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Pirate History & Spanish Coins
 | By Tom Sebring
September 25, 2007 |
Some of the most popular topics for books and movies are those romantic scoundrels known as pirates. Ravaging the seas, looting helpless merchant ships, they spread fear throughout the Caribbean and the Atlantic Coast. While pirates operated earlier in the New World, the most intensive period of piracy was roughly 1690-1725, known as "The Golden Age Of Piracy."
A list of notorious pirates would be very long, but some of the best known are Bartholomew Roberts, John Avery, Edward England, Edward Teach (Blackbeard), William Kidd and Henry Morgan.
This article reviews the pirate culture, the economics of piracy, and describes a few of the best known buccaneers and their depredations. Also analyzed in detail are the kind of coins the marauding pirates would have encountered and the recent excavation of two pirate ships.
The Pirate Culture
In many ways a pirate ship was a true democracy. The captain was elected by the crew and could be deposed for poor performance such as not leading the pirates to rich prizes. If deposed, he might be dropped to a lower status such as first mate or he could be placed in a small boat with provisions to find his way to shore.
The pirate crew was a true multi-cultural group which might include English, French, Dutch, and Portuguese seamen. Blacks were also welcome and many pirate ships had escaped slaves in the crew.
To ensure order on board a pirate ship, crew members were required to sign the ship's "articles of agreement."
The articles drawn up by pirate captain Bartholomew Roberts were typical. Here are some of the key provisions:
1. Every man shall have an equal vote in affairs of the ship.
2. If any man robs another he shall have his nose and ears slit and be put ashore.
3. There will be no gambling with cards or dice.
4. No women are allowed on the ship.
5. He that deserts the ship in time of battle shall be punished by death or marooning.
6. No fighting on board ship. Two men fighting must end their quarrel by sword on shore.
7. Every man who shall become a cripple or lose a limb shall receive eight hundred pieces of eight and proportionate amounts for lesser wounds.
8. The captain and quartermaster shall each receive two shares of a prize, the master gunner and bosun one and one half shares, and seamen one share each.
The pirates had good reason to desire to work in a just and democratic society. Many of them had previously served as seamen under the oppressive conditions of warships. The slightest breach of discipline could bring about a bloody whipping. A man could be hung for disobeying an officer. The food was atrocious and the pay meager. Many of the men on board a warship had been pressed into service against their will. To these men the concept of having a substantial impact upon their living and working conditions, and even upon the direction of the ship's operations was deeply satisfying. Plus, the pay was a lot better!
It should be noted that many of the pirates began their careers as privateers on ships which carried "Letters of Marque," issued by their government which authorized them to attack and capture enemy merchant vessels. This of course could be an extremely profitable occupation. When the countries involved, say England and France, were no longer at war these letters of marque were no longer valid. Unwilling to give up their profitable depredations, some of the privateer captains and their crews opted to "go on the account" meaning become pirates. They would now try to take merchant ships regardless of what flag they flew.
The Economics of Piracy
There is an old statement that says that to understand an issue you should "Follow the Money." This certainly applies to the issue of piracy.
The rise of piracy was closely connected to the restrictions placed by England, Spain and other nations on trade with their colonies. England was the most protectionist of all. The most valuable colonial products; sugar, tobacco and raw cotton could only be sent to England. In addition, the American colonies had to import all of their essential manufactured goods from England.
The colonies resented these restrictions and their ports were a willing market for smuggled goods.
Enter the pirates. Since they had acquired their captured goods at no cost, they could afford to sell them cheaply and they did. Pirate ships carrying captured goods such as woolen and muslin goods, wine and other valuable cargoes were openly welcomed in colonial cities such as New York and Philadelphia.
The pirates would sail into a colonial port and openly unload and sell their stolen cargoes at extremely cut-rate prices. In the case of New York, a citizen reported that the governor actively encouraged the pirates. The merchants of the city were little more than "fences' of smuggled and pirated goods. In addition to buying the pirated goods, the merchants made money by selling the pirates staples such as flour.
Carolina and Rhode Island had possibly the worst reputation for favoring pirates. In one court case in Rhode Island a prisoner was foolish enough to plead guilty to piracy. The jury assumed they must have misunderstood him and acquitted him! In 1692 there was even an attempt in the Carolina state assembly to pass a bill granting complete amnesty to all pirates and their accomplices.
It is little wonder that efforts by British warships to capture pirates operating along the Atlantic Coast were fruitless!
Famous Pirates
Among the many pirates who sailed during this tumultuous period a few became especially well known for their ferocity and success. Following is a review of the lives and exploits of three very famous pirates.
