The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down (20 page)

At the entrance of Bahía Honda, a flotilla of English privateers had beaten them to the punch. Hornigold could see that one of them was that thorn in his side Henry Jennings.

***

When Jennings gave the order for all vessels to weigh anchor and chase after Hornigold, Bellamy and Williams were aboard the
St. Marie,
their periagua tied astern. They helped the prize crew raise the French ship's anchors and watched as the
Barsheba
and
Mary
raced off. By the time the
St. Marie
was underway, the rest of the fleet had already passed out of sight. Opportunity, the two men could see, had come knocking.

As the
St. Marie
pulled out of the harbor, Bellamy and Williams gave the signal. Their men rose up in unison, surprising Jennings's prize crew and the French prisoners, and seized control of the ship. While some of Bellamy's men held their captives at gunpoint, the others quickly hauled their periagua alongside and threw sacks and chests of coins aboard. Keeping an eye on the
Barsheba
and
Mary,
six or eight miles off, Bellamy and Williams got their men aboard the canoe as well and rowed off into the wind. Their take: 28,500 pieces of eight (£7,125). To put it in perspective, the annual income of an early eighteenth-century merchant captain was about £65.

Meanwhile, Jennings, Vane, and the other men aboard the
Barsheba
knew they were never going to catch up to Hornigold and the
Marianne.
They could also see that the
St. Marie
had fallen dangerously far behind. Better to return to Bahía Honda, Jennings noted, than lose our own prize. At his signal, the
Barsheba
and
Mary
swung around. An hour or two later they approached the
St. Marie.
Her crew hailed them, clearly distraught. Bellamy's men had risen against them and made off with everything, they said. Murmurs of discontent spread through the
Barsheba.
Jennings had lost much of their plunder. The furious privateer ordered his men to seize the other periagua and, as the
Mary
's carpenter, Joseph Eels, later recalled, had it "cut to pieces," apparently along with any of Bellamy's men who were aboard it at the time. During this rage, Jennings also ordered the hapless Captain Young's sloop burnt to the waterline.

Sometime later, his anger spent, Jennings gave out new orders. The fleet would sail for Nassau to divide up what remained of their spoils.

***

After the heist, Bellamy and Williams caught up with Hornigold. The pirates met face-to-face off the coast of Cuba. Hornigold must have been pleased to learn that the men in the canoes had managed to steal Jennings's treasure from right under his nose. He could use men like these. Bellamy and Williams, after the pirate articles were read, joined the crew of the
Benjamin.

Mariners appreciate competence, and Bellamy must have inspired a great deal of it, for despite his youth, Hornigold appointed Bellamy as the captain of the newly captured
Marianne,
ahead of several older men in his own crew including Edward Thatch and his quartermaster, William Howard. Bellamy presumably manned the
Marianne
with his periagua crew of twenty or thirty, plus some thirty to forty of Hornigold's men. He and Williams now had a well-built ocean-going sloop at their disposal, a chest of treasure in the hold, and the most infamous English pirate of the day as their consort. All they needed were some cannon to arm their new raider.

For a week or more, they continued prowling the eastern end of Cuba, waiting to intercept Spanish or French traffic coming through the Yucatán Channel. But instead of a rich prize, they came across yet another pirate.

Olivier La Buse, captain of the armed sloop
Postillion,
joined the pirate squadron. La Buse and Hornigold made peculiar allies. La Buse and most of his crew were French, while Hornigold still saw himself as a patriot, carrying on a righteous war against England's enemies. La Buse and his men were bona fide pirates, happy to plunder anybody for a profit. Somehow, the French corsair and the English captains agreed to work together, cementing a transnational relationship that would last for many years.

It's likely that Bellamy had something to do with this arrangement. The young man wasn't fighting for Britain, he was fighting against the system: captains, shipowners, kings, the whole lot, and not a few of Hornigold's own company felt the same way. If Hornigold objected to sailing with the French pirate, his men overruled him. The
Postillion,
armed with eight guns, would be sailing with them.

