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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
In "Daring Deeds of Famous Pirates," E. Keble Chatterton masterfully weaves together historical narratives and vivid character sketches to bring to life the exhilarating world of piracy in the Golden Age. This meticulously researched volume not only chronicles the fearless exploits of notorious pirates such as Blackbeard and Captain Kidd but also delves into the socio-political contexts that fostered their audacity on the high seas. With a narrative style that is both engaging and informative, Chatterton's prose captures the imagination, immersing readers in a thrilling blend of adventure and history that reflects the romanticized view of piracy prevalent in early 20th-century literature. Chatterton, a prominent maritime historian and novelist, was profoundly influenced by his lifelong fascination with the sea and its tales. Raised in a time when maritime lore captivated public interest, his dedication to uncovering the hidden truths behind legendary seafaring figures led him to craft this compelling account. His previous works and background in naval history equipped him with the expertise needed to present these tales with authenticity and flair. This book is highly recommended for enthusiasts of maritime history, adventure tales, and lovers of the romantic notion of piracy. Chatterton'Äôs work offers not just a thrilling read, but an invitation to explore the complex world of these daring buccaneers, making it an essential addition to any historical library.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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Daring Deeds of Famous Pirates
Table of Contents
Introduction
Ambition and lawlessness collide on open waters, and this book follows the perilous magnetism of those who chose the pirate’s path. Under the pen of E. Keble Chatterton, Daring Deeds of Famous Pirates presents a clear-eyed tour of notorious figures and episodes that have long captivated readers. Rather than treating piracy as pure romance, it explores the tension between audacity and accountability, daring and destruction. The sea becomes both setting and instrument, shaping character and consequence. Readers are invited to consider why certain exploits endure in memory and how legend, often burnished by time, meets the stubborn texture of recorded history.
This work belongs to popular maritime history, written for a broad audience by a British author known for accessible narratives about the sea. First published in the early twentieth century, it reflects a period when the age of sail still lingered in cultural memory, and when English-language readers were eager for vivid accounts of adventure grounded in historical fact. Chatterton’s approach aligns with his era’s penchant for synthesis: he assembles episodes and portraits into a coherent sequence, framing piracy within the larger story of seafaring and trade. The result is neither academic monograph nor fiction, but a narrative history designed to inform and engross.
The premise is straightforward and inviting: a curated survey of pirates whose names and deeds have entered popular lore, presented as a series of self-contained chapters. Though the book ranges across coasts and oceans, its center of gravity is the age of sail and the period often described as the Golden Age of Piracy. Chatterton selects incidents that illuminate character, decision, and consequence at sea—boarding actions, brinkmanship, escapes, and the precarious logistics of outlaw life. Readers can expect brisk scene-setting, an eye for maritime circumstance, and a measured sense of drama that privileges clarity over sensationalism.
Chatterton’s voice is that of an engaged guide: confident without bluster, descriptive without excess. He writes with a period sensibility that balances moral judgment and narrative momentum, characteristic of early twentieth-century popular histories. The style is straightforward and rhythmic, attentive to the practicalities of ships, crews, and weather as much as to headline-grabbing feats. While the book embraces the inherent excitement of its subject, it does so with restraint, foregrounding verifiable details and avoiding the embellishments that often surround pirate lore. The tone invites both the casual reader and the enthusiast, offering a digestible, sequential reading experience.
Several themes steer the book’s course. Foremost is the interplay between order and defiance: piracy as an affront to maritime law and commerce, yet also as a form of opportunistic enterprise shaped by the conditions of seafaring. There is an implicit study of leadership—how authority is claimed, tested, and lost aboard cramped wooden worlds. Chatterton also engages the mechanics of risk: the calculus of pursuit and evasion, the strain of navigation and supplies, and the ever-present hazards of weather. Throughout, the narrative weighs notoriety against consequence, asking what, beyond daring, sustains a career outside the law and what ultimately curtails it.
