Edward Teach, or Blackbeard as he is more widely known, is one of the best known pirates in history.

He was an immense man, extremely brave with exceptional strength, but was also cruel and sadistic. On one occasion he shot off his Mate’s knee for his own amusement. Another time, with all his crew, he burned brimstone in the hold with the hatches closed to simulate hell. He was the last man out. He grew a long plaited black beard to cover his face and tied ribbons in it for more effect. Carrying six pistols, three on each side, this massive figure with hair and beard aflame with firebrands boarded the ships that were his prey, striking terror into their crews. Daniel Defoe likened him to a ‘frightful meteor and frightened America more than any Comet.’

Early in his career he captured a French merchant ship in the Bahamas and liked the French ship so much that he chose to use it as his own, renamed ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’, with which he subsequently challenged and captured various other merchant ships.

The British, in the meantime, had heard of Blackbeard’s acts of piracy and sent a warship with heavy artillery to capture him and his ship. Unfortunately, the ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’ proved too much of a match for the warship which, badly damaged, had to limp into port.

The King of England made an effort to end all piracy by offering complete pardon to any pirate who would voluntarily give himself up; when Blackbeard heard this he blockaded the port of Charleston, determined to let the authorities know that he was in command of the ports and he was not about to relinquish his title or let any of his comrades give themselves up.

Eventually Blackbeard did give himself up and became a respectable citizen; he married and became Mr Edward Teach but, being a man of rich tastes, soon ran out of money and returned again to piracy.

In 1718, when attempting to take a rich prize, Blackbeard finally met his match in the shape of two British naval vessels lying in the James River, and knew that it would be difficult for them to manoeuvre in the river’s close confines. However, Lieutenant Robert Maynard and a Captain Gordon set out in two small sloops with their men and guns ready. They used long sweep oars and approached the pirate ship that had her flag raised. Unfortunately, one of the sloops ran aground, leaving only Maynard to fight Blackbeard. Maynard and his crew steered their little ship straight at Blackbeard’s and steeled themselves for the worst.

After a short battle the two men met head on and fired their pistols at each other. Blackbeard’s shot missed its target but Maynard’s shot went deep into Blackbeard’s chest, although he continued fighting until another British sailor struck him with his sword and he dropped dead at last.

Legend has it that after his head was cut off and his body thrown overboard, it defiantly swam round the ship before finally sinking out of sight.

by Terry Took © 2015

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

Hollywood depicts female pirates as swashbuckling women as fierce as their male counterparts, which many people think is a product of the fertile minds of the writers. Not so, as there are many recorded instances of women being on pirate ships who were as ruthless as any of the men.

Anne Bonny and Mary Read, when captured and tried for their crimes, pleaded ‘their bellies’ as both were pregnant at the time of their trial and, under English Law, could not be sent to the gallows. These two are the most famous, perhaps because they both served on the same ship and were eventually brought to trial in Jamaica.

Anne Bonny was reputedly the illegitimate daughter of an Irish lawyer and the family maid who fled to America after the scandal of Anne’s birth. In her early teens Anne eloped with her pirate lover James Bonny, who turned informer when the governor of the Bahamas offered pardons to all pirates. Disgusted by his weakness she then tried a variety of men but finally took up with Calico Jack Rackham, named for the striped trousers he always wore. He dressed her in men’s clothing and together they went pirating aboard a merchant ship stolen from Nassau harbour.

Dressed in pantaloons and wearing a cutlass, Anne fought like fury and more than held her own with any male opponent.

Aboard one of the many ships Calico Jack and Anne Bonny captured was a young Dutch sailor who soon confided to Anne that she too was a woman in a man’s clothing. This was Mary Read, whose mother had passed her off as a boy and Mary saw no reason to reveal the fraud until later in life, thinking that a man’s life was easier than a woman’s and consequently served in both the Dutch and the English navies.

Soon after being discovered Mary agreed to sign the pirate ‘articles’ aboard Calico Jack’s ship and both women, as witnesses swore at their trial, “fought ferociously in combat dressed in men’s jackets and long trousers with handkerchiefs tied about their heads”. A female witness added that “they cursed and swore at the men to murder me to prevent my bearing witness against them”. The master of a sloop which the pirates took testified that “Anne Bonny had a gun in her hand and both women were very profligate, cursing and swearing and ready to do anything”.