Blackbeard
Edward Teach, known as "Blackbeard" was probably the most feared and famous pirate of his time. He was a huge man, 6'3" and burly with a thick black beard and a ferocious disposition. To increase his already fearsome appearance, he placed lighted fuzes in his hair so that when he boarded an enemy ship a cloud of smoke surrounded his head and he literally appeared to be the devil.
He was a native of Bristol, England and initially sailed from that port as a privateer during the French War. He became a pirate in 1716, and during a short career he terrorized the Caribbean ark, the Atlantic Coast. Though sought by the English Navy, he entered colonial ports to sell his captured goods with impunity.
In November of 1718 his luck ran out when he was cornered at Ocracoke Inlet, Virginia, by British Lieutenant Maynard, who commanded the armed sloops Pearl and Ranger. Fearless as always, Blackbeard and his men boarded Maynard's sloop and a fierce fight raged. Fighting ferociously, Blackbeard finally went down with two pistol and saber wounds. Maynard mounted Blackbeard's head on his bowsprit and sailed back to port.
Henry Morgan
Most pirates lived short lives, killed in battle or hung. Henry Morgan, feared along the entire Spanish Main for his bloody exploits was the only buccaneer to die in bed as an honored statesman!
Morgan was born in 1635 in Wales of a military family. After serving with Cromwell's forces he ended up in Jamaica where he was given a ship by the Governor with a privateering commission authorizing him to attack and harass the Spanish.
He became the scourge of the Spanish Main, sacking Porto Bello, Maracaibo, and other Spanish ports. His style of attack was not to try to take a city with the firepower of his ships, but rather to land his forces miles away from the port and attack from the land side. In 1671 Morgan launched an attack on Panama, and after a fierce and bloody fight took the City, The pirates captured a rich booty of .750,000 pieces of eight. (It was useless for a wealthy citizen of a captured Spanish town to try to conceal his gold and silver. Morgan's men would torture the individual's family until the location of the precious metals was revealed.)
When Morgan returned to Port Royal after sacking Panama, great jubilation greeted him. However, King Charles II of England was less happy. He had recently signed a new treaty with the Spanish and Spain threatened war if the pirates who attacked Panama were not punished immediately. King Charles sent two warships to Jamaica with a new governor. Morgan and Governor Modyford were carried back to England in chains. Modyford was imprisoned for a year and then released. Morgan, who was a national hero in England, was not imprisoned. Instead, he was knighted, appointed deputy governor of Jamaica, and sent back to Jamaica with the charge to hunt down and try pirates (an assignment which he largely ignored). When Morgan died on Aug. 25, 1688, wealthy and respected, English naval ships in the harbor gave him a 21 gun salute!
Captain Kidd
Captain Robert Kidd had been a prosperous and successful citizen of New York. In 1692 he was commander of a privateering expedition against the French when he distinguished himself. In 1696 he sailed out of Plymouth, England in the Adventure Galley which carried 30 guns and 80 men. He carried a privateers commission which charged him to take both French and pirate vessels.
Unfortunately Kidd found pickings slim and his crew became very restless. Kidd then made the mistake of taking a Moorish vessel commanded by an English captain. News spread of his action and Kidd found himself being hunted for piracy. Under pressure from his crew, Kidd threw away all pretense and began to attack ships of all nations. He took an extremely rich prize called the Quedagh Merchant and found himself instantly wealthy.
Robert Kidd was finally apprehended, and in 1701 he was tried and hung. His body was then tarred, covered with chains, and hung outside the harbor as a warning to potential pirates. Rumors abounded that Kidd had secretly buried the captured gold and silver from the Quedagh Merchant, but if he did no one has found it.
Anne Bonney, Mary Read
There were also, believe it or not, a few female pirates.
"Calico Jack Rackham (so named for his colorful clothing) was fond of women. In 1719 this small time pirate met Anne Bonney, the illegitimate daughter of a lawyer, They fell in love and Rackham convinced her to join him on his ship where she dressed as a man. Later Mary Read, who also dressed as a man, joined Anne Bonney on Rackham's ship. The two women also fought as men whenever Rackham's ship went into action.
The British authorities were searching for Rackham and in 1720 they found him. Cruising off Jamaica he was engaged by a heavily-armed privateer. Rackham's ship was boarded and the pirates quickly surrendered.
According to the captain of the privateer the only members of Rackham's crew who put up a fight were Anne Bonney and Mary Read!
The pirates were tried and the male pirates were hung. Anne Barney and Mary Read were also condemned to death, but the sentence was withheld when both women were found to be pregnant. Mary Read died of a fever soon after the trial and all trace has been lost of Anne Bonney and her child.
