Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship (17 page)

And they were getting better at their craft. By 1680, pirates were causing great disruption to the legitimate trade moving into and out of Jamaica. The governor called for Royal Navy warships. By 1683, they had arrived, four in all, including the
Ruby
, a 125-foot giant killer that could carry forty-eight cannons and a crew of 150. She anchored at Port Royal and would be directed by Governor Thomas Lynch, who had been charged with destroying the pirate scourge.

But it would take more than just the hoisting of sails for these warships to take on this enemy. More than twelve hundred pirates were thought to be operating out of Port Royal alone. They had faster ships,
could slip into shallower waters, knew the waterways and inlets and escape routes better, and had more experienced captains. And the pirates knew they would hang if they were caught.

Still, the sheer power of the navy frigates was enough to scare many pirates away. To those who remained, the rows of cannons aboard the navy ships anchored in sight of Port Royal spoke a simple truth:
We are the hunters now. You are the prey. It is just a matter of time before we catch you. And when we do
,
you will die.

Governor Lynch sent the warships into heavy patrol, not just around Jamaica but to Hispaniola, Cuba, and other pirate strongholds. Often, the frigates returned empty-handed, but with every cruise they gained experience and savvy. Soon, they were catching pirates, most of whom chose to surrender rather than risk annihilation in battle. Pirates continued to flee from Port Royal and other safe havens; for those who remained, the prospect of the gallows loomed larger than ever. Every month, it seemed, England got better at exterminating these rogues of the sea.

Nevertheless, if a man were willing to go up against the Royal Navy, defy the will of a nation, spit in the face of wealthy merchants and plantation owners, give the middle finger to a governor, and sail in a world increasingly hostile to his kind, he might still make a fortune as a Caribbean pirate. To do it in 1684, however, he would need to be better than good, and brave in exceptional measure.

“And that was when Bannister made his move,” Mattera said. “He had everything, Carolina—respect, admiration, money, a future. He risked it all to turn pirate. Why would he do that?”

His fiancée didn’t answer.

“Carolina?”

Mattera could tell by her breathing she’d fallen asleep. Reaching over, he pulled up her covers and kissed her cheek.

“There was something calling to Bannister,” he said, rolling over and putting his head on his pillow. “It was more than money or power. There was something else going on with this guy.”

T
HE MORE
M
ATTERA LEARNED
about pirates, the more interesting he found their portrayal in Hollywood films and popular culture. Some things the movies depicted were true, others were fantasy, and still others were rarely shown.

Pirates, for example, were not known to make prisoners walk the plank. They found it easier to kill a man by hacking him with a sword or shooting him—and then throwing him overboard, no theatrics required. And they never buried treasure or made maps leading to it; they spent their money, often as fast as they could steal it.

But they did love parrots and taught them to talk, and kept them as pets during voyages. And they went into battle carrying as many weapons as possible—not to look cool but because guns of the day often misfired and took time to reload.

Mattera loved the language of the pirates, and even found a book dedicated to the subject. Pirates never said “Arrgh” or “Shiver my timbers” (which almost certainly originated, like so much supposed pirate language, in Hollywood movies from the 1950s). They did use terms and phrases such as “Ahoy,” “A merry life and a short one,” and several curses, oaths, threats, and greetings, each of which Mattera enjoyed. He scribbled down these favorites to yell at Chatterton when next he saw him:

—Eat what falls from my tail!

—Damn your blood!

—I’ll cleave your skull asunder!

—I’ll cut you in pound pieces!

—I come from hell and I’ll carry you there presently!

Some other things Mattera had learned from the movies turned out to be true as well. Pirates employed hooks and wooden legs as prosthetics, and patches to cover eye sockets, often for injuries suffered in
battle. They wore a range of outfits, from the drab and practical to the most fanciful flourishes of gold, crimsons, blues, and reds, including feathers, gold chains, silk shirts, and velvet trousers. (Often, their getups depended less on sartorial instinct than what they’d recently stolen.) And they swore, drank, gambled, and womanized as if any night might be their last. “Whenever they have got hold of something, they don’t keep it for long,” wrote one contemporary observer. “They are busy dicing, whoring and drinking so long as they have anything to spend. Some of them will get through a good two or three thousand pieces of eight in a day—and next day not have a shirt to their back.” Mattera had known guys like that growing up.