Both of them were captured in October 1720, when a British Naval vessel surprised Calico Jack’s pirates off the Jamaican coast. The pirates, together with Calico Jack, were all drunk and hid in the hold while the two women fought their attackers like hellcats with pistols, cutlasses and machetes whilst screaming at their shipmates, “Come up and fight like men!”.

On his way to the gallows with his men, Calico Jack is reported to have said, “If instead of these weaklings I’d only had more women with me!”.

Mary Read died of fever in prison before her baby could be born whilst Anne Bonny went free with her child a year later.

by Terry Took © 2015

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

Piracy, alongside prostitution and medicine, is one of the world’s oldest professions and is recorded long before Julius Caesar’s day but he was amongst the most notable men to be captured by pirates. In 78 BC pirate bands were dominant in the Mediterranean Sea with many governments paying them tribute giving them free rein to their activities.

On being exiled from Rome for supporting the party of his uncle Marius, Gaius Julius Caesar decided to go to Rhodes to take elocution lessons from the great orator, Apolonius Molon. However, a pirate galley seized his ship whilst on voyage off the coast of Caria in Asia Minor and jailed Caesar, with other passengers, in crudely built huts whilst demanding a ransom be paid for them.

Caesar spent his time reading and practising javelin throwing, and even wrote poetry until his friends sent fifty talents some thirty eight days later. This was double the amount that the pirates demanded because Caesar himself said that twenty five talents was not enough for a man of his status. Showing the strength, arrogance and boldness that characterised him for the rest of his life, he vowed that he would have their lives for his kidnapping. No one had ever threatened them before as they were virtually immune from prosecution.

Caesar persuaded one of his friends, the legate of Miletus (an ancient Greek city on the West coast of Anatolia in Turkey) to provide soldiers and ships for him to attack his erstwhile captors. As soon as the fleet was assembled he sailed and reached Pharmacussa, a small island in the Aegean Sea close to the mainland of Asia Minor (now Turkey), late at night when the pirates were sleeping off the effects of drunken celebrations. He found them stretched out in front of their campfires and captured all of them without a struggle.

Caesar had vowed that the pirates would be executed but he now discovered that they were protected by Junius , the powerful praetor (governor) of Asia Minor who had agreed to leave the pirates alone if they did not attack any Roman commercial ships. Amazed at Caesar’s presumption but rather fearing his political influence – he was, after all, to eventually become the ruler of Rome – Junius promised that he would decide when he returned to Pergamus.

This was not good enough for Caesar who was too impatient to wait this decision, so went to Pergamus and informed the acting praetor there that Junius had ordered the pirates to be punished. Julius Caesar’s presence was so strong that the man did not dare to ask for written orders and Caesar’s vow came true.

The pirates were all crucified on the same day.

by Terry Took © 2015

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

When stealing a ship, pirates looked for the two things that they needed, speed and power.  Due to the nature of their ‘trade,’ very few pirates had ships built for them. However, they used many types of vessels but western pirates favoured the three masted square rigged ship, the brigantine or the schooner.

A 350 ton square rigger, although relatively slow, was favoured for long voyages, there being enough space on board for 200 crew, ample hold space for loot and it could carry 20 cannons.

The brigantine was the favourite of many of the pirate captains as it was a very versatile vessel with two masts and carried up to 100 men and 10 cannon. This vessel was some 80 feet long and about 150 tons and considerably faster than the square rigger.

Enabling the pirates to navigate shallow waters only five feet or so deep, where they could hide in shallow watered coves or bays, the two masted schooners were fast and could sail at 11 knots in a good breeze. This allowed the pirates to escape when being chased. The schooner, at about 100 tons, could accommodate about 75 men and was also big enough to carry eight cannon.

An interesting ship was that of Captain Kidd which was a fully rigged ship named ‘Adventure Galley,’ so named because she had her sides pierced to carry 23 pairs of long oars. Built in England in 1695 she carried a crew of 150 men and weighed 287 tons with an armament of 34 cannon. The ‘Adventure Galley’ could, despite her size and weight, sail at 14 knots (about 16 miles per hour) and could even make three knots when being rowed in a dead calm.

