The Pirates Whos Who | Page 3

pounds, which he has
prided himself on spending in the taverns and gambling-hells of Port
Royal in a week, how can he settle down to humdrum uneventful toil,
with its small profits? Thus he goes back "on the account" and sails to
some prearranged rendezvous of the "brethren of the coast."
To write a whole history of piracy would be a great undertaking, but a
very interesting one. Piracy must have begun in the far, dim ages, and

perhaps when some naked savage, paddling himself across a tropical
river, met with another adventurer on a better tree-trunk, or carrying a
bigger bunch of bananas, the first act of piracy was committed. Indeed,
piracy must surely be the third oldest profession in the world, if we
give the honour of the second place to the ancient craft of healing. If
such a history were to include the whole of piracy, it would have to
refer to the Phoenicians, to the Mediterranean sea-rovers of the days of
Rome, who, had they but known it, held the future destiny of the world
in their grasp when they, a handful of pirates, took prisoner the young
Julius Cæsar, to ransom him and afterwards to be caught and crucified
by him. The Arabs in the Red Sea were for many years past-masters of
the art of piracy, as were the Barbary corsairs of Algiers and Tunis,
who made the Mediterranean a place of danger for many generations of
seamen. All this while the Chinese and Malays were active pirates,
while the Pirate coast of the Persian Gulf was feared by all mariners.
Then arose the great period, beginning in the reign of Henry VIII.,
advancing with rapid strides during the adventurous years of Queen
Elizabeth, when many West of England squires were wont to sell their
estates and invest all in a ship in which to go cruising on the Spanish
Main, in the hope of taking a rich Spanish galleon homeward bound
from Cartagena and Porto Bello, deep laden with the riches of Peru and
Mexico.
Out of these semi-pirate adventurers developed the buccaneers, a
ruffianly, dare-devil lot, who feared neither God, man, nor death.
By the middle of the eighteenth century piracy was on the wane, and
practically had died out by the beginning of the nineteenth, the final
thrust that destroyed it being given by the American and English
Navies in the North Atlantic and West Indian Seas. But by this time
piracy had degenerated to mere sea-robbing, the days of gallant and
ruthless sea-battles had passed, and the pirate of those decadent days
was generally a Spanish-American half-breed, with no courage, a mere
robber and murderer.
The advent of the telegraph and of steam-driven ships settled for ever
the account of the pirates, except in China, when even to this day

accounts reach us, through the Press, of piratical enterprises; but never
again will the black, rakish-looking craft of the pirate, with the Jolly
Roger flying, be liable to pounce down upon the unsuspecting and
harmless merchantman.
The books devoted to the lives and exploits of buccaneers and pirates
are few. Indeed, but two stand out prominently, both masterpieces of
their kind. One, "The Bucaniers of America, or a True Account of the
Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of Late Years upon the Coasts
of the West Indies," etc., was written by a sea-surgeon to the
buccaneers, A.O. Exquemelin, a Dutchman, and was published at
Amsterdam in 1679.
Many translations were made, the first one in English being published
in 1684 by William Crooke, at the Green Dragon, without Temple Bar,
in London. The publication of this book was the cause of a libel action
brought by Sir Henry Morgan against the publisher; the buccaneer
commander won his case and was granted £200 damages and a public
apology. In this book Morgan was held up as a perfect monster for his
cruel treatment to his prisoners, but although Morgan resented this very
much, the statement that annoyed him much more was that which told
the reader that Morgan came of very humble stock and was sold by his
parents when a boy, to serve as a labourer in Barbadoes.
The greatest work on pirates was written in 1726 by Captain Charles
Johnson. The original edition, now exceedingly rare, is called "A
General History of the Pyrates, from Their First Rise and Settlement in
the Island of Providence, to the Present Time," and is illustrated by
interesting engravings.
Another edition, in 1734, is a handsome folio called "A General
History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous
Highwaymen," etc., "To which is added a Genuine Account of the
Voyages and Plunders of the Most Notorious Pyrates," and contains
many full-page copperplates by J. Basire and others. The pirates are
given only a share