How it was possible to identify the pirates?

[Swashbuckler 1700]

There are really many records of pirates and pirate ships recognized by navy or merchant captains.

This happened for example to Vane who was rescued after shipwreck in 1719 in Honduras and then the merchant captain who rescued him recognized him and turned him over to authorities in Jamaica.

Or another example

George Lowther was careening his vessel in 1723 on an island near Venezuela when Walter Moore, a merchant captain of the South sea company, recognized them as pirates and attacked.

Was the world really so small back than that pirates could be recognize so easily. We know that pirates and their vessels didn't differ much from other sailors or ships so how could they tell that “he is Charles Vane” like that. We know that pirates had no skull hats to mark them or anything like that and we know that pirates ships didn't fly jolly Rogers 24/7 so there was really hard to tell who is a pirate and who is not same with the ships Still many pirates were recognized. In an era when there was no wanted posters with photos with faces or anything this seems really odd to me.

Edited January 5, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Dutchman]

shirts v/s skins........

[Frtiz]

According to Colin Woodard (The Republic of Pyrates) the merchant captain that picked Vane up did not recognize him. It was Holford who recognized Vane, a retired buccaneer that became a merchant captain himself. Holford arrived with his vessel at the anchorage before the merchant left the island Vane was stranded on. Spotting his old friend Vane on the ship, Holford went straight to the captain and revealed his true identity.

George Lowther was attacked by Walter Moore while he careened his sloop on the island Blanco or Blanquilla. A general history of the pyrates: "The Eagle Sloop of Barbadoes, belonging to the South-Sea Company, with 35 Hands, commanded by Walter Moore, coming near this Island, in her Voyage to Comena [Cumana], on the Spanish Continent, saw the said Sloop just careen'd, with her Guns out, and Sails unbent, which she supposed to be a Pyrate, because it was a Place where Traders did not commonly use, so took the Advantage of attacking her, as she was then unprepared; the Eagle having fired a Gun to oblige her to show her Colours, the Pyrate hoisted the St. George's Flag at their Top-Mast-Head, as it were to bid Defiance to her; but when they found Moore and his Crew resolved to board them in good Earnest, the Pyrates cut their Cable, and hauled their Stern on Shore, wich obliged the Eagle to come to an Anchor a-thwart their Hawse, where she engaged them till they called for Quarters and struck; at wich Time Lowther an twelve of the Crew made their Escape out of the Cabin window."

So Moore recognized the pyrates by their behavior.

A: Careening a vessel on a remote island. A merchant would use a harbour facility to careen.

B: Showing signs of panic and hostility when he tries to engage them. The captain of a legal vessel most likely would have asked Moore to come aboard for a chat.

Was the world really so small back than that pirates could be recognize so easily.

I think the answer could be yes. Otherwise the pardon of King George would not have been so appealing to the pyrates of the Flying Gang.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

According to Colin Woodard (The Republic of Pyrates) the merchant captain that picked Vane up did not recognize him. It was Holford who recognized Vane, a retired buccaneer that became a merchant captain himself. Holford arrived with his vessel at the anchorage before the merchant left the island Vane was stranded on. Spotting his old friend Vane on the ship, Holford went straight to the captain and revealed his true identity.

George Lowther was attacked by Walter Moore while he careened his sloop on the island Blanco or Blanquilla. A general history of the pyrates: "The Eagle Sloop of Barbadoes, belonging to the South-Sea Company, with 35 Hands, commanded by Walter Moore, coming near this Island, in her Voyage to Comena [Cumana], on the Spanish Continent, saw the said Sloop just careen'd, with her Guns out, and Sails unbent, which she supposed to be a Pyrate, because it was a Place where Traders did not commonly use, so took the Advantage of attacking her, as she was then unprepared; the Eagle having fired a Gun to oblige her to show her Colours, the Pyrate hoisted the St. George's Flag at their Top-Mast-Head, as it were to bid Defiance to her; but when they found Moore and his Crew resolved to board them in good Earnest, the Pyrates cut their Cable, and hauled their Stern on Shore, wich obliged the Eagle to come to an Anchor a-thwart their Hawse, where she engaged them till they called for Quarters and struck; at wich Time Lowther an twelve of the Crew made their Escape out of the Cabin window."

So Moore recognized the pyrates by their behavior.

A: Careening a vessel on a remote island. A merchant would use a harbour facility to careen.

B: Showing signs of panic and hostility when he tries to engage them. The captain of a legal vessel most likely would have asked Moore to come aboard for a chat.

Was the world really so small back than that pirates could be recognize so easily.

I think the answer could be yes. Otherwise the pardon of King George would not have been so appealing to the pyrates of the Flying Gang.

Well that tells something.I knew that pirates pretty much knew each other but I was not aware of the others like former privateers or buccaneers. Or I was aware but I didn't thought about them. Well I guess that the Anglo-American maritime circles were not too big back then so the world was really small.

