Of Captain Mission and His Crew | Page 3

the future course of history.
Considered as a short novel, the history "Of Captain Misson and his Crew" reveals many of the same techniques which Defoe used in his longer works. To gain a sense of verisimilitude the narrator pretends to be working from a manuscript, a device which Defoe also employed in his Memoirs of a Cavalier. As in Colonel Jack real historical figures and events from the War of the Spanish Succession are woven into the adventures of the Victoire. Captain Misson and his crew sink the Winchelsea, an English ship lost in the West Indies at the end of August, 1707, and they barely escape from Admiral Wager's fleet which fought a famous battle there in 1708. Even the name of Misson's ship, the _Victoire_; was undoubtedly familiar to Defoe as the vessel commanded by the famous French corsair, Cornil Saus.[6] So convincing is Defoe that although his hero is shown meeting a real freebooter, Captain Tew, ten years after Tew's death, Misson is still included in the histories of piracy.[7]
Also typical of Defoe's fiction is the relationship between Captain Misson, the leader, and his intellectual mentor, Carracioli. Colonel Jack and his tutor, Moll Flanders and her Governess and particularly, Captain Singleton and William Walters form similar groups. Just as William Walters, a Quaker, reminds Captain Singleton and the crew that their business is not fighting but making money, so Carracioli addresses lengthy speeches to the crew, converting everyone on the Victoire to democracy and deism. Misson's Libertalia takes root in Madagascar, where Singleton wanted to establish a colony, while both Carracioli and Walters adapt the secular aspects of their religion to piracy. But whereas Walters eventually converts Singleton into an honest Christian, Carracioli leads Misson into piracy.
In the history "Of Captain Misson and his Crew," Defoe decided to pursue the same method of third person narrative as in his brief biographies of real pirates. The result is that he merely provides a sketch of political theories rather than a study of human beings. Of course there are good reasons for this. Defoe was more interested in dramatizing proletarian utopian ideals than in developing the inner workings of Misson's mind. The novelette is unified by its epic theme, not by its study of character or its episodic plot.
Although Defoe toyed with radical notions throughout The History of the Pyrates, he had little faith in their practicality. Libertalia must be understood as Defoe's best expression of political and social ideals which he admired but considered unworkable. The continuation of Misson's career in the section "Of Captain Tew" depicts the decline and fall of the utopia and the hero's tragic death as a disillusioned idealist. This, however, is another story, a story which suggested that private property was necessary, equality impossible and slavery a useful expedient for colonization. It was a far more comforting message for the Augustan Age, but it could not silence the tocsins of the French Revolution which sound throughout the speeches of Misson and Carracioli.
Maximillian E. Novak University of Michigan

Bibliographical Note
The text of "Of Captain Misson and His Crew" has been reproduced from the Henry E. Huntington Library's first edition copy of the second volume of A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates which appeared under the title The History of the Pyrates.
Notes to the Introduction
[Footnote 1: Daniel Defoe, A Review of the Affairs of France, ed. A. W. Secord (New York, 1938), IV, 424a.]
[Footnote 2: _The Anatomy of Exchange--Alley_ (London, 1719), p. 8.]
[Footnote 3: A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (London, 1728), II, 220.]
[Footnote 4: See Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (Stanford, 1953), pp. 97-99.]
[Footnote 5: In the previous year Defoe had written that "it was the most dangerous thing in the World for a young Gentleman, sober and virtuous, to venture into Italy, till he was thoroughly grounded in Principle, ... for that nothing was more ordinary, than for such either to be seduc'd, by the Subtlety of the Clergy, to embrace a false Religion, or by the Artifice of a worse Enemy, to give up all Religion, and sink into Scepticism and Deism, or, perhaps, Atheism." A New Family Instructor (London, 1727), p. 17.]
[Footnote 6: See Ruth Bourne, _Queen Anne's Navy in the West Indies_ (New Haven, 1939), pp. 63, 169-172; and Manuscripts of the House of Lords, New Series (London, 1921), VII, 117-119.]
[Footnote 7: See Philip Gosse, The History of Piracy (New York, 1934), p. 194; and Patrick Pringle, Jolly Roger (London, 1953), pp. 136-138.]
_Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulci_. Hor.

THE HISTORY OF THE PYRATES. VOL. II.
OF CAPTAIN MISSON.

We can be somewhat particular in the Life of this Gentleman, because, by very great Accident, we have got into our Hands a French Manuscript, in which