The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down (46 page)

Even so, when a Spanish invasion fleet appeared off Nassau on February 24, 1720, Rogers was able to face them with a fifty-gun fort, the ten-gun eastern battery, the
Delicia,
100 soldiers, and 500 armed militiamen. By fortune, the sixth-rate frigate HMS
Flamborough
(twenty-four guns) was in Nassau at the time, although Rogers had to browbeat her abrasive captain, John Hildesley, to stay and defend the island. The Spanish, by contrast, had three frigates of forty, twenty-six, and twenty-two guns, a twelve-gun brigantine, eight armed sloops, and an invasion force of 1,300 men. Rogers's defenses dissuaded the Spanish from a direct assault on the harbor. Instead, they landed on the backside of Hog Island and, in the middle of the night, attempted to cross the narrow eastern channel in small boats. A pair of heroic sentries—both free blacks—somehow managed to fire enough musket rounds to frighten the Spaniards into retreat. Ironically, two men who had probably been slaves themselves had saved Rogers, a professional slave dealer.

The Bahamas were secured, but the effort exhausted Rogers's physical and financial resources. The imperial government continued to ignore his letters, merchants denied him credit, and his colony's economy remained paralyzed for lack of productive settlers. Rogers was in such poor health that he nearly died on two occasions. In November 1721 he spent six weeks in South Carolina, hoping a rest in the cooler climate and more genteel surroundings of Charleston would repair his health. Instead, he found a city in political upheaval and, while there, was wounded in a duel with Captain Hildesley of HMS
Flamborough
relating to "disputes they had at [New] Providence." He sent one last set of letters to London before returning to Nassau, begging support and instructions. They, like many others before them, went unanswered.

By midwinter, Rogers could bear it no longer. "I can subsist no longer on the foot[ing] I have been left ever since my arrival," he wrote the Council of Trade on February 23, 1722. "I have no other satisfactions left me in this abandoned place and condition, [except] having done my duty to His Majesty and my country, though at the hazard of my entire ruin." Leaving the colony in the hands of William Fairfax, Rogers sailed for England a month later, hoping face-to-face meetings would prove more productive than his correspondence. He arrived in London in August to learn that King George had fired him, and a new governor was already on his way to Nassau. Worse, his fellow investors had liquidated the Co-partners for Carrying on a Trade & Settling the Bahama Islands, making no allowance for the £6,000 Rogers had personally advanced on their behalf. Rogers was ruined once again. His creditors moved in on him and, before long, he found himself locked in debtors prison. The man who had captured a Manila galleon, dispersed the pirates of the Caribbean, and successfully defended a critical strategic asset from an invasion force twice his strength was left behind bars.

***

Many former pirates became privateers during the course of the War of the Quadruple Alliance, with varying degrees of success. Benjamin Hornigold, founder of the pirate republic, took his commission from Rogers and cruised against Spanish pirates from the familiar shelter of Nassau Harbor. In the spring of 1719, while lurking near Havana, his vessel was captured by a Spanish ship and brigantine; he either died in the engagement or in a Cuban prison, as his Bahamian colleagues never saw him again. Josiah Burgess, once Nassau's third most powerful pirate, served Rogers as a lieutenant of the Independent Company, a justice of the Vice-Admiralty Court, and a privateer. In the latter capacity, his vessel was wrecked near Abaco; Burgess drowned, along with George Rounsivell, the young man Rogers pardoned at the gallows, who had gone back into the water to try to rescue him.

Henry Jennings and Leigh Ashworth both operated privateers out of Jamaica. Jennings was particularly successful, arriving in New York in October 1719 on his trusty
Barsheba
with two brigantines and a sloop taken from the Spaniards off Vera Cruz. Jennings survived the war and returned to respectable merchant service out of Bermuda. In 1745, during the War of the Austrian Succession, his sloop was captured in the West Indies; prison may have proven fatal to a man in his early sixties. Ashworth's fate is unclear, but in May 1719 he was again stepping over the line between privateering and piracy, by attacking one of Rogers's privateers and kidnapping one of Thomas Walker's sons off Cuba.

Others jumped over the line with both feet, and none more infamously than Vane's old quartermaster, "Calico Jack" Rackham.

