On this day in history...

[GregF]

On March 22, 1724, exactly one week after Captain Richard Hawkins had set sail from the coast of Belize with a load of logwood, the men aboard his ship spotted two vessels bearing down on them. One was a large, three-hundred-ton galley with three tall masts and several dozen men aboard. The other was a sloop. Hawkins immediately sensed that the men standing aboard the deck of the galley were pirates, ready to attack at the ship’s twelve guns. And as he would soon learn, the man shouting orders from the deck was the quartermaster who had recently deserted Edward Low and was now a new pirate captain in his own right, Francis Spriggs.

Spriggs’ crew came alongside Hawkins’ ship and boarded it. The pirates ruthlessly ripped Hawkins' ship apart, taking cable, rigging, several sails, and the ship’s boat, then destroying everything else. "Every thing that pleased them not they threw overboard," Hawkins later wrote. "All my compasses, instruments, books, escritoire, binnacle, and in short, every individual thing they destroyed; broke all my windows, knocked down the cabin, seized all my small arms and ammunition, and then delivered me my ship in despicable condition."

After several days, Hawkins and a number of other captives were released, although they were retaken by Spriggs' crew a little more than 24 hours later because the pirates did not recognize his ship and thought it was a new capture. Hawkins was eventually released again on the island of Roatan where he and several other captives were able to secure passage back home aboard other vessels.

[William Brand]

March 25 -

On this day in 1643, anchoring in the harbor of present day Kingston on March 25, Captain William Jackson led a party of 500 men against the nearby town of St. Jago de la Vega which he captured after heavy resistance by the town's defenders at a cost of around forty men. Threatening to burn the town, he received a ransom of 200 cattle, 10,000 pounds of cassava bread, and 7,000 pieces-of-eight. Many of the English buccaneers became with the tropical island and, during their stay, twenty three men left to live among the Spaniards.

Also on this day in 1675 the first British Royal Yacht, Mary hit rocks in a fog off Anglesey. The wrecksite is protected.

[William Brand]

March 26 -

John Julian (ca. 1701 – 26 March 1733, aged 32) was the first recorded black pirate to operate in the New World, as the pilot of the ship Whydah.

Julian was a half-blood Miskito Indian who joined Samuel Bellamy early in his brief career. He eventually piloted the Whydah, which was the leading ship of Bellamy's fleet, when he was only 16 years old. Julian was one of 30 to 50 people of African descent in the pirate crew — all were treated as equals.
Newspaper item about execution of "Julian the Indian" (Weekly Rehearsal, Boston, March 1733)

Julian's life became more difficult after he survived the Whydah wreck in 1717. He was jailed in Boston but apparently never indicted. He was likely sold into slavery, the "Julian the Indian" bought by John Quincy — whose grandson, President John Quincy Adams, became a staunch abolitionist.
A purported "unruly slave," Julian the Indian was sold to another owner and tried often to escape. During one attempt, he killed a bounty hunter who was trying to catch him. He was executed on March 26, 1733.

[GregF]

Fascinating entry!

[William Brand]

March 27 -

Upon their arrival in the West Indies, Francis Spriggs and his crew captured a sloop near St. Lucia, a Martinique merchantman, and a vessel with a cargo of logwood which they tossed into the sea after carrying away as much as they could take. In early 1724, while in New England waters, Spriggs and the Delight received word of the death of King George I and discussed the possibility of gaining a royal pardon within the year after sailing from Rhode Island on this day in 1724.

[GregF]

March 28, 1726 -- On this day, The Boston Gazette reported the execution of one of the last surviving members of the Edward Low / Francis Spriggs crew, Philip Lyne. When Spriggs captured the sloop Susannah in 1725 he put his quartermaster, Philip Lyne, in command of the vessel. By early 1725, Lyne was capturing ships independently, although he and Spriggs may have followed the same course up the Atlantic coast of the American colonies during the first part of the year. Like Low and Spriggs, Lyne built his small crew by enticing recruits or forcing captives from the ships he overtook as he sailed north. By May, Lyne had about a dozen men aboard, both crew members and captives. Off the coast of Florida, Lyne captured a sloop on its way back to Virginia, forcing two more men and taking about half of the ship’s cargo of rum and sugar.

