The Pirates Own Book: When Charles Ellms Met Henry Avery

Most of the stories told of our favorite pirates have trouble at the beginning. No one is really sure where the gentleman rover in question came from. What is more certain is the grisly death met by the dread fellow; from Bartholomew Roberts to Jean Laffite, from Francois L’Olonnais to Thomas Tew, spilled blood and guts come before the end of the story. In other it must be said less frequent cases, the pirate in question fades from history never to be seen or heard from again. From Christopher Condent to that fiction about the Laffite brothers, they simply stop being pirates and “blend in”. Henry Avery was among those “lost to history”, but Charles Ellms tells us that was not at all the case.


In The Pirates Own Book, Ellms begins his chapter on Avery with the usual story of the Captain’s exceeding wealth and marriage to the Great Mogul’s daughter thanks to his capture of one of the ruler’s treasure ships. Ellms quickly sets us straight, however, by informing us that Avery was “… actually starving without a shilling” at the time of his death.

Ellms then launches into the usual routine. Avery was born in Devonshire, he tells us, and went to sea in merchant ships at an early age. Avery was mate aboard the vessel of Captain Gibson when, in 1715, he began to foment mutiny among his fellows. He clearly had the itch to go a-pirating and the rest of the crew, according to Ellms, was just as eager. Gibson was fond of the bottle and one night when he was sleeping off a drunk, Avery and his men cut the ship’s cable and headed out from Corunna in the West Indies. When Gibson awoke, Avery informed him that he had taken over the ship. “You must know that I am captain of this ship now, and this is my cabin, therefore you must walk out; I am bound for Madagascar, with a design of making my own fortune, and that of all the brave fellows joined with me.”

Gibson decides against joining Avery, and is set on shore with a small group of like-minded sailors.

Once in the waters around Madagascar, Avery recruits the captains of two armed sloops to join him in his pirating venture. They form a little flotilla and take a galley of the aforementioned Mogul in the Indian Ocean. The ship is bound for Mecca where the Mogul’s daughter is making a pilgrimage, and it is packed to the gunnels with more riches than can reasonably be imagined. As Ellms points out: “It is a well known fact that people of the east travel with great magnificence…”

Avery and his cohorts plunder the ship of all its wealth and the ship limped home to India where the Mogul immediately protested to the British government. “The noise which this made over all Europe,” Ellms says, “gave birth to the rumors that were circulating concerning Avery’s greatness.”

Meanwhile, Avery was duping the two captains of those sloops out of their share of the Mogul’s treasure. Through assurances of his own ship’s superior sailing and fighting power, he led these captains to understand that their booty would be better off aboard him. When they agreed and transferred their wealth, Avery sailed for the West Indies under cover of night, leaving the unfortunate captains behind.

Convincing his men that their wealth would now allow them to live like kings ashore, Avery first considered settling at New Providence. He then moved on to Boston but was concerned that he would not be able to sell the gems of the Great Mogul without raising suspicions. He sailed for Ireland and eventually ended up in Brideford, Devonshire, according to Ellms.

At this point, most historians agree that further information on what became of Avery is unattainable, but Charles begs to differ. In a wonderful plot twist – which the reader has to hope wasn’t true – he has Avery casting about Devonshire trying to sell his cache of diamonds. “When he unbosomed himself to [a speculator] and other pretended friends,” these men, posing as merchants, assured Avery that they could sell his treasure for the highest possible price. Leaving a deposit with former pirate, they took the diamonds and disappeared with no intention of returning. As Ellms so eloquently puts it: “… the merchants thus proving themselves as good pirates on land as [Avery] was at sea.”

The end of this story is poignant in the extreme. Avery sets out for Ireland in search of the con men. Having no luck, he is reduced to walking home to Brideford from Plymouth. “He had been there but a few days, when he fell sick and died; not being worth so much as would buy him a coffin!”

Thus the man once known as Long Ben and “the Arch Pyrate” ended up buried in a paupers’ field in Devonshire. Or so Charles Ellms tells us.

Header: Captain Avery receiving the three chests of Treasure on board his Ship from The Pirates Own Book

Movies: Rum On TV

Just to clarify before we start, Triple P doesn’t really have a “TV” title so we’re stuck with Movies.

