Howard Pyle's Book of pirates : fiction, fact & fancy concerning the buccaneers & marooners of the Spanish Main
In the colonies at that time, as was just said, men were too few and
scattered to protect themselves against those who had made up their
minds to take by force that which they wanted, and so it was that men
lived an unrestrained and lawless life, such as we of these times of
better government can hardly comprehend.
The usual means of commerce between province and province was by water
in coasting vessels. These coasting vessels were so defenseless, and
the different colonial governments were so ill able to protect them,
that those who chose to rob them could do it almost without danger to
themselves.
So it was that all the western world was, in those days, infested with
armed bands of cruising freebooters or pirates, who used to stop
merchant vessels and take from them what they chose.
Each province in those days was ruled over by a royal governor
appointed by the king. Each governor, at one time, was free to do
almost as he pleased in his own province. He was accountable only to
the king and his government, and England was so distant that he was
really responsible almost to nobody but himself.
The governors were naturally just as desirous to get rich quickly,
just as desirous of getting all that they could for themselves, as was
anybody else--only they had been taught and had been able to learn
that it was not right to be an actual pirate or robber. They wanted to
be rich easily and quickly, but the desire was not strong enough to
lead them to dishonor themselves in their own opinion and in the
opinion of others by gratifying their selfishness. They would even
have stopped the pirates from doing what they did if they could, but
their provincial governments were too weak to prevent the freebooters
from robbing merchant vessels, or to punish them when they came
ashore. The provinces had no navies, and they really had no armies;
neither were there enough people living within the community to
enforce the laws against those stronger and fiercer men who were not
honest.
After the things the pirates seized from merchant vessels were once
stolen they were altogether lost. Almost never did any owner apply for
them, for it would be useless to do so. The stolen goods and
merchandise lay in the storehouses of the pirates, seemingly without
any owner excepting the pirates themselves.
The governors and the secretaries of the colonies would not dishonor
themselves by pirating upon merchant vessels, but it did not seem so
wicked after the goods were stolen--and so altogether lost--to take a
part of that which seemed to have no owner.
A child is taught that it is a very wicked thing to take, for
instance, by force, a lump of sugar from another child; but when a
wicked child has seized the sugar from another and taken it around the
corner, and that other child from whom he has seized it has gone home
crying, it does not seem so wicked for the third child to take a bite
of the sugar when it is offered to him, even if he thinks it has been
taken from some one else.
It was just so, no doubt, that it did not seem so wicked to Governor
Eden and Secretary Knight of North Carolina, or to Governor Fletcher
of New York, or to other colonial governors, to take a part of the
booty that the pirates, such as Blackbeard, had stolen. It did not
even seem very wicked to compel such pirates to give up a part of what
was not theirs, and which seemed to have no owner.
In Governor Eden's time, however, the colonies had begun to be more
thickly peopled, and the laws had gradually become stronger and
stronger to protect men in the possession of what was theirs. Governor
Eden was the last of the colonial governors who had dealings with the
pirates, and Blackbeard was almost the last of the pirates who, with
his banded men, was savage and powerful enough to come and go as he
chose among the people whom he plundered.
Virginia, at that time, was the greatest and the richest of all the
American colonies, and upon the farther side of North Carolina was the
province of South Carolina, also strong and rich. It was these two
colonies that suffered the most from Blackbeard, and it began to be
that the honest men that lived in them could endure no longer to be
plundered.
The merchants and traders and others who suffered cried out loudly for
protection, so loudly that the governors of these provinces could not
help hearing them.
Governor Eden was petitioned to act against the pirates, but he would
do nothing, for he felt very friendly toward Blackbeard--just as a
child who has had a taste of the stolen sugar feels friendly toward
the child who gives it to him.
At last, when Blackbeard sailed up into the very heart of Virginia,
and seized upon and carried away the daughter of that colony's
foremost people, the governor of Virginia, finding that the governor
of North Carolina would do nothing to punish the outrage, took the
matter into his own hands and issued a proclamation offering a reward
of one hundred pounds for Blackbeard, alive or dead, and different
sums for the other pirates who were his followers.
Governor Spottiswood had the right to issue the proclamation, but he
had no right to commission Lieutenant Maynard, as he did, to take down
an armed force into the neighboring province and to attack the pirates
in the waters of the North Carolina sounds. It was all a part of the
rude and lawless condition of the colonies at the time that such a
thing could have been done.
The governor's proclamation against the pirates was issued upon the
eleventh day of November. It was read in the churches the Sunday
following and was posted upon the doors of all the government custom
offices in lower Virginia. Lieutenant Maynard, in the boats that
Colonel Parker had already fitted out to go against the pirates, set
sail upon the seventeenth of the month for Ocracoke. Five days later
the battle was fought.
* * * * *
Blackbeard's sloop was lying inside of Ocracoke Inlet among the shoals
and sand bars when he first heard of Governor Spottiswood's
proclamation.
