieur T's fabulous tome. You won't regret it.

Header: To Tread Water from L'Art de Nager via BibliOdyssey

Women at Sea: "An Extremely Manly Woman"

For over 300 years, the lady we will speak of today was revered as, for lack of a better analogy, the Jeanne d'Arc of Holland. She was, according to contemporary if anonymous accounts, a key player in the city of Haarlem's defense against its Spanish overlords. During the siege of the town that began in the winter of 1572 and would drag on until July of 1573, Kenau Simonsdochter Hasselaar fought the Spanish with the spirit of a lion. Or so it was said until a particular Victorian minded historian got a hold of her story and brought the idea of a fighting matron into question.

Kenau Hasselaar was evidently born in the city she held dear some time in 1526. Her parents, Simon Hasselaar and Grietje Koen, ran a brewery and Kenau grew up learning a great deal about business at her mother's knee. It would doubtless be to that Victorian historian's great chagrin that we are now aware of the facts about middle class women in 16th century Haarlem. Most were partners in their husband's businesses, or ran their own outright as Kenau would. Their business acumen was stellar and Dutch women gained a reputation on both sides of the Atlantic for driving a hard bargain, so to say.

Kenau grew up tough and smart. She was married at 18 to a shipwright and wood seller named Nanning Borst. It appears that Kenau jumped right in to the ship building business while also continuing to deal in grain, the best of which she funneled to her parents' brewery, no doubt at wholesale. The Borsts were blessed with four children, all of whom had reached maturity by the time Nanning died in 1562.

Kenau along with her youngest child and only son, Gerbrand, continued to run the lucrative shipbuilding business. There is also some hint that Kenau may have been involved in the usually illegal, often piratical and always profitable logwood trade. Although the documentation is sketchy, if true, this would have made Kenau the next best thing to a pirate in her own right.

When the Spanish, who were already occupying the Low Countries, decided they were fed up with the free-thinking and free-speaking Dutch, Frederick of Toledo, the son of the powerful Duke of Alva, descended on Haarlem with 12,000 men. Frederick's intention was to lay siege to the wealthy port city and thereby cut off supply routes to the interior of the country. He imagined the siege would last no more than seven days; in fact it would stretch out to a full seven months.

Inside the city, things were not as bad as they might have been. Haarlem, with its various water ways, was almost impossible to isolate. Provisions and arms came into the city across the Harlemmermeer lake and, despite the vast superiority of Spanish numbers, the 4,000 or so fighting men of Haarlem stubbornly refused to give in to tyrants.

Meanwhile Kenau, now in her forties and, according to one contemporary, "an extremely manly woman", was not about to sit by and let the heretics destroy her city. She rallied some 300 able bodied women - those with children that could be left at home and who were not pregnant, nursing, infirm or too aged to be of much use - and marched to the city walls with pike and sword in hand. From the moment she and her "batallion of Amazons", as historian Vicki Leon refers to them, set right to work. They shored up breaches in the walls, carried earth to build new ramparts, nursed the wounded and sick, carried water both for drinking and to swab the city's cannon, and cheered on those who seemed to falter in their resolve. All in all, their tireless efforts proved very worth while to their city and their cause.

To some degree, all that sweat and struggle was for naught. The city surrendered to the Spanish of July 13, 1573. While it appears that no women were put to death, perhaps in part because of a general ransom paid by the city to Frederick, the entire city garrison and 40 of Haarlem's burghers were executed. According to Robin Cross and Rosalind Miles in their book Warrior Women, there were so many men to kill that the executions took more than a week to complete. When the Spanish executioners grew too weary to lift their swords, they tied their victims back to back and threw them into the Spaame river to drown.

Kenau, whose nephew was briefly held by the Spanish but later released, continued her shipbuilding business. She traveled a good bit after the fall of Haarlem, which is documented by sales receipts for things she bought and sold. Was this a purposeful way of avoiding punishment for her defiance during the siege? No historian I can find has said so, but one has to wonder.

Some time after 1585, Kenau bought a ship and apparently departed upon it bound for Norway. The ship was carrying wood, and possibly some of that precious and contraband logwood, but was lost at sea. When the ship returned to Haarlem under the command and ownership of a captain named Lieven Hansz, Kenau's no doubt savvy daughters cried foul. They took Hansz to court as a possible thief and murderer. Hansz claimed he bought the ship at the port of Flensburg where the port official was selling deserted ships. Hansz's theory, which the court seemed to buy, was that Kenau must have been attacked by pirates and murdered with her crew.

Regardless of the actual circumstances of Kenau Hasselaar's death, she remained a national hero for centuries. She was celebrated at each centennial of the siege of Haarlem in etchings, paintings and song. Ships were named after her, statues erected and her given name, Kenau, became part of the Dutch language; its meaning denoted a feisty, unconquerable woman.

And then along came Dr. C. Ekama who, in 1872, disputed not only Kenau's role during the siege but that of any other woman. His argument centered around the lack of documentation of women dying in battle or, in particular, being executed with the burghers. There is very little to his theory aside from this and, it must be said, his obvious 19th century take on the place and capability of women in general.