I had an informative piece all thought out for today and, as I settled in last night to do a bit of research for same, all that changed. My habit on Tuesdays, nay indeed my chiseled-in-stone must do, is to watch “Dirty Jobs” on the Discovery Channel. I don’t watch episodic TV at all and, aside from football during the season, I don’t really have any shows I just can’t miss (although “Deadliest Warrior” on Spike might actually be one if I’m honest). That said, I don’t miss Mike Rowe on “Dirty Jobs”. So imagine my surprise – and delight – when last night’s episode was all about making rum.

And not just any rum, Brethren, but a rum named after the infamous “Rhode Island Pirate” Thomas Tew. The label features Tew’s menacing flag (above) and the rum’s manufacturer, Newport Distilling Company, is itself in Rhode Island. Find out more about them at their website.

Of course there were many an off-handed reference to pirates and piracy but what struck me the most was Mike and his crew’s willingness to drink like pirates. The company also runs Coastal Extreme Brewing Company and Mike and his colleagues sampled their Newport Storm Beer to kick off the morning. Sure, it was 8:30 in Rhode Island but damned if the sun’s not over the yardarm somewhere, mate. This was all done under the auspices of a specific brewer’s privilege which evidently dates back to Colonial times and whose name Mike mentioned more than once but your humble hostess didn’t bother to write down. Leave me a comment if you know what it’s called; I’ll make a note of it.

Update: Triple P's good friend Timmy! tells us the right to drink beer while working at a brewery is known as "The Sternewirth Privilege", so now we know. Thankee, Timmy!

At any rate, as the day wore on Mike began sampling the rum and became – for lack of a better phrase – a very happy pirate. Of interest to pirates of the New World, though, is the fact that the folks at Newport Distilling Company are bringing back an old tradition of rum making in Rhode Island. In the last half of the 18th century Rhode Island could count over 20 rum distilleries within its boarders at any given time. Thomas Tew is hand crafted, made with molasses and aged on site in oak barrels just like the kind of rum its namesake pirate would have been accustomed to. While Thomas Tew rum is not currently available outside of its home state, the company hopes to change that within the next couple of years.

Here are four videos from the show over at Discovery’s website (the "Alcohol Pop Quiz" is particularly funny). Waste a few minutes today watching the way rum used to be made, and then raise a tankard to our ancestors and those who are keeping the old ways alive, by land and at sea. Oh and raise one to Mike and his crew as well. They’re clearly good and game lads one and all.

Home Ports: Saint Mary's Island

Just north and east of the island of Madagascar is a small group of islets that are perfectly situated. Perfectly, that is, for a pirate looking to score some of the fattest prices in the 18th century world. The islets sit on the edge of the Indian Ocean and just south of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Persia. Using any of them as a port, a clever pirate could take a fat East Indiaman returning to England or Holland one evening and then cruise north the following day to snatch the treasure galley of some Ottoman pasha. All this and home in time for supper. Or so the rumors that circulated in places like the West Indies and the Guinea coast said.

Ile Sainte-Marie is the largest islet of the group in question. As piracy became a target of aggressive persecution by the various European powers in the early 18th century, the men who plied the sweet trade turned their eyes to the wealth of the East and set sail for Africa. They found Sainte-Mary quite to their liking. Not only was it abundant in fruits and game, its native people were friendly – particularly when they found that most of the pirates had not come to enslave them – and the island was surrounded by shallow cays and inlets. These were perfect for hiding from aggressors, evaluating a prize or simply pulling a ship up on her keel and giving her a good careening. It seems, at least on the face of it, a veritable pirate paradise.

This idea caught the imagination of European writers and one in particular, the man who fancied himself Captain Charles Johnson, devoted a good deal of paper to writings on the piratical community he call Libertalia. Johnson, the author of A General History of Pyrates, has come down to us as either an eye witness authority on piracy or a complete crank. It just depends on who is commenting on his work. The idea of Libertalia, which is often reputed to have been based on Ile Sainte-Marie, has caught the imagination of many moderns because of its very modern take on community. Whether or not it actually existed is the point that must be questioned.