For contemporary readers, the book offers both perspective and correction. It restores historical contours to stories often smoothed into myth, situating piracy within the broader systems of trade, empire, and maritime regulation. In a time when the figure of the pirate circulates widely in entertainment, Chatterton’s account underscores how real-world constraints—jurisdiction, logistics, discipline—shape outcomes more than bravado alone. The questions it raises about charisma, violence, and the public appetite for sensational figures remain current. It also illuminates the origins of patterns still recognizable today, from the global nature of sea-lanes to the contest between security and profit.
Daring Deeds of Famous Pirates is, in the end, a guided passage through episodes that have defined the pirate in cultural memory, rendered with pace and a regard for fact. It promises atmosphere without indulgence, action framed by context, and a steady hand on difficult moral waters. Readers will find a sequence of vivid narratives that resist easy glorification, encouraging reflection on why these stories endure and what they reveal about the sea’s enduring pull. Chatterton offers an invitation to look past the skull-and-crossbones to the human decisions beneath, and to appreciate the history that anchors the legend.
Synopsis
E. Keble Chatterton’s Daring Deeds of Famous Pirates surveys notable episodes from the age of piracy, presenting brief, documented accounts of men and women who preyed upon sea-borne commerce. Opening with the historical setting, the book distinguishes privateering—war-sanctioned raiding—from outright piracy. It outlines the maritime conditions that enabled such careers: weak colonial enforcement, rich trade routes, and agile small craft. Chatterton emphasizes firsthand narratives and contemporary reports, framing each chapter around a particular figure or exploit. The tone remains factual and brisk, foregrounding actions at sea, ship-handling, and outcomes, while acknowledging the legal and moral judgments applied by their contemporaries.
The narrative begins with the buccaneers of the Spanish Main, explaining how hunters-turned-seafarers from bases such as Tortuga and Port Royal evolved into organized raiders. Chatterton recounts tactics—careening vessels, using shallow-draft sloops, and deceptive flags—and shows how these methods challenged heavily laden galleons in confined waters. Early episodes focus on bold coastal assaults and harbour incursions, where speed, surprise, and local knowledge outweighed formal naval power. Figures associated with these raids demonstrate the shift from opportunistic plunder to coordinated enterprises, linking island havens, informal codes of conduct, and the economics of captured cargoes throughout the Caribbean littoral.
As trade expanded, the book traces piracy’s spread from the Caribbean into the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Chatterton highlights ventures that targeted East India shipping, pilgrim convoys, and intercolonial routes, noting the global repercussions of single, spectacular captures. He describes how notorious voyages exposed legal gray areas between commission-backed privateering and piracy, provoking diplomatic protests and naval retaliation. The narrative underscores how scattered settlements, sparse patrols, and lucrative prizes made remote seas attractive. Increased convoying, treaties, and coordinated anti-piracy cruises begin to appear as countermeasures, setting the stage for later suppression while illustrating the scale and audacity of long-range predation.
A central chapter examines Captain William Kidd, whose career illustrates the blurred line between licensed warfare at sea and criminality. Chatterton outlines Kidd’s commission to hunt pirates, the outfitting of the Adventure Galley, and the pressures of investors and crew. The account follows disputed captures, the problem of prize legality, and Kidd’s return under suspicion. His arrest, transport, and trial are presented through documentary detail, emphasizing contested evidence and conflicting testimonies. By assembling the sequence of voyages, encounters, and legal proceedings, the book shows how administrative decisions ashore could define a seaman’s fate as sharply as any battle fought under sail.
Turning to Edward Teach—Blackbeard—the book documents a method of intimidation that relied on spectacle as much as force. Chatterton recounts the acquisition of powerful ships, the blockade of a colonial port, and the use of smoke, noise, and disciplined boarding to compel surrender. The narrative also features Stede Bonnet, a landowner-turned-pirate whose inexperience contrasted with Teach’s seamanship. Their brief association, subsequent separation, and parallel destinies illustrate the risks of leadership, crew cohesion, and coastal pursuit. These episodes show how local governors, merchant captains, and naval detachments coordinated responses, tightening the net around raiders operating along North American and Caribbean coasts.