Kenau's actual contributions during the siege may never truly be known, but the rewriting of her history is an old and sad story. Our recent ancestors, at least in the West, decided that we should not know the whole truth about our distant past. But we are digging up those truths one at time, and the story of Kenau Hasselaar, that extremely manly woman, and her bravery is worth knowing.

Header: An etching of Kenau Haselaar by an anonymous artist from the 17th century via Wikimedia

Seafaring Sunday: Departure of Doom

February 17, 1700: HMS Advice leaves Boston Harbor for London. She is carrying a frail, sickly man of 55 years who was once a prominent citizen of Massachusetts Colony. He is on his way to stand trial for piracy and will die most pitiably at the end of a rope at Execution Dock in Wapping. His name is William Kidd.

Header: William Kidd in New York Harbor by J.L.G. Ferris via Wikipedia ~ a fanciful imagining of Kidd at the height of his success

Horror on the High Seas: Torture for Torture's Sake

Hard to believe but it is that time again... For the fourth year in a row, Triple P celebrates a seagoing Hallowe'en with Horror on the High Seas week. What, after all, is more fun than mayhem, torture, ghosts and disgust at sea? Seriously, we'll discuss all of that and more.

Let us start out with torture and pirates via that story of the unfortunate Aaron Smith. Smith, a pilot and some-time surgeon aboard an English merchant, was captured by pirates in the Caribbean in 1822. Pressed into unwilling service due to his knowledge of the islands, Smith witnessed atrocities that he would later write about to great acclaim. His pamphlet The Atrocities of the Pirates, was published after he was tried and acquitted on charges of piracy. Of course his Victorian contemporaries, already in love with the gruesome, snapped up his writing and, for a short time, the pilot knew a modicum of fame.

Here is a sample involving a member of the pirate crew whom the captain accused of plotting mutiny:

[The Captain] threatened me with vengeance for my interference, declaring that he had not done half that he intended to do.

Having said this, he turned to the man, told him that he should be killed, and therefore advised him to prepare for death, or confess himself to any of the crew whom I chose to call aside for that purpose.

The man persisted in his plea of innocence, declared that he had nothing to confess, and entreated them all to spare his life. They paid no attention to his assertions but, by the order of the Captain, the man was put into the boat, pinioned and lashed in the stern, and five of the crew were directed to arm themselves with pistols and muskets and to go in her. The captain then ordered me to go with them, savagely remarking that I should now see how he punished rascals, and giving directions to the boat's crew to row for three hours backwards and forwards through a narrow creek formed by a desert island and the island of Cuba. "I will see," cried he, exulting, "whether the mosquitoes & the sandflies will not make him confess." Prior to our leaving the schooner, the thermometer was above ninety degrees in the shade, and the poor wretch was now exposed naked to the full heat of the sun. In this state we took him to the channel, one side of which was bordered by swamps full of mangrove trees, and swarming with the venomous insects before mentioned.

We had scarcely been half an hour in this place when the miserable victim was distracted with pain; his body began to swell, and he appeared one complete blister from head to foot. Often in the agony of his torments did he implore them to end his existence and release him from his misery; but the inhuman wretches only imitated his cries, and mocked and laughed at him. In a very short time, from the effects of the solar heat and the stings of the mosquitoes and sandlies, his face had become so swollen that not a feature was distinguishable; his voice began to fail, & his articulation was no longer distinct.

The unfortunate man continued to be tortured in this manner for another half an hour. Finally, the boat was rowed back to the ship but, when the captain was informed that the man had not confessed, he ordered that the "rascal" be taken back to the sand bar and used for target practice. Surviving this, the poor devil was finally weighed down with "a pig of iron... fastened round his neck, & he was thrown into the sea."

An ignominious end for a man who clearly chose bad company and, in the final analysis, found a miserable death for it.

Header: Dead Pirate Ashore by Howard Pyle c 1887 via Wikipedia

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Pick/Pike

I was inspired to pick today’s words by U.S. Navy pikes. Trust me, that insane sentence will make sense by the end of this post.

In sailor-speak, pick means the usual things it does on land. Even at sea you can pick your nose and you can pick your friends but I’m not going to finish that old canard. Canard, as an aside, means duck in French; while ducks have beaks and friends, they have no noses. It is only at sea, however, that a ship can pick up the wind. This is a term for a sailing ship going from one trade or other reliable wind to another while avoiding calms as much as possible. This was a favorite tactic of clipper ships in their heyday as they ran from New York to San Francisco then on to China and around to New York again.

Pickets are pointed staffs thrust into the ground to demark military terrain, or even just tie a horse to. Pickets may also be markers for pointing a mortar towards its target, even if same is not visible from the weapon. Piquet is a group put on watch at a distance from the main body of military to sound the first alarm in case of approach by the enemy.

A picard was a type of barge or boat once used for shipping materials and livestock on the Severn river in England. The word’s origin may or may not be related to the French word for a native of Picardy. A picaroon was a small vessel used for piracy in the New World whose name probably originated with the Old World term for petty theft. Piccary was petty thievery on the High Seas and in England pickerie was the theft of small items – a loaf of bread or an apple – that was usually considered the act of women and/or children. The long-standing sentence for pickerie was the far-worse-than-it-sounds punishment of ducking or swimming. Usually carried out in either very cold and/or filthy bodies of water, this form of torture could lead to death outright or infection that essentially amounted to a death sentence.

