WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH A DRUNKEN SAILOR?

Ahoy there- bmk

Even with the extreme sensitivity of geophys equipment today. It would take a survey that would be conducted on 2 ft centers to locate a "suitcase full of gold" . The DeBraak, an early Dutch merchantman was loaded with treasure and sank in an area that would have been just off shore from Zwannendael (now Lewes) Delaware. Surveys and sensing expeditions had been working for yeqrs until some wag discovered a Dutch coin in the surf in the late 1990s . They had forgotten that the beach had eroded by about 2 ft per year since the late 1700s. It was more than 1/2 mile out in the Hen and Chicken shoals (a local bottom grabbing SE trending shoal that trends from Lewes to Cape Henlopen)
I think the final count was about 50 mil in todays bucks. However , stuff like rubies and emeralds, in transit from South American mines were not so easily found.

Great thread!

There aren't any famous Finnish pirates that I am aware of, even though certain areas of Finland, especially the Åland islands, have a long maritime tradition.

The best known privateer in Dutch history was Piet Hein from Delfshaven. Whose career started as son of a merchant captain. He spent a number of years as a slave on a Spanish galley (enough to explain his dislike of the Spanish). After his liberation due to a truce, he became a captain for the Dutch East India company and after that for the West India company. He was issued with letters of privateering and carried out military style attacks on Portugesa and Spanish possessions. His biggest fame he won when in 1628 he conquered a Spanish fleet in the bay of Matanzas and returned home with a treasure in gold and especially silver, amounting to some 12 million guilders, which was a fabulous sum at the time, I saw it converted into todays currency standards once but I don't remember the exact amount except that it was more than a billion and it was a great help in the war effort against the Spanish.

Unfortunately for Piet, he did not live to enjoy his success. In the same year that he turned "legit" and became an admiral in the Dutch navy, he was killed in an engagement with Dunkirk pirates.

Very nice, Setanta. A piece on Sir Henry Morgan should make interesting reading. Personally, I'm more interested in Henry (Long Ben) Avery, Bartholomew Roberts, and L'Onolais (The Cruel). Isn't that a nice mixed bag? Kidd and Blackbeard hardly register when compared to Morgan, Avery, and Roberts.

Buried pirate treasure is largely a myth. They spent it as fast as they got their hands on it, and often the booty was disposed of at less than 10% of its legitimate valuation. Most plundered ships were relatively poor pickings, especially after the treasures of the New World largely dried up. Most of Morgan's raid(s) were on land, not the sea. Now Avery, on the other hand, was part of a combined operation that waylaid a number of the Grand Moguls treasure ships ... all of which carried fantastic amounts of treasure, and Avery presumably died a natural, if anonymous death at home in England.

Look forward to much, much more here.

Enjoying this thread, the history and ships, in particular the sloops as photo images.

This is a very nice and interesting thread.
The ships are beautiful.
I learned about Blackbeard when we were in Hatteras. There was a lady telling folklore about him.
From my childhood I remember Klaus Störtebecker, who was beheaded in Hamburg around 1400.

Quite interesting, too, are the stories about female pirates.

Nice thread Set.

My timbers are well and truly shivered.

I look forward to the next part, me bucko.

Some years ago I was doing research in the records of the British Admiralty Court for New England and I came across an interesting phenomenon, a sort of legalized hijacking (it was not exactly piracy, but close). The customs service, in an attempt to reduce smuggling, (an honorable profession in these part in the 18th century) began to search ships and demand to see their papers at sea. It seems that it thought, probably correctly, that most ships carried multiple (and forged) papers stating port of origin, cargo, owners, etc. So it granted permission to enterprising capitalists (mostly out of Newport) who would outfit a ship and crew and sometimes, but not always, captain them, to intercept New England bound cargos. Most of these "patrol boats" took off immediately for the Caribbean where the pickings were easier, here they would seize ships and take them back to Rhode Island where they would swear before a judge that they had seen papers being tossed out the stern cabin. This was good enough for the judge and the cargo would be seized and handed over to compensate for the effort. Once or twice they did actually catch a smuggler. One in particular I recall was a number of 12 pounders found at the bottom of a hold apparently being smuggled to a French island during King George's war. Some of the ships were New Englanders but oddly, the majority of the miscreants seem to have been Dutch. Most of the booty recovered was sugar and molasses

Avast, McTag . . . you're not related to that wiley Scot, William Kidd, are ye?

FM: For a fascinating tale to take on your cruise, try Farley Mowat, the great Canadian author from the prairies, who wrote a tale of a sunken galleon, a modern salvage ship and a hurricane--The Serpent's Coil: An Incredible Story of Hurricane-Battered ships and the Heroic Men Who Fought to Save Them. He wrote a good deal about the eight years he spent among the savage and charming Newfies, as you can read at this link. He was denied entry to the United States, and although no explanation has been forthcoming, it probably has to do with his environmental actitivism to protect the seas. A vessel of The Ocean's Shepherds group, the ship Farley Mowat, cruises to impede seal- and whale-hunters.

Thanks Mac.

Darn it Paaskynen, you stole one of my tales. I will try to flesh out Piet Heyn, but there isn't much to tell, as you've pointed out. Fabulous stories of pirates for thousands of years in this world. Do you know any tales of Helsingfors pirates, or pirates in the Aland Islands or the bulf of Bothnia? Chip in some stories, if you like.

Thanks Ash, and yes, you've named many on my "short list." I will do Bart Roberts, and l'Ollonais. I agree with you on the careers of the pirates, but Kidd and Teach are probably most famous to Americans, and of course, Jean and Pierre Lafitte, whom i will profile as well. I am saving Henry Morgan for last, as the most successful. Just beforde i do him, i'll do Bart Roberts, who took more shipping, i believe i am correct in stating, than any other pirate whose deeds have been recorded. I want to do Roc Brasiliano (ironically with that name, a Dutchman) and a few others whose names i have to scrape out of my mental broom closet.

