Pirate Nation. David Childs
have scanty leisure to write to you.
Thus with God’s blessing to our little ones, and hearty prayers for their well being, I commit you all to God.
Yours only now and ever,
George Cumberland
That one prize scarcely earned Cumberland the praise granted to him in a letter to Essex in June 1588, in which the writer refers to Cumberland as ‘the English Lord that doth great harm to the Spanish at sea’, but it might have been the source of the ‘jewel of gold like a sacrifice’ and the ‘pair of bracelets’ which he and his wife presented to the queen on the following New Year’s Day. That aside, those voyages, along with his contribution against the Armada, equipped Cumberland, or so he believed, with the necessary experience to expand his horizons and ambitions: in 1589 he was to make his first voyage to the Azores hunting ground.
Nine years earlier, while Gilbert and Ralegh were floundering in the western Atlantic; while John Hawkins was beginning his reforms as the new Treasurer of the Navy; while Frobisher was experiencing failure in the frozen north; while the teenage, newly-married Cumberland was establishing himself in his northern estates, plain Francis Drake was engaged in the voyage that would forever change English aspirations on the rewards for roving. Before he could do this, however, he had to make sure that he had a ship that would suit his purposes, and by this time his career had advanced sufficiently for him to be able to build bespoke.
With the punishment for piracy being to be hanged in chains at Wapping, most practitioners were either foolhardy, desperate or the possessor of influential friends. (Author collection)
Before the English established trading links with the Far East, their preferred method of acquiring oriental exotica was to forcibly remove it from returning merchantmen like the ones depicted here. (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
Without the need for wharfage or alongside berths, pirates were able to unload while