Pickling for sea voyages was done not only to food but also to wood. Pickling of timber in order to make it more durable was often accomplished with Sir William Burnett’s fluid, a solution of chloride and zinc. Because of this method, pickling was sometimes called Burnettizing.

A picul (or, more properly, pekul) was a commercial weight in China equivalent to approximately 130 pounds. Pictarnie is a Scottish word for the seagoing bird known as a tern.

A pike-turn or a turn-pike is what was known to the French as a chevaux de frise. This was the habit of topping military pikes with iron and standing them upright through beams, much like a fence, to discourage the enemy. In fact, the French term – which literally translates curly hair – is used to this day to denote a certain type of wrought iron fencing.

Finally, a pike is best described by Admiral Smyth:

A long, slender, round staff, armed at the end with iron (as in a boarding-pike). Formerly in general use but which gave way to the bayonet.

And so here is the picture, from the U.S Navy’s Twitter feed, that got me thinking about pikes while picking today’s words. I told you it would all make sense. Eventually.

Header: Engraving of a ducking or water ordeal from the late Medieval period via The Medievalist

Seafaring Sunday: The Horrors of War

August 19, 1702: A six day engagement between a British squadron under Vice Admiral John Benbow and a French squadron under Admiral Jean du Casse began off the coast of Santa Marta, Grand Colombia. Benbow vigorously attacked the French squadron, but the refusal of most of his captains to support the action allowed du Casse to escape. Two of the captains, Richard Kirby of HMS Defiance and Cooper Wade of HMS Greenwich were convicted of cowardice and shot.

Header: The Horrors of War by Caroline Tank via American Gallery

Women at Sea: Mademoiselle de la Rocque

On the face of it, the story of Marguerite de la Rocque reads as a simple one. Good girl from up-and-coming family gets knocked up and kicked out of the house. In Marguerite’s case, the situation and consequences of her scandal were so unusual as to be extreme.

In what year and exactly where Marguerite was born remains somewhat of a mystery. We know that her influential kinsman, Jean-Francois de la Rocque de Roberval, was born around 1500 in the ancient city of Carcassonne, located in southern France. We also know that Marguerite held lands in Languedoc, also in southern France, in her own name by 1536. She also jointly owned land in Pontpoint with Roberval. Roberval would have a significant effect on Marguerite’s life but their exact relationship continues as pure speculation. Certain historians call them brother and sister or half-siblings while others say they were cousins. Either way, Marguerite seems to have been under the protection of Roberval by the time she reached maturity.

Roberval was a social climber who wormed his way into a friendship with the young Francois I of France during a brief military foray into Italy in 1524. Francois took a shine to young Jean and gifted him the estate of Roberval in northern France. There, the two buddies spent time hunting and womanizing but Roberval could not keep up with Francois’ expensive tastes. He borrowed heavily on his estates in the south and did a brief but unsuccessful stint as a French privateer when those same estates were threatened with foreclosure.

Desperate, Roberval returned to Francois and proposed that the king grant him a commission to recolonize New France. This was the area of Canada now known as Quebec and Newfoundland. Roberval had help convincing Francois from a shifty individual named Jacques Cartier. Cartier had been to New France, and he enjoyed flashing the “diamonds and gold” – which were in fact nothing more expensive than quartz crystal and pyrite – that he had found there “in great abundance.”

The king agreed and made Roberval Lieutenant General of New France in 1541. At this time, it is reasonable to assume that Marguerite was somewhere between 20 and 25 years old. And it is here that the narrative of her life’s story turns from standard to curious indeed.

For some reason that history fails to mention, Marguerite de la Rocque signed on for her kinsman’s passage to New France. Why a young, unmarried woman from a good family and with land in her own name would do such a thing is a point for discussion. Even if Roberval was her appointed guardian, one might imagine that a good marriage would be a better way to look after her than packing her off to an unknown, inhospitable colony. All the same, that is what Roberval did and Marguerite, along with her maidservant Damienne, boarded the ship Valentine bound for New France in April of 1542.

The passage was doubtless grueling, as all travel was at the time. Three ships held 200 colonists along with Roberval’s men, a few horses and the ships’ sailors. At some point during the months-long cruise, Marguerite began an affair with one of her shipmates. Who this man was remains part of the mystery surrounding her. Speculation makes him everything from a young knight to a hardened soldier. In her novella about Marguerite published in 1559, the Queen of Spain, Marguerite of Navarre, made the young man a poor carpenter.

Who he was not withstanding, Roberval found out about the man’s dalliance with his kinswoman and he did not take it lightly. In true puritanical fashion (Roberval was secretly a member of the Calvinist church in France, known as Huguenots), the new Lieutenant General marooned a probably pregnant Marguerite de la Rocque on a barren island off the coast of Quebec, along with her maid. In some accounts, the offending lover was set down on the island with them. In others, he jumped off the departing ship and swam to Marguerite’s side. Either way the three, or perhaps four, marooners were stuck on the Isle de Demons – island of Demons which is speculated to be the modern Hospital Island.

