Fox

Excellent! Exactly the kind of conversation I was hoping to stimulate Actually, a lot more people could vote than is generally assumed. It varied from region to region, and in some areas the vote was heavily restricted, but in the early 17th century (1621 I think, but don't quote me) a Parliamentary commission determined that unless there was a local by-law to the contrary every adult male had the right to elect their Parliamentary representative. Almost no voting on board Naval ships, and only occasional voting on merchant ships. Voting was not uncommon on privateers. However, the important point to consider here is that no pirate had spent his entire life at sea, every pirate had experience of both land-based and maritime society, so in order to properly contextualise pirate practices it is important to look at both. That's a very important point. Pirate fulfilled two roles on their ship. In the first place they were the crew and as such followed the orders of their superior officers (in theory at least). However, they were also the owners of their ship, and in legitimate society ship owners had some say in the running of the vessel, either directly or by means of an elected group of managers - pirates used both methods at different times, sometimes the whole crew had a say in the running of the ship, sometimes they chose a group of 'managing owners'. Sometimes pirate ships were run by the officers in just the same manner as in the Navy. Roberts', Lowther's and Phillips' articles are all in the GHP, Low's articles are in the Boston News Letter and the trial of Harris' crew. These, I presume are the four you (and everyone else) are familiar with. In addition, the articles of John Taylor (which I have posted before somewhere), John Gow, Thomas Anstis, Nicholas Clough, and George Cusack have survived in full, and Davis' articles have survived in part in various sources. These are the ten I was referring to. Kidd's privateering articles have been preserved and appear to have remained in force after he turned to piracy, as may have Tew's. Yes, and his articles are also very unusual. My point exactly! Quite. Pirates had a great deal of freedom to drink and swear which sailors in other services did not (while on ship at least, on shore was a different matter). Apart from those two things I can't think of any 'freedoms' that pirates had that other sailors did not, and in some cases they had greater restrictions. Hardly the romantic 'freedom of the seas'. Amity. Non-payment of wages (or under-payment) was a much more common complaint of seamen than physical brutality, and was a much bigger problem in the Navy than it was for merchant ships. Merchant shipmasters were much better at paying wages for the simple reason that they relied on wages to attract the best seamen. There are, of course, exceptions such as the ones you mentioned, but they were exceptions. In the case of Every's crew, the mutinous sailors believed they were entitled to wages half-way through the voyage, while their contracts show that in fact they were mistaken. Articles of War is a much later term. In the GAoP the Navy was regulated by Printed Instructions, which were same in peacetime as wartime. Generally (though by no means always) ships on home service were paid off at the end of each year and the whole or majority of the ship's company were discharged together. In peace time the RN relied on volunteers to man the few ships kept in service and one would assume (reasonable!) that volunteers were less likely to be troublesome. This is possibly one of the reasons that there were so few desertions to pirate ships from naval vessels: pirates generally flourished in peacetime when the calibre of RN crews was generally much higher. (The big reason of course is that there was simply less interaction between pirates and the Navy than between pirates and merchant ships, and when there was interaction it tended to involve the Navy blowing holes in the pirates' ship, which I guess would discourage desertion).