Pirate views on race and gender fascinated Mattera. Black people sailed often on pirate ships during the Golden Age. In fact, black sailors often composed a large minority of men on board. Their status, however, depended on the time. Early in the Golden Age, black men aboard pirate ships were more likely to be slaves—either working as such, or as prisoners captured from ships and to be traded at market. Later in the era, however, many black men aboard pirate ships—perhaps even most of them—were full-fledged pirates, with all the rights and privileges of their white counterparts. They led charges into combat, earned equal pay, stood side by side with Blackbeard himself during battle—all 150 years before slaves became free in the United States.

But for all the racial equality, pirates almost never sailed with women. Just four or five are known to have worked as pirates during the Golden Age. Two of them—Mary Read and Anne Bonny—became famous, dressing as men and fighting alongside one of the most celebrated of all pirate captains, “Calico” Jack Rackham. Almost without exception, pirates viewed the presence of women aboard their ships as a distraction and a potential source of conflict and jealousy. On some pirate ships, the penalty for secreting a woman aboard was death.

Mattera could not get enough of these men. He absorbed pirate
customs, cataloged their weapons, diagrammed their ships. All the while, he marveled at their criminal instincts. Wherever he looked he saw Gambino in them.

Like the gangsters Mattera had known growing up, the pirates worked to avoid violence and fighting. It wasn’t because they were frightened (they weren’t) or believed they couldn’t win (they almost always had bigger crews, stronger fighters, and better weapons than their prey). It was because bloodshed was bad for business. A battle at sea could result in casualties, ruin plunder, even cost the pirates their own ship. It also attracted the attention of the law. To steal quietly always paid best.

Most pirate victims understood whom they were dealing with and gave up on the spot. For their cooperation, they often were treated fairly, even generously. But there were also those who, for money or principle or pride, tried to flee or put up a fight. That’s when the pirates rained down their particular brand of terror, one designed to echo across oceans.

By squeezing a man’s eyes from their sockets, roasting him on a baking stone, or extracting and eating his still-beating heart, pirates did more than punish resistors or force them to turn over hidden booty. They also sent a message to the rest of the world:
Do not struggle against us. We are crazy. It always ends better if you just go along.
To guarantee they were heard, they often spared a lucky few, sending them home to spread the terrible word.

Not every pirate captain tortured or punished resistors so cruelly. But enough of them did it enough of the time that by the seventeenth century, the only weapon a pirate often needed was the design sewn into his flag. Unmistakable even at great distances, it announced not a fait accompli, but that a choice was at hand.

Mattera lost himself in these stories. Still, he was looking for something even deeper about pirates—for an insight into their lives. So he began asking a different kind of question, one he’d posed to every interesting person he’d met since he was a boy: How did you get here?
The voices that began sounding from inside his books began to tell a singular story.

A
YOUNG
E
NGLISHMAN OF
the late seventeenth century might expect to earn his living as a farmer or carpenter or baker. If he were good with his hands he might become a tailor or a smith. But if he had a strong constitution and an appetite for adventure, he could step off the end of his country and find work on one of the many merchant ships that carried cargo and passengers to a world that was expanding by the day. A merchant seamen visited strange lands, stared down nature, saw places and creatures his peers could scarcely imagine. In the process, he learned to become a first-rate mariner, able to navigate treacherous waters and find his way by the stars.

It could be the hardest of lives. Often, the work was backbreaking, the conditions miserable, and the pay barely enough to survive. Perhaps worst of all, merchant captains exercised absolute authority over their crews, often treating them brutally and holding back what little salary they earned. If anyone objected—and even when they did not—the captain might whip, torture, imprison, or starve them. Much of this treatment was protected by admiralty law, which granted a captain near autocratic power over his crew. Such laws were deemed necessary to maintain order (and profitability) aboard the ships, but such unchecked authority opened doors to abuse and created a legion of predators at the helm.

Aggrieved seamen might leave the trade, but those who desired to stay at sea had few options. One was to join the navy, where provisions and pay were a bit better, and the workloads more humane. Discipline, however, might be even more severe aboard a navy ship. And there was always the chance a sailor might die in battle for a cause he might not agree with, or even understand.

