18th century AD

Owning the heritage of pirates--those legendary figures obscured by the mists of myth and myopia--is not easy. Most people see them as Errol Flynn caricatures, Disneyesque parodies, or simply criminals. Recognition of the black man's role in the maritime world of pirates has been slow to enter America's perception of its past.

Piracy was not an articulate movement. It produced no theoreticians, manifestoes or apologists. Pirates were "marginal men" driven by desperation and rage to vengeful acts of theft, terrorism and violence against an oppressive society. Early 18th-century Europe, for instance, was in the throes of severe economic, socialpolitical and religious changes that did not benefit all sectors of society equally. If it can be said that many lives were thus "sacrificed on the altar of progress," then pirates belong in the ranks of those men and women who refused to die quietly. That some engaged in insurrection on the high seas as a reaction to political oppression, religious persecution, slavery or simple want, does not absolve them; it only emphasizes their historical existence independent of either romanticized entertainments or superficial condemnation.

Since 1984, scholars at Cape Cod, Mass., have worked to dispel some of the mystery swirling around the silhouettes of these long-dead men. Research accompanying the archaeological recovery of more than 100,000 artifacts from the wreck site of the Whydah galley, the only sunken pirate ship ever discovered and authenticated, has provided startling insights into 18th-century piracy, including radical new findings about the role of blacks as pirates.

Barry Clifford, the head of the Whydah project, began to recognize this role in the late 1970s, while reviewing 1717 reports of African bodies washed ashore after the wreck. Although the Whydah was a slaveship before being commandeered by the English pirate Sam Bellamy, Clifford knew her human cargo had been sold prior to her capture and that the drowned blacks must therefore have been pirates.

Clifford learned that among Bellamy's pirates were British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Swedes and American Indians; moreover, at least 25 were former captive Africans liberated by the pirates from an unidentified slaveship, while an estimated two dozen more were African Americans. They had no common religion, and they had no common language, yet nearly 200 men were united in a common enterprise transcending nationality, religion and race. Such cooperation was in stark contrast to the hatreds then ravaging 18th-century Europe and America.

Subsequent research confirmed that the Whydah crew was not unique in its cosmopolitan makeup. Blacks were an important part of most pirate crews, and statistical evidence suggests that 25 to 30 percent of an estimated 5,000-plus pirates active during the years 1715 to 1725 were of African descent.

There are hard, practical reasons why blacks made good recruits. Tough enough and smart enough to escape bondage, a runaway slave could be counted on to fight to keep his freedom. Indeed, at least two crews were entirely black, with the exception of a single white man apiece.

Piratical racial tolerance did not proceed from a vision of the fundamental brotherhood of man; instead, it sprang from a spirit of revolt against political, economic and social oppression. The shared experience of oppression was thus a solvent that broke down social barriels within a pirate crew. Shared feelings of marginality meant that the primary allegiance of pirates was given to their brethren. It is hardly surprising that so many blacks--confronted with far worse prospects by staying put within the European or American social order--chose piracy.

Sailors and slaves lived on the bottom rungs of society's ladder. Rightly or wrongly, many of them saw turning pirate as the only avenue of escape from the twin grindstones of poverty and tyranny. Some stayed in piracy only long enough to amass enough booty for a fresh start in a town where their faces weren't known. Others remained in "the sweet trade" year after year--long after their fortunes were made--apparently because they simply enjoyed the freedom of a life outside the constraints of master, church and king.

Bellamy was once a shipmate of Blackbeard, the fearsome ogre who personifies the pirate of popular imagination. Far less familiar are Blackbeard's 60 crewmen (out of 100) who were black. Before his last battle, Blackbeard swore he wouldn't be taken alive, and entrusted a black named Caesar with blowing up the ship in case of defeat. After Blackbeard was killed, Caesar was kept from carrying out his orders only at the last possible moment by prisoners who had broken free.

Some argue that blacks played only a servile role among pirates. That no known crew ever prohibited its black members from carrying firearms is blunt proof to the contrary. Indeed, on one occasion, armed black pirates successfully led a mutiny against a tyrannical white pirate captain and his cronies!

Even more conclusive are the instances of blacks elected to the command of predominantly white crews. On three separate occasions, Diego Grillo, a runaway slave from Havana, defeated warships dispatched to capture him. Nicknamed "Lucifer," he plagued the Spanish for three decades.

Francisco Fernando had perhaps the briefest, yet most successful, piratical career of all. After taking over 250,000 silver "pieces of eight" in his first robbery, he promptly retired.

