Notorious Pirate Havens of the Caribbean

By Nick Smith

The pirate stronghold: a place where the wenches are dirty and cheap, where the rum and smuggled French wine flow fast and free, and a place safe from the Crown…

The popular image of lawless havens of prostitutes, alcoholism, and squalor is not one far from the truth. Throughout the Golden Age of Piracy there were many such places a dubious seafarer of ill-repute could find a bed for the night, and unfussy merchants to unload their pilfered cargo to, but where were they? When were they operational? And why were they tolerated?

In last month's post, I already discussed in detail the history of the buccaneers, but let me give you a quick recap. The buccaneers were mostly runaway indentured servants or grounded sailors attempting to carve a bloody life for themselves in the disease-ridden Caribbean. They were around throughout the 17th Century, and in their early days operated mainly from their base of Tortuga - our first pirate haven.

Tortuga - 1650.

In his book - The Buccaneers of America - Exquemelin gives a firsthand account of how thousands of musket-wielding buccaneers lived on this turtle-shaped island North of Hispaniola. An island disputed by the French, Spanish, and English, but very loosely administered by the French government, it was a perfect place for hardened opportunists to strike out at Spanish-owned Hispaniola and Cuba and to pilfer precious redwoods. Even in times of peace, the Spanish didn't believe there was such a thing in the Caribbean, and so battles waged between the military and civilians alike. Corrupt governors made no move to curb such piratical activities by their warrior inhabitants. No doubt they benefited greatly from the money they earned, and in times of need the buccaneers acted as an elite militia.

If you think I was exaggerating about prostitutes, I wasn't. A French governor, in an attempt to cool the temper of the bloodthirsty buccaneers, imported over a thousand ladies of negotiable affection from Europe! This pirate haven thrived until the 1670s, when the French took a greater interest in the island and expelled the English and Dutch inhabitants.

They went other places instead - most notably Port Royal, Jamaica - our second pirate haven. Under the control of England since the English Civil War, it was a perfect island for the refugee buccaneers to strike at not just Cuba and Hispaniola - but the Spanish Main also. The musket-wielding wood-choppers had become emboldened, and led by such legends as Henry Morgan, they brought literally tons of pilfered wealth back to England. Their attacks were sharp and brutal. 

Did the English government make an effort to curb the activities then? No… they encouraged it, and sent advisers to help. With such fame and fortune earned by some, even more rogues flocked from across Europe. A place beyond control, contemporaries described Port Royal as the most wicked place on earth, and when the earthquake of 1692 sent half of this pirate haven into the sea, it was claimed that God was punishing the depraved for their sins.

A cross-section of Port Royal, before and after 1692. Wikipedia Commons

Port Royal - and the newer-formed Kingston across the bay - did remain as a pirate haven, but other places began to take preference for the sea rovers, such as the neglected French administered Petit and Grande Goave on Hispaniola.

When England (and soon after, Britain) went to war with France and Spain in the early 1700s, most of the English pirates found work as privateers throughout the Caribbean and beyond, operating from Kingston and other English colonies. At the end of the War of the Spanish Succession in 1714, an opportunistic Jamaican governor began handing out letters of marque to pirates once more. He no doubt profited personally from the continued pilfering of Britain's traditional enemies. His action emboldened the now out-of-work sailors and privateers who were deemed to be surplus to requirements since the war's end. They flocked to the Caribbean like flies to a carcass, and even when they became too much of a strain for the capital of Jamaica, they found their own home instead…

Our next pirate haven is the town of Nassau, on New Providence Island - arguably the most famous and important of all pirate havens from the Golden Age. Pirates once friends with the Jamaican governor now set out to carve their own path. With the wealth of pilfered shipping lanes, they invested in the small Bahamas settlement and made it their own. Nassau became the feared home of the famous Blackbeard, Charles Vane, Benjamin Hornigold, Anne Bonney etc.

Those who had been a welcome tradition to the English crown for nearly a hundred years were now deemed to be a pest. Spain had more or less fallen, France was in a recession, and the pirates had turned to attacking British shipping instead. Nassau had been declared a pirate republic by the occupants, an open challenge to the accepted authority.