Libertalia according to Johnson’s book was the brainchild of a merchant seaman turned pirate named James Misson. In his vision, which was spurred on by his association with a “lewd Priest” from Rome named Giacomo Caraccioli, the Frenchman saw all men as brothers, no organized religion as valid, and slavery as the cruelest of human ills. His pirate utopia was established under a white flag and Libertalia’s motto was “For God and Liberty”. The pirates cruising out of Ile Saint-Marie called themselves Liberi and shared all goods and prizes in common. They routinely set any slaves they came upon free and so their numbers were increased rapidly by the grateful Africans joining up right away. According to Johnson’s description, Libertalia lasted 25 years and welcomed such famous and infamous captains as Thomas Tew, Christopher Condent, Henry Avery and William Kidd. The end of Libertalia is as egalitarian as its founding was revolutionary. Eventually the pirates grew weary of their lives at sea and settled down with the local girls to farm land where “… no hedge bounded any particular man’s property…” and the fruits of their labors were “… carried into the Common Treasury”.

No one would deny that the idea of Libertalia is delightful. Of course, we would all like to imagine the lion lying down with the lamb and beating swords into plowshares. The reality, however, is that Johnson chose unwisely in his fantasy populace. Pirates, though in many ways more democratic than the societies they preyed upon, were also ruthless brigands who were far from altruistic. Slaves were more often than not prizes to be sold, other pirate crews could be a threat to the amount of loot each individual might get, and the last thing these sailors were cut out for was farming. In many cases, getting away from the drudgery of agriculture was why they went to sea in the first place. Then, too, there’s the harsh fact that to take a prize or prizes, some killing will probably have to be done and that seems a poor way to treat a brother.

Ile Sainte-Marie was certainly a pirate base during the heyday of the “pirate round” from approximately 1690 to 1725. There can be no doubt that men like Tew, Edward England, Avery and Kidd at least touched at the island and several shipwrecks dating from the era have been found in the waters around Sainte-Marie. One in particular, sunk in Baie des Forbans not far from the island’s capital, is thought by the explorer Barry Clifford (of Whydah fame) to be Christopher Condent’s Flying Dragon. There is also the old cemetery that overlooks the bay (pictured above) known as le Cimitere des Pirates where modern residents continue to leave offerings for their freebooting ancestors. That seems to me a far more factual legacy than any pirate utopia could ever be.

Pathetic Pirates: Painful Agonizing Failure

It saddens me somewhat to have to tell you, Brethren, the tale of William Kidd, privateer, businessman and convicted pirate. When people think of Captain Kidd they seem to get a very Robert Lewis Stevenson sort of "International Talk Like A Pirate Day" picture in their minds. He's a swarthy, mean-spirited sort who peppers his speech with "Ahoy", "Matey" and "Arrr!" while swilling rum by the onion bottle-full. The watercolor above, by Howard Pyle, pretty much sums it up. Toward the end of his life, I'm betting the real William Kidd wished it were so.

Above is the only known portrait from life of Kidd. As you can see, he looks far more like a New York gentleman - which indeed he was at one point - than a hardened criminal. In fact what Kidd was might surprise the general population. Indecisive, incapable in command and easily duped, William Kidd may very well have been the most pathetic pirate of all time. Certainly, he was the most unlucky.

Kidd was of Scottish descent and born some time between 1650 and 1655. He first makes his appearance on the broad map of history in 1689 when he is captaining an English privateer in the Caribbean. The ship, which Kidd is said to have taken as a prized, was named Blessed William and saw a number of cruises. By 1691, however, Kidd's crew was fed up with their Captain. Robert Culliford, with the backing of his mates, staged a mutiny. They took Blessed William, left Kidd stranded and made for the West Coast of Africa.

Somehow Kidd managed passage to New York where he set his sights on a career as a merchant. The one big break in his life came in 1692 when he married the lovely, genteel and filthy rich widow Sarah Oort. They lived in her ritzy mansion on Wall Street and owned a pew at the trendiest house of worship in town, Trinity Church. In late 17th century New England it did not get any better than that.

Kidd, who probably went to sea as a very young man, seems to have felt constrained by his life on land. In 1695 he booked passage to London to try and use his wife's influence to secure himself another privateering commission. In the halls of government he met Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, and the horrible downhill spiral that would be the rest of Kidd's life was set in motion.

Bellamont was the newly appointed Governor of New England. He would replace Benjamin Fletcher who had famously backed the colonial privateer Thomas Tew, and gotten quite rich for it. King William was no longer of a mind to put up with privateers who turned pirate in the Indian Ocean and stirred up trouble by taking Arab and Indian ships while England was trying to strike up trade bargains with their princes. Bellamont was charged with stopping the "Roundsmen" and putting an end to their seafaring predations.