What exactly happened during the two and a half years that Marguerite was literally stranded can’t be said, but she certainly encountered one hardship after another. Local legend says that the band of three took shelter in a particular cave. It is known that they had a certain amount of provisions, including at least one gun, black powder and shot, one or more knives, a Bible and perhaps bread. In short order they had to turn to hunting and gathering. Before the birth of her baby, both Damienne the maidservant and Marguerite’s lover had died.

Marguerite managed to give birth on her own. If she was indeed pregnant when Roberval marooned her, the blessed event would have occurred in the spring. It is probably no surprise to anyone that Marguerite’s final companion, and apparently only child, died within a month of her birth.

Even in the face of so much loss, Marguerite went on. She wielded the gun with aplomb, even taking down a bear at one point. She was wrapped in its skin when Basque fishermen from Newfoundland happened by in the fall of 1544. She climbed into their boat, clutching her tattered Bible, and never looked back.

Marguerite returned to France, where legend says she opened a school for girls in Picardy. No records exist of any legal action brought against Roberval on her behalf. It seems a certainty that, after failing in New France, he returned to Paris and claimed her lands as his own. This greedy act may very well have been the motive for his brutal treatment of Marguerite from the very beginning.

But karma, then as now, is a hard mistress. Leaving a Huguenot meeting one night in Paris, Roberval and a group of companions were attacked and beaten to death by a Catholic mob. He was 59 or 60 years old.

The unfortunately little-known story of Marguerite de la Rocque, the female Robinson Crusoe who knew the isolation of a marooner years before Alexander Selkirk was even born, remains a titillating fabric whose frayed edges cry out to be sewn up.

Header: Can You Hear Me Now by Christina Ramos via American Gallery

History: Why Turn Pirate?

Yesterday marked the two hundredth anniversary of the beginning of the War of 1812.  On June 18, 1812, the U.S. declared war on Britain specifically to protect "free trade and sailors' rights."  The issue was Royal Navy harassment of both U.S. merchant ships and naval vessels as well.  The famous Chesapeake/Leopard affair of 1809 saw James Barron's USS Chesapeake fired on and boarded by HMS Leopard.  In the fray, some American sailors were "pressed" into Royal Navy service after being erroneously identified as British citizens and deserters.  These kind of incidents continued to happen until the outcry from the common sailors and their families was enough to cause Congress to make the difficult decision to go to war once again with the mighty British Empire.

The issue of ill treatment aboard Royal Navy and British merchant vessels was a long standing one and it was arguably one of the primary causes for the rise in piracy that led to the early 18th century "Golden Age" of same.  What happened aboard ship, though technically governed by Admiralty Law, was almost entirely hinged on how sane, rational and humane an individual captain and his officers might be.  Knowing that ultimate power corrupts ultimately, one can easily imagine how bad things could become afloat if the governor of your little wooden world was a sadist.

All it took was for an officer or captain to decide they had it in for a man and things could turn ugly.  As Gaile Selinger, pirate historian, notes, history is full of stories of men being permanently crippled or dying due to seemingly unfounded harsh treatment aboard ship.

Men could be chained below decks and held indefinitely, sometimes with very little or no food and water.  Sweating was a popular punishment as well, with various ways devised to work a man quite literally to death.  Men might be forced to climb up and down the rigging, hour upon hour, until the simple fell to their death.  Hugh Pigot, the famously cruel captain of HMS Hermione, would effect this punishment and, once the man dropped over of exhaustion, have him tossed into the sea dead or alive.  On other occasions men were forced to run around the deck to the same end.  Pirates notoriously adopted this form of torture, adding the pricking with sharp objects shown in the engraving above.

Boys were sometimes made to sit at the main masthead as punishment for an infraction, sometimes as simple as misspelling a word in a letter home.  They might be left up there for days; if they fell asleep and tumbled to the deck, so be it.  Men were also similarly tortured by being hung from the top.  Battered against the hardwood of the mast and exposed to the elements, death would often result.

The general malevolence of Royal Navy officers toward common seamen can be summed up in the writings of one of their own, Nathan Uring, who called sailors "... unthinking, ungovernable Monsters... when there is no power nor laws to restrain them."  Even writers of nautical fiction who hold the Royal Navy dear had to concede that trouble could arise at least now and then.  Patrick O'Brian has Jack Aubrey's usual coxswain, Barrett Bonden, aboard another ship at one point in the Aubrey/Maturin series.  When Bonden requests a transfer to HMS Surprise, he is given the ridiculous punishment of 500 lashes for his trouble.  Needless to say, Captain Aubrey takes immediate action.  Unfortunately, most sailors weren't so lucky.

Given all this and more, it seems a simple thing to imagine why a man would turn pirate.  Better to take your chances on your own, and not have as much worry about torture, denied pay or lack of shares in a prize.  At least you knew what you were getting into: a short life, but a merry one indeed.

Header: Pirates "sweating" a prisoner, 19th c engraving via Photographers Direct

Sailor Mouth Saturday: Go/Going/God

Today's words when used at sea usually have to do with orders. Well, except the last one; that usually has to do with bald-faced swearing. “God damn your eyes, sir,” comes to mind for some reason. Anyway, let us take a closer look and, upon the close of this post, I’ll explain the reason for William Blake’s peon to Horatio Nelson at the header. Bear with me, I humbly beg; or just skip to the last paragraph. I’m just glad that you’ve stopped by.