Laurens de Graff led more than a thousand men during his 1683 Veracruz, Mexico, raid, did far more damage to the Spanish than the "Buccaneer King" Henry Morgan ever dreamed, and was the single pirate most feared by both the English and the Spanish during the 1680s and '90s.

A quartermaster of the famed Captain Kidd was black. Abraham Samuel, a former slave from Martinique, retired from piracy to rule a kingdom in Madagascar. This list of characters runs out long before the numerous accounts of raids.

Like untold others who survived the incredible horrors of the Middle Passage and who endured generations of anonymous slavery, most black pirates are nameless men who appear only briefly on the dusty documents of old archives to tantalize the modern historian. Such is the extraordinary story of an unnamed black man from Rhode Island who fell in love with an American Indian woman. While tradition has it that she returned his love, she was a servant of the powerful clan that owned Gardiners Island, off the east end of Long island. Marriage between the two lovers was forbidden by the couple's masters. According to Gardiners Island legend, the black man could not bear the thought of separation from his love. Fleeing to the West Indies, he joined a pirate crew and soon rose through the ranks to a position of leadership.

It is a matter of historical fact, however, that this nameless black man led a wild raid on Gardiners Island in the late summer of 1728. No one was injured, but the pirates spent no less than four days looting the place of money, provisions and other valuables. Three armed vessels, including a British man-of-war, were sent out to capture the pirates, but their ship escaped, unscathed in a running sea battle--one hopes with the lovers happily reunited on the quarterdeck with the black flag, Jolly Roger, triumphantly cracking above them in the wind!

This flag attests to a radicalized sense of identity and solidarity directed against the traditional authority of "the old order." Pirates were denied due process of law by virtue of their special legal status as outlaws. Pirates therefore defiantly chose the skull and crossbones as an emblem to show that those who had turned pirates were, being "dead" in law, serving under the "Banner of King Death." The skull and crossbones, however, is also an old symbol of resurrection and rebirth. Together with other initiatory features of pirate society, this choice of banner shows that turning pirate may have been seen as a transformation--or a rebirth--from slave to free man.

"Dirk" Chivers, the commander of the North African-built pirate ship Soldado, told prisoners that his crew "acknowledged no Country-men, they had sold their Country and were sure to be hanged if taken, and that they would take no quarter, but would do all the mischief they could." The only nation to which they owed allegiance was the deck beneath their feet, and, if a pirate ship were asked from whence she hailed, the likeliest reply was, "From the Seas!"

In an age of increasing governmental centralization and control, pirates governed themselves in a remarkably democratic and libertarian fashion under the guidance of their "articles." Strikingly uniform in content among the various crews, the articles represented a sort of political compact, or constitution. One's oath to obey them was the sole condition of membership in a pirate crew. No known set of articles makes any distinction between different races or nationalities; the black man was an equal participant in this social experiment.

The articles allocated duties, specified distribution of plunder and provisions, and regulated discipline. Decision making was democratic. Pirates elected--and, if necessary, deposed--their captains and officers by majority vote. Indeed, the entire crew had the right to vote on all questions affecting its welfare.

When the gap between richest and poorest was rapidly expanding, when privilege for the few was being purchased at the expense of the many, pirates saw themselves as partners in an enterprise in which all proceeds were to be shared equally. No pirate was entitled to more than twice the share of plunder enjoyed by another pirate; any differences were for special duties as prescribed by the articles. Even valuable gold jewelry was broken up so that it could be distributed equally.

Pirate egalitarianism applied not just to treasure, but also to everyday life. In contrast to both the Royal Navy and the merchant marine, no special quarters were reserved for officers, and meals were taken communally. Workers' compensation was provided to maimed "brethren of the coast," frequently totaling as much as 800 pieces of eight--about ten years' worth of top merchant seaman's wages.

Recognizing the threat to social order posed by pirates' counterculture and fearing that they might succeed in establishing a land-based commonwealth, the British government in the early 1720s launched a successful campaign of extermination against them.

It has been said that history is written by the winners. The true story of the 18th-century pirate has been enshrouded with the preconceptions of admirers and detractors alike. Indeed, nearly three centuries later, scholars still find it difficult to obtain a fair hearing for their findings. Nonetheless, these fascinating men are slowly emerging, and our awareness of black participation in this seaborne rebellion is becoming comparable to our knowledge of other slave revolts in Colonial history.

Kenneth J. Kinkor, a freelance writer and lecturer on Colonial maritime history, is the historian for the Whydah Project and a Whydah exhibit interpreter at the Pilgrim Monument and Provincetown Museum in Provincetown, Mass.

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