The career of Bartholomew Roberts demonstrates piracy at its most organized. After early service under Howell Davis, Roberts emerged as a formidable commander, implementing rules aboard, maintaining discipline, and operating across multiple theaters—from West Africa to the Caribbean. Chatterton charts rapid sequences of captures, the management of prizes, and the use of windward routes and seasonal knowledge to evade patrols. Engagements with warships and the climactic battle that ended Roberts’s command are recounted with attention to sail handling, gunnery, and the fragile balance between daring and overreach. The chapter illustrates how efficiency and planning could briefly overpower superior state resources.
Chatterton includes accounts of Anne Bonny and Mary Read, whose participation challenges contemporary assumptions about who could serve aboard pirate craft. Their story is set alongside that of John “Calico Jack” Rackham, focusing on small-ship raids, inshore maneuvering, and the circumstances of their capture. The narrative traces the legal process that followed, with details drawn from court records and period chronicles. By placing these figures within the broader operational pattern—informal alliances, refuge in island communities, and the hazards of night actions—the book situates individual notoriety within the everyday realities of provisioning, command disputes, and the constant threat of informers and patrols.
Broader chapters survey additional leaders and regions, linking buccaneer assaults, Atlantic cruisers, and Gulf operations into a continuous chronology. Chatterton notes the role of colonial authorities who alternately tolerated, profited from, or suppressed sea-roving crews, and he describes the infrastructural countermeasures that emerged: fortified harbors, convoy schedules, and specialized anti-piracy tenders. The narrative also considers the effect of new governors, amnesties, and shifting imperial priorities. By interleaving personal exploits with administrative developments, the book shows how changing legal frameworks and improved naval coordination eroded the havens and markets upon which successful piracy depended.
The closing sections explain piracy’s decline as a product of converging pressures: better intelligence, faster cruisers, tighter maritime law, and more predictable trade defenses. Chatterton emphasizes that while these figures displayed seamanship, audacity, and organizational skill, their careers ultimately hinged on fragile networks and legal ambiguities that states moved to close. The book’s overarching purpose is descriptive rather than celebratory—assembling concise narratives from contemporary sources to show what was done, how, and with what consequences. By ending with suppression and reform, it underscores piracy’s historical limits and the emergence of regulated oceanic trade that reshaped opportunities for seaborne predation.
Historical Context
Daring Deeds of Famous Pirates is anchored in the early modern maritime world spanning roughly the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, with its core in the so-called Golden Age of Piracy (c. 1650–1726). Its scenes stretch from the Caribbean—Port Royal (Jamaica), Tortuga (Hispaniola), and Nassau (New Providence)—to the North American seaboard at Charleston and the Outer Banks, across West Africa’s Guinea and Gold Coasts, and eastward to the Red Sea and Madagascar. These waters were the arteries of expanding Spanish, English, French, and Dutch empires, where convoyed treasure fleets, plantation economies, and Navigation Acts shaped trade, and swift, shallow-draft sloops and frigates determined tactics, pursuit, and escape.
Buccaneering on the Spanish Main emerged after England’s seizure of Jamaica in 1655 and the rise of French and English hunter-raiders on Hispaniola and Tortuga. Between 1668 and 1671, Sir Henry Morgan struck Puerto Príncipe (Cuba), Porto Bello (Panama), Maracaibo (Venezuela), and finally Panama City itself, operating from Port Royal, the notorious freebooting entrepôt later devastated by the 7 June 1692 earthquake. The Treaty of Madrid (1670) sought to restrain such depredations by recognizing English possessions while curbing privateering. Chatterton’s volume recounts these episodes as foundational, using Morgan’s campaigns and the buccaneers’ bases to illustrate how imperial rivalry, geography, and maritime skill produced the era’s first celebrated sea raiders.