But why not get a little something for all the trouble, Bellamont reasoned, and his Whig friends agreed wholeheartedly. In an under-the-table deal Bellamont along with at least four high ranking officials agreed to back Kidd anonymously and get him a commission and a ship. In return they would then be given a cut of any prize money Kidd accrued. Kidd himself was rather left out of the deal, with no percentage stipulated specifically for himself or his crew.

Kidd set out for the Indian Ocean in 1696. He had a letter of marque signed by the King, a fresh off the blocks 300 ton, 34 cannon, three mast ship named Adventure Galley ("galley" because she shipped oars as well as sails) and a hand picked, seaworthy crew. What could go wrong?

Before even clearing the Nore, Kidd's ship failed to dip her flag to an oncoming Navy sloop. The Navy retaliated immediately, sending a press gang onto Adventure Galley and spiriting away all Kidd's best men. Kidd had no choice but to put in and round up a new crew, this time an assorted bunch of miscreants who could probably all be labelled pirates.

Kidd's cruise to the Indian Ocean was a disaster. No potential prizes were sighted, tainted water killed one third of the crew via cholera, scurvy crippled the rest and the ship began to leak. By the time Kidd reached Madagascar, fresh water and food the crew was starting to discuss dumping Kidd and turning pirate. Adventure Galley took on more ex-rovers to replace the sick and dead crewmen and continued on.

At this point, Kidd appears to have lost his capacity to lead. He became indecisive, calling for his ship to give chase to a potential prize and then reversing his order. Adventure Galley bobbed about the Indian Ocean, taking on water but catching no prizes. The crew's thoughts turned to mutiny. Off the southern coast of India a potential prize was finally seen but when it was found to be an English merchant, Kidd again called off the chase. His gunner, William Moore, called him a coward and Kidd cracked a wooden bucket over the man's head. Moore died of his wound the following day. The crew's moral was now as bad as it could get.

Meanwhile, Adventure Galley was so full of water that her pumps had to be worked 24/7. After taking three small merchants from various ports that yielded nothing in the way of the treasures the crew had been promised, Kidd turned toward port. In February of 1698, while heading for the Malabar coast, Kidd had a moment of luck. The Quedah Merchant, and Indian with a cargo of close to 710,000 English pounds in gold and gems, came under his lee. Too full of treasure to run, Quedah Merchant struck and Kidd's crew perked up.

Taking his prize into a local harbor, Kidd was surprised to find the mutinous Robert Culliford in port captaining the East Indiaman Mocha. Kidd exhorted his men to take Mocha but they taunted Kidd instead, saying that they would rather fire guns on him than on Culliford. Against his commission, Kidd tried to placate his crew by sharing out some of the Quedah Merchant's treasure with them. This unfortunate decision seems to have had the opposite effect; most of Kidd's crew took off with Culliford - and their share of Kidd's prize.

Disheartened, Kidd abandoned the derelict Adventure Galley and made for New York in Quedah Merchant. He made the Caribbean and anchored at Anguilla, a Dutch island, where he was informed of his new status as the "Scourge of the Indies". In London, the Tory party had found out about the Whig's deal with Kidd and branded their rivals a "Corporation of Pirates". The Whigs retaliated by selling Kidd out, saying he had gone pirate on his own and putting a price on his head. Kidd was now a wanted fugitive but it seems that the reality of his situation still didn't sink in. He decided to head straight for New York and a private audience with Bellamont.

Kidd ditched the Quedah Merchant on the coast of Hispaniola and transferred some of his prize cargo onto a sloop, leaving the remainder under guard with the Merchant. Later, he also left some of his treasure with his friend John Gardiner on Gardiner's Island not far from New York. The real problem was that, based on his commission, the prize goods were not his to dispose of. Kidd fell almost voluntarily into his former partners' trap.

Bellamont refused to meet with Kidd, despite the fact that Kidd showered the Governor's wife with fancy gifts from his prize. Finally, through a ruse, Bellamont lured Kidd to New York where he was easily arrested. While Bellamont rounded up the enormous treasures at Gardiner's Island and Hispaniola, Kidd sat in chains throughout the cold New York winter of 1699.

