Mutiny

[Elena]

Anybody knows links to good mutiny stories? Besides Bounty...

And what interests me the most... I know that pirates had the articles of agreement, but as far as I have read (not remembering where) there had been mutinies on pirate ships too, with captains killed in their sleep and so on. I think this interests me more... any mutiny stories among pirates and privateers?

[Dutchman]

Try Demon of the waters, by Gregory Gibson. Story of the mutiny on the whaleship Globe- a bit late from the GAOP, but still very clearly chronicles how a lesser known mutiny festered.

[Mission]

Crews would have mutinies to turn pirate, but once they turned pirate the articles allowed them to vote the captain out. So it wouldn't be usual for pirates to mutiny unless a minority fraction of the pirates wanted to go against the majority or the captain refused to give up his captaincy after being voted out.

As for privateers, they ran the same danger of mutiny as any other ship. It seems to me Woodes Rogers was outvoted or at least pressured by his crew to go after a ship off of South America that he was against capturing. They never mutinied on him that I can recall. (I do seem to recall some funny stories about William Dampier being left ashore by his crew because he was not well-liked. I don't know that I'd call that mutiny, though. If you asked the crew, they'd probably call it just desserts.)

[Bos'n Cross]

heck, dampier was apparently so bad that stenkirk wanted to just wait for another ship......how bad must a leader be to think it a better idea to stay on an island with goats......till who knows when.......

[Fox]

Crews would have mutinies to turn pirate, but once they turned pirate the articles allowed them to vote the captain out.

Sorry ol' buddy, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to flag this up, but only because I happen to have been working on this very issue for the last couple of days.

Bart Roberts' articles are the only ones that mention voting at all, on 'affairs of the moment', which certainly included the election and deposition of other officers. It was never put to the test as to whether it covered them for deposing Roberts himself. By contrast, the articles of Cusack, Kidd, Anstis, Phillips and Gow all demand obedience to the captain and/or officers in some form or other.

Certainly, captains sometimes were deposed by popular vote, including Edward England, Ned Low, Charles Vane, Howell Davis, John Taylor, and others. It just wasn't enshrined in the articles. Thomas Anstis was possibly killed in his sleep by his own men.

The most common form of 'mutiny' on pirate vessels was probably in the form of uprisings by forced men. James Fife and John Phillips were both killed by rebellious conscripts, for example.

FWIW, Selkirk voluntarily marooned himself on Juan Fernandez because he thought the ship wouldn't make it across the Pacific (he was right, it didn't), but the captain was Thomas Stradling. Dampier was away at sea at the time in command of a consort vessel. However, when he was rescued, he nearly volunteered to remain behind again when he heard Dampier was aboard Rogers' ship. He only agreed to leave the island on the assurance that Dampier wasn't in command.

Edited February 19, 2011 by Foxe

[Elena]

Thank you all, very much! I like these stories... and they help me.

[Mission]

I stand corrected.

The forced men uprisings are sort of interesting. What then became of the ship? Did it turn non-pirate? Wouldn't that have been a hoot? Someone should make a movie...

[Fox]

The forced men uprisings are sort of interesting. What then became of the ship? Did it turn non-pirate? Wouldn't that have been a hoot? Someone should make a movie...

There are a couple of examples of the forced men taking the ship into port, sometimes with prisoners from the pirate crew if they weren't all killed. When John Fillmore and James Cheeseman led the revolt against Phillips somebody actually pointed out that if they killed all of the priates then there'd be nobody to testify to their innocence. Frequently, such forced men had to stand trial, to prove their innocence, even if everyone accepted it anyway.

[Bos'n Cross]

Thanks for the correction mr.fox, i had believed selkirk had been on dampier's vessel....for shame on me for not checking to be sure

[Swashbuckler 1700]

To open old tread: This is nice mutiny story

( yes it is wiki but......)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batavia_(ship)

[William Brand]

Seconded. The Batavia's Graveyard is one of the most chilling stories of madness and mutiny you can find.

http://www.amazon.co...t/dp/0609607669

[Elena]

Thank you very much! Still interesting to read, even if we had our mutiny one year ago (and meanwhile the newly elected captain's player quitted us too, so this time it will be a kidnapping by revenge, in order to take him out of the story).

[Bright]

When the U. S. Brig-of-War Somers sailed on September 13, 1842, people never suspected that when it returned the following December it would carry with it the story of the only mutiny in United States naval history.http://youtu.be/u4OPOrPvXO8

Edited April 30, 2012 by Bright