For five years Nassau remained an independent haven for freebooters until the Royal Navy and pirate hunters were dispatched to curb the problem. At the lead was Woodes Rogers, a once-privateer most notable for rescuing the real-life Robinson Crusoe: Alexander Selkirk. In 1718 he landed on the shores of Nassau, strung up a load of pirates, and offered the Royal Pardon to the rest. And so ended the great tradition of lawless pirate havens throughout the Caribbean. The Golden Age of Piracy was just about over…

An end to piracy: "The Capture of Blackbeard" Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1920, oil on canvas.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Nick Smith is a twenty-eight year old Northumbrian in exile, currently living on a small rock in the Channel Sea where he teaches science. He has a love for all things of a nautical and historical nature.

He is the author of the gritty swashbuckling adventures ROGUES’ NEST & the newly released GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE – both explore the reality of buccaneers and pirates at the start of the 1700s.

ROGUES’ NEST is set in the very real pirate haven of Petit Goave, described briefly above.

Find out more about his work at roguesnest.com 

Sir Francis Drake and the African Slaves, by Tim Vicary

As a boy, growing up in Devon, I was taught that Francis Drake and John Hawkins were great Elizabethan heroes.  Drake was the first Englishman to sail around the world, to return with untold riches and be knighted by Queen Elizabeth on the deck of his ship, the Golden Hind; Hawkins was the founder of the Royal Navy, the man who designed and built the fast, weatherly galleons which sailed rings around the Spanish Armada.

These men were pioneers, adventurers, founders of the British Empire. Everything they did seemed admirable. They had saved the nation once; if England were ever in danger of invasion again all we had to do was to sound Drake’s Drum (which was hidden somewhere in Plymouth) and like King Arthur, he would rise from the dead and sail back to our rescue. As schoolboys, we basked in the reflected glory of these men. The symbol for the county of Devon was an Elizabethan galleon – Drake’s ship - sailing proudly across a blue sea.

It’s different today. Look up Devon County Council on the web and what do you find? No ship – just a logo of two green leaves. Terrific. (So Devon has trees and the rest of England does not?) But it’s a sign of the times. The environment is fashionable, the British Empire is no longer something to be proud of. 

Do today’s school children learn much about Francis Drake and John Hawkins? I wonder. If they do, I’m sure they are taught a different version of British history differently to the one I learned; and to an extent, that’s quite right. For Sir Francis Drake was not just a hero; he was also a pirate and a thief. He was licensed by the Queen to steal, burn and destroy Spanish ships and colonies in the New World. He was as feared and hated by the Spanish just as much as the Vikings once were by English monks, or Somali pirates are by sailors today.  

So what about his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, the founder of the British Navy, the man who built Queen Elizabeth’s galleons to defend us against the Spanish Armada? Surely he was no pirate; he was a respectable merchant, a shipowner,  a businessman, a senior civil servant.

Well, yes. He was all of those things. But he was a slave trader too. That’s where much of his wealth came from.

Oh dear. If there’s one thing that’s really really bad about the British Empire, that has be it: the slave trade. African prisoners torn from their homes, chained and packed like sardines into the stinking holds of wooden ships for month-long voyages across the heaving Atlantic. Then poked and prodded, naked and trembling, in a marketplace where they stood waiting to be sold.

Everyone knows this. I’m sure if there’s one thing that British school children DO learn about in their history lessons it’s the slave trade. And quite right too. It was horrible. It was also one of the greatest forced migrations in history. It’s because of the slave trade that British and American classrooms today don’t just contain white children who can identify with men like Drake and Hawkins, but also black children whose African ancestors were enslaved by men just like them.

You might think John Hawkins was ashamed of being a slave trader, but he wasn’t. Not at all. After all he hadn’t started it; the Portuguese were selling slaves long before him; they regarded the whole of the west African seaboard as exclusively their own, granted to them by the Pope. They sold slaves across the Atlantic to Spanish colonists in New Spain, the part of the New World the Pope had granted exclusively to them. Hawkins was just trying to get some of this commerce for himself, in the spirit of free trade. He made three slave-trading voyages, and he was so successful that he commissioned a coat of arms, proudly featuring – of all things – a black man bound with a rope.