Following on from some posts in the Jacobite Politics thread, I thought a thread about busting some pirate myths might be quite interesting. I'm not talking about the superficial myths like whether pirates wore eyepatches so they could see better below decks, or reenactor myths like whether they wore bucket boots, but deeper myths about who pirates were, and what they did. Some of these have been discussed elsewhere, so this will be more of a consolidation, but some are (I think) new. Feel free to add others. Pirates' pay scales were extremely egalitarian compared with other maritime trades and 18th century society. On the face of it the division of loot specified in pirate articles was fairly egalitarian, with captains receiving between 1 (Anstis) and 2.5 (Clough) shares, while their men received 1 share. By contrast, a captain of a Royal Navy 6th rate ship (roughly equivalent in size to a 'typical' pirate ship) received 7 times the pay of an ordinary seaman and some privateer captains received 10 times the pay of the their crewmen. However, in other maritime trades the disparity was less marked: masters of New England fishing vessels typically received between 1 and 2 shares; captains of London merchant ships in war time received, on average, only 2.2 times the pay of the crew; and 2 shares was not untypical for many privateer captains. Moreover, not all pirates received a full share, and forced men often received nothing at all. Pirates routinely voted on various matters, and pirate society was more democratic than legitimate society. Pirates sometimes voted on important decisions, but by no means always. Even when a vote was taken there was no guarantee that it would be adhered to. For example, when Samuel Burgess voted on whether the ship he was quarter-master of should sail West to the Pacific or East to Madagascar the result was overwhelmingly in favour of the Pacific, however the officers had all voted for Madagascar and being the only ones who could actually navigate sailed for Madagascar. Bartholomew Roberts' articles specify that every man shall have a vote in affairs of the moment, but in fact, by the time forced men, boys, slaves, soldiers in the company are taken into account, none of whom were allowed to vote, suffrage in Roberts' company was only extended to around 46% of the company. Roberts' articles are the only set surviving to mention the right to vote, others specify that officers are to be obeyed: John Gow's articles say that the crew should obey Gow as if he were the captain of a merchant ship and they 'under monthly pay'. Neither was voting and democratic practice unique to pirates at the time, by any means. Voting was extremely common in legitimate society on local issues (and everything that occurred on a pirate ship must be considered a 'local' issue), and in many cases, such as the New England town meeting, suffrage was much wider in legitimate society than in pirate society. In Pennsylvania it was written into the charter that everyone who paid tax had the right to vote in elections. Pirates always voted for their officers. Analysis of the career paths of 82 pirate captains between 1660 and 1730 shows only 23.2% elected by the crew (though in fact the actual number may be slightly higher). Pirates created a welfare system that was far in advance of its time. Several sets of articles specify lump-sum payouts from the communal fund for members of the company injured in action. Only one or two records exist of pirates actually receiving this 'smart money', but it's quite likely that other cases went unrecorded. However, pirates got the idea for the system from legitimate seafaring. At least as early as the beginning of the 16th century the Trinity House Guild for sailors had collected a portion of its members wages to pay for the upkeep of almshouses and a hospital for the use of injured seamen, and in 1588 English Admirals Drake and Hawkins instituted the 'Chatham Chest' into which all Royal Navy sailors paid a monthly sum of 6d from their wages and which provided pensions for injured seamen. By the end of the 17th century ALL English sailors, regardless of their service, paid into the Greenwich fund, which maintained the Greenwich Hospital for seamen and paid pensions to injured sailors. Many pirates went 'on the account' to escape the brutality inherent in the Royal Navy and merchant ships. Some pirates said that that was their motivation. In the Royal Navy and East India Company vessels the most lashes that a captain could order on his own authority was 12. On other merchant ships floggings were rare, though most seamen accepted that a certain amount of disciplinary violence, such as a couple of blows with fist or cane was concomitant with the maintenance of discipline. By contrast the lowest number of lashes specified in any pirate articles was 39, and some records speak of pirate 'criminals' receiving hundreds of lashes from the rest of the company. Pirates revelled in unparalleled freedom. 10 surviving sets of pirate articles contain 72 clauses between them (many of them duplicated in several sets of articles: division of shares, for example, is covered by 6 surviving clauses). Only two explicitly guarantee some kind of freedom (Roberts' right to vote and Anstis' right to seek a pardon), while 25 actively restrict various freedoms such as drinking, gambling, womanising, freedom of speech or leaving the company. In addition, pirates are known to have had rules not covered by surviving articles, such as the rule on Bellamy's ship that nobody was allowed to right anything down unless it was pinned to the mast so that everyone could read it. In Taylor's company it was forbidden to discuss religion. More than one company had rules about bed-time!