War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), precipitated by the death of Spain’s Charles II (1700), unleashed vast privateering under letters of marque from London, Bristol, and French ports. Expeditions such as Woodes Rogers’s circumnavigation (1708–1711) in the Duke and Duchess, which rescued Alexander Selkirk and captured a Manila galleon off Cabo San Lucas (1709), exemplified licensed predation. The Treaty of Utrecht (1713) demobilized thousands of seamen, while the 1715 Spanish treasure-fleet wrecks off Florida created rich salvage targets. From c. 1715 to 1726, Nassau on New Providence functioned as a "Republic of Pirates," sheltering Edward Teach (Blackbeard), Charles Vane, "Calico Jack" Rackham, Anne Bonny, and Mary Read. King George I’s general pardon (September 1717) and Governor Woodes Rogers’s arrival at Nassau (1718) marked the crackdown: Charleston’s blockade (May 1718), Blackbeard’s death at Ocracoke (22 November 1718), and Rackham’s capture (1720) are central set pieces in the book.
The Spanish flota system—annual convoys from Veracruz and Cartagena meeting at Havana for the crossing to Cádiz—was a structural target for freebooters. The hurricane of 31 July 1715 destroyed eleven treasure ships along Florida’s coast near present-day Vero Beach, attracting private salvors and pirates like Henry Jennings in 1715–1716, which in turn fed Nassau’s ascendancy. Farther east, Henry Every’s seizure of the Mughal ship Ganj-i-Sawai (near Socotra, September 1695) and its escort created a diplomatic crisis: riots at Surat, Emperor Aurangzeb’s closure of English factories, and the East India Company’s forced compensation and anti-piracy pledges. A royal proclamation placed a bounty on Every, inaugurating one of Britain’s first global manhunts. Chatterton uses these episodes to demonstrate how single maritime disasters or captures reshaped imperial policy and hardened legal responses to sea robbery.
Legal and naval suppression formed the other arc of events. Parliament’s anti-piracy statutes (notably 1698 and 1700) extended Admiralty jurisdiction to the colonies, enabling juryless trials in Jamaica, Barbados, Boston, and at sea. Captain William Kidd, commissioned in 1696 to hunt pirates, was tried at the Old Bailey and hanged at Execution Dock, Wapping (23 May 1701), for the murder of gunner William Moore and the taking of the Quedagh Merchant (1698). Lieutenant Robert Maynard ended Blackbeard at Ocracoke Inlet (22 November 1718), displaying the head at Hampton. Bartholomew Roberts fell off Cape Lopez (10 February 1722); fifty-two of his crew were executed at Cape Coast Castle soon after. In Boston, William Fly’s 12 July 1726 hanging served as a moral spectacle. The book dramatizes these prosecutions and battles as decisive blows that closed the Golden Age.
Beyond the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean and Red Sea corridors linked Mocha, Surat, and the Indonesian archipelago to pirate anchorages at Madagascar and Île Sainte-Marie. Traders such as Adam Baldridge dealt with raiders in the 1690s; Thomas Tew died assaulting a Mughal convoy (1695), while William Kidd’s controversial cruise (1696–1699) slid from privateering to outlawry before his 1701 execution. In the southwest Indian Ocean, Olivier Levasseur ("La Buse") preyed between Seychelles, Réunion, and Madagascar until his hanging at Saint-Denis (7 July 1730). Chatterton’s narratives trace these eastern ventures to underline piracy’s global circuits and the ways European chartered companies and local rulers responded to violence at sea.
The Barbary corsairing system in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli—Ottoman-affiliated regencies active from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries—formed a parallel arena in the Mediterranean. Raids seized European mariners and coastal villagers for ransom and slavery, provoking repeated campaigns: the First Barbary War (1801–1805) and Stephen Decatur’s 1815 expedition for the United States, Lord Exmouth’s bombardment of Algiers (27 August 1816) for Britain, and France’s 1830 conquest of Algiers, which ended the trade. When Chatterton evokes corsairs alongside Atlantic freebooters, he situates piracy within state structures and tribute economies, contrasting semi-official predation with outlaw bands and foregrounding how different legal regimes defined or excused maritime violence.
By juxtaposing privateering commissions with outlawry, and heroic "daring deeds" with executions, the book implicitly critiques the era’s political economy. It exposes how imperial states instrumentalized violence at sea, then disavowed the same skills when war ended, casting surplus sailors into poverty and the gallows. Descriptions of pirate articles, elected captains, and shares highlight shipboard attempts to correct class abuses typical of merchant service—wage theft, brutal discipline, and press-gangs. Figures like Anne Bonny and Mary Read reveal gender and legal hypocrisies. The recurrent presence of slaving ports and treasure convoys situates piracy within colonial extraction, inviting readers to question legality, justice, and the morality of oceanic empire.