She was one of most up to date ships of her day, with 3,200 square yards of canvas under full sail and had an anchor weighing 3,000 pounds with 6,000 pounds of cable. (Even on modern ships, the anchor is only there to hold the cable which is what actually moors the vessel.) The difference is that on the ‘Adventure Galley,’ the anchor and cable had to be heaved in by man power, one of the reasons why these old vessels had to have a large crew. Today, everything is done by machinery, obviously necessary. To give an example, one of the ships I sailed on had 25 ton anchors backed up with about 400 tons of cable.

Pirate ships usually far outclassed the heavily laden merchant ships as their owners would not foot the expense of fitting them out with many, if any, guns. Consequently the pirates were very pleased when they found one of these lumbering vessels on the high seas and could take them and their cargoes at will.

Conversely, they were usually outclassed by the Royal Navy’s men-of-war, heavily armed frigates and sloops, and could only hope to outrun these very well built vessels with their well trained crews.

Few pirates had long careers at their chosen trade when the Navy had them in their sights.

by Terry Took © 2014

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.

 

In the words of Daniel Defoe, pirate flags were designed to ‘strike terror upon all beholders’.

The first to appear was the red flag of the early buccaneers or privateers, which was rumoured to be dyed with blood and warned any merchant ship that the pirates would show no mercy if they encountered any resistance. The black flag, most often associated with pirates was not used until 1700 or thereabouts. At this time pirates raised a black flag to advise the enemy that good quarter would be given. If resistance was met, the bloody red flag was raised to show that the offer of quarter was withdrawn. However, there was a wide variety of flags beside the traditional one of the skull and cross bones, which had been the symbol of death since medieval times.

‘Calico Jack’ Rackham’s flag depicted a skull leering over crossed sabres. French pirate, Emmanuel Wynne, used a sable ensign with cross bones, a death’s head and an hourglass. The hourglass meant that time was running out. The pirate John Quilch’s flag showed a man with an hourglass in one hand and a dart in the heart with three drops of blood dripping from the other hand. A flag of ‘Black Bart,’ Bartholomew Roberts showed a pirate standing next to death, each holding a hand on an hourglass. Christopher Condent’s pennant contained three skull and crossbones.

The infamous Blackbeard’s flag showed the skeleton of the devil holding an hourglass and pointing a spear at a red heart that dripped blood, whilst Captain Edward Low’s flag featured a red skeleton on a black background.

Why the traditional black pirate flag was, and is, called the ‘Jolly Roger’ remains a mystery, but many people think that the name was first given to the red flag by French Buccaneers who called it the ‘jolie rouge’ (pretty red). This was changed by English pirates to Jolly Roger and the name was transferred to the black flag. Although, perhaps, the Jolly Roger may derive from the English word ‘roger’ which, in the seventeenth century, meant a rogue or devil.

Yet another explanation has the Jolly Roger deriving from the Tamil title ‘Ali Raja’, which means King of the Sea and was widely used in the eastern seas. According to this theory English pirates may have pronounced Ali Raja as Ally Roger or Olly Roger and thence to Jolly Roger. However, this theory seems a little far fetched but, as in many of these types of theory, almost anything is possible.

Whatever flags the old time pirates used and whatever they were named, they struck fear into the hearts of many a ship’s crew and passengers, as there was little mercy given by the pirates who were intent, in the first instance, of making themselves rich at the expense of others.

Modern pirates such as the Somalis use sophisticated weapons and do not show any flags, but still strike terror into the hearts of innocent seafarers.

by Terry Took © 2014

Terry Took was born in Yorkshire but has lived in Tynemouth for over 50 years. He spent 45 years in the Merchant Navy which included 27 years as North Sea Pilot. He then spent five years as a lecturer at the Marine Department of South Tyneside College.

He is now an Elder Brother in Trinity House and Marine Director.

If you have any comments or would like to contact Terry then please e-mail him at pilotone@pilotone.plus.com.