Captain Charles Johnson - The History and Lives of Notorious Pirates and Their Crews

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Owen Corrigan

Print ISBN: 978-1-62914-539-6

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-62914-986-8

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

FOREWORD

T ime, though a good Collector, is not always a reliable Historian. That is to say, that although nothing of interest or importance is lost, yet an affair may be occasionally invested with a glamour that is not wholly its own. I venture to think that Piracy has fortuned in this particular. We are apt to base our ideas of Piracy on the somewhat vague ambitions of our childhood; and I suppose, were such a thing possible, the consensus of opinion in our nurseries as to a future profession in life would place Piracy but little below the glittering heights of the police force and engine-driving. Incapable of forgetting this in more mature years, are we not inclined to deck Her (the H capital, for I speak of an ideal), if not in purple and fine linen, at least with a lavish display of tinsel and gilt? Nursery lore remains with us, whether we would or not, for all our lives; and generations of ourselves, as schoolboys and pre-schoolboys, have tricked out Piracy in so resplendent a dress that she has fairly ousted in our affections, not only her sister profession of High Toby and the Road, but every other splendid and villainous vocation. Yet Teach, Kid, and Avery were as terrible or grim as Duval, Turpin, and Sheppard were courtly or whimsical. And the terrible is a more vital affair than the whimsical. Is it, then, unnatural that, after a lapse of nigh on two centuries, we should shake our wise heads and allow that which is still nursery within us to deplore the loss of those days when we ran before a favouring Trade the very good chance of being robbed, maimed, or murdered by Captain Howel Davis or Captain Neil Gow? It is as well to remember that the Captains in this book were seamen whose sole qualifications to the title were ready wit, a clear head, and, maybe, that certain indefinable power of the eye that is the birth-right of all true leaders. The piratical hero of our childhood is traceable in a great extent to the thrillers, toy plays, and penny theatres of our grandfathers. Here our Pirate was, as often as not, a noble, dignified, if gloomy gentleman, with a leaning to Byronic soliloquy. Though stern in exterior, his heart could (and would) melt at the distresses of the heroine. Elviras eyes were certain to awaken in his mind the recollection of other eyes as innocent as thine, child. In short, he was that most touching of all beings, the Hero-cum-Villain. And it was with a sigh of relief that we saw him at the eleventh hour, having successfully twitted the Government Men and the Excise (should he have an additional penchant for smuggling), safely restored to the arms of the long-suffering possessor of the other eyes.

Alas! this little book mentions no Poll of Portsmouth, nor does it favour us with a Yeo, heave, oh! nor is there so very much cut and thrust about it. It was written in that uninspiring day when Pirates were a very real nuisance to such law-abiding folk as you and I; but it has the merit of being written, if not by a Pirate, at least by one who came into actual contact with them. I am not at all sure that merit is the right word to use in this instance, for to be a Pirate does not necessarily ensure you making a good author. Indeed, it might almost be considered as a ban to the fine literary technique of an Addison or a Temple. It has, however, the virtue of being in close touch with some of the happenings chronicled. Not that our author saw above a tithe of what he recordshad he done so he would have been set a-sundrying at Execution Dock long before he had had the opportunity of putting pen to paper; but, as far as posterity was concerned, he was lucky in his friend William Ingramevidently a fellow of good memory and a ready tonguewho, as our author states in his Preface, was a Pirate under Anstis, Roberts, and many others, and who eventually was hanged in good piratical company on the llth of June, 1714.

The actual history of the little book, the major part of which is here reprinted, is as follows:

Its full title is The History and Lives of all the most Notorious Pirates and their Crews, and the fifth edition, from which our text is taken, was printed in 1735. A reproduction of the original title-page is given on the following page.

As a matter of fact, the title is misleading. How could a book that makes no mention of Morgan or Lollonois be a history of all the most notorious Pirates? It deals with the last few years of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth, a period that might with justice be called The Decline and Fall of Piracy, for after 1730 Piracy became but a mean broken-backed affair that bordered perilously on mere sea-pilfering.

A little research into the books history shows us that it is consistent throughout, and that it is a piracy, in the publishers sense of the word, of a much larger and more pretentious work by Captain Charles Johnson, entitled, A General History of the Pyrates from their first Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to the Present Time; With the Remarkable Actions and Adventures of the two Female Pyrates Mary Read and Anne Bonny.

This was published in London, in like this in original by Charles Rivington in 1724. A second edition, considerably augmented, was issued later in the same year, a third edition in the year following, and a fourth editionin two volumes, as considerable additions in the form of extra Lives, and an appendix necessitated a further volumein 1725.

THE

HISTORY and LIVES

Of all the most Notorious

PIRATES,

AND THEIR

CREWS;

From Capt. Avery, who first settled at Madagascar , to Captain John Gow , and James Williams , his Lieutenant, etc. who were hangd at Execution Dock, June 11 . 1725, for Piracy and Murther; and afterwards hangd in Chains between Blackwall and Deptford . And in this Edition continued down to the present Year 1735.

Giving a more full and true Account than any yet Publishd of all their Murthers, Piracies, Maroonings, Places of Refuge, and Ways of Living.