The other option lay in the shadows. It called to the daring and it promised a far different life. To find it, a merchant sailor need only
step to the other side of the harbor, to the other side of the world, to where the pirates lived, to the place where a common man could turn king.

Many pirates became wealthy, earning hundreds or even thousands of times more than a merchant seaman, sometimes overnight. They formed large crews, often exceeding one hundred, making for easier workloads and more carefree environments. They chased adventure, became comrades, lived life on their terms. Cruelty by pirate captains was almost unknown.

Of course, there were dangers to turning pirate, especially in the late seventeenth century. They risked life and limb on every voyage, and often hanged for their crimes. Still, if a man possessed a certain boldness, if he dreamed for himself glorious things, chancing the gallows made sense. By Bannister’s time, nearly three-quarters of all pirates came from the ranks of the merchant seamen, strong young men adept at sea, tired of bad treatment, and with little to lose. That made them a formidable force before they ever left port, a gang of the angry who, on the right day and with the right leader, might even take on the Royal Navy.

O
F ALL
M
ATTERA
’
S PIRATE BOOKS
, the one he loved most was the oldest and tiniest,
The Buccaneers of America
, written by onetime pirate Alexandre Exquemelin, and first published in 1678. It was skinny enough to pocket, so he took it on a trip to the grocery store one morning with Carolina. Flipping through pages while Carolina inspected the produce, he found this sentence: “When a ship has been captured, the men decide whether the captain should keep it or not.”

“Carolina!” he called.

“
Siento
—sorry,” he said to startled customers, then made his way past the bananas and papayas until he could whisper in Carolina’s ear.

“I think I’ve got it. I think I found what I’ve been looking for.”

At his apartment, he tore through Exquemelin and other books.
He’d been through many of these volumes before, but always for the swashbuckling stuff. This time, he turned to the chapters on pirate organization and politics. He’d always presumed them to be the dreariest sections. From the moment he began reading, they opened his eyes.

B
EFORE EVERY VOYAGE
,
PIRATES
gathered together to commit an unthinkable act: They made every crewman an equal. From the greenest of lookouts to the captain himself, no one would own rights over any other or possess privileges unavailable to all. The men would eat the same meals, earn similar wages, share the same quarters. The captain would exercise absolute authority only in battle; at other times, he would guide the ship according to the pleasure of the crew.

And that was just the start of the madness.

Having made everyone equal, the pirates now put almost everything to a vote. To choose where to stalk prey, they voted. To decide whether to attack a target, they voted. To determine the rules of the ship, the punishment for wrongdoers, division of booty, to maroon or shoot traitors, they voted. And every man’s vote counted the same.

One might have expected these men, who lived lawless lives in the shadow of gallows, to cast their ballots in unpredictable ways. Yet, time and again through the decades that spanned their Golden Age, the pirates seemed to vote exactly alike. Mattera could see the patterns right away. Using his orange highlighter, he began underlining rules that seemed to govern every pirate ship that sailed in the era:

—Captains were to earn no more than two or three times that of the lowliest deckhand.

—Every man was to have an equal share of food, liquor, and other provisions.

—Battle injuries would be compensated according to body part. On one pirate ship, damages were paid as follows:

Lost right arm	600 pieces of silver or six slaves
Lost left arm	500 pieces of silver or five slaves
Lost right leg	500 pieces of silver or five slaves
Lost left leg	400 pieces of silver or four slaves
Lost eye (either one)	100 pieces of silver or one slave
Lost finger	100 pieces of silver or one slave
Internal injury	up to 500 pieces of silver or five slaves
Lost hook or peg leg	Same as if original limb was lost

—Anyone caught stealing from the ship’s plunder would be punished, including by being marooned on an uninhabited island.

—Anyone caught cheating another crewman would have his ears and nose slashed by the aggrieved party, then turned out at the next port.

—No women were allowed on board. Anyone sneaking a woman onto the ship would be killed.

—Disputes between crewmen would be settled onshore by duel.

—Bonuses would be awarded for courage in combat, the sighting of prey, boarding a target ship first, and other heroics.

—Punishments would be inflicted for cowardice, drunkenness, insolence, disobedience, rape, and any other action that undermined the ship’s primary purpose—to steal.

—Any unsettled issues would be put to a vote.

—Every man’s vote carried equal weight.