Sometime before November 1725, Lyne’s ship was captured in a bloody battle with two sloops and brought back to the Dutch island of Curacao at the bottom of the Caribbean, just north of South America. Many of the pirates had been wounded during the capture and their injuries had barely been treated or bandaged. They were a dismal group as they were marched to their trial and, according to bystanders, they “were very offensive and stunk as they went along.” Lyne was the most gruesome of the pack. He’d taken a blast head-on. One of his eyes was shot out and his nose hung down on his face. Lyne and four other pirates were convicted and hanged at Curacao.

[William Brand]

Excellent addition, and even better since I didn't have anything for today.

[William Brand]

March 29 -

On this day in 1721, Charles Vane was hanged at Gallows Point in Port Royal. He died without expressing the least remorse for his crimes. After death, his body was hung from a gibbet on Gun Cay, at the mouth of harbor at Port Royal, as a warning against piracy.

[William Brand]

April 1 -

On April 1, 1698, several people were tricked into going to the Tower of London to "see the Lions washed". Broadsheets were distributed to the public, inviting people to see the annual ceremony to wash the royal lions. This joke has continued for many years.

The practice was alive and well in 1857...

Also...

Thomas Cocklyn was an 18th-century English pirate, known primarily for his association and partnership with Howell Davis and Oliver La Buze. He was reportedly elected captain "due to his brutality and ignorance" when first sailing from New Providence in 1717.

On this day in 1719, Cocklyn was a participant in the capture of the West African-bound English slave ship the Bird Galley at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River. The three pirate captains celebrated their victory on board the ship for nearly a month before releasing its captain, William Snelgrave, and giving him the Bristol Snow and the remaining cargo left from the pirates' week-long occupation of the ship.

[William Brand]

April 2 -

Mauritius, Hollandia and Amsterdam, these were the names of the three merchant ships that set sail from Texel for “the East”, together with the small ship the Duyfken, on April 2, 1595. It proved to be an exciting adventure. Only three of the four vessels returned in August 1597 and only 87 of the 249 man crew. The revenues were modest. But still, this first Dutch sailing expedition to Asia was a success because it opened a trade route to the East and paved the way for the rise of the Dutch East India Company.

[William Brand]

April 6 -

The first European to reach the cape was the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488, who named it the “Cape of Storms” (Cabo das Tormentas). It was later renamed by John II of Portugal as “Cape of Good Hope” (Cabo da Boa Esperança) because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East. The land around the cape was home to the Khoikhoi people when the Dutch first settled there in 1652. The Khoikhoi had arrived in these parts about fifteen hundred years before. They were called Hottentots by the Dutch, a term that has now come to be regarded as pejorative. Dutch colonial administrator Jan van Riebeeck established a resupply camp for the Dutch East India Company some 50 km north of the cape in Table Bay on April 6, 1652 and this eventually developed into Cape Town. Supplies of fresh food were vital on the long journey around Africa and Cape Town became known as “The Tavern of the Seas”.

Also on this day in 1688, Raveneau de Lussan and his followers arrive at Santo Domingo aboard an English lugger.

[GregF]

April 18 -- On this day in 1724, a small band of pirate captives staged one of the bloodiest and most celebrated uprisings in the history of Atlantic piracy. The captives had been taken by a crew under the command of John Phillips, who had been cruising with a relatively small crew since August 1723. One of the captives was a young New England fisherman named John Fillmore (who, in time, would become the great grandfather of U.S. president Millard Fillmore). By the middle of April 1724, Phillips' crew was making its way north of Boston heading for Canada. The pirates had just captured a sloop under the command of Andrew Harradine, of Gloucester, Massachusetts, and had moved over to the sloop and kept Harradine as another captive.

The pirates were in an especially raucous mood as they sailed north. They had captured as many as eighteen vessels in less than three weeks’ time and had brought on board a huge supply of food and drink. The crew spent most of April 17 celebrating their success, eating and drinking late into the night. Sometime that evening, Phillips, the captain, gave two orders: for the carpenter (also a captive) to bring his tools up onto the deck so he could start work on some repairs early the next morning, and for the crew to make sure they took an observation of the sun at noon the next day to determine their position at sea. This gave the captives the opportunity they needed to form a plan.