Go as a stand alone order is usually reserved for the shipyard and indicates the moment when a ship is ready to be released from the stocks. To go ashore implies shore leave, and “goashores” were a sailor’s best clothes, reserved in general for time on land when impressing the locals and representing the ship well would both have been a priority.

A ship is said to be going free when she is sailing with the wind on her beam, the bowlines slackened. She is going large when sailing off the wind in which case there would be much going about or tacking.

A go by is code for a strategy to get out of trouble, in the sense of the ship as a whole. As an example, Captain Aubrey gave the French ship Acheron the go by when he had his men row Surprise into a fog bank after her rudder was disabled in the movie Master and Commander.

Going through the fleet is an old and horrible form of torture inflicted in the Royal Navy prior to its abolition in the early 19th century. A criminal sailor was condemned to a certain number of lashes along side a group of ships at anchor in the same area, with the total lashes sometimes as high as 500. The unfortunate was rowed to each ship in a launch, the proscribed flogging performed, and then the launch rowed on to the next ship. Men were known to die from such punishment, and objection to this type of extremity was one of the foremost arguments against impressments of Americans by the Royal Navy which in turn led to the War of 1812.

A godsend meant an unexpected prize or sudden lifting of storm or attack. While the word God I will leave to the inimitable Admiral Smyth:

We retain the Anglo-Saxon word to designate the ALMIGHTY; signifying good, to do good, doing good, and to benefit; terms such as our classic borrowings cannot pretend to.

Since, upon his death at Trafalgar, Nelson became something of a god to the British people, Blake’s painting seems only appropriate for today.

Header: The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan by William Blake c 1805

Seafaring Sunday: Hanged by the Neck

April 22, 1722:  The last living members of pirate Bartholomew Roberts' crew were hanged after trial at Cape Coast Fortress, Africa.

Header: Making Chase by Don Maitz

People: "A Blood-thirste Piratte"

Spanish pirates are not often heard of in the record of the Golden Age. Though Spanish buccaneers were not uncommon, with most of them preying on their foreign Brethren rather than merchants of other countries, they seem to have become almost extinct after the turn of the 18th century. Of course this is probably a simple issue of record; certainly there were as many Spaniards who went a-pirating as men from any other nation. Most freebooters, it must be remembered, slipped into oblivion as far as history is concerned. We can’t all grow up to be Blackbeard.


That is why one brief entry in Philip Gosse’s The Pirate’s Who’s Who is so very tantalizing. The two paragraphs tell the story of the probable grisly demise of a Spanish “piratte” named Antonio Mendoza, and reading the purported original record can lead to some curious speculations on why and when a man might be branded a villain of the waves.

Mendoza is said to be from the island of Hispaniola. There is no reference to ships or a history of freebooting, but only a paragraph from “a very interesting document” which Gosse claims was discovered on the island of St. Kitts by Alpheus Hyatt Verrill.

Verrill was an adventurer, naturalist, explorer and author, among other things, who wrote extensively in genres from anthropology to science fiction. He was also involved in a number of archaeological digs in the Caribbean. Theodore Roosevelt once said that it was “… my friend Verrill here, who really put the West Indies on the map.” While many who came before might disagree with Teddy, Verrill’s experiences certainly make him a creditable source for the information Gosse offers.

That information is in the form of an English indictment against one Antonio Mendoza from the year 1701. It reads as follows (note that the English here is updated to the best of my ability for the convenience of the reader; should you care to read “ye olde originalle”, Gosse’s book is available online here).

An assize and general gaol delivery held at St. Christophers Colony from the nineteenth day of May to the 22nd day of the same month 1701 Captain Josias Pendringhame Magistrate etc. The jury of our Sovereign Lord the King do present Antonio Mendoza of Hispaniola and a subject of the King of Spain for that the said on or about the 11 day of April 1701 feloniously deliberately and maliciously and in contrary to the laws of Almighty God and our Sovereign Lord the King did in his cups saucily and arrogantly speak of the Governor and Lord the King and by force and arms into the tavern of John Wilkes Esq. did enter and there did horrible swear and curse and did feloniously use threatening words and did strike and cut most murderously several subjects of our Sovereign Lord the King. Of which indictment he pleads not guilty but one present Master Samuel Dunscombe mariner did swear that said Antonio Mendoza was of his knowledge a bloodthirsty pirate and guilty of diabolical practices and the Grand Inquest finding it true bill to be tried by God and the Country which brings a jury of 12 men sworn find him guilty and for the same he be adjudged to be carried to the Fort Prison to have both his ears cut close by his head and be burned through the tongue with a hot iron and to be cast chained in the dungeon to await the pleasure of God and Our Sovereign Lord the King.

It is curious, or telling, that at no point in the indictment is Mendoza himself referred to as a seaman. It is only the testimony of “Samuel Dunscombe mariner” that puts Mendoza plundering on the high seas. Aside from that, the Spaniard’s only crimes appear to be drunkenness, ill-advised language and a bar fight. The question that arises, at least for me, is how many men “in their cups” were fingered as pirates so that the law could take them in hand and subject them to what can only be called ghastly torture?

What became of Antonio Mendoza of Hispaniola is lost to history. It is not hard to imagine his possible death in the dungeon at Fort Prison, however. One hopes that it was quick given what he had to suffer beforehand.