Daring Deeds of Famous Pirates
THE ROMANCE OF PIRACY
CHAPTER ITHE EARLIEST PIRATES
I suppose there are few words in use which at once suggest so much romantic adventure as the words pirate and piracy. You instantly conjure up in your mind a wealth of excitement, a clashing of lawless wills, and there pass before your eyes a number of desperate dare-devils whose life and occupation are inseparably connected with the sea.
The very meaning of the word, as you will find on referring to a Greek dictionary, indicates one who attempts to rob. In classical times there was a species of Mediterranean craft which was a light, swift vessel called a myoparo[1] because it was chiefly used by pirates. Since the Greek verb peirao means literally “to attempt,” so it had the secondary meaning of “to try one’s fortune in thieving on sea.” Hence a peirates (in Greek) and pirata (in Latin) signified afloat the counterpart of a brigand or highwayman on land. To many minds piracy conjures up visions that go back no further than the seventeenth century: but though it is true that during that period piracy attained unheard-of heights in certain seas, yet the avocation of sea-robbery dates back very much further.
Robbery by sea is certainly one of the oldest professions in the world.[1q] I use the word profession advisedly, for the reason that in the earliest days to be a pirate was not the equivalent of being a pariah and an outcast. It was deemed just as honourable then to belong to a company of pirates as it is to-day to belong to the navy of any recognised power. It is an amusing fact that if in those days two strange ships met on the high seas, and one of them, hailing the other, inquired if she were a pirate or a trader, the inquiry was neither intended nor accepted as an insult, but a correct answer would follow. It is a little difficult in these modern days of regular steamship routes and powerful liners which have little to fear beyond fog and exceptionally heavy weather, to realise that every merchant ship sailed the seas with fear and trepidation. When she set forth from her port of lading there was little certainty that even if the ship herself reached the port of destination, her cargo would ever be delivered to the rightful receivers. The ship might be jogging along comfortably, heading well up towards her destined port, when out from the distance came a much faster and lighter vessel of smaller displacement and finer lines. In a few hours the latter would have overhauled the former, the scanty crew of the merchantman would have been thrown into the sea or pressed into the pirate’s service, or else taken ashore to the pirate’s haunt and sold as slaves. The rich cargo of merchandise could be sold or bartered when the land was reached, and the merchant ship sunk or left to wallow in the Mediterranean swell.
It is obvious that because the freight ship had to be big-bellied to carry the maximum cargo she was in most instances unable to run away from the swift-moving pirate except in heavy weather. But in order to possess some means of defence it was not unusual for these peaceful craft to be provided with turrets of great height, from which heavy missiles could be dropped on to the attacking pirate. In the bows, in the stern and amidships these erections could easily be placed and as quickly removed. And as a further aid oars would be got out in an endeavour to accelerate the ship’s speed. For whilst the pirate relied primarily on oars, the trader relied principally on sail power. Therefore in fine settled weather, with a smooth sea, the low-lying piratical craft was at its best. It could be manœuvred quickly, it could dart in and out of little bays, it could shelter close in to the shore under the lee of a friendly reef, and it was, because of its low freeboard, not easy to discern at any great distance, unless the sea was literally smooth. But all through history this type of vessel has been shown to be at a disadvantage as soon as it comes on to blow and the unruffled surface gives way to high crest and deep furrows.