Later that night, the pirates finally passed out. Some went to sleep in Phillips’ cabin near the back of the sloop and two others -- the quartermaster John Rose Archer and a pirate named William White -- lay down in the cook’s area near the fireplace on deck. The two of them must have been drunk beyond comprehension because after they’d been asleep for a while, Fillmore was able to sneak up to Archer and White with a hot stick from the fire and burn the soles of their bare feet so badly that they would not be able to walk on the deck the next day.

When morning broke on April 18, the captives woke up and began their work, but there was no sign of the pirates, who remained fast asleep. Finally, close to noon, Phillips and several other men stumbled out of the cabin. With barely a glance between Cheesman and Fillmore, the captives saw their chance. Most of the crew was now on deck. Phillips went back into his cabin to mold some lead slugs. The sails were full and the ship was moving through the water at a good rate, with one of the captives at the helm. Fillmore and Harradine were standing on the deck with several of the other pirates. The carpenter, Edward Cheesman, had intentionally left a broad axe resting on the deck after finishing his work that morning, and Fillmore stood casually spinning the broad axe with his foot.

In an instant the men attacked. First Cheesman grabbed the pirate standing next to him and threw him overboard. Fillmore bent over and picked up the broad axe at his feet and bore down on another of the pirates who was busy cleaning his gun, striking him over the head and killing him. Alarmed by the shouts and commotion on deck, Phillips came out of his cabin to see what was going on. The captive who was manning the tiller, a Native American named Isaac Lassen, jumped at Phillips and grabbed his arm while Harradine struck him over the head with an adze. Finally, two French captives jumped a fourth pirate, killed him, and threw him overboard. In less than two minutes’ time, four of the most active pirates on the crew, including Phillips, had been killed. The remaining pirates were now far outnumbered and immediately surrendered. The captives took control of the ship and headed back to Boston. Two of the surviving pirates were tried and hanged there a few weeks later.

(For more, see gregflemming.com)

[William Brand]

April 22 -

On this day in 1718, Rogers departed the Thames with his expedition of seven ships, 100 soldiers, 130 colonists, and supplies ranging from food for the expedition members and ships' crews to religious pamphlets to give to the pirates, whom Rogers believed would respond to spiritual teachings, to take up his appointment as "Captain General and Governor in Chief". The expedition was accompanied by three Royal Navy vessels.

Also on this day in 1782, Anne Bonny died at the respectable age of 80 in South Carolina.

[William Brand]

April 23 -

Since I don't have anything piratey for today, we'll mention Shakespeare. William Shakespeare's birthday is not know, but it was customary to baptize a person 3 days after they were born. Shakespeare was baptized on the 26th of April in 1564, so his birthday is commonly celebrated on the 23rd.

Also on this day in 1616, Shakespeare died.

[William Brand]

April 24 -

Bernard Desjean, Baron de Pointis, was a French admiral and privateer. He was born in Brittany. He took part in naval operations in the 1680s under Duquesne, like the bombardment of Algiers and the punitive action against Genoa. In the 1690s he fought under Tourville among others in the Battle of Beachy Head (1690). In 1693, he became chef d'escadre. In 1697, he undertook his greatest expedition: the Raid on Cartagena. This raid was so successful that it made him immensely rich and very appreciated by King Louis XIV. In 1702, after the death of Jean Bart, he was appointed head of the Dunkirkers, but he was soon replaced by Marc-Antoine de Saint-Pol Hécourt for lack of initiative. In 1705, he tried to attack Gibraltar by sea during the Twelfth Siege of Gibraltar, but was defeated by John Leake in the Battle of Cabrita Point. After this battle Pointis retired from active service. He published Relation de l'expédition de Carthègene faite par les François en 1697. He died in Paris on this day in 1707.

[William Brand]

April 25 -

On this day in 1680, buccaneers under Harris, Sharp and Cook plundered the mining town of Santa Maria (east of Panama City) and set fire to the town. Then using canoes they rowed downstream to the Pacific.