Kidd was finally transferred to London in the spring of 1700. By then he was a sick and broken man of about 45 abandoned by everyone, including the lovely Sarah Oort Kidd who washed her hands of her criminal husband. Kidd was treated to a series of four trials, one more disastrous than the other. Not only could he produce no evidence in his favor, but he became progressively more ill as the farcical proceedings went on. Finally, in May of 1701, his sentence of death by hanging was carried out.

Kidd's jailers took pity on him and got him blind drunk before the ordeal. Even in death his luck was lousy, though. The first attempt at hanging him failed when the rope broke and Kidd fell into the mud at Whapping. He was strung up a second time and strangled to death. His body was tarred, chained and returned to the gibbet where it hung for three years as a warning "...to all persons from committing ye like crimes".

In the end, Kidd was an unfortunate pawn in a political game so far over his head that it might as well have been played by the gods on Olympus. It seems that, like so many characters in Greek tragedies, Kidd failed because he was destined to. I'm sure that didn't make it hurt any less.

People: "With Interesting Stories To Tell"

Thanksgiving is nearly upon us, Brethren, so I thought an "old-timey" American legend from before the Revolution, Civil War or Wild West might be in order. Today we meet the pirate from Newport, Rhode Island: Thomas Tew.

Tew was born on American shores - most probably right in Newport - in the late 17th century. His family was well to do and he was well educated and gentlemanly. In 1690 , with another war between England and France dragging on, Tew saw an opportunity for adventure and put his mind to taking it. He travelled to Bermuda, then a center of English privateering, and got some time aboard ships under his belt.

By 1692, Tew was ready to step up to Captain. He obtained a letter of marque from Bermuda's Governor Richier. The letter specifically tied Tew and his ship, the Amity, to the Royal African Company of London who probably put down the cash for the ship, men and stores needed for the voyage. The Company was in direct competition with French slavers on the western coast of Africa and Tew was engaged to raid and plunder French settlements and take French slave ships as prizes. With a crew of 60, Amity set out from Bermuda bound for Goree on the coast of Guinea.

At some point during the crossing of the Atlantic, either out of altruism over slavery (probably not) or pure greed (that's my bet), Tew proposed turning pirate to his men. Given the restrictions of Amity's letter of marque, he reasoned that they would be better off as freebooters. Any success that they had would be cash in their hands and not in the pockets of an already rich Company in London. The crew agreed without descent, and Captain Tew set a course for the rich hunting grounds of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

There appears to have been some dawdling involved and in Charles Johnson's A General History of Pirates, published in 1724, Tew puts Amity in at Madagascar more than once between 1692 and 1693. Eventually the decision to turn pirate paid off in the biggest way possible. In 1693, Amity met and engaged an Arab galley in the Straits of Bebelmandebin in the Red Sea. The galley was laden with treasure bound for the palace of the Arab Grand Moghul and her crew put up very little resistance. Without injury to a single man, Tew's crew took the galley. Her cargo amounted to approximately 16 million modern US dollars.

Amity sailed home, not to Bermuda but to Newport. They reached Rhode Island in April of 1694 and were hailed locally as heroes for their success against the "Musilimen". Merchants from up and down the American coast flocked to Newport to purchase Amity's goods. Each crewman was paid between $192,000 and $480,000 in modern coin with Tew receiving even more. History mentions very little about the Royal African Company's reaction to this turn of events, so I have to imagine that Tew slipped them some cash as well.

Tew was feted in New England and he spent time at dinners and parties in Boston, Philadelphia and especially New York where he was a favorite guest of Governor Fletcher. Tew made an impression on the Governor, who is quoted as remarking that he found the pirate "...quite agreeable and companionable, with interesting stories to tell."

After less than a year of partying by land, Tew got the itch to return to sea. He acquired a new ship and a letter of marque - most likely with Governor Fletcher as a patron - and returned to Newport to crew and stock. Men flocked from as far away as the Bahamas to sign on with Tew. His reputation had be made with the enormous wealth allotted to his previous crew. In November of 1694, Tew's ship - again named Amity - set out across the Atlantic this time with two others Captained by Thomas Wake and William Want.

While Johnson's History tells us that Tew met up in Madagascar with a French pirate and started a pirate settlement they named Libertaria, the story is most probably apocryphal. There is no solid documentation of the establishment of a "pirate nation" on Madagascar, and most historians feel that Johnson was trying to illustrate the democratic nature of pirate society with his tall tale.