True, many pirates had served in the Royal Navy, but I don't know of any pirate (and bear in mind that records do not allow for a complete analysis) who had served only in the Royal Navy. As to whether pirates earned more or not, after 18 months of quite successful cruising Bellamy's company on the Whydah were able to share out £50 per man which, compared to the figures you quote above is good but not spectacular. Some pirates certainly made a huge amount, like Every's crew who shared approximately £1,000 per man after 3 years, but they were the very lucky ones.

I refer you to my previous comment

You're probably right there. The most aggressive pirate Jacobitism was found amongst the Bahamas pirates who remained after the 1718 schism, and Vane was the most prominent of those pirates. Certainly there was a notable level of swearing amongst pirates, many people commented on it. Egalitarianism is a much more thorny issue, and one that has a lot of myths attached to it. For example, we are often told that pirates' division of loot was much more equal than other maritime trades, but although it was much more equal than the Royal Navy and some privateers there were loads of merchant ships on which the master/captain only got 2.5 times the wage of the crew, and in many cases it was no more than 1.5 times the wage of the crew. The standard contract on Newfoundland fishing vessels was that the skipper got two shares and the crew got one each. By making comparisons like that it seems there was nothing extraordinary about the pirates' pay divisions. Yes, that's a very interesting quote (it's from one of the trials originally). Pity there's no real way of telling what they meant by it. To a modern reader, especially one who has read around the subject of pirates, it's tempting to assume that they were referring to a "rob the rich to feed the poor" mentality, but whether that's actually what they meant or whether they were referring to some other attribute of Robin Hood's and is impossible to tell. That may have been true at the time of the '45 rebellion, but not really at the height of the Jacobite threat between around 1714 and 1723 (familiar sounding dates?). At that time Jacobitism was as common in England and the colonies as much as in Scotland. If you're interested in the subject then Paul Kleber Monod's book Jacobitism and the English People is essential reading. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Jacobitism-English-People-1688-1788-Kleber/dp/0521447933/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1389304670&sr=8-1&keywords=monod+jacobitism

Sometimes I mourn the lack of a Facebook style "like" button on this forum

I've always liked the shorter version of William Taylor: William was a dozy bastard, With not a brain-cell in his head, Left his true love for another, She came back and shot him dead.

Of course! Any group of people who do things slightly differently to other groups could be called a subculture. Society is made up entirely of subcultures. The question is, what differences were there between the pirate subculture and other subcultures? This is the question I've spent the last four years trying to answer and the answer is (in my opinion of course) "not much". So far as I can see, every identifiable aspect of pirate social culture was rooted in practices that already existed elsewhere in legitimate maritime or land-based society. This is a huge topic and probably deserves its own thread if anyone wants to pursue it further. As for 'declaring war on the world', the phrase appears often enough in contemporary records to make me sure that some pirates really said it. How many of them really meant it is another question, and one that can't really be answered satisfactorily. Davis may have said it - Johnson probably had some good sources for his chapter on Davis - but Davis was a known Jacobite. The same goes for Vane who was probably more of a committed Jacobite than any other pirate. Low may have meant it, none of his recorded actions suggest that he didn't mean it (which is not the same as saying that he did). The Taylor quote, if I remember rightly, was more a case of bravado and defending his own courage than an anti-clerical statement, but other pirates are certainly known to have expressed irreligious sentiments.