Also on this day in 1719, Daniel Defoe first published Robinson Crusoe. This first edition credited the work's fictional protagonist Robinson Crusoe as its author, leading many readers to believe he was a real person and the book a travelogue of true incidents. It was published under the considerably longer original title The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, Of York, Mariner: Who lived Eight and Twenty Years, all alone in an un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque; Having been cast on Shore by Shipwreck, wherein all the Men perished but himself. With An Account how he was at last as strangely deliver'd by Pyrates. Epistolary, confessional, and didactic in form, the book is a fictional autobiography of the title character (whose birth name is Robinson Kreutznaer)—a castaway who spends years on a remote tropical island near Trinidad, encountering cannibals, captives, and mutineers before being rescued.

[GregF]

On April 26, 1717, the pirate ship Whydah, under the command of Samuel Bellamy, approached Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The Whydah was originally a slaving ship, captured by Bellamy in the Caribbean in February, with more than 130 men aboard and mounting 23 guns. On the morning of April 26, the pirates captured a pink, a large vessel with two or three masts and a distinctive narrow, rounded stern, which was on its way from Boston to New York. Bellamy sent seven of his men aboard the pink, the Mary Anne from Ireland, with orders to follow him. But those pirates “drank plentifully” of the wine they found aboard the pink, which meant their leadership of the vessel they had taken charge of was half-hearted, at best.

Making matters worse, the weather deteriorated throughout the day. The men aboard the pink had been told to follow Bellamy, in the Whydah, but by about four o’clock that afternoon, there was almost no way for the vessels to see each other in the “very thick, foggy” weather. That night, sometime after 10 o’clock, a horrendous storm struck, bringing lightning and heavy rain. The storm pushed the pink Mary Anne close to an island that was, at the time, located just off what is today Nauset Light. The Whydah was about four miles north, off the coast of Marconi Beach not far from the Marconi Wireless Station. At some point during the night the Whydah was slammed into the shallow sand off the coast and sunk to the bottom of the sea floor.

There are two notable epilogues to the Whydah sinking:

1) A team of divers led by Barry Clifford discovered the Whydah wreck on the ocean floor about three decades ago, and they continue to pull up gold, weapons, and artifacts -- many of which are on display at the Pirate Museum in Provincetown, MA (see http://www.nationalgeographic.com/whydah/story.html).

2) Only two of more than 130 men aboard the Whydah survived -- an “Englishman” named Thomas Davis and the other, according to newspaper reports and trial records, was an “Indian” named John Julian. Davis was tried in Boston, but acquitted because we was a forced captive. It is widely assumed (and written) that Julian is the same Julian the Indian who, as a runaway slave, was convicted of murder and executed on Boston Neck in a snowstorm sixteen years later. But there’s no conclusive proof that is true -- see my column in today’s Cape Cod Times on the anniversary of the Whydah sinking (http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20140426/OPINION/404260341)

[William Brand]

April 27 -

On this day in 1702, Jean Bart, French Privateer, died of pleurisy and is buried in the Eglise Saint-Eloi in Dunkirk.

[William Brand]

April 29 -

Ingela Olofsdotter Gathenhielm née Hammar, was a Swedish privateer in service of King Charles XII of Sweden during the Great Northern War. He died on this day in 1729.

[William Brand]

May 2 -

On this day in 1670, King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company, made up of the group of French explorers who opened the lucrative North American fur trade to London merchants. The charter conferred on them not only a trading monopoly but also effective control over the vast region surrounding North America's Hudson Bay.

Although contested by other English traders and the French in the region, the Hudson's Bay Company was highly successful in exploiting what would become eastern Canada. During the 18th century, the company gained an advantage over the French in the area but was also strongly criticized in Britain for its repeated failures to find a northwest passage out of Hudson Bay. After France's loss of Canada at the end of the French and Indian Wars, new competition developed with the establishment of the North West Company by Montreal merchants and Scottish traders. As both companies attempted to dominate fur potentials in central and western Canada, violence sometimes erupted, and in 1821 the two companies were amalgamated under the name of the Hudson's Bay Company. The united company ruled a vast territory extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and under the governorship of Sir George Simpson from 1821 to 1856, reached the peak of its fortunes.

After Canada was granted dominion status in 1867, the company lost its monopoly on the fur trade, but it had diversified its business ventures and remained Canada's largest corporation through the 1920s.

