The Pirates of the New England Coast 1630-1730 and Every Day Life in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
9781465588517
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Why did men go a-pirating, or “on the account” as the pirates called it? The sailors said it was few ships and many men, hard work and small pay, long voyages, bad food and cruel commanders. “Hard ships make hard men.” “Many sailed but few returned.” “No kind words on deep water.” “No law off soundings.” “We live hard and die hard and go to Hell afterwards.” These are some of the sea sayings that have come down to us from long ago, and they go to prove that the narrow channel of sailor men was narrow indeed and full of rocks and shoals which could only be cleared by very careful steering. The sea was ever a hard calling, especially in the days of which this work treats. The men before the mast were little better than slaves: “Growl you may but go you must” was the saying. Small pay (which they “earned like horses and spent like asses”), scanty food and often stinking water with generally hard usage turned many an honest sailorman into a desperate pirate. Sea captains thought it good policy to keep their men as “busy as the Devil in a gale of wind” to prevent them doing a job o’ work for that Gentleman with the long tail, who, it was said, took especial interest in the doings of “those who go down to the sea in ships.” “Six days shalt thou labour as hard as thou art able, the seventh, holy-stone the main deck and chip the chain cable.” Capt. Thomas Phillips wrote in 1693, that “nothing grates upon the seamen more than pinching their bellies, or treating them with cruel or reproachful words.” One can easily imagine a group of hard-bitten men sheltering under the lee of the long boat on a dirty night; wet, cold and tired; listening with hungry interest to the yarns of an “old stander” who had been “on the account,” telling of the time he sailed with Bart Sharp or “Long Ben” Avery; picturing with many a brave oath, that other channel, the broad one, straight, with smooth water, pieces-of-eight to port, dollars and doubloons to starboard, snug harbors in tropic isles, dusky maids, punch, tobacco and grub in plenty, laced coats and chains of gold. There is another side to the picture, not so pleasant, to be sure, but easily dimmed by a noggin of rum or a swig or two of flip. ’Tis naught, after all, but the yard-arm of a man-of-war with a man on the end of a tricing line with his flippers seized to his sides; and on a seashore, a wooden erection with a something hanging—something that looks uncommonly like a sailorman, watching, with wry face, the ebbing and flowing of the tide. But there’s nothing in the picture to make one of the right sort go about ship. Better a short choking sensation than a long starving in merchants’ employ or scurvy rotting for a pay ticket on board a king’s ship. Capt. Charles Johnson tells us in his book on pirates, that one “Mary Read, a female pirate, being asked by her captain, before he knew she was a woman, why she followed a life so full of danger and at last to the certainty of being hanged, replied: as to the hanging she thought it no great hardship, for were it not for that every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so infest the seas that men of courage would starve. That if it was put to her choice she would not have the punishment less than death, the fear of which kept dastardly rogues honest; that many of those who were now cheating the widows and orphans and oppressing their poor neighbors who had no money to obtain justice, would then rob at sea and the ocean would be as crowded with rogues as the land, so that no merchant would venture out and the trade in a little time would not be worth following.”