***

Rackham didn't lack for courage, but perhaps for judgment. After abandoning Vane in November 1718, he convinced his band to cruise just off the shore of Jamaica, a particularly dangerous environment as the island was home to the Royal Navy's West Indies fleet and a large number of armed merchant vessels. With risk came rewards. On December 11, the pirates lay chase to the merchant ship
Kingston,
overtaking her so close to Port Royal that the townspeople watched the attack. The ship, it turned out, was carrying a cargo valued at £20,000, much of it in the form of a large parcel of gold watches hidden in the bulk cargo. Her Jamaican owners were not going to let such a brazen theft succeed. As it happened, there were no warships in the harbor, but with the governor's blessing, the owners outfitted a pair of privateering vessels to recover their ship.

Three months later, in early February 1719, the privateers finally found the
Kingston
at Isla de los Piños, south of Cuba. Rackham's brigantine was anchored alongside, but most of her crew was ashore, sleeping off hangovers under the brigantine's sails, which they'd converted into temporary tents and awnings. Surprised and in no condition to defend themselves, Rackham's company fled into the woods, hiding there until the privateers left with the
Kingston
and most of her cargo. Rackham and his men were left with two boats, a canoe, a few small arms, twenty silver watches, and several large bales of silk stockings and laced hats. After donning the finery, the pirates became divided over how to proceed. From their captives they had learned that King George had extended his pardon (the same extension that had allowed some of Blackbeard's men to escape hanging in Virginia). Rackham and six followers decided to take the pardon in Nassau, where they might claim that Vane had forced them into piracy. They left in one of the boats and worked their way around the eastern tip of Cuba, capturing various Spanish boats along the way.

Rackham arrived in Nassau in mid-May 1719 and convinced Rogers to pardon his men. They lived in Nassau for a while, hawking watches and stockings, drinking in what taverns and brothels still remained. (Rogers, who continued to distribute Protestant religious pamphlets to the ex-pirates, presumably clamped down on some of Nassau's moral excesses.) As their money ran out, Rackham's friends shipped out on privateers or merchant sloops. Rackham, with his captain's double-share of plunder, lasted the longest. During this time, he made the acquaintance of one of New Providence's most infamous harlots, Anne Bonny, wife of James Bonny, a rank-and-file pirate who had become one of Rogers's informants. Rackham took a fancy to the fiery young woman, who swore like a pirate and had cuckolded her husband on a great many occasions. He spent the last of his money courting her, then shipped out on one of Burgess's final privateering missions, and spent his share of the proceeds on his new flame. The two fell in love and, sometime in the spring or early summer of 1720, approached James Bonny to seek an annulment of their marriage. Bonny agreed to do so in exchange for a substantial cash payment, but they would need a respectable witness to sign the appropriate papers. They chose their witness poorly. Richard Turnley, a mariner despised in some circles for having piloted HMS
Rose
safely into the harbor when Rogers first arrived, not only refused to act as witness, he informed Governor Rogers of the situation. Rogers, perhaps having read too many of the religious pamphlets he'd brought with him, told Bonny that if she annulled her marriage he would have her thrown in prison where he would force Rackham to whip her. Anne "promised to be very good, to live with her husband and keep loose company no more." She had no intention of doing any of these things.

Unable to continue their relationship ashore, Rackham and Bonny decided to take to the sea as pirates. The couple recruited a half-dozen disgruntled former pirates as well as Anne's close friend, a cross-dressing female sailor named Mary Read. The author of
A General History of the Pyrates
erroneously claimed that Bonny and Read met at sea, when Read, dressed as a man, was pressed into service aboard Rackham's pirate sloop. According to this oft-repeated account, Bonny took a liking to the fresh-faced recruit, only discovering her true gender after making the moves on her. Read is then said to have explained that her mother had raised her as a boy in order to pass her off as another man's son, that she had served as a sailor and foot soldier, and had come to Nassau when pirates captured a merchant ship she was serving aboard. Indeed, the two women may well have met after Bonny mistook Read for a handsome young man, but the encounter almost certainly took place not at sea, but in Nassau. We know this because by the time Rackham and Bonny decided to go pirating together, Mary Read was not only with them, her identity and gender were already well known to Governor Rogers, who identified the women by name in an official proclamation released to the Boston newspapers.