Not very politically correct. Not the sort of public relations we can celebrate in our schools today, where racism is rightly regarded with anathema. And it wasn’t just John Hawkins who was involved with this; his young cousin Francis Drake sailed with him too, on the third and most troublesome of his three slaving voyages.

Clearly, these men were no angels. They were slave-traders, pirates, thieves – how can we possibly regard them as heroes? Surely we should just condemn them outright; and say there was nothing good about their lives at all?

 Well, perhaps. But perhaps not. These men, like most historical figures, were more complex than they first appear.

John Hawkins was both a slave trader AND the Treasurer of Queen Elizabeth’s Navy. He was the man who commissioned and built the ships which defeated the Spanish Armada. And by doing that, he saved many English men from becoming slaves themselves, bound for years to an oar in a Spanish galley, or being burned alive by the Inquisition at an Auto-da-Fe.

Francis Drake was both a pirate AND a great explorer, consummate navigator, circumnavigator of the world. He, like Hawkins, saved England from invasion by Spain.

But the life of Francis Drake also shows us something else. Astonishingly, it seems that it was possible to be both a slave trader AND the friend of escaped African slaves!

Here is the evidence. In 1567 the young Francis Drake sailed to Sierra Leone in a fleet commanded by his cousin, John Hawkins. Here they bought, stole and captured some 500 African slaves which they transported to the Spanish Main and sold to Spanish colonists. But although the colonists were happy to buy the slaves, they were less happy about the vendor; their King, Philip of Spain, had made it very clear that English and French merchants should be kept out of his New World Empire, and treated as pirates.

So when Hawkins’s fleet was caught in a hurricane, and forced to seek shelter in the Spanish port of San Juan de Ulloa, he knew he was in trouble. While he was there, repairing his ships, the new Viceroy arrived from Spain with a fleet of 13 ships. At first, Hawkins negotiated an uneasy truce with the Viceroy: hostages were exchanged, and the Spanish fleet entered the harbor, mooring a short distance from the English. But the Spanish Viceroy had no intention of doing deals with a pirate. The truce was broken, and after a fierce battle most the English ships were sunk or captured. Hawkins escaped in one ship, Drake in another. Hawkins’s ship, the Minion, was so overcrowded with sailors from his other ships that he was forced to maroon several hundred men on land, where they were taken prisoner by the Spanish. When the Minion eventually reached England, only 15 men were still alive on board.

This incident made it crystal clear, as the Spanish Viceroy intended, that there was no possibility of English merchants trading with the Spanish colonists. Over the next few years Hawkins tried to negotiate with Spain for the return of his imprisoned sailors, even pretending, at times, that he was a Catholic. But Francis Drake took a more direct method. Since it was no longer possible to trade with the Spanish colonists, he decided to raid them instead. He set out to steal the gold and silver from the mines of South America which made the Spanish king so rich.

Francis Drake was very successful at this. In fact, he became one of the most successful pirates in all history. Historians estimate that each shareholder in his voyage of circumnavigation round the world made a profit of £47 for each £1 they invested. Queen Elizabeth got more money from that one pirate ship, than all other Exchequer receipts for a year.

But Francis Drake couldn’t have done all this on his own. Many of his most successful raids were due to some very important allies – the Cimarrons. These Cimarrons were escaped African slaves; people exactly like those whom he and John Hawkins had captured in Sierra Leone. Some of them may have actually travelled in Hawkins’s ships. But a lot of the Africans who were sold as slaves to the colonists had escaped. So many of them escaped, in fact, that they became a major threat to the Spanish colonists – just as big a threat as the English and French pirates. But unlike the pirates, the Cimarrons didn’t want gold and silver; they didn’t have much use for it.  They wanted freedom, and revenge, and the ability to defeat their Spanish masters.

All the accounts suggest that Francis Drake got on really well with these people. In a famous raid in Panama Drake presented the Cimarron leader, Pedro, with a gold encrusted scimitar which had previously belonged to Henry II, king of France. A true pirate’s sword! His Cimarron allies also took him to a hilltop in Panama, and showed him a famous tree. They climbed this tree with Francis Drake and his friend, John Oxenham, and showed them a marvelous sight: the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Pacific to the west. It was this vision which inspired Drake’s later voyage round Cape Horn.