Richest City in the World
Pirate headquarters in the late 1600s was Port Royal on the island of Jamaica. Jamaica itself was originally colonized by the Spanish in 1509, but it was given little attention. In 1655 Oliver Cromwell sent an expedition of British warships and occupied Jamaica. After Cromwell's death English pirates, driven now from the island of Tortuga by the Spanish, found Port Royal to be the ideal base from which to attack Spanish treasure ships. The governor of Jamaica welcomed them, and British, French, Dutch, and Portuguese pirates received letters of marque authorizing them to attack the Spanish.
Port Royal's harbor, which could hold 500 ships was soon filled. By 1658 Port Royal was a boom town full of brothels, gambling halls, and taverns. In July of 1661 alone forty new tavern licences were issued. There were also a couple of churches, but one clergyman who arrived from England left Port Royal on the same ship, saying "the majority of it's population consists of pirates, cut throats, whores, and some of the vilest people in the whole world".
So much plundered gold and silver poured into Port Royal that at one time the government considered establishing a mint there. Port Royal was now one of the largest and richest cities in the New World. One visitor however, referred to it as the "richest and wickedest city in the entire world."
However, all of this feverish activity came to a sudden halt in 1692 when a devastating earthquake hit Port Royal. Much of the city sank into the ocean with great loss of life. Port Royal never recovered its previous prominence. (Immediately before the earthquake in 1692 Port Royal was nearly twice as large as New York City).
In 1965 salvor and marine archaeologist Robert F. Marx led an expedition to Port Royal to dive on the sunken city. Marx and his divers found a large number of artifacts including pottery, silverware, pewter utensils, arms, and thousands of Spanish colonial coins. These coins are genuine pirate treasure!
Coin Pirates Encountered
What kind of coins did the pirates encounter during their depredations?
Years ago this might have only been a matter of speculation. Now, however, we have the evidence produced by the salvage over the last forty years of many sunken ships to answer this numismatic question. The coins carried by the vessels sunk during the golden age of piracy were the kind of coins which would have been looted by these nefarious brigands.
Some of the salvaged ships were Spanish galleons carrying gold and silver from Spain's New World colonies back to Spain. One coin romanticized in popular culture as the "pirate piece of eight" is the famous Spanish colonial Pillar Dollar. However, these coins were produced on a screw press beginning in 1732, well past the peak period of pirate activity and would not have been encountered by our brigands. The Spanish coins actually encountered during this period would have been Spanish colonial "cobs" (from the Spanish phrase "cabo de barra' meaning "end of the bar"). The cobs were cut from a bar of gold or silver, heated, and hand struck with obverse and reverse dies.
Other ships salvaged were frequently Dutch East Indiamen loaded with chests of silver to be used for trade in the Far East. Coins carried by these ships consisted of both Spanish colonial cobs and Dutch coins.
The salvage of warships of various nations also produced quantities of coins, which generally came from the ship's pay chest or from funds carried to purchase supplies.
Following are some coins recovered from ships sunk during the peak period of piracy. Some had a direct and others an indirect connection to piracy.
Shown here is a 1712 Lima Mint 8 escudos gold cob. This coin was recovered from the wrecks of the 1715 Spanish Treasure Fleet sunk off the coast of Florida during a hurricane. After the disaster the Spanish immediately began salvaging coins and bullion from the wreck site.
Learning of the wreck and salvage efforts, pirate Henry Jennings led several ships to the wreck site. The pirates drove the Spanish from the salvage site and seized 350,000 pesos in gold and silver. This coin is similar to those that Henry Jennings might have plundered from the 1715 Fleet salvage camp.
The 1711 gold one ducat Netherlands coin shown here, Utrecht Mint, was recovered from the wreck of the Dutch East Indiaman De Liefde (The Love). The ship was wrecked on the rocks of the Shetland Islands in 1711.
She was loaded with gold and silver coins to be used for trade in the East Indies. She was taking the northern route around the British Isles to avoid the pirates who were infesting the English Channel.
This coin has a direct connection to pirates! It is a Bolivia 1676 eight reales cob Potosi Mint from the wreckage of the Spanish ship Santa Maria de La Consolacion. She was heavily loaded with silver coins intended for Panama. Soon after leaving port she was pursued by two pirate ships commanded by the famous pirate Bartholomew Sharpe. To save the treasure from the pirates, the Spanish captain ran the ship aground on the rocks of Isle de Muerto (Island of Death), Ecuador in July of 1681. The Spanish then burned the ship, depriving the pirates of the valuable treasure. Enraged, the pirates landed and slaughtered 140 Spanish survivors. The ship's remains were salvaged in 1998 and thousands of coins were raised. These coins actually almost became captured pirate treasure!