Also on this day in 1724, the Post-Boy newspaper suggests that George Lowthers did not die in 1723. The newspaper, the only known original still in existence, is owned by Eric Bjotvedt and reports:

"The last Letters from S. Christopher bring Advice, that on the 20th of February, the Eagle Sloop, h ted out from that Island, had brought in thither the Pyrate Sloop she had taken from Lowther, with twenty of the Men that were on board, (Lowther himself and many of the Crew having made their Escape) and it was believed that twelve or thirteen of them would be convicted of Pyracy, and that the others would be clear’d, as being forced into the said Pyrates Service.

[William Brand]

May 3 -

Peter Harris (the elder) died on this day in 1680. He was a British buccaneer, one of the captains (along with Bartholomew Sharp and Edmund Cook) in the Pacific Adventure, a privateering expedition headed by Richard Sawkins and John Coxon. After plundering the mining town of Santa Maria (east of Panama City) on April 25, 1680, the buccaneers set fire to the town and using canoes rowed downstream to the Pacific. On May 3, the "expedition" reached the port at Perico island off the coast of Panama City, finding there a Spanish fighting force of several barques and other ships. Although eventually victorious, the buccaneers lost twenty men, among them Captain Harris.

Another Buccaneer called Peter Harris, apparently a nephew of the one mentioned above, was active in the same area during 1684–1685.

[William Brand]

May 6 -

Cook first sighted Australia on this day in 1770.

[GregF]

On May 8, 1723, heading away from the coast of present-day Belize, the crew of Edward Low captured at least six vessels off Cabo de San Antonio, at the western tip of Cuba. The captain of one of the captured vessels, John Welland of Boston, was taken with four of his men over to a second of Low's sloops, under the command of Charles Harris, and questioned about the gold and silver he had on board, which the pirates then took from him. Several hours later, Welland was moved over to Low’s sloop, where he was hacked repeatedly with a cutlass. One of the strokes sliced off his right ear. Welland was then forced below decks, where he lay for two or three hours while his wounded head continued to drip blood onto the wooden floor. Eventually Welland asked another captive for some help. The man brought Welland some water and then went to get Kencate, the ship’s doctor. Meanwhile, up on the deck, the pirates tortured other captives by burning them “with matches between their fingers,” according to one survivor, searing their flesh to the bone “to make them confess where their money was.” They cut and whipped a number of the other captives, and sank one of the ships.

Low planned to force another member of Welland’s crew, twenty-two-year old Henry Barnes, who was from Barbados. But Barnes tried to get away the next day, when Low captured another ship and decided to release Welland and some of the other sailors in that newly captured vessel. Hearing this, the young Barnes tried to hide on the ship until it sailed away, but the pirates realized he was missing. When Low threatened to burn the entire ship, Barnes came out of hiding and went aboard one of the pirates’ sloops.

-- from At the Point of a Cutlass: The Pirate Capture, Bold Escape, and Lonely Exile of Philip Ashton (www.gregflemming.com).

[madPete]

May 11, 1891 - On this date in 1891, the leaders of the Namoa pirates were executed by Chinese authorities beheaded at Kowloon. The group was named after the steamer they had captured six months earlier.

Thanks to Jamaica Rose and No Quarter Given:

https://mbasic.facebook.com/notes/no-quarter-given/today-in-pyrate-history-tm-may-11-1891-the-namoa-pirates-are-executed/200969226606412/

[William Brand]

Niiice additions.

May 17 -

On this day in 1662, Bartholomew Roberts was born in Casnewydd-Bach, or Little Newcastle, between Fishguard and Haverfordwest in Pembrokeshire, Wales. His name was originally John Roberts, and his father was most likely George Roberts. It's not clear why Roberts changed his name from John to Bartholomew, but pirates often adopted aliases, and he may have chosen that name after the well-known buccaneer Bartholomew Sharp. He is thought to have gone to sea when he was 13 in 1695 but there is no further record of him until 1718, when he was mate of a Barbados sloop.

Also, pirates arrived off Veracruz on this day in 1683, leading with van Hoorn's two captured Spanish ships to mislead the town. Meanwhile, Laurens de Graaf and Yankey Willems slipped ashore with a small force of men. They proceeded to remove town's fortifications and incapacitate the town's defensive militia. Van Hoorn, marching overland, joined with de Graaf and attacked the town.