Some of these Africans liked Drake so much that they even chose to sail with him. As the wounded Drake was getting back into his pinnace after a raid on Nombre de Dios in 1573, a black man called out to him from the shore: ‘Are you Francis Drake? Then I am coming with you!’ This man, an escaped African slave called Diego, became one of Drake’s longest-serving seamen, and stayed with him until he died on the Golden Hind’s round-the-world voyage six years later. And in 1586, at the siege of Santo Domingo, Drake sent a different black servant to receive a Spanish officer who carried a flag of truce. When the Spaniard, apparently insulted by this, callously ran the black man through with his sword, Drake was so incensed that he insisted that the Spanish hanged their own officer before any further negotiations took place.

So perhaps, even though he was once a slave-trader, we can exonerate Drake from the modern slur of racism. Slavery, after all, was common in the sixteenth century, and not necessarily linked to race. Thousands of slaves were chained to the oars of the galleys on both sides, Spanish and Turkish, at the battle of Lepanto; that was how Mediterranean sea-battles were fought. Moorish sailors from North Africa raided the coasts of Cornwall and southern Ireland for slaves to sell in the markets of Constantinople. For sailors and people who lived near the coast, slavery was an unfortunate hazard of life. It could happen at any time, out of the blue, and transform a person’s life forever.

For someone writing a historical novel about Drake and Hawkins today, what does all this mean? Surely the story can’t, or shouldn’t, be only about the heroic English sailors, as books were when I was young. John Hawkins’s third slave-trading voyage transformed the lives of hundreds of unlucky Africans – more Africans, probably, than there were English sailors on his ships. So in a novel about these events, surely the Africans should have a prominent place too. What was life like for them, as well as for the English sailors who captured them?

In my book, Nobody’s Slave, I try to imagine what this may have been like. Nobody’s Slave is the story of two teenage boys, one African, one English, whose lives collide on John Hawkins’s third slave-trading voyage. I have tried to write an adventure story which, I hope, can be read by anyone, white or black, as part of our shared and troublesome history. It’s a work of fiction, but all the main events really happened; they are based on original sources, and as true and accurate as I can make them.

Sources:  Much of the original source material can be found in The Principal Navigations Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, by Richard Hakluyt. Hawkins’ own account of his voyage (written and approved by John Sparke, who sailed with him) is in Volume 7; two other very colorful accounts, by Miles Philips and Job Hortob, both of whom sailed with Hawkins and were captured by the Spanish, are in Volume 6.

Links: Amazon US

Amazon UK

Tim’s website

17th Century Recipes

by Katherine Pym

From the book: Samuel Pepys' Penny Merriments, Being a Collection of Chapbooks, full of Histories, Jests, Magic, Amorous Tales of Courtship, Marriage and Infidelity, Accounts of Rogues and Fools, together with Comments on the Times. Selected and Edited by Roger Thompson of the University of East Anglia at Norwich, 1977.

Whew, what a mouthful. Our titles these days are much shorter, with less syllables, easier to remember. To remember this, I simply refer to it as: Penny Merriments, a tome I found in a bookstore and considered a great find. It has all sorts of wonderful information, like recipes to make one beautiful, or a recipe for the newest way to roast a hare. It sends me right back into the era of my choice...

17th century England started out with traders going to far distant shores, but the cost was extensive. Spices were gathered through the Levant Company (owned by noblemen and gentlemen of quality) and the fledgling East India Company. As the century moved forward, their ships went to places already taken by the Spanish and Portuguese. 

 

Battle during First Anglo/Dutch War

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) began at about the same time as England's, but they weren't hampered by the religious upheaval and civil wars England endured during the first half of the century. The Dutch VOC had a leg up on English merchant shipping until Cromwell decided enough was enough and went to war with Holland. This is known as the First Anglo/Dutch war (1652-54), and fought entirely at sea. These wars were over trade, who could monopolize which ports in the East and West Indies.