Thanks to you Osso and Ul . . . Ul, didn't he sail in the ship Studebaker Hawk? (Bad joke for the older Americans here.)

Walter, the two notorious ladies will be in the next installment.

Thank you, Lordclosehauledanddoublereefed, i hope to have more by tomorrow.

Acq, those Admiralty Courts were originally provided with a local jury, and it is not surprising that they so readily awarded prizes to their neighbors. One of the outrages felt by the watermen of New England after the French and Indian War was that the new Sugar Act removed Admiralty Courts from local jurisdictions, and eliminated the jury. High time for some revolutionary action, eh?

<pssssst, when did Farley Mowat become a prairie boy? He was born in Belleville, close by the hamburgers. Lives in Port Hope now - on the way to the hamburgers from here. He did live in Saskatoon for a while, but he's a valley boy, eh .>your link oh boy

Farley's dad picked up stakes and moved to Saskatchewan when he was just a lad. He grew up on the prairies, and wrote a good many pieces about them, including one of my favorites, The Dog Wore Goggles . . . so there, ya darn ol' girl . . .

(Pssst . . . you read the link, moved to Windsor at age nine, and then to Saskatoon when he was 12. Darn ol' Canajun girls . . . )

Yes indeed, two revenue cutters, the Liberty and the Gaspee mysteriously caught fire in Narragansett Bay shortly thereafter. See the following site for the story and official inquiry. http://gaspee.org/BartlettGaspee.html

I'll fight ya for him.
He's a valley boy.

He did spend some time in the prairies in his mid-to-late teens, til he came back to Ontario to go to U of T, and off to war. Lived on Cape Breton before he came home to the valley, eh.





<I saw what was under his kilt when I was a kid. He was on What's My Line, when the hamburgers took me to a taping of the show when we were in New York, many decades ago. Scarred. Scarred for life, I was. He's a true redhead.>

You are such a dirty girl . . .

Walter, the two ladies who accompanied Calico Jack Rackham were fierce fighters. When the others were condemned, they plead their bellies (i.e., they were pregnant). It is said that as Calico Jack was lead off to the gallows, Anne Bonny shouted after him: "If ye'd fought like a man Calico Jack, ye'd not be goin' to hang like a dog!"

Dotted along the littoral of the Carribean were pirate havens--crude settlements carved from the wilderness, where the more daring smugglers--Spaniard, Dutchman, Frenchman and Englishman--came to buy the booty for a fraction of the already low prices on the Spanish Main. Most would have a resident "Captain," who maintained order with the aid of retired pirates armed with belaying pins (imagine a lead-weighted baseball bat about two feet long) and marlin spikes. Some grew to more than a thousand inhabitants. They often had colorful names: End of the World, Mad Dick's Bones, Ville d'Ouragan (Hurricane City), Plage Noire (Black Beach), Ville du Traitre (City of the Traitor), Lost Harbor . . .

They were magnets for pirates on the run, farm boys marooned by someone's navy for petty theft or assault, prostitutes on the run from cruel pimps, retired Madames who turned their saved coin into great wealth brokering the trade with smugglers--full bosomed fences as it were. Often at the end of a successful cruise, ships of all sizes and shapes would assemble at such a haven for the division of the plunder, and then, with everyone's pockets bulging, and more rum aboard than salt pork, they'd set sail in a body to a wealthy port--Curaçao, Petite Goave, perhaps even Maracaibo--where their sheer numbers and armament prevented military interference, to drink the town dry. Sometimes these ad hoc expeditions turned riotous, and more than once a city was sacked for the imagined slights of the gentry.

walter wrote : "Quite interesting, too, are the stories about female pirates. "

i trust walter will regale us with some stories of how the "female pirates" tortured him during his service for the "fatherland"! hbg

Belleville? As in the Triplets of Bellville??

Do include Long Ben Avery on your list. Contention for who was the "most successful" is pretty much limited to Morgan, Roberts and Avery. Morgan and Avery managed to survive their crimes to enjoy great wealth as "upright" citizens. Roberts, on the other hand, died in combat and his crew were mostly hung by the Admiralty.

Folks tend to romanticize about pirates and the lives they led. In reality, they were mostly drunken petty criminals whose lives tended to be both brutal and short. It is true that life aboard a pirate ship was about as "democratic" as it got in the 17th century. Captains often had unquestioned authority only when the ship was engaged in action. Plunder was apportioned in equal shares, with additional shares given the Captain, the Quartermaster, and as compensation for loss of limbs and eyes. Unfortunately most ships taken held pedestrian cargos like lumber, turpentine, molasses, cotton, indigo, etc. Most commerce in the Atlantic was in trade goods, not the transfere of treasure.

Gold, silver and gems were prized, but difficult to steal in large quantity. The richest prizes were the treasure fleet that transported the stolen wealth from Meso-America to Spain, and the Muslim ships that carried pilgrims to and from Mecca while trading between India and Southwest Asia. Both attracted large numbers of potential pirates, but they were heavily armed and protected. Morgan's richest strikes were raids on Spanish ports. Avery got the bulk of one season's pilgrimage between Mecca and India. Roberts took a lot of ships, but he didn't seem to make much money out of it.

Being wanted criminals for capital crimes, pirates couldn't usually interact freely with "regular citizens". They were welcome in Port Royal and at various pirate settlements in the Caribbean, where loot might be fenced for enough to buy women and drink for a short while. Only a few were able to enter into more profitable deals with gentry. For instance, Morgan had outstanding contacts in England, and Avery managed to blend into English society without being taken.