Header: Brimstone Hill Fortress on St. Kitts via Wikipedia

The Pirates Own Book: Bloody Gow

Charles Ellms devotes a scant four pages in The Pirate’s Own Book to the notorious Captain Gow, and one of those is taken up by the illustration above. His focus in documenting Gow seems to be, not the man himself who is a shadowy figure in the annals of piracy, but cataloguing the prizes he took in his brief career. The second focus is the miserable torture Gow was subjected to upon his capture, and his final avoidance of the worst sort of punishment England was handing out at the time. Of course, this is not surprising for Ellms.


Most historians agree that Gow, whose Christian name is usually given as John, was of Scottish origin. While he probably began his career at sea as a boy, Ellms picks up his story when he is leading a mutiny aboard the merchant George in July of 1724. The mutineers called their captain on deck at night with the distress of a man overboard. When the captain hurried to the rail, they tried to toss him into the sea. The captain fought valiantly, clinging to the forechains even after being wounded, but Gow dispatched him with an axe. Gow was named captain, and the mutinous crew turned to piracy.

It is worth noting that Ellms has Gow telling his men just at this moment that he will brook no treachery or disobedience:

… let every such man depend upon it that he shall certainly go the same way as those that are just gone before.

Gow immediately sets to work taking prizes and Ellms dutifully lists the cargoes therein as if he were a purser completing a manifest. By the next page it is May of 1725 and Gow has the George in port in the Orkney Islands. Here, he and his men are “… apprehended by a gentleman of that country…” and taken to London to stand trial at the Admiralty Court. When brought into court Gow “… obstinately refused to plead, for which the Court ordered his thumbs tied together with whipcord.” This torture, a relative of the thumbscrews, is endured repeatedly by Gow who continues to refuse to plead.

According to English law at the time, a lack of a plea meant that a trial could not commence. It did not, however, mean that the court could not order you put to death or – at the very least – tortured until you made a plea. Gow was sentenced to return to prison and be “… pressed to death.”

This misery, known in Medieval times as “severe and hard punishment” was almost routine and is describe by Geoffrey Abbott in Rack, Rope and Red-Hot Pincers:
The prisoner… [shall be] put in a mean room, stopped from the light and shall there be laid on the bare ground… without garment about him except something about his middle… Then there shall be laid upon his body as much iron or stone as he can bear, and more.

Usually a board was laid over the prisoner before the weights began to be piled on. People survived this hideous ordeal for days on end, slowly crushed to death.

Gow, taken into the “mean room” and shown the instruments of torture decided immediately to drop his obstinacy and plead not guilty. By this time the trials of his mates had been completed and it was short work for the court to convict Gow along with the rest.

Gow was hanged in June of 1725. He was another pirate whose noose broke and who had to ascend the gibbet twice before his execution was complete. Curiously, this is something that Ellms leaves out of his telling, choosing instead to ramble about two other pirates named Weaver and Smith who did not appear in the piece previously. Just one more quirk to appreciate about The Pirate’s Own Book.


Header: Gow killing the Captain from The Pirate’s Own Book

Seafaring Sunday: Merciless Torture

August 20, 1722: The pirate Edward "Ned" Low captures the Wright Galley after an arduous chase. For their failure to prudently heave to and surrender, the crew and passengers are horribly tortured by Low and his men. The specifics of the pirates' barbarism will have to wait, though. Horror on the High Seas week returns in October, after all...

People: Once More Into The Thames

We've talked about piracy on the River Thames, that great artery that made London what she was and is, before. The freebooting on the waterway was always lucrative, but it seemed to come into it's own as England did. By 1600 there was a good deal of documentation at the Admiralty Court about the river men who turned a profit by stealth and theft. Some of these people have come down to us with names at the very least and some with an anecdote or two attached. Today then, Brethren, a few river pirates from the Golden Age of Thames-side highwaymen.

First is the tale of one Garret Scottle of Limehouse in what was becoming London's East End. Scottle was involved in one of the trades that fed the great machine of seafaring, as were most of the inhabitants of his neighborhood. What he did precisely is unknown but business was bad enough that he rounded up a few men and left a punch house late on December 20th of 1607 with no good intent in his mind. The men, five in all, rowed a dinghy downstream to Deptford where they came upon a launch at anchor. They boarded her and managed to take fifty pounds before abandoning their prey and their own boat for shore. The raid was so badly bungled, probably due to the inebriation of the perpetrators, that the men were caught within 24 hours. All but one, including our man Scottle, hanged for their crime.

This act of desperation shows the lengths to which people would go to make a shilling. Many of the documented piracies seem to have been committed by amateurs. The waterways were only marginally patrolled by the navy and no police force existed on land. The poignant case of Elizabetha Patrickson and her husband William is in the same vein. The couple waded out to the boat of one Henrico Marten, a lawyer. According to the indictment against them, the Patricksons took a "turkee" (linen and silk blend) woman's gown, a dagger and a cloth doublet amounting to the ridiculously small sum of fifteen pounds. Caught virtually in the act, Elizabetha and William were tortured into confession (probably by pressing or with the ingeniously miserable iron bands known as Skeffington's grieves) and eventually hanged. Clearly the Patricksons are more to be pitied than censored.