It is as impossible to explain the growth of piracy as it is to define precisely the call of the sea. A man is born with a bias in favour of the sea or he is not: there is no possibility of putting that instinct into him if already he has not been endowed with that attitude. So also we know from our own personal experience, every one of us, that whilst some of our own friends fret and waste in sedentary pursuits, yet from the time they take to the sea or become explorers or colonisers they find their true métier. The call of the sea is the call of adventure in a specialised form. It has been said, with no little truth, that many of the yachtsmen of to-day, if they had been living in other ages, would have gone afloat as pirates or privateers. And so, if we want to find an explanation for the amazing historical fact that for century after century, in spite of all the efforts which many a nation made to suppress piracy, it revived and prospered, we can only answer that, quite apart from the lust of wealth, there was at the back of it all that love of adventure, that desire for exciting incident, that hatred of monotonous security which one finds in so many natures. A distinguished British admiral remarked the other day that it was his experience that the best naval officers were usually those who as boys were most frequently getting into disfavour for their adventurous escapades. It is, at any rate, still true that unless the man or boy has in him the real spirit of adventure, the sea, whether as a sport or profession, can have but little fascination for him.
International law and the growth of navies have practically put an end to the profession of piracy, though privateering would doubtless reassert itself in the next great naval war. But if you look through history you will find that, certainly up to the nineteenth century, wherever there was a seafaring nation there too had flourished a band of pirates. Piracy went on for decade after decade in the Mediterranean till at length it became unbearable, and Rome had to take the most serious steps and use the most drastic measures to stamp out the nests of hornets. A little later you find another generation of sea-robbers growing up and acting precisely as their forefathers. Still further on in history you find the Barbarian corsairs and their descendants being an irrepressible menace to Mediterranean shipping. For four or five hundred years galleys waylaid ships of the great European nations, attacked them, murdered their crews and plundered the Levantine cargoes. Time after time were these corsairs punished: time after time they rose again. In vain did the fleets of southern Christian Europe or the ships of Elizabeth or the Jacobean navy go forth to quell them. Algiers and Tunis were veritable plague-spots in regard to piracy. Right on through time the northern coast of Africa was the hotbed of pirates. Not till Admiral Lord Exmouth, in the year 1816, was sent to quell Algiers did Mediterranean piracy receive its death-blow, though it lingered on for some little time later.
But piracy is not confined to any particular nation nor to any particular sea, any more than the spirit of adventure is the exclusive endowment of any particular race. There have been notorious pirates in the North Sea as in the Mediterranean, there have been European pirates in the Orient just as there have been Moorish pirates in the English Channel. There have been British pirates on the waters of the West Indies as there have been of Madagascar. There have flourished pirates in the North, in the South, in the East and the West—in China, Japan, off the coast of Malabar, Borneo, America and so on. The species of ships are often different, the racial characteristics of the sea-rovers are equally distinct, yet there is still the same determined clashing of wills, the same desperate nature of the contests, the same exciting adventure; and in the following pages it will be manifest that in spite of differences of time and place the romance of piratical incident lives on for the reason that human nature, at its basis, is very much alike the whole world over.
But we must make a distinction between isolated and collected pirates. There is a great dissimilarity, for instance, between a pickpocket and a band of brigands. The latter work on a grander, bolder system. So it has always been with the robbers of the sea. Some have been brigands, some have been mere pickpockets. The “grand” pirates set to work on a big scale. It was not enough to lie in wait for single merchant ships: they swooped down on to seaside towns and villages, carried off by sheer force the inhabitants and sold them into slavery. Whatever else of value might attract their fancy they also took away. If any important force were sent against them, the contest resolved itself not so much into a punitive expedition as a piratical war. There was nothing petty in piracy on these lines. It had its proper rules, its own grades of officers and drill. Lestarches was the Greek name for the captain of a band of pirates, and it was their splendid organisation, their consummate skill as fighters, that made them so difficult to quell.
I have said that piracy was regarded as an honourable profession. In the earliest times this is true. The occupation of a pirate was deemed no less worthy than a man who gained his living by fishing on the sea or hunting on land. Just as in the Elizabethan age we find the sons of some of the best English families going to sea on a roving expedition to capture Spanish treasure ships, so in classical times the Mediterranean pirates attracted to their ships adventurous spirits from all classes of society, from the most patrician to the most plebeian: the summons of the sea was as irresistible then as later on. But there were definite arrangements made for the purpose of sharing in any piratical success, so there was an incentive other than that of mere adventure which prompted men to become pirates.
