Pirates in the News! June 6, 2008

This week one has to give due respect to Canada, which not only has a Navy, but one in the Gulf of Aden that actually intervened in a pirate attack successfully. See here and here.

"I am convinced that the presence of our aircraft drove them away from the traffic lanes and prevented any further attack today on merchant shipping in the area," said Cmdr. Kelly Larkin, commanding officer of the multi-purpose frigate.

"We continued to monitor those two skiffs and their crew as they were heading back toward Somalia territorial waters."

The Canadian Frigate took images of the skiffs as they ran back to coastal waters, just another example of the multinational efforts in place around the Gulf of Aden.

Moving west, Nigeria is in trouble, this isn't exactly a surprise when you're a fixture in a weekly digest of pirate news, but there are issues tangential to piracy that are plaguing this African nation. Among others, Food shortages are hitting Nigeria hard, and increased piracy is hurting Nigeria's fishing industry (second only to oil, also hit by piracy).

In New York City, a man was arrested for carrying a pirate sword into Macy's Department Store. The man claimed he was on his way to a kickball game where his team of pirates plays, which is likely, many of the hip young moderns play kickball, even the "Paper of Record" has reported on the craze.

Prince William of England is going to take a few months with the Royal Navy this summer in the North Atlantic and Caribbean. The serious article is entertaining, but is it as entertaining as....
No. Probably not as entertaining.

Finally, if your grandmother doesn't have a navy for you to join if you yearn for adventure and you have a few thousand dollars to throw around, just take a nuclear powered ice-breaker to the North Pole.

Distances between Caribbean Islands

Here's an interesting Chart that gives some distances between Caribbean Islands. Think about that next time you watch Pirates of the Caribbean!

Distances between Islands

Calico Jack Rackam, Anne Bonney and Mary Read

Easily one of the most colorful famous pirates, "Calico Jack" Rackam was known by the colorful clothes he wore. What makes him famous however is two members of his crew, Anne Bonney and Mary Read.

Making a name for himself as Quartermaster on Captain Vane's ship until Vane was ousted and Calico Jack was elected captain. Rackam then plied the pirate trade around Jamaica with some small success. He made his way to the Bahamas and met Anne Bonney, they courted in earnest and when she became pregnant he sent her to friends in Cuba to care for her. Their money eventually ran low and Calico Jack convinced Anne to join him on the high seas, disguised as a man. They plundered small merchant vessels sailing from island to island in the West Indies. After her ship was captured Mary Read, disguised as a man, joined the crew. The two women bonded closely because among other things they clearly had in common, they were both pregnant.

While they mostly pirated small-time vessels when they stole the sloop, William, from Nassau Harbor, they drew the Governor's undivided attention. They were captured and taken to Jamaica for trial. Calico Jack was hanged, but Anne and Mary both escaped the noose because of their pregnancies, the innocent child being protected from execution by English Common Law.

Anne's response to her husband's death is recorded in Defoe's General History of the Pyrates,

that she was sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a man, he need not have been hanged like a dog.

Mary Read died in prison, either from a fever or from childbirth. Anne Bonney, however, did not stay in prison forever, there is evidence that her father ransomed her and she returned home to South Carolina.

Evidence provided by the descendants of Anne Bonny suggests that her father managed to secure her release from gaol and bring her back to Charles Town, South Carolina, where she gave birth to Rackam's second child. On 21 December 1721 she married a local man, Joseph Burleigh, and they had eight children. She died in South Carolina, a respectable woman, at the age of eighty-four and was buried on 25 April 1782.

Pirates in the Caribbean- Captain Edward "Blackbeard" Teach

Captain Edward “Blackbeard” Teach (1680-1718)

An English Pirate, Blackbeard began his career on privateers sailing in the Caribbean during the War of Spanish Succession. He worked his way through the ranks of sailors and was given his command when his former Captain retired.

He chose pirating over privateering and earned a reputation for cruelty attacking the Atlantic Coast and West Indies.

He was 6’ 4” and noted for weaving hemp into his beard and lighting it aflame during battle. He is depicted in paintings as having numerous weapons of all kinds on him and is the archetypical pirate.

He kept his headquarters in the Bahamas and the Carolinas and was eventually brought down with a detachment of the English Navy sent from Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Maryland.

He died in combat after being shot 5 times, stabbed more than 20 and finally beheaded.

Pirates in the Caribbean- Stede Bonnet

Stede Bonnet is often referred to as "The Gentleman Pirate" turned to piracy later in life. A wealthy landowner, he had some militia experience as a young man but mostly lived high on the hog in Barbados for years. Unfortunately, his career as a planter was marked by failures and at the age of 29 he put together a ship and a crew and set his sights on brigandage. Caribbean

"There is also or has been lately over on the [North American] Coast, a pirate sloop from Barbados commanded by one Major Bonnet, who has an Estate on that island," Candler wrote his superiors in London in the summer of 1717. "The sloop is his own. This advice I had from a letter from thence, that in April last [1717] he ran away out of Carlisle Bay in the night and had aboard 126 men and 6 guns... and ammunition enough."

-Captain Benjamin Candler of the HMS Winchelsea

His ship, The Revenge, plied the coasts around Barbados and along the Eastern American Seaboard until he was seriously injured on his way to Nassau. In Nassau he met Blackbeard, and most of his crew defected to join Blackbeard's crew aboard Queen Anne's Revenge. For a time while he was recovering, Bonnet joined Blackbeard aboard his ship as a guest.

The next summer he set out again, this time as a privateer commissioned by the Governor of North Carolina to plunder Spanish shipping. He adopted the alias "Captain Thomas" and changed his ship's name to the Royal James. While the ship was being careened on the Cape Fear River, a group of pirate hunters from South Carolina led by Captain William Rhett captured Bonnet and his crew after a battle of a few hours.

Bonnet was hanged for two counts of piracy on December 10, 1718 in Charleston.