The Pirates Whos Who | Page 6

would
row alongside, and then suddenly, with shouts and curses, board the
vessel, kill any who resisted, and start a cruise in their new ship, their
number being increased by volunteers or forced men from amongst the
prize's crew. Cruising thus, the pirates would gradually get together a
small fleet of the fastest and best sailing vessels among their prizes and
increase their crew as they went along.
Both the buccaneers and the pirates had their favourite haunts and
places of rendezvous. These had to be within easy sailing distance of
one or more regular trade routes, and at the same time had to be in
some quiet spot unlikely to be visited by strange craft, and, besides
being sheltered from storms, must have a suitable beach on which their
vessels could be careened and the hulls scraped of barnacles and weeds.

The greatest stronghold of the buccaneers was at Tortuga, or Turtle
Island, a small island lying off the west coast of Hispaniola. Here in
their most piping days flourished a buccaneer republic, where the
seamen made their own laws and cultivated the land for sugar-cane and
yams. Occasionally the Spaniards or the French, without any warning,
would swoop down on the settlement and break up the small republic,
but sooner or later the buccaneers would be back once again in
possession.
The favourite and most flourishing headquarters of the West India
pirates was at New Providence Island in the Bahama Islands, occupied
to-day by the flourishing town of Nassau, now the headquarters of
those worthy descendants of the pirates, the bootleggers, who from the
old port carry on their exciting and profitable smuggling of whisky into
the United States.
The numerous bays and islands lying off the coast of South Carolina
were very popular with the free booters in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries; while Port Royal, in Jamaica, was noted
from early days as the port from which the most famous buccaneers
sailed for the Spanish Main, and to which they returned with their
plunder.
The French filibusters and pirates mostly used the Virgin Islands, while
the Dutch patronized their own islands of Curaçao, Saba, and St.
Eustatius. But the buccaneers did not allow the chance of nationality to
divide them, for Frenchmen, Englishmen, and Dutchmen, all "brethren
of the coast," sailed together and plundered the Spaniard in open and
equal friendship.
An entirely different group of pirates arose in the South Seas, with their
headquarters in Madagascar. Here the pirates went farther towards
forming a permanent society than at any other time during their history,
with the exception of the Barbary corsairs, who had their strongly
fortified settlements for many years at Algiers, Tunis, and Sallee.
The origin of the buccaneers is interesting, and I cannot do better than
quote the opening chapter of Clark Russell's "Life of William

Dampier," in the English Men of Action Series, published by Messrs.
Macmillan in 1889. He writes:
"In or about the middle of the seventeenth century, the Island of San
Domingo, or Hispaniola as it was then called, was haunted and overrun
by a singular community of savage, surly, fierce, and filthy men. They
were chiefly composed of French colonists, whose ranks had from time
to time been enlarged by liberal contributions from the slums and alleys
of more than one European city and town. These people went dressed
in shirts and pantaloons of coarse linen cloth, which they steeped in the
blood of the animals they slaughtered. They wore round caps, boots of
hogskin drawn over their naked feet, and belts of raw hide, in which
they stuck their sabres and knives. They also armed themselves with
firelocks, which threw a couple of balls, each weighing two ounces.
The places where they dried and salted their meat were called boucans,
and from this term they came to be styled bucaniers, or buccaneers, as
we spell it. They were hunters by trade, and savages in their habits.
They chased and slaughtered horned cattle and trafficked with the flesh,
and their favourite food was raw marrow from the bones of the beasts
which they shot. They ate and slept on the ground, their table was a
stone, their bolster the trunk of a tree, and their roof the hot and
sparkling heavens of the Antilles."
The Spaniards, who were jealous of any other nation than their own
having a foothold in America, determined to get rid of these wild but
hitherto harmless buccaneers. This they accomplished, and in time
drove the cattle-hunters out of Hispaniola; and to make sure that the
unwelcome visitors should not return, they exterminated all the wild
cattle. This was the worst mistake the Spaniards could have made, for
these wild men had to look for other means of supporting themselves,
and they joined the