Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
truth of the "purchase" gained by Drake in the famous capture of the
plate ship in the South Sea.
One of the old buccaneer writers of a century later says: "The
Spaniards affirm to this day that he took at that time twelvescore
tons of plate and sixteen bowls of coined money a man (his number
being then forty-five men in all), insomuch that they were forced to
heave much of it overboard, because his ship could not carry it all."
Maybe this was a very greatly exaggerated statement put by the author
and his Spanish authorities, nevertheless there was enough truth in it
to prove very conclusively to the bold minds of the age that
tremendous profits--"purchases" they called them--were to be made from
piracy. The Western World is filled with the names of daring mariners
of those old days, who came flitting across the great trackless ocean
in their little tublike boats of a few hundred tons burden, partly to
explore unknown seas, partly--largely, perhaps--in pursuit of Spanish
treasure: Frobisher, Davis, Drake, and a score of others.
In this left-handed war against Catholic Spain many of the adventurers
were, no doubt, stirred and incited by a grim, Calvinistic,
puritanical zeal for Protestantism. But equally beyond doubt the gold
and silver and plate of the "Scarlet Woman" had much to do with the
persistent energy with which these hardy mariners braved the
mysterious, unknown terrors of the great unknown ocean that stretched
away to the sunset, there in far-away waters to attack the huge,
unwieldy, treasure-laden galleons that sailed up and down the
Caribbean Sea and through the Bahama Channel.
Of all ghastly and terrible things old-time religious war was the most
ghastly and terrible. One can hardly credit nowadays the cold, callous
cruelty of those times. Generally death was the least penalty that
capture entailed. When the Spaniards made prisoners of the English,
the Inquisition took them in hand, and what that meant all the world
knows. When the English captured a Spanish vessel the prisoners were
tortured, either for the sake of revenge or to compel them to disclose
where treasure lay hidden. Cruelty begat cruelty, and it would be hard
to say whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin showed himself to be most
proficient in torturing his victim.
When Cobham, for instance, captured the Spanish ship in the Bay of
Biscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle had
cooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew
and every Spaniard aboard--whether in arms or not--to sew them up in
the mainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead
bodies in the sail when a few days later it was washed up on the
shore.
Of course such acts were not likely to go unavenged, and many an
innocent life was sacrificed to pay the debt of Cobham's cruelty.
Nothing could be more piratical than all this. Nevertheless, as was
said, it was winked at, condoned, if not sanctioned, by the law; and
it was not beneath people of family and respectability to take part in
it. But by and by Protestantism and Catholicism began to be at
somewhat less deadly enmity with each other; religious wars were still
far enough from being ended, but the scabbard of the sword was no
longer flung away when the blade was drawn. And so followed a time of
nominal peace, and a generation arose with whom it was no longer
respectable and worthy--one might say a matter of duty--to fight a
country with which one's own land was not at war. Nevertheless, the
seed had been sown; it had been demonstrated that it was feasible to
practice piracy against Spain and not to suffer therefor. Blood had
been shed and cruelty practiced, and, once indulged, no lust seems
stronger than that of shedding blood and practicing cruelty.
Though Spain might be ever so well grounded in peace at home, in the
West Indies she was always at war with the whole world--English,
French, Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to
keep her hold upon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon
the earthquake of the Reformation, her power was already beginning to
totter and to crumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and
from it alone could she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold
and silver. So it was that she strove strenuously, desperately, to
keep out the world from her American possessions--a bootless task, for
the old order upon which her power rested was broken and crumbled
forever. But still she strove, fighting against fate, and so it was
that in the tropical America it was one continual war between her and
all the world. Thus it came that, long after piracy ceased to be
allowed at home, it continued in those far-away seas with unabated
vigor, recruiting to its service all that lawless malign element which
gathers together in every newly opened country where the only law is
lawlessness, where might is right and where a living is to be gained
with no more trouble than cutting a throat.
Howard Pyle's
Book of Pirates
Ye Pirate Bold.
It is not because of his life of adventure and daring that I admire
this one of my favorite heroes; nor is it because of blowing winds nor
blue ocean nor balmy islands which he knew so well; nor is it because
of gold he spent nor treasure he hid. He was a man who knew his own
mind and what he wanted.
Howard Pyle
Chapter I
BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN
Just above the northwestern shore of the old island of Hispaniola--the
Santo Domingo of our day--and separated from it only by a narrow
channel of some five or six miles in width, lies a queer little hunch
of an island, known, because of a distant resemblance to that animal,
as the Tortuga de Mar, or sea turtle. It is not more than twenty miles
in length by perhaps seven or eight in breadth; it is only a little
spot of land, and as you look at it upon the map a pin's head would
almost cover it; yet from that spot, as from a center of inflammation,
a burning fire of human wickedness and ruthlessness and lust overran
the world, and spread terror and death throughout the Spanish West
Indies, from St. Augustine to the island of Trinidad, and from Panama
to the coasts of Peru.
