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| The Mores of Buccaneers |
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James Fenton
copyright © 2006
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Originally published
in The Guardian
18 February 2006
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One expects pirate literature to be full of
fantasy. Instead it turns out to be rich in curious facts. Exquemelin
tells us that the sweet and delicious green fat of the green
turtle is so penetrating that "when you have eaten nothing
but turtle flesh for three or four weeks, your shirt becomes
so greasy from sweat you can squeeze the oil out and your limbs
are weighed down with it".
The agreements drawn up by the buccaneers specified
the following rates of compensation: for loss of a right arm,
600 pieces of eight or six slaves; for a left arm or a right
leg, 500 pieces of eight or five slaves; for a left leg, 400
pieces of eight or four slaves; for an eye or a finger, 100
pieces of eight or one slave.
A document reproduced by Captain Charles Johnson
in his life of Captain Roberts sets out typical democratic terms
under which the buccaneers were prepared to serve on a pirate
ship. Every man had a vote and had equal title to fresh provisions
and strong liquor, confirming Exquemelin's statement that the
men always ate as well as the captain. No boys or women were
allowed on board ship, and there was to be no gambling at cards
or dicing for money. "No striking one another on Board,
but every man's quarrels to be ended on shore, at swords and
pistol."
The pirate ship in its day resembled the Filipino
cockpit today in this sense: it was a society that had to be
honestly run. The man who takes the bets before today's cockfight
keeps them all in his head, and every participant is solemnly
bound to honour his commitments. Anyone who cheats in the cockpit
is punished by a single blow from each member of the audience
- a system that the 17th-century pirates would have recognised
and approved. But on Captain Roberts's ship the penalty for
defrauding the company to the value of a dollar in plate, jewels
or money was marooning. This is glossed by Johnson as "a
barbarous custom of putting the offender on shore, on some desolate
or uninhabited cape or island, with a gun, a few shot, a bottle
of water, and a bottle of powder, to subsist with, or starve".
Surprising, perhaps, in this world of desperadoes,
to find that lights and candles were to be put out at eight
o'clock at night, and that "if any of the crew, after that
hour, still remained inclined for drinking, they were to do
it on the open deck". Surprising too to learn from the
last article of the agreement that the musicians were to have
rest on the Sabbath day, "but on the other six days and
nights, none without special favour".
Musicians? Well, there was continual carousing
- one could eat and drink, according to the agreement, as much
as one wished. And pirate entertainments are recorded. The life
of Captain Anstis tells us of dancing and mock trials on land
in which the pirates took turns to be criminal on one day and
judge another, the judge being dressed up in a dirty tarpaulin
and a "thrum cap", with a large pair of spectacles
on his nose, and sitting in a tree. An example of such an extempore
dialogue is given.
In the life of Captain Bellamy, we learn of
a play performed on board the Whidaw in 1717, written by Bellamy
and called The Royal Pirate. It was acted on the quarter-deck
to great applause. In one scene Alexander the Great was examining
a pirate. The ship's gunner, too drunk to distinguish play from
reality, heard Alexander intone the line:
Know'st thou that Death attends thy mighty
crimes,
And thou shall'st hang to-morrow morn betimes.
The gunner rushed off to the gun-room where
he told his drunk companions that "they were going to hang
honest Jack Spinckes, and that if they suffered it, they should
all be hanged one after another, but, by G-d, they should not
hang him, for he'd clear the decks."
At this, he took a grenade with a lighted match
and threw it among the actors. A general melée ensued
in which Alexander had his left arm cut off and revenged himself
by killing the culprit. "The gunner and the two surviving
comrades were that night clapped into irons, and the next day
not only acquitted but applauded. Alexander and his enemies
were reconciled and the play forbade any more to be acted."
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