For the knowledgeable few, however, professional river piracy was almost a sure bet. With the lack of reliable law enforcement, a ruthless, capable man or woman could spend years pillaging on the Thames and never fear the noose. One such thorn in the Admiralty's side was a man known as Black Will. Described by one victim as "... a black fellow... who said he knew he should never be taken for he had used that trade... these twenty years." There are documented cases involving Black Will from 1608 until at least 1620. In some he is an African. In others he is an Englishman wearing a black coat or with his face blacked or both. Will may have been more than one man, but he surely was never brought to justice.

A second famous river pirate of the time was Dick of Dover. Like Black Will, there are many accounts of Dick over a similar period. Some documents assert he was a sailor named Richard Catro. Catro was questioned at the Admiralty but denied he was the famous pirate. After a freebooting escapade involving 150 pounds worth of cloth taken from a French merchant near Tilbury, Catro was arrested and sentenced to death. Later mention of Dick of Dover puts his actually execution in question. Or perhaps, as with Black Will, more than one pirate sported the moniker.

Thames river pirates carried on, to some degree unchecked, throughout the 17th and into the 18th century. Better patrols, by citizen groups and the navy, slowed but did not stop the thieves as the 19th century approached. The stories that have come down to us, though, are a wonderful snapshot of the human condition in all its forms.

Some are as amusing now as they must have been frightening then. I personally love the story of the Ratcliffe brigand who boarded ships wearing a metal helm shaped like a skull. And the tale of hapless Arthur Hale, who appeared in Admiralty Court wearing a pair of silk stockings from the cargo he claimed vehemently never to have seen, much less stolen.

Horror On The High Seas: Torture - Key To Success?

Most pirates don't come off as well as Henry Morgan in today's popular culture. The King of Rum is portrayed as a handsome swashbuckler, clad all in pristine red, his gleaming boot on the rum barrel rivaling the gleam of his scalawag grin. I would be willing to bet that is an image the historical Henry Morgan - scruffy, portly and generally mean - enjoys to no end. Whose getting the last laugh? The mustachioed Captain sitting on rather than standing over the rum barrel in Howard Pyle's depiction above.

So, while we're talking about horrific acts of violence by men at sea lets hold the microscope of reality over Henry Morgan and then see who wants to answer the question - got a little Captain in ya?

As we discussed on Tuesday, all pirates can be accused of torture unilaterally without very many being able to mount a reasonable defense. It seems, though, that at sea freebooters were more likely to get down to business and just toss you overboard if the most valuable goods on your ship weren't revealed. Time to ask the next guy. By land though, when raiding towns and cities, creativity just seemed to blossom. Maybe it was the lack of urgency, maybe it was the want of salt pork or maybe - just maybe - it was the fact that born sailors get testy by land. Whatever it was, some guys just seemed to really get into making their fellow man miserable.

Morgan surpassed most in this regard. In 1668 he led a flotilla of 700 men to the city of Portobello and, three years later stormed Panama City in Panama. Despite some setbacks in men and ships, both raids were extremely successful and brought Spain to her knees. Even though the Spanish burned Panama City to the ground, Morgan still managed to extract 750,00 pieces of eight and untold gems, gold and silver from the city. He fared even better in Portobello. By the time he returned to Port Royal in Jamaica, Henry Morgan was one of the richest men in the New World. And all this, thanks to torture.

In Portobello things were a little easier than later on in Panama. Find a guy that looked wealthy, tie him up to a rack and get him talking. No rack available? Damned inconvenient but strapado will do, of course. Bind the person's hands behind their back and throw the long end of the binding over a high, sturdy beam or the like. Now yank your victim up off his feet toward the beam. Still won't talk? Let him drop and then yank him up again suddenly before his feet touch the ground. Don't know where that booty is yet? Tie some weight to his feet and repeat until all joints in the arms are completely dislocated. This was another form of racking particularly favored by the Spanish Inquisition, so Captain Morgan loved to use it on his Spanish victims. Not surprisingly, it worked.

Morgan also had a penchant for genital torture and he could probably be called a sexual sadist. In Panama, where the people had a chance to stash their goods in the local jungles prior to his arrival, he had a field day. For the gentlemen, hanging by the genitals until your man either talked or had things ripped off was popular. Lit fuses tucked away in delicate places worked well too. The victim could watch the foot long fuse fizzle and decide which he liked better, his cash or his balls. Sometimes black powder was added at the end of the fuse. Good times.

But then there were the ladies and no one treated them to his own special brand of attention like Henry Morgan. In general, wealthy women had value because their families would pay ransom money, sometimes in huge amounts. The average girl was good for one thing and I don't think I need to explain that here. Morgan had some close pals that he liked to gang up on a particularly pretty girl with. If she cooperated, he might even pay her. If she didn't, he might rub her down with animal fat and stick her in a bread oven or, in less civilized scenery, grease just her face and hold it in an open fire.

Women held for ransom were frequently starved and, after the sack of Panama, more than one was made to march tied at the hands and barefoot (if not naked) across the isthmus of Panama back to the Atlantic. Those that did not or could not keep up were cut lose from the herd and left to die in the jungle. Many of these unfortunates, upon returning to their families after the ransom was paid, were locked away in convents against their will. Their ability to draw a wealthy and powerful suitor gone through no fault of their own, parents and guardians washed their hands of the young women and abandon them to the Church. The torture continued for them just as it would for a slave. Only death took care of their suffering.