Also shown here is a 1668 Spanish Netherlands ducaton, Brabant Mint. It was recovered in 1971 from the wreckage of the Dutch East Indiaman Meeresteijn, sunk off Jutten Island, South Africa in 1702. The ship was about to take on supplies in Capetown. Dutch East Indiamen, loaded with gold and silver, though armed, were attractive targets for pirates. Of great interest to pirate enthusiasts are the two pirate ships located and salvaged in the last 20 years. These wrecks have provided data regarding the arms pirates used, their navigation equipment and tools, and in the case of one of the wrecks, even the type of coins they captured.
The Whydah
The pirate ship Whydah, captained by Captain Samuel (Black Sam) Bellamy, sank in a storm in 1717. Bellamy had captured the ship, a former slaveship, some months earlier. He had also recently captured the Mary Anne, a small merchant ship.
The two ships were both headed up the East Coast, the Whydah following the Mary Anne, during a severe storm. Unfortunately the Mary Anne's cargo was wine, and her crew became roaring drunk. The Mary Anne drove onto the rocks off Wellfleet, Massachusetts and sank. The Whydah, following her lights, also ran ashore and sank. All but six of the crews of the two ships were drowned .The six surviving pirates were captured and hung.
In 1983 salvager Barry Clifford, after a long and difficult search, located the Whydah's remains off Wellfleet. Marine archaeologists openly doubted that Clifford had found the Whydah until he raised a bronze ship's bell which bore the words "Whydah Galley 1716."
Thousands of artifacts were raised from the Whydah, including arms, navigation instruments, and large amounts of silver and gold coins. The coins were primarily Spanish American cobs of various dates and mints.
There was a poignant human interest story revealed during the salvage of the Whydah's wreckage. One of the ships captured by Bellamy had among its passengers a woman named King and her 10-year-old son John.
Against his mother's strong protests the boy supposedly opted to join the pirates. Was this story a legend? Among other human remains the Whydah's salvagers found was a small human leg bone inside a stocking and shoe. Forensic analysis found the bone to be that of a 10- to 11-year old child.
Queen Anne's Revenge
Earlier in this article the career of the most famous pirate of all time, Blackbeard, was discussed. Eleven years ago, the remains of an 18th century shipwreck was discovered off North Carolina's Outer Banks.
Amazingly, after analysis of the artifacts removed from the wreckage, and a study of historical records, it is fairly well established this wreck is that of Blackbeard's ship the Queen Anne's Revenge!
Causing havoc in the Caribbean and the Atlantic Coast from 1716 to 1718, Blackbeard (Edward Teach) was diligently sought by the British Navy. In June of 1718 his flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge ran aground on a sand bar off Beaufort, North Carolina. Unable to move the ship the crew stripped the vessel and abandoned her. Several months later Blackbeard was killed in a battle with British Navy ships.
The marine archaeologists diving on the wreckage found off North Carolina discovered 25 cannon along with anchors and many other artifacts. A commemorative wine glass from the coronation of King George I dates the wreck to no earlier than 1714. Plans are under way to complete a museum that will feature the artifacts from the Queen Anne's Revenge and tell Blackbeard's story.
Pirates and Numismatists
Much has been written about the depredations of those romantic rogues we call pirates. We are familiar with the exploits of the best known buccaneers, and we have learned a great deal about the culture and economics of piracy. However, it was only over the last 40 years or so that salvaged ships began to send up to the surface thousands of specific examples of the kind of coins our pirates would have looted. This numismatic aspect makes pirate tales even more fascinating.
SOURCES
Cawthorne, Nigel A History of Pirates - Blood and Thunder on The High Seas, London: Hartwell Books, Inc. 2005
Cordingly, Nigel Under The Black Flag - The Romance and The Reality of Life Among The Pirates New York: Harcourt Brace and Company. 1995
Ellms, Charles The Pirates New York: Gramercy Books. 1996
Lucie-Smith, Edward Outcasts of The Sea - Pirates and Piracy London: Paddington Press Ltd. 1978
Marx, Robert Pirate Port - The Story of The Sunken City of Port Royal New York: The World Publishing Company 1967
Johnson, Captain Charles A General History of The Robberies and Murders of The Most Notorious Pirates London: Conway Maritime Press 1998 (First published in 1724).
Reichbardt, Tony Searching For Pirates American Archaeology, Vol. 11 No. 2 2007
Ritchie, Robert C. Captain Kidd and The War Against The Pirates Cambribge, Mass; Harvard University Press 1986.
Clifford, Barry and Turchi, Peter The Pirate Prince - Discovering The Priceless Treasures of The Sunken Ship Whydah New York: Simon and Schuster. 1993.
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