But a distinction needs to be drawn between being physically cut off from society and spiritually (for want of a better word) cut off from society. For example, Drake's men on his circumnavigation spent three years without visiting a friendly port, and probably had less contact with English seamen that even the later pirates of the 1720s, but nevertheless remained English. Certainly for the 1720s pirates their interaction with legitimate society was limited, but it doesn't necessarily follow that they didn't consider themselves members of that society as a result. No, you're not wrong at all. There was bound to be a difference between what the authorities thought about pirates and what the pirates thought about themselves. There are some records that talk of 'rebel pirates', but in general it was possibly not to the authorities' advantage to publicise too widely that some pirates were JAcobites, even if they knew it (which they may not have done). It is also a question of priorities, the fact that they were pirates was more important than the fact that they were Jacobites, especially in court where piracy was both easier to prove and carried a more severe sentence than Jacobite sympathies. Also, pirates were tried in Vice-Admiralty courts, who had no jurisdiction to try people for Jacobitism. Sorry, I missed that. Yes, it is very probable that some of the things in the GHP (like Beer's speech, for example) were intended as anti-Whig rhetoric. This would certainly make sense if Mist was the author. We don't necessarily know that Davis was a Presbyterian, and the pirates' use of the term may simply have been intended as an insult. As you correctly observe, Presbyterians were not particularly popular with everyone. I'd have to dig out my sources, but somewhere Macrae mentions that he was at school with England, which would make England a Scotsman rather than Irish (the GHP notwithstanding). As a Scotsman, it's most unlikely that he was a Catholic. I can't think offhand of any Anglo-American pirates known to have been Catholics, but most French and Spanish pirates probably were. I can't think of any Jacobite symbolism used on pirate flags, but to be honest I can't really think of any Jacobite icons being used on any flags anywhere, so that doesn't necessarily mean anything either way. Neither am I aware particularly that Jacobites opposed or supported the Act of Union. The first flag you posted remained in use, especially by private ships, long after 1707. Again, I'd have to check on the exact date, but I believe the Union flag was still specifically reserved for naval vessels until fairly late.

No, Edward England and Jasper Seegar were two different men, Seegar took over command from England. Somewhere there's a thread around here about Oliver la Buse with details of the England/Seegar/Taylor identifications

Some good points there (though most historians are agreed that the Beer speech is apocryphal). As with any general point it's usually possible to find a few exceptions. Shivers wasn't English, so the discourse of Jacobitism wasn't really open to him, though there are other pirates from that period who expressed similar sentiments. Stede Bonnet names his ship after the pretender, and if we're going to accept the George Roberts' account is real then the best that can be said there is that one member of the company had anti-establishment views and one was a raving Jacobite. Hawkins' account of the same company suggests that they were on the whole pro-Hanoverian. Blackbeard's actions in no way show that he cared only for his own kind, and his keenness to acquire a pardon suggests that he wanted to regain legitimate society (which is also true of a very large number of other pirates). And yes, there are some massive gaping holes in Rediker's theories.

That is probably entirely true, and I make that point (in more detail) in the article. The fluctuations in the level of piratical Jacobitism are more or less concurrent with the fluctuations of popular Jacobitism amongst the English people in general. What this fact means is far more important than the fact itself. It shows beyond reasonable doubt that pirates were very much in touch with popular politics - they had not turned their backs on society as many authors would have us believe, nor did they consider themselves state-less. They considered themselves a part of contemporary society.

The attribution of the "Moody" flag to Barbary Corsairs is also a (possible) error. In the original book in which the flag appeared it is described as a "pavillon des corsaires", which has led people to assume it's a Barbary corsairs' flag. However, the symbolism is quite unlike that of other known Barbary corsairs' flags, and the French word "corsaires" simply meant "pirates" without the more specific connotation that the word "corsairs" has in English.

That's what Hawkins says... but a Dutchman named Roggewein said the exact opposite, and there's another account (I'd have to dig out my sources) that talks about the pirates alternating several times between black and red. Therefore, whatever Hawkins noted about Spriggs' company didn't necessarily hold true of other pirates. As for Konstam's assertions about flags - that's one of my biggest bugbears with his work. He knows that it's not true. I know that he knows because I told him. Yet still he writes it... I've got info on something like 80 pirate flags from the GAoP, if you include the fake ones and the probable/possible ones. To my knowledge, all of the flags known to be flown by the Lowther/Low group, except Lyne's, featured a skeleton piercing a heart, mostly on black, one on blue. All of the flags flown by members of the Flying Gang featured a death's head or a death's head and bones, though the exact design varied from company to company. FWIW, there is another witness account that mentions Blackbeard's death's head flag.