To-day, if the navies of the great nations were to be withdrawn, and the policing of the seas to cease, it is pretty certain that those so disposed would presently revive piracy. Nothing is so inimical to piracy as settled peace and good government. But nothing is so encouraging to piracy as prolonged unsettlement in international affairs and weak administration. So it was that the incessant Mediterranean wars acted as a keen incentive to piracy. War breeds war, and the spirit of unrest on sea affected the pirate no less than the regular fighting man. Sea-brigandage was rampant. These daring robbers went roving over the sea wherever they wished, they waxed strong, they defied opposition.
And there were special territories which these pirates preferred to others. The Liparian Isles—from about 580 B.C. to the time of the Roman Conquest—were practically a republic of Greek corsairs. Similarly the Ionians and the Lycians were notorious for piratical activities. After the period of Thucydides, Corinth endeavoured to put down piracy, but in vain. The irregularity went on until the conquest of Asia by the Romans, in spite of all the precautions that were taken. The Ægean Sea, the Pontus, the Adriatic were the happy cruising-grounds for the corsairs. The pirate-admiral or, as he was designated, archipeirates[2], with his organised fleet of assorted craft, was a deadly foe to encounter. Under his command were the myoparones, already mentioned—light and swift they darted across the sea; then there were, too, the hemiolia, which were so called because they were rowed with one and a half banks of oars; next came the two-banked biremes and the three-banked triremes, and with these four classes of ships the admiral was ready for any craft that might cross his wake. Merchantmen fled before him, warships by him were sent to the bottom: wherever he coasted there spread panic through the sea-girt towns. Even Athens itself felt the thrill of fear.
Notorious, too, were the Cretan pirates, and for a long time the Etruscan corsairs were a great worry to the Greeks of Sicily. The inhabitants of the Balearic Islands were especially famous for their piratical depredations and for their skilful methods of fighting. Wherever a fleet was sent to attack them they were able to inflict great slaughter by hurling vast quantities of stones with their slings. It was only when they came to close quarters with their aggressors the Romans, and the latter’s sharp javelins began to take effect, that these islanders met their match and were compelled to flee in haste to the shelter of their coves. At the period which preceded the subversion of the Roman commonwealth by Julius Cæsar, there was an exceedingly strong community of pirates at the extreme eastern end of the Mediterranean. They hailed from that territory which is just in the bend of Asia Minor and designated Cilicia. Here lived—when ashore—one of the most dangerous body of sea-rovers recorded in the pages of history. It is amazing to find how powerful these Cilicians became, and as they prospered in piracy so their numbers were increased by fellow-corsairs from their neighbours the Syrians and Pamphylians, as well as by many who came down from the shores of the Black Sea and from Cyprus. So powerful indeed became these rovers that they controlled practically the whole of the Mediterranean from east to west. They made it impossible for peaceful trading craft to venture forth, and they even defeated several Roman officers who had been sent with ships against them.
And so it went on until Rome realised that piracy had long since ceased to be anything else but a most serious evil that needed firm and instant suppression. It was the ruin of overseas trade and a terrible menace to her own territory. But the matter was at last taken in hand. M. Antonius, proprætor, was sent with a powerful fleet against these Cilician pirates; they were crushed thoroughly, and the importance of this may be gathered from the fact that on his return to Rome the conqueror was given an ovation.
In the wars between Rome and Mithradates the Cilician pirates rendered the latter excellent service. The long continuance of these wars and the civil war between Marius and Sylla afforded the Cilicians a fine opportunity to increase both in numbers and strength. To give some idea of their power it is only necessary to state that not only did they take and rob all the Roman ships which they encountered, but they also voyaged among the islands and maritime provinces and plundered no fewer than 400 cities. They carried their depredations even to the mouth of the Tiber and actually took away from thence several vessels laden with corn. Bear in mind, too, that the Cilician piratical fleet was no scratch squadron of a few antique ships. It consisted of a thousand vessels, which were of great speed and very light. They were well manned by most able seamen, and fought by trained soldiers, and commanded by expert officers. They carried an abundance of arms, and neither men nor officers were lacking in daring and prowess. When again it became expedient that these Cilicians should be dealt with, it took no less a person than Pompey, assisted by fifteen admirals, to tackle them; but finally, after a few months, he was able to have the sea once more cleared of these rovers.