Not long afterward, the three pirates—Hornigold, Bellamy, and La Buse—spotted a merchant ship coming across the Yucatán Channel from the direction of Campeche. This turned out to be an English ship bound for Holland with a load of logwood: a friendly vessel, not a prize. Unlike Hornigold, La Buse and Bellamy had no compunction about sacking an English ship. A vote was taken, and Hornigold's men again overruled him. While Bellamy and the unarmed
Marianne
held back, La Buse and Hornigold secured the prize. A crew was sent aboard to search and sail the ship. They took what odds and ends seemed useful—drink, coins, provisions, spare parts, a skilled crewman or two—and after eight or ten days let her go on her way, probably at Hornigold's insistence.

A few days later, at the eastern tip of Cuba, they made a capture everyone could be happy with: two Spanish brigantines loaded with cocoa, which they captured without firing a shot. After looting the vessels, they sailed to Isla de los Piños, where they found three or four English sloops topping off water and firewood supplies. The hulls of the pirate vessels needed cleaning, so the pirates announced to the masters of the small sloops that their vessels were to be commandeered to help with the careening process. Hornigold may have found an unpleasant surprise on the underside of the
Benjamin.
The shipworms appeared to have done her serious damage, something requiring the services of a proper shipyard to remedy. Hornigold began contemplating the disposal of his great sloop, the possession of which had caused so much alarm among the law-abiding citizenry of New Providence.

The careening completed, the pirates continued along the southern shore of Cuba, bound for the Windward Passage. La Buse knew of some good hideouts along the shores of sparsely populated French Hispaniola, and directed the fleet in that direction. Hispaniola was well placed for raiding commerce coming in and out of the Caribbean. A lair was found and agreed on, and the pirates resolved to work together to sack as many vessels as possible.

Hornigold wanted to get rid of the
Benjamin
first, and sometime around the end of May 1716 resolved to sail to Nassau for that purpose. The
Benjamin
was loaded up with bulky cargoes to sell to the Bahamas' growing cadre of unscrupulous smugglers. Bellamy and Williams may have come along as well in the interest of securing cannon for the
Marianne.
Hornigold, Thatch, and at least 150 others left La Buse, agreeing to return in a few weeks' time.

***

On April 22,1716, Henry Jennings's privateering fleet arrived in Nassau's expansive harbor. It was quite a sight: the
St. Marie,
now equipped with thirty-two guns, escorted by Jennings's own ten-gun
Barsheba
and Ashworth's ten-gun
Mary.
It was the most powerful naval force New Providence had seen since Henry Avery had shown up with the
Fancy
twenty years earlier.

Jennings, Ashworth, and Carnegie all went ashore to the bawdy town of Nassau, leaving their vessels left in the hands of trusted subordinates. After two or three days, the quartermaster of the
St. Marie,
the sickly Allen Bernard, rowed to town and interrupted Jennings's debauchery. Apart from four or five men, the entire complement of the
Barsheba
was aboard the
St. Marie
looting her remaining cargo. "This must not be,"Jennings is said to have exclaimed. He told Bernard to "go on board and dissuade them" by claiming that none of them could afford to delay departure for the wrecks. "Between you and I," he confided, "if I can get her out to sea again with ye goods in her, I will run her up to Jamaica and secure her, for these fellows have drawn me into this [mess] and will doubtless, when they have shared ye goods, leave me to answer all."

Bernard, suffering from a stomachache, begged the captain to go himself, to lend the weight of his authority. With both his authority and a large quantity of valuables at stake, it would have seemed a prudent measure. But Jennings refused, telling his quartermaster "he would not be concerned with such rogues." Apparently the captain had more important things to do between the taverns and whorehouses.

On his way to the shore, Bernard came across Carnegie and Ashworth and apprised them of the situation. The two captains took the situation more seriously than their commodore, each volunteering to help Bernard restore order on the
St. Marie.
Ashworth immediately rowed out to the
Mary
to make sure his crew hadn't joined the riot, while Carnegie and Bernard made their way to the
St. Marie.