Sure there's more but I bet your imagination can fill in the blanks. Henry Morgan never met the kind of dramatic and fitting end served up to Francois L'Olonnais. He died, most probably of cirrhosis of the liver, in his bed in Kingston with the title of Governor of Jamaica after his name. He was arguably the most successful pirate that ever lived. If nothing else, his story seems do confirm that you don't get anywhere by being nice.

Tomorrow, Horror on the High Seas presents the strange and violent story of Samuel Comstock, savage mutineer.

Horror On The High Seas: That One Guy That Takes It Too Far

Pirates liked to torture people. That is one of those statements that is hard to refute. Its right up there with dinosaurs roamed the Earth. It happened a lot and no amount of argument will take away the hard evidence.

There were standard tortures that just about every pirate utilized at some point without much thought. Beatings were popular. Fists and pieces of wood or the flat of a cutlass you already have are pretty economical ways to get information out of another person. If we're to believe The Sopranos the mob still takes that approach today and the bos before there were "bosses", Jean Laffite, kept a hulking rock of a blacksmith name Thiac around to dole out the occasional dose of piratical justice.

More inventive but equally common tortures were "sweating", in which the generally naked prisoner was forced to run around a tree, stump or the mainmast while the pirates poked and jabbed at him with lances, swords, bayonets and even forks. Flogging always won the day and was a particular favorite to use on merchant or navy Captains who were found to be excessively fond of the same sort of punishment for their men. Usually the torture was applied to extract information about treasure hidden either aboard ship or in the town being raided. Sometimes, though, it was just a slow day and what else is a sociopath gonna do? No hard feelings, mate.

Whether its sucking up to the boss or torturing prisoners, there's always that one guy who has to take things right to the edge. The guy who isn't satisfied with the "usual" and really dips deep into the well of creativity for all he's worth. In the case of pirates and torture, that guy was Francois L'Olonnais.

We've spoken about The Man from Olon, who was born Jean-David Nau in Brittany, France, before so I won't get caught up in the details of his life. What is pertinent to this discussion is that L'Olonnais - or L'Olonnois if you prefer - was sold into indentured servitude at a young age. His master took him to one of the Spanish holdings in the Caribbean and he was worked mercilessly and beaten regularly for years of his life. He was probably a few fries short of a Happy Meal from childhood but this brutal treatment turned him from slightly tweaked to psychopath. When his indenture was up, he went to the island of Tortuga and began a bloody career whose savagery and success would be surpassed only by Henry Morgan.

But back to the torture. L'Olonnais was very probably an extremely intelligent guy and he had the kind of insight into human nature that allowed him to manipulate others without even taking out a sword. L'Olonnais had a penchant for torturing one prisoner with extreme prejudice while his or her friends and neighbors watched helplessly, wondering who would be next.

Alexander Exquemelin, who sailed with L'Olonnais as ship's surgeon, wrote quite candidly of his murderous habits in Buccaneers of the Americas. From the book: "It was the custom of L'Olonnois that, having tormented any persons and they not confessing, he would instantly cut them in pieces with his hanger and pull out their tongues." He frequently racked prisoners and, notorious for his impatience, just got fed up when they tried to fight the torture. On one occasion he dismembered a man on the rack and licked the blood from his sword while the man's associates stood by, probably soiling themselves.

Other tortures favored by L'Olonnais included slow, keep-them-alive-as-long-as-possible dismemberment. Again from Exquemelin: "...to cut a man to pieces, first some flesh, then a hand, an arm, a leg..." L'Olonnais also employed the torture of woolding which involved tying a rawhide or rope tightly around the head with knots over the eyes and tightening it with a stick until the person's eyes popped out of their skull. Unlike many other pirate leaders, L'Olonnais often performed the tortures himself and only on Spanish citizens. Hatred combined with insanity turned a man into a demon.

His most notorious act of torture, pictured above in a woodcut from Exquemelin's book, took place in Central America while he was trying to avoid the Spanish army. His prisoners, taken from Nicaragua, led he and his men into a Spanish trap. When the pirates managed to beat back the Spanish, L'Olonnais secured his prisoners and asked them what route would be safe on his march back to the Gulf. When one of the men said that no one knew a safe route, L'Olonnais opened the man's chest cavity with his sword, pulled out the beating heart, gnawed on it a moment and then shoved it in the face of another prisoner. "Tell me the way," he screamed. "Or I shall do the same to one and all!" No further Spanish ambushes were encountered.

The history of piracy is generally awash in blood and guts and not a jolly three hour cruise where we all talk a little funny. The story of Jean-David Nau surely brings that point home. Though in possession of wealth beyond most men's wildest dreams, Francois L'Olonnais met an end that befit his reign of terror. He was slowly cut to pieces by angry Darien natives whose villages he had previously raided. His body parts were burned while he watched and his ashes scattered to the winds. I often wonder if he died well. The surviving members of his crew do not say.

Tune in again tomorrow when Horror on the High Seas takes us out to the great South Pacific where we meet a very young woman who courageously faced down Malay pirates.