We can well sympathise with the merchant seamen of those days. The perils of wind and wave were as nothing compared with the fear of falling into the hands of powerful desperadoes, who not merely were all-powerful afloat but in their strong fortresses on shore were most difficult to deal with. With the Balearic Islanders in the west, the Cilicians in the east, the Carthaginians in the south, the Illyrians along the Adriatic in their low, handy liburnian galleys, there were pirates ready to encircle the whole of the Mediterranean Sea. It is worth noting—for he who reads naval history must often be struck with the fact that an existing navy prevents war, but the absence of a navy brings war about—that as long as Rome maintained a strong navy piracy died down: but so soon as she neglected her sea-service piracy grew up again, commerce was interrupted both east and west, numerous illustrious Romans were captured and either ransomed or put to death, though some others were pressed into the service of the pirates themselves. By means of prisoners to work at the oars, by the addition of piratical neighbours and by mercenaries as well, a huge piratical community with a strong military and political organisation continued to prevent the development of overseas trade. This piracy was only thwarted by keeping permanent Roman squadrons always ready.
Of course there were pirates in these early times in waters other than the Mediterranean. On the west coast of Gaul the Veneti had become very powerful pirates, and you will recollect how severely they tried Cæsar, giving him more trouble than all the rest of Gaul put together. They owned such stalwart ships and were such able seamen that they proved most able enemies. During the time of the Roman Empire piracy continued also on the Black Sea and North Sea, though the Mediterranean was now for the most part safe for merchant ships. But when the power of Rome declined, so proportionately did the pirates reappear in their new strength. There was no fearful navy to oppose them, and so once more they were able to do pretty much as they liked. But we must not forget that long before this they had ceased to be regarded as the equivalent of hunters and fishermen. They were, by common agreement, what Cicero had designated “enemies of the human race”: and so they continued till the nineteenth century, with only temporary intervals of inactivity.
The thousand ships which the Cilician pirates employed were disposed in separate squadrons. In different places they had their own naval magazines located, and during that period already mentioned, when they were driven off the sea, they resisted capture by retreating ashore to their mountain fastnesses until such time as it was safe for them to renew their ventures afloat. When Pompey defeated them he had under him a fleet of 270 ships. As the inscription, carried in the celebration of his triumph on his return to Rome, narrated, he cleared the maritime coasts of pirates and restored the dominion of the sea to the Roman people. But the pirates could always boast of having captured two Roman prætors, and Julius Cæsar, when a youth on his way to Rhodes to pursue his studies, also fell into their hands. However, he was more lucky than many another Roman who, when captured, was hung up to the yard-arm, and the pirate ship went proudly on her way.
In the declining years of the Roman Empire the Goths came down from the north to the Mediterranean, where they got together fleets, became very powerful and crossed to Africa, made piratical raids on the coast and carried on long wars with the Romans. Presently the Saxons in the northern waters of Europe made piratical descents on to the coasts of France, Flanders and Britain. Meanwhile, in the south, the Saracens descended upon Cyprus and Rhodes, which they took, seized many islands in the Archipelago, and thence proceeded to Sicily to capture Syracuse, and finally overran the whole of Barbary from Egypt in the east to the Straits of Gibraltar in the west. From there they crossed to Spain and reduced the greater part thereof, until under Ferdinand and Isabella these Moors were driven out of Spain and compelled to settle once more on the north coast of Africa. They established themselves notably at Algiers, took to the sea, built themselves galleys and, after living a civilised life in Spain for seven hundred years, became for the next three centuries a scourge of the Mediterranean, a terror to ships and men, inflicted all the cruelties which the fanaticism of the Moslem race is capable of, and cast thousands of Christians into the bonds of slavery. In many ways these terrifying Moorish pirates—of which to this day some still go afloat in their craft off the north coast of Africa—became the successors of those Cilician and other corsairs of the classical age. In due course we shall return to note the kind of piratical warfare which these expatriated Moors waged for most of three hundred years. But before we come to that period let us examine into an epoch that preceded this.