Although the dates are sketchy, it is clear that Tew again engaged an Arab galley in the Red Sea some time in either late 1695 or 1696. This one was not as agreeable as the last, and cannon fire was exchanged. The fighting was bloody and it appears that Johnson gets Tew's final moments right:

In the engagement, a shot carried away the rim of Tew's belly, who held his bowels with his hands some small space.

Tew died of his wounds aboard Amity. Those of his crew that survived were most probably either executed or enslaved by the Grand Moghul.

Thomas Tew, though largely forgotten in our time, was the quintessential romantic pirate for Americans of his day. Successful, dashing and well spoken, he made a fine impression on deck and in society. In the end, too, he died in action rather than swinging from a rope. That's what legends are made of.

History: What Would Pass for Nice Booty

I know everybody loves the stuff and I'll probably draw some wrath from the "Pirates of the Caribbean" crowd but I honestly think that popular fiction has dumbed pirates down to a reprehensible degree. The belief that every ship was

full of gold that could then be spent without question ashore sort of makes these guys look like all they had to do was shoot a man or two and their ship had come in - so to speak. Either that or just be crotchety British actors who turned to skeletons at night. Hell, skeletons don't even need grog, do they? Sometimes history is far, far more interesting than mass market, made to make money fiction, regardless of Disney's ability to afford CGI. Told you I wouldn't be popular after this one.

But I'm not here to feed the fantasy (if I were my profile picture would graphically attest to just how much cleavage that waistcoat is capable of producing when laced up tight). I'm here to show you the ropes and so let us talk about what was really crammed into the holds of those unfortunate merchant ships that encountered our Brethren at sea. I know some of you are with me still, and I thankee.

Most of the time - and I'm talking from Ancient Roman days to right stinking now - the merchant vessel was carrying humble goods for sale to humble people in humble ports around the world. It was not uncommon for pirates during the Golden Age to come across ships taking livestock or human chattel to a Caribbean port. Molasses, rum, wine, sugar cane and cloth were also top prizes. Fruits and vegetables were not uncommon and, despite the popular picture of "scurvy dogs", guys in a crew like Blackbeard's had access to a remarkably healthy diet because of small prizes full of produce. All of these items were routinely taken to a known port where merchants were happy to trade with seamen "on the account" for the cold hard cash that bought fancy clothing, women and rum.

Of course, there were places where incredible fortunes might be stumbled upon, but these were the exception and not the rule. They were also one of the myriad reasons so many sailors chose and then stayed with the perilous life of a pirate or privateer. Venezuela had harbors what produced enormous pearls seemingly endlessly, and ships that sailed from Maracaibo and Caracas were frequently laden with this kind of wealth. Mexico was a source of gold and silver, as was Peru and whole galleons full of gold dust or silver bars were available in the time of the English sea dogs and the buccaneers.

In the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, East India men returning from the wealthy ports of China and India frequently carried chests of jewels and bolts of silk, both of which could be traded on the West Coast of Africa or in Madagascar for enormous sums. Thomas Tew, the English pirate turned American dandy, captured a merchant in the Indian Ocean in the late 17th century that yielded a share of 3,000 pounds for every crew member. The modern equivalent would be approximately 4 million pounds. Set for life. No question.

By the privateering days of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the treasure ships of the Spanish Main had dried up. Simple cargoes like rice, salt, ivory and indigo as well as frilly goods like lace and silk stockings or underthings were more common. Men like the Laffite brothers made multiple fortunes simply by providing a goods-starved market in the form of New Orleans under the American embargo of foreign merchandise with a one-stop, tariff free shop. They also saw an opportunity in the revolutionary enterprises of Central and South America. Ships transporting arms and munitions were a delight to a privateer. Not only could he (or she) have their pick of cannon - which were particularly hard to come by - but liberationists would happily pay top dollar for any weapons at all. Most unfortunate of all, the slave trade had not ceased but simply gone underground. Since slaves could not legally be imported into the U.S., plantation owners throughout the country flocked to Barataria or Galveston to buy smuggled men and women from the Laffites.

I'm not saying no one got rich by any means. Plenty of savvy men and women made fortunes in "the trade". And there's my argument really. Nothing was handed to them. They had to be savvy just to be able to stay alive, make a buck and have a little fun. And an evening by the fire having a few chuckles with a guy like Thomas Tew seems like a lot more fun to me than trying to drink with a skeleton.