With that said, the recipes below show an inordinate amount of spices, which were very costly. During the reign of King James I, a fight to near death took place between VOC and English Merchantmen in the South Seas that decimated the crops of nutmeg on Pulo Run Island, in the Banda archipelago.

Dutch Flagship sailing into Mediterranean Harbor

Through the Levant Company, citrus fruits, dates, pepper, cotton cloth, and other fruits and spices were trekked across the desert sands to ports the Levant held in the Mediterranean, then imported via ship to London. (I won't even mention the pirate contingent that upped the cost of goods.) Once these commodities hit the London markets, they proved costly for the middling English household.

The below recipes can only come from later in the 17th century, and were directed to the more well-to-do. Middling folk who could read, enjoyed the thoughts of these, though... 

"To Roast a shoulder of mutton with Oysters the best way.
"Take one not too fat nor too lean, open it in divers places, stuff your oysters in with a little chopt penny-royal (of the mint family), baste it with butter and claret wine, then serve it up with grated nutmeg, yolks of eggs, ginger, cinnamon, butter and red wine vinegar."

"To Stew a Leg of Lamb the best way.
"Slice it and lay it in order in your stewing-pan, seasoned with salt and nutmeg, adding a pound of butter, and half a pint of claret, with a handful of sliced dates, and the like quantity of currants, and make the sauce with the yolk of two eggs, a quarter pint of verjuice (acid juice from sour or unripe fruit, very sour), and two ounces of sugar. Boil them up, and put them over the meat, serving up hot together." 

"The Art of Beautifying the Hands, Neck, Breast and Face: Harmless and Approved, with other Rare Curiosities.
"To make the hands arms white, clear and smooth. Take a quarter of a pound of sweet almonds, blanch and bruise them, with a quarter of a pint of oil of roses, and the like quantity of betony-water (plant of the mint family): heat them over a gentle fire; and then press out the liquid part, and it will serve for either hands or face anointed therewith."

"To take away Freckles, Morphew (scurfy skin) or sunburn.
"Steep a piece of copper in the juice of lemon till it be dissolved (can copper dissolve?), and anoint the place with a feather morning and evening, washing it off with white wine."

"To take off any scurf from the hands and face.
"Take water of tartar, that is, such wherein calcined (burnt to a powder) tartar has been infused, anoint the place, and wash it as the former (with white wine)."

And now, for the final and most excellent recipe...

"To sweeten the Breath, and preserve the Teeth and Gums.
"Boil a handful of juniper berries, a handful of sage, and an ounce of caraway seeds in a quart of white wine, til a third part be consumed: strain it and wash your mouth with it morning and evening, suffering a small quantity to pass down: you may whiten the teeth by rubbing them with pumice stone."