The French ship was a scene of chaos. A hundred men poured over her, hauling European goods and supplies from her holds, piling them in boats, and rowing them over to the desolate shore of Hog Island, not far from the rotting bones of Henry Avery's
Fancy.
None of them had the slightest interest in what Carnegie and Bernard had to say. Flummoxed, Bernard returned to shore to try to raise Jennings to action. The captain was once again unmoved and told Bernard to watch over them and to not take any of the cargo by force.

Bernard spent the rest of the day observing the men's actions on the Hog Island shore. They had divided the plunder into three lots, and contrary to the practice of privateers, had allocated two lots for themselves and one for the owners, rather than the other way around. They should have taken all the plunder back to Jamaica, to be distributed and taxed by the Vice-Admiralty Court. Instead, they immediately divided their portion among themselves. Only the owner's lot was to be sent to Jamaica. Not wanting to entrust the owners' share to Jennings, the crew contracted the services of a local sloop, the
Dolphin.
This ten-ton vessel, curiously enough, belonged to one of Thomas Walker's sons, Neal.

Before the
Dolphin
's departure, Jennings, Ashworth, and Carnegie decided their best course of action was to inform their vessels' owners of their taking the French ship and the insubordination of the men. They drew up a manifest of the
Dolphin
's contents and wrote detailed letters to their owners and business partners and entrusted them with Allen Bernard and the
Mary
's quartermaster, Joseph Eels. Bernard and Eels boarded the
Dolphin,
letters in hand, and began the journey home.

After the
Dolphin
's departure, Jennings managed to secure control of the
St. Marie
and mustered a crew for her, the
Barsheba,
and the
Mary
to sail for the Spanish wrecks. They arrived a few days later, their considerable firepower presumably scaring off the Spanish guard ships. A passing English merchantman later reported that the
St. Marie
was presiding over a total of twenty-four English vessels on the wrecks, half Jamaican, half Bermudan, which would "not permit either French or Spaniards to come there." According to the
Barsheba
s
youthful doctor, John Cockrane, divers managed to take "some money out of ye water" before sailing back to Nassau. Not long thereafter, Jennings, still considering himself an honorable privateer, led the
Barsheba
and
St. Marie
back to Jamaica.

It's likely that Charles Vane did not return to Jamaica with the
Barsheba.
Nothing was there for him, except the possibility of legal proceedings. On the other hand, on New Providence he had his share of treasure, a good harbor at his disposal, and a town filled with brothers-in-arms. Given his personality, Vane was likely a ringleader of the looting of the
St. Marie,
in which case the owners would not have been pleased with him. It was better to stay in Nassau and enjoy a merry life until the money ran out.

***

Hornigold and Thatch sailed into Nassau in early June. They had been gone two months, and the pirate society on New Providence had grown in their absence. Dozens of periaguas, launches, and sloops sheltered inside Hog Island, their lines indicating a mix of origins: Spanish, French, English, and Dutch. Along the shore, the pirates had beached a couple of unwanted prize sloops, their looted hulls baking in the sun.

Amid the palms, palmettos, and tropical scrub, smoke rose from the cooking fires of a hundred huts, tents, and hovels. Most of these were made from whatever was handy: driftwood, old spars, decking, and worm-eaten hulls covered over with palmetto thatch or bits of old sailcloth. The ruder sort was home to groups of logwood cutters driven from Campeche, or black and Indian slaves on the run from their masters in Cuba, Hispaniola, or Jamaica. Slightly better were the hovels of the wreckers and former mariners. Nassau looked like an encampment of castaways, with sailors singing, dancing, drinking, and fornicating. Increasing numbers of wives and prostitutes were settling on the island, tending alehouses, mending clothes, cooking meals, and keeping the men company at night. One young sailor, James Bonny, had recently arrived from South Carolina with his sixteen-year-old wife, Anne; the latter quickly earned a reputation for libertine behavior. For most of the mariners it was a dream come true: ample food, drink, women, and leisure time. And when the money ran out, there was always another ship to capture, a plantation to loot, a treasure wreck to dive on.