The account is partially correct: The women did indeed become cross-dressing pirates. Late on the night of August 22, 1720, Rackham, Anne Bonny, Mary Read, and six men stole one of the swiftest vessels in all of the Bahamas, the
William,
a twelve-ton, six-gun sloop belonging to privateer John "Catch Him if You Can" Ham.
^*
The watch aboard the
Delicia
challenged the pirates as they left the harbor, but they talked their way out of trouble, claiming they were going to stand outside the harbor for the evening after having broken their anchor line. Instead, they took the
William
round to the backside of New Providence and began plundering fishing canoes and other vessels from locations all over the Bahamas, their numbers growing as unhappy sailors and former pirates joined their company. Rackham and Bonny also went out of their way to track down Richard Turnley, whom they knew to be hunting turtles on one of the Bahamas' outer cays. They destroyed his boat and pressed three of his crewmen, while Turnley and his young son hid in the woods. They left behind a fourth crewman with a message for Turnley: If Rackham and Bonny ever came across him again, they would whip him to death.

Over the next two months, Bonny and Read became inseparable and, in matters of fashion, developed a compromise between them. "When they saw any vessel, gave chase, or attacked, they wore men's clothes," as Read preferred, a former captive would later testify at their trial, "and at other times, they wore women's clothes." At a time when women sailors were unheard of, Bonny and Read actively participated in combat, running gunpowder for the men, fighting in battles, and terrorizing their captives. Dorothy Thomas, a fisherwoman detained by the pirates on the north side of Jamaica, testified that the two women "wore men's jackets and long trousers and [had] handkerchiefs wrapped around their heads ... a machete and pistol in their hands and cursed and swore at the men, [urging] ... that they should kill her, to prevent her [testifying] against them." Thomas added that the only reason she knew they were women "was by the largeness of their breasts." On October 20, 1720, the pirates daringly attacked the sloop
Mary & Sarah
while she lay at anchor in Dry Harbor, on the north shore of Jamaica; the vessel's captain noted that Bonny had "a gun in her hand," and that "they were both very profligate, cursing and swearing much, and very ready and willing to do anything on board."

Despite having his lover aboard, Rackham continued to pursue a reckless strategy. He spent much of October on the shores of Jamaica, hopping from harbor to harbor, stealing small vessels, and recruiting additional crewmen. Soon he was being dogged by several Jamaican privateers, including one commanded by former Bahamian pirate Jean Bondavais, who had been terrorizing Spanish shipping. Bondavais caught up with Rackham while he was collecting recruits from shore near the western tip of Jamaica. Rather than trying to conceal his identity, Rackham promptly fired on Bondavais' vessel. Bondavais retreated to report the incident to Captain Jonathan Barnet, a privateer who had been hunting for Rackham in his own well-armed sloop. Barnet chased Rackham throughout the afternoon and into the night, during which time many of Rackham's men fell to drinking. The alcohol may have affected the pirates' handling of their swift vessel because, at ten o'clock, Barnet came within hailing distance. He ordered them "to strike immediately to the King of England's colors." Somebody on Rackham's sloop responded:"We will strike no strikes," at which point Barnet's men fired a swivel gun.

At this point, most of Rackham's men fled into the hold, leaving Read and Bonny on deck. Read, according to the
General History,
"called to those under deck to come up and fight like men and, finding they did not stir, fired her arms down the hold amongst them, killing one and wounding others." Moments later, Barnet's men fired a broadside, backed by a hail of small arms fire, causing the pirates' boom to crash onto the deck, followed by the shot-ridden mainsail. Unable to maneuver their vessel, the pirates begged for quarter. Barnet's men stormed over the rails, took everyone aboard into custody, and the next morning delivered them to the militia officer ashore. Soon thereafter, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read found themselves in Spanish Town jail, awaiting trial.

Among their fellow prisoners was Charles Vane. It's not known if the pirates were able to speak to one another, but if they did, Vane may have had some harsh words for his former quartermaster. Had Rackham not led the uprising against him two years earlier, Vane might have succeeded in building a pirate fleet comparable to those once commanded by Bellamy and Blackbeard. Once divided, neither man had the strength to do any serious damage to the British Empire. Rackham was among the first to be tried and found guilty. On November 18, 1720, the day of his execution, Anne Bonny was allowed to see him one last time. "I'm sorry to see you here," she is said to have told him, "but if you had fought like a man, you need not have hanged like a dog." Later that day he and four other men were executed at Gallows Point in Port Royal. His body was later placed in a gibbet on a small island in the harbor now known as Rackham's Cay; he and Vane may have been hanged separately, but their corpses swung within sight of each other across Port Royal Harbor.