There were certainly pirates who weren't Jacobites (Jennings possibly among them, his association with Hamilton notwithstanding), and there were surely some pirates whose Jacobitism was lukewarm. As I note in the article, Jacobitism was also the only real opposition discourse in the early 18th century, so yes, also an element of "my enemy's enemy" (which does not necessarily make the Jacobite sentiment any less forceful). Royal Rover might seem "softly" Jacobite now, but in 1720 it was unashamedly and unambiguously Jacobite. With regards to the conversations in Roberts' book: it is possible that the book is a fiction written by Defoe or some other author, but there is also every possibility that the book really was a faithful account written by the otherwise unknown George Roberts. If the book is a fiction then obviously the conversations were imaginary, but if the book is really the work of a genuine Roberts then the conversations were probably paraphrased but essentially accurate in their sentiments. Frankly, nobody has really done enough research on George Roberts to confirm or dismiss him as the author, and there's no real evidence that somebody else wrote it. Until that research is done satisfactorily all we can do is speculate. For myself, I prefer to take the book at face-value while acknowledging the possibility that it's a fake, until such time as it can be proven or disproven. Others are free to adopt a different stance.

Naturally I disagree with Bialuschewski's conclusions, and it is perhaps a little unfair of me to respond without you being able to read the whole article... but I'm going to anyway. Bialuschewski argues persuasively that the primary motive for most pirates was greed, not politics. I completely agree with that assessment. Bialuschewski argues that because profit was more important to pirates than politics, their displays of political sympathy must therefore have been a sham, a facade. His case partly rests on the fact that at no point did pirates actually contribute any material aid to the Jacobite cause. However, I would argue that greed and the pursuit of personal wealth in no way prohibit or restrict political activism. Just because a man is a bank robber, does that also mean he can't be an ardent Republican (or Conservative, or communist, or whatever)? No, it does not. Other groups, whose Jacobitism has not been questioned, also failed to provide any material assistance to the Jacobite cause, so piratical Jacobitism can't be dismissed on that count. In fact, though, the New Providence pirates offered to raise a Jacobite squadron, and entered into detailed discussion with Jacobite admiral George Camocke, until the Jacobite court caused the plan to be dropped following the departure of Woodes Rogers to the Bahamas. Can't remember if this has been linked here before, but those interested in my article on the subject can read it here: http://www.academia.edu/772352/Jacobitism_and_the_Golden_Age_of_Piracy_1715-1725

I haven't counted them all, but I'm not surprised by the number of Johns in this list or the Seamen's Registry - in general there were a lot of Johns around, it was a very common name.

An illiterate quarter-master is slightly surprising, for the reasons you give, but the role of QM varied from company to company so it may be that in Cocklyn's company somebody else kept the accounts. And although a captain who was unable to navigate would be of limited effectiveness it was not necessarily an essential requirement, as long as one of the other officer could. Most pirate ships were run along rather military lines, and the role of captain was usually more of a military appointment among pirates. Many pirate companies are known to have also appointed sailing masters who were predominantly responsible for the navigation. After the surgeon, the master was probably the person most likely to have been forced, which may suggest a lower-than-average number of navigators on board the typical pirate ship.

Right on both counts. Walter Kennedy didn't turn to piracy until 1718, having travelled out to the Caribbean in Woodes Rogers' force sent to suppress the Bahamas pirates, and the flag so often attributed to "Walter" Kennedy almost certainly comes from this description

Not as far as I know, and if there was it would be unlikely to be complete because there were different ways of becoming an officer. There is a Navy Records Society volume listing all commissioned officers in the Royal Navy within certain dates, which covers the GAoP, but it's only captains and lieutenants. Merchant officer tended to go through apprenticeships, either with one of the big companies like the East India Company, or with an individual officer, so the records of merchant officers have long since been scattered to the winds.