About the middle of the seventeenth century certain French adventurers
set out from the fortified island of St. Christopher in longboats and
hoys, directing their course to the westward, there to discover new
islands. Sighting Hispaniola "with abundance of joy," they landed, and
went into the country, where they found great quantities of wild
cattle, horses, and swine.
Now vessels on the return voyage to Europe from the West Indies needed
revictualing, and food, especially flesh, was at a premium in the
islands of the Spanish Main; wherefore a great profit was to be turned
in preserving beef and pork, and selling the flesh to homeward-bound
vessels.
The northwestern shore of Hispaniola, lying as it does at the eastern
outlet of the old Bahama Channel, running between the island of Cuba
and the great Bahama Banks, lay almost in the very main stream of
travel. The pioneer Frenchmen were not slow to discover the double
advantage to be reaped from the wild cattle that cost them nothing to
procure, and a market for the flesh ready found for them. So down upon
Hispaniola they came by boatloads and shiploads, gathering like a
swarm of mosquitoes, and overrunning the whole western end of the
island. There they established themselves, spending the time
alternately in hunting the wild cattle and buccanning[1] the meat, and
squandering their hardly earned gains in wild debauchery, the
opportunities for which were never lacking in the Spanish West Indies.
[Footnote 1: Buccanning, by which the "buccaneers" gained their name,
was a process of curing thin strips of meat by salting, smoking, and
drying in the sun.]
At first the Spaniards thought nothing of the few travel-worn
Frenchmen who dragged their longboats and hoys up on the beach, and
shot a wild bullock or two to keep body and soul together; but when
the few grew to dozens, and the dozens to scores, and the scores to
hundreds, it was a very different matter, and wrathful grumblings and
mutterings began to be heard among the original settlers.
But of this the careless buccaneers thought never a whit, the only
thing that troubled them being the lack of a more convenient shipping
point than the main island afforded them.
This lack was at last filled by a party of hunters who ventured across
the narrow channel that separated the main island from Tortuga. Here
they found exactly what they needed--a good harbor, just at the
junction of the Windward Channel with the old Bahama Channel--a spot
where four-fifths of the Spanish-Indian trade would pass by their very
wharves.
There were a few Spaniards upon the island, but they were a quiet
folk, and well disposed to make friends with the strangers; but when
more Frenchmen and still more Frenchmen crossed the narrow channel,
until they overran the Tortuga and turned it into one great curing
house for the beef which they shot upon the neighboring island, the
Spaniards grew restive over the matter, just as they had done upon the
larger island.
Accordingly, one fine day there came half a dozen great boatloads of
armed Spaniards, who landed upon the Turtle's Back and sent the
Frenchmen flying to the woods and fastnesses of rocks as the chaff
flies before the thunder gust. That night the Spaniards drank
themselves mad and shouted themselves hoarse over their victory, while
the beaten Frenchmen sullenly paddled their canoes back to the main
island again, and the Sea Turtle was Spanish once more.
But the Spaniards were not contented with such a petty triumph as that
of sweeping the island of Tortuga free from the obnoxious strangers;
down upon Hispaniola they came, flushed with their easy victory, and
determined to root out every Frenchman, until not one single buccaneer
remained. For a time they had an easy thing of it, for each French
hunter roamed the woods by himself, with no better company than his
half-wild dogs, so that when two or three Spaniards would meet such a
one, he seldom if ever came out of the woods again, for even his
resting place was lost.
But the very success of the Spaniards brought their ruin along with
it, for the buccaneers began to combine together for self-protection,
and out of that combination arose a strange union of lawless man with
lawless man, so near, so close, that it can scarce be compared to any
other than that of husband and wife. When two entered upon this
comradeship, articles were drawn up and signed by both parties, a
common stock was made of all their possessions, and out into the woods
they went to seek their fortunes; thenceforth they were as one man;
they lived together by day, they slept together by night; what one
suffered, the other suffered; what one gained, the other gained. The
only separation that came betwixt them was death, and then the
survivor inherited all that the other left. And now it was another
thing with Spanish buccaneer hunting, for two buccaneers, reckless of
life, quick of eye, and true of aim, were worth any half dozen of
Spanish islanders.
By and by, as the French became more strongly organized for mutual
self-protection, they assumed the offensive. Then down they came upon
Tortuga, and now it was the turn of the Spanish to be hunted off the
island like vermin, and the turn of the French to shout their victory.
Having firmly established themselves, a governor was sent to the
French of Tortuga, one M. le Passeur, from the island of St.
Christopher; the Sea Turtle was fortified, and colonists, consisting