So, who wants to try one of these recipes and let me know how it works? I'd especially like to know the results of whitening your teeth with pumice stone. Or should I do a disclaimer? Don’t do this without the guide of a professional!

~~~~~~~~~

Katherine Pym's novel Twins, a 2012 EPIC finalist, delved into trade with the Levant Company. Find all of Katherine's works at: http://www.amazon.com/Katherine-Pym/e/B004GILIAS 

'El Camino Real' - A Path Worn Through Time

by Jenny Barden

This picture sums up what is left of el Camino Real: stones disappearing into the undergrowth, lost in darkness, veiled by forest mist. Very little remains, but what does conjures up the shadows of the pack trains that used to traverse this vital road across Panama, bringing bullion from the mines of South America from the Pacific side of the isthmus to the Caribbean by the quickest overland route. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, el Camino Real, 'the Royal Road', bore the riches that helped sustain the might of the Spanish Empire and its domination in Europe. It stretched from the city of Panama in the south, across mountains and through rainforest, to Nombre de Dios in the north. Over the stones once laid by some 4000 native slaves under the command of Gaspar de Espinosa in 1517-9, pack trains in convoys, often of two or three together totalling some 200 mules or more, would walk, plod, climb and struggle over this path until their hooves wore hollows that can still be seen in places today.

The road was never easy. It was only just over sixty miles in length, yet it passed through thick forest and vegetation that proliferated so rapidly the road was in constant need of repair. In the rainy season it became impassable because of the many rivers that had to be forded which turned into torrents once swollen by tropical storms, and even without rain (as I know only too well from experience) the high humidity would soon leave the clothes of any traveller completely saturated. Those who took the Royal Road had to contend with mosquitoes that carried malaria and yellow fever, and up in the mountains, where drops were precipitous, when a mule lost its footing it would be gone for ever. There were other dangers too: the risk of ambush by Cimaroons - bands of runaway African slaves - and towards the end of the sixteenth century there was the very real threat of pirate attack.

Chris Haslam noted some of the hazards in his article 'The World's Wildest Walk' for the Sunday Times*: 'Some 300ft below, the Nombre de Dios river roars through unseen cataracts, a constant reminder of where you end up if you fall. And falling is a constant possibility. The problem is that if you slip, you need to grab something to stop you falling, and if you grab something it will either bite you, spike you or try to tear your hand off. Scorpions, tarantulas and lethal bullet ants lurk in the leaf litter. Deadly eyelash vipers and enormous fer-de-lances lie disguised as branches and roots, and even the flora threatens armed response. Thorns, hooks and barbs shred clothes and skin, causing wounds that go septic in hours, and peaceful looking leaves cause cruel and unusual burns. It's hard enough hauling a rucksack around here: imagine driving a stolen mule train.'

Francis Drake was the first Englishman to realise the vulnerability of the Spanish bullion supply while it was in transit over the Royal Road, and after several raids along the coast and attacks on shipping for little gain, many setbacks and a thwarted attempt to ambush the 'Silver Train' (as the bullion pack trains were called), he finally achieved a remarkable victory in April 1573 by capturing a convoy carrying almost 30 tons in silver and over half a ton in gold.**

This was Drake's first great enterprise: the triumph that began his meteoric rise to fame, fortune and a place in English history books.

After that attack, the Spanish began to store their treasure at Puerto Bello to the west of Nombre de Dios. (Drake later died of dysentery near Puerto Bello after a failed expedition to raid the City of Panama; he is buried at sea in the bay)
                                                                       
                                                                                 

The Camino Real and its offshoot connecting the Chagres river with the City of Panama: el Camino a Cruces (part of which still survives as Las Cruces Trail) continued to be used to carry bullion north and merchandise south for another two hundred years. In 1671 the buccaneer Henry Morgan used Las Cruces trail to reach the old city of Panama which he then looted and burned to the ground, and in the nineteenth century prospectors used the trail to cross the isthmus on their way to join the gold rush in California. The trail finally came to an end with the construction of the Panama Railroad in 1855. The railway reduced the time needed to cross the isthmus from a minimum of three days, and sometimes several weeks, to only an hour.

With the opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 most of the old road was lost forever, flooded by the damming of the Chagres to form Lake Gatun and by the Madden Dam behind which Lake Alajuela now covers a large part of the old trail. The development of Panama City as a metropolis has obliterated much more, and the forest and rivers have swallowed up the rest. There are only a few traces left of the highway that once played such an important part in the history of world affairs, but here is one: the Puente del Matadero in Panama la Vieja - the bridge over which Camino a Cruces began.

If you look under this bridge, you can see the channels worn in the stones by the rush of the tide over nearly five hundred years.


There's a very good website about the Camino Real here: http://www.bruceruiz.net/PanamaHistory/el_camino_real.htm

Michael Turner of the Drake Exploration Society describes the route Drake took to reach both the failed ambush and his successful attack near Nombre de Dios in his book In Drake's Wake: the early Voyages. I gather he's planning another route march across the isthmus this coming February...

My debut novel, Mistress of the Sea, is set against the backdrop of Drake's attack on the Silver Train along the Camino Real. The book will be published by Ebury Press and launched this Thursday, 30 August 2012. It will be released first in hardback with the paperback to follow.

The book is available for pre-order here: http://amzn.to/PUavyS


** There's a piece about how Drake and his men got away with the haul on the EHFA site here: 'Carrying Away the Booty' - Drake's attack on the Spanish 'Silver Train'


* Chris Haslam's article appeared in the Sunday Times 03.09.2006

All pictures taken by the author. Map drawn by the author. ©JennyBarden