I recently did an analysis of the career paths of 82 pirate captains active between 1690 and 1726. Of those 82: 38 had been officers in legitimate service (mostly merchant, some privateer) immediately before becoming pirate captains; 8 had been 'officers' on a pirate ship; 5 had been petty officers in legitimate service; 2 had been pirate petty officers; 29 unknown. 19 had captaincy conferred on them by their crew (including by popular election; 6 had captaincy awarded to them by a more senior pirate officer, such as the 'commodore' of a pirate squadron; 18 progressed to command by dint of being the senior available officer at the time, without any evidence of popular election; 21 retained command that they had previously held, such as when a privateer captain led his company into piracy; 18 unknown. 8 were killed in action; 27 were captured by the authorities; 19 retired; 6 were deposed by popular vote; 4 were deposed by violence; 7 died a natural death while still captain; 11 unknown. FWIW, the captains were: George Cusack, Nicholas Clough, Joseph Bannister, Henry Every, Thomas Wake, Richard Want, Joseph Farrell, William Maze, Thomas Tew, Robert Culliford, Richard Shivers, William Kidd, John Halsey, Richard Glover, Jacob Mason, George/Josiah Raynor, Edward Coats, Captain Bobbington, John Hore, John Kelley, George Booth, John Bowen, Thomas Howard, Nathaniel North, Thomas White, Thomas Mostyn, Joseph Bradish, Captain Burk, John Quelch, Thomas Pound, Thomas Shafto, James Allison, Blackbeard, Charles Vane, John Rackham, Walter Kennedy, Howell Davis, Bartholomew Roberts, Thomas Anstis, John Fenn, Stede Bonnet, Henry Jennings, Leigh Ashworth, Francis Fernandez, Captain Leslie, Thomas Nichols, Porter, James Fife, Benjamin Hornigold, Samuel Bellamy, Paul Williams, Thomas Cocklyn, William Moody, Edward England, John Taylor, Jasper Seagar, Robert Sample, Captain Lane, Edmund Condent, James Skyrm, John Phillips, John Cockram, John Martel, Captain (not Walter) Kennedy, Ignatius Pell , Richard Worley, Burgess, John Augur, George Lowther, Ned Low, Charles Harris, Shipton, Frank Spriggs, Phillip Lyne, Joseph Cooper, William Fly, John Gow , Philip Roche , John Evans, Edward Williams, John Vidal, and Alexander Wyat.

Apparently it is! I wasn't aware of that, so thanks for the heads-up. I've let the guy who does my website know. I don't update as often as I should, but you can also find me here: https://www.facebook.com/ETFox

I think the trial of Barlow and Simmons and the others involved in that uprising is, possibly, unique. Several times forced men who had risen up against their pirate captors were put on trial for piracy with the foregone conclusion that they would be found not guilty, as a protection against being tried in the future (and sometimes to make them eligible to give evidence against others), but in this case the forced men were tried for murder, for killing their two pirate captors. Fascinating (if you're a kind of pirate-history dork like me).

Welcome aboard Greg, It's about time somebody wrote a book about Low and his consorts - there's so much source material relating to them that I'm amazed nobody has done it yet. In fact, I was just reading the trial of Barlow and Simmons et al the other day... I look forward to reading your book One (off-topic) question: which edition of Fillmore's narrative are you using? There's a quotation from Fillmore on your webpage that isn't in the edition I have.

Yes, I understood that it was a deliberate overstatement. Judging by other accounts of Taylor though, I still think that du Bucquoy was reporting as honestly as he could the character traits of a man who was, at times, perhaps bordering on psychotic, but at other times displayed very admirable traits.