There had been a storm, and a good many vessels had run into the inlet
for shelter. Blackbeard knew nearly all of the captains of these
vessels, and it was from them that he first heard of the proclamation.
He had gone aboard one of the vessels--a coaster from Boston. The wind
was still blowing pretty hard from the southeast. There were maybe a
dozen vessels lying within the inlet at that time, and the captain of
one of them was paying the Boston skipper a visit when Blackbeard came
aboard. The two captains had been talking together. They instantly
ceased when the pirate came down into the cabin, but he had heard
enough of their conversation to catch its drift. "Why d'ye stop?" he
said. "I heard what you said. Well, what then? D'ye think I mind it at
all? Spottiswood is going to send his bullies down here after me.
That's what you were saying. Well, what then? You don't think I'm
afraid of his bullies, do you?"
"Why, no, Captain, I didn't say you was afraid," said the visiting
captain.
"And what right has he got to send down here against me in North
Carolina, I should like to ask you?"
"He's got none at all," said the Boston captain, soothingly. "Won't
you take a taste of Hollands, Captain?"
"He's no more right to come blustering down here into Governor Eden's
province than I have to come aboard of your schooner here, Tom Burley,
and to carry off two or three kegs of this prime Hollands for my own
drinking."
Captain Burley--the Boston man--laughed a loud, forced laugh. "Why,
Captain," he said, "as for two or three kegs of Hollands, you won't
find that aboard. But if you'd like to have a keg of it for your own
drinking, I'll send it to you and be glad enough to do so for old
acquaintance' sake."
"But I tell you what 'tis, Captain," said the visiting skipper to
Blackbeard, "they're determined and set against you this time. I tell
you, Captain, Governor Spottiswood hath issued a hot proclamation
against you, and 't hath been read out in all the churches. I myself
saw it posted in Yorktown upon the customhouse door and read it there
myself. The governor offers one hundred pounds for you, and fifty
pounds for your officers, and twenty pounds each for your men."
"Well, then," said Blackbeard, holding up his glass, "here, I wish 'em
good luck, and when they get their hundred pounds for me they'll be in
a poor way to spend it. As for the Hollands," said he, turning to
Captain Burley, "I know what you've got aboard here and what you
haven't. D'ye suppose ye can blind me? Very well, you send over two
kegs, and I'll let you go without search." The two captains were very
silent. "As for that Lieutenant Maynard you're all talking about,"
said Blackbeard, "why, I know him very well. He was the one who was so
busy with the pirates down Madagascar way. I believe you'd all like to
see him blow me out of the water, but he can't do it. There's nobody
in His Majesty's service I'd rather meet than Lieutenant Maynard. I'd
teach him pretty briskly that North Carolina isn't Madagascar."
* * * * *
On the evening of the twenty-second the two vessels under command of
Lieutenant Maynard came into the mouth of Ocracoke Inlet and there
dropped anchor. Meantime the weather had cleared, and all the vessels
but one had gone from the inlet. The one vessel that remained was a
New Yorker. It had been there over a night and a day, and the captain
and Blackbeard had become very good friends.
The same night that Maynard came into the inlet a wedding was held on
the shore. A number of men and women came up the beach in oxcarts and
sledges; others had come in boats from more distant points and across
the water.
The captain of the New Yorker and Blackbeard went ashore together a
little after dark. The New Yorker had been aboard of the pirate's
sloop for all the latter part of the afternoon, and he and Blackbeard
had been drinking together in the cabin. The New York man was now a
little tipsy, and he laughed and talked foolishly as he and Blackbeard
were rowed ashore. The pirate sat grim and silent.
It was nearly dark when they stepped ashore on the beach. The New York
captain stumbled and fell headlong, rolling over and over, and the
crew of the boat burst out laughing.
The people had already begun to dance in an open shed fronting upon
the shore. There were fires of pine knots in front of the building,
lighting up the interior with a red glare. A negro was playing a
fiddle somewhere inside, and the shed was filled with a crowd of
grotesque dancing figures--men and women. Now and then they called
with loud voices as they danced, and the squeaking of the fiddle
sounded incessantly through the noise of outcries and the stamp and
shuffling of feet.
Captain Teach and the New York captain stood looking on. The New York
man had tilted himself against a post and stood there holding one arm
around it, supporting himself. He waved the other hand foolishly in
time to the music, now and then snapping his thumb and finger.
The young woman who had just been married approached the two. She had
been dancing, and she was warm and red, her hair blowzed about her
head. "Hi, Captain, won't you dance with me?" she said to Blackbeard.
Blackbeard stared at her. "Who be you?" he said.
She burst out laughing. "You look as if you'd eat a body," she cried.
Blackbeard's face gradually relaxed. "Why, to be sure, you're a brazen
one, for all the world," he said. "Well, I'll dance with you, that I