Also other interesting things are that pirates and how they identified or did not identify other ships at sea.

HMS Swallow was recognized by its former crewman aboard Robert's pirate ship. While he might know his former ship really well this is funny. And Often pirates had problems of recognizing ships or even the type of the ship from a distance. E.G this happened when Edward Low mistook the HMS Greyhound to be a merchantman.... Could it simply be that Low had no proper spyglass?

Edited January 6, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Mission]

Frtiz brings up several good points.

From what I've read, it seems like a lot of ships mainly identified themselves (either verbally or by raising their flag) when they got near each other. In nearly every period account I've read there has been at least one incident of two ships encountering one another in the Caribbean causing one to send someone aboard the other so they could ask them who they were and where they hailed from. I've also read several times where they suspected a ship of being a pirate only to meet up with them and find this not to be the case. (And then other times when it was the case.)

As for identifying particular pirates, I've seen several accounts where a sailor recognized someone he had sailed with previously. I suspect there was a lot of crossover in crews in the Caribbean. They also talked a great deal about the pirates in local newspapers when they impacted their trade. If you haven't already read it, I recommend checking out Pirates and Buccaneers of the Atlantic Coast by Edward Rowe Snow. It contains some interesting details some of it culled from newspapers about how pirates operated and were chased and caught.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I keep that book in mind.

((edit) My good goolging skills allowed me the find an online version of that book. I was not aware of that fact that you meant so old book (1940s) but anyway thanks the book is really nice.)

So the answer is that the Anglo-American maritime circles were small in gaop and people like merchants were really well aware of pirates and constantly kept a weather eye for them just in case there was something that seemed more or less fishy. I think if a vessel seemed oddly well armed or overmanned it was a likely to be a pirate craft.

Also thinking again there is some cases when pirates were not identified easily (nor because of their ships or faces). For example Howel Davis cheated Portuguese governor by presenting a privateer.

Of course any vessel could be identified by its flag but that was not what i meant. But anyway good points you have there.

Still I wonder how pirates made so many misjudgments what it came to other ships at sea. Really often they messed up with that what is a warship and what is not. But the distance was probably an explanation here or the bad eyesight ( ) as well as the fact that many vessels looked quite much the same.

Edited January 6, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Coastie04]

In a modern parallel, I do believe that many vessels could have been identified in a local area. In southeast Alaska, where I currently roam, I can identify many vessels in the area by name, whether I've sailed on them or not. There are many smaller cargo vessels, fishing vessels, tugs, cruise ships, Coast Guard cutters and of course ferries that are known by almost every professional sailor in the area. And today, many ships are even more similar than they were in the GAoP. Additionally, due to a professional and personal interest, I have occasion to wander the small boat docks and would be able to recognize not all, but a good number of those boats as well, especially the particularly beautiful or ugly ones. I would also argue that many boats looked the same back then. To a professional, small differences are often glaring ones. From a long distance, you can definitely tell a fishing boat from a tug (even not towing), although they are about the same size. At the same time, I have run across people even today, across the country, who know people or ships that I have sailed on as well. In one example, a mate that I work with is the sister of a captain I sailed under on the Lady Washington years ago. So even though there are many sailors, it is still a fairly tight knit community where often someone in a crew knows people in another one.

Coastie

[Frtiz]

That is interesting. I already assumed that someone with knowledge and professional background would be able to identify a certain vessel, especially when considering that during GAOP they were handcrafted one of a kind pieces. Certainly it was not enough to rename a captured vessel and change some rigging to fool someone who knows what he is looking at.

So how could it be that pirates often misjudged ships? Was it really often? I don't think so. The usual account reads more like "they took two fishing boats here, three trading sloops there and a merchantman the next day". Considering the proportion of correct judgements and wrong ones I would not use the term often. Roberts took about 200 ships before he was taken by HMS Swallow. Even Rocky Marciano would be proud of that record. As far as I recall HMS Swallow was the attacker. So the fight was not the result of a misjudgement by Roberts and his crew.

The only written account of Lows encounter with HMS Greyhound I managed to find in my small library comes form Peter Earle (The Pirate Wars): "The hero of the hour was Captain Peter Solgard of HMS Greyhound, a "rowing 6th-rate" with 20 guns and 130 men. In the early hours of 10 June 1723, he sighted the two pirate sloops of Edward Lowe and his consort Charles Harris, each with eight or ten guns and some 175 men between them. He tacked and sailed away from the pirates to encourage them to give chase and then, when they had closed, went about and bore down on them."

So fine Mr. Solgard used some trickery to lure the pirates in by acting like a merchantman under attack would have done. Maybe Low was really fooled and did not recognize the Greyhound. But maybe he did and thought the advantage was on his side with him being two against one, having more men and roughly even firepower. Pirates did attack bigger vessels - even well armed ones - when they were desperate to trade their sloops up for something more powerful.

I don't want to argue that there weren't misjudgements. Stede Bonnets decision to slug it out with a Spanish warship made him suffer bigtime. As we know Bonnet was not the typical pirate. Bellamy and La Buse were a different calibre and they had to break off from attacking a French frigate of 40 guns wich they tried to capture. So misjudgements happened, but I dare say not often.

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Well still it is odd that even that many misjudgments happened. I would think mariners could know even better but of course even they don't have super eyesight....

And I think Roberts thought at first that Swallow was a French merchant until the crewman came... But was there some fraud with flags or something made by Ogle. I am not sure...

[Coastie04]

Mistaken identities could easily happen. Bear in mind also, that in the case of a naval vessel being sent from a distant port (say in England) in order to deal with pirates, there would have been plenty of time to disguise her. Sailors could not know every boat in the world, and thus might take a chance on an unknown. Also, the people sent to deal with pirates were professionals as well. They would know how to disguise their boats, at least from a distance, in order to lure a hungry pirate. I hate to use this as an example, but think of the movie Master and Commander. By using paint, not trimming the sails perfectly, reacting slowly, and producing much more smoke than any regular trader/naval vessel ever would, the Surprise was disguised as a whaling ship. IIRC from the books, one thing they did was to paint a facade which actually enlarged the gunports instead of concealing them. Unarmed vessels would sometimes have gunports painted on the side in order to deter pirates, and thus would want to emphasize them to potential enemies. These, as well as the use of various flags, would have been used to trick people if tricking was your goal (either to evade the navy or draw prey in). I'm sure there were other ways to trick people as well, such as false papers in case they made it on board (thinking of tricking navy and privateers here). At the same time, between legitimate merchant ships and naval forces, there was information traded in ports of call (and occasionally at sea, especially if the ships did positively recognize each other). This information could be related to being chased by an unknown vessel (and the description), reports of ships taken in certain areas, tricks that pirates were currently trying, etc. So it was a big competition between tricking and recognizing the tricks. Furthermore, there is always the chance of misjudgement or bad luck in battle where a pirate might loose to an armed ship that he either underestimated the strength of, or the enemy just got in a lucky shot at the mast, rudder, captain, etc.

Coastie

[Swashbuckler 1700]

Nothing ground breaking but:

Getting some great stuff from Shelvocke's book "A voyage round the world, by the way of the great South Sea". When I browsed the book I came across a happening were he (Shelvocke) was mistook, for a moment, to be a pirate.

Being lazy to copy the text from pictures I post links the two pages that tells about the incident (as I cannot post the actual pictures because they are, for some reason, too big for this site). I have hinted where the e-book can be found in so many other treads so I wont repeat my self any further....

http://ia700308.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/28/items/avoyageroundwor00schegoog/avoyageroundwor00schegoog_tif.zip&file=avoyageroundwor00schegoog_tif/avoyageroundwor00schegoog_0062.tif&scale=7.284109149277689&rotate=0

http://ia700308.us.archive.org/BookReader/BookReaderImages.php?zip=/28/items/avoyageroundwor00schegoog/avoyageroundwor00schegoog_tif.zip&file=avoyageroundwor00schegoog_tif/avoyageroundwor00schegoog_0063.tif&scale=7.284109149277689&rotate=0

Edited January 19, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[Swashbuckler 1700]

I recently found an interesting case. It is a rare example of that pirates were indeed identified because of their personal appearance. I am not claiming that this was never a rule but this case is interesting.

I was reading Rickhard Zacks' classic book "The Pirate Hunter: The True Story of Captain Kidd"

I won't quote it directly as the book I am reading is a local translated version (However it appears to be fairly accurately translated.)

There was a case which happened in The Cape of Good Hope in late 1699. Pirate Robert Culliford and some other pirates had just received a pardon from Captain Thomas Warren of the pink "Vine" and he pirates were travelling on-board the Warren's vessel as free men. However Certain Mathew Lowth of the East India Company stopped their ship and he got suspicious since the men (Culliford and other pardoned pirates) were wearing "Company's cloth" (meaning fine Indian cloth the EIC used to trade). There was some disagreement about the pardon of the pirates but after a long argument Warren with the pirates were able to leave in peace.

Culliford was relatively a successful pirate, He captured a grand prize Great Mohammed and some other ships so it is logical that he and his men had expensive stolen cloth. I find no reason to doubt Zacks who referred e.g to Lowth's logbook (though not in this particular section)

What is also notable, in my humble opinion, is that the cloth, accordingly to Zacks was sewn as breeches or other typical clothing. The pirates were wearing homemade clothes of the stolen cloth. The sewn clothes like breeches were typical pieces of clothing that sailors used: the only difference seemed to be the cloth and not the actual style of clothing.

I think that this thread is the correct place for this :)

Edited October 25, 2013 by Swashbuckler 1700

[JS1990]

Wow - this is a great question! Thanks to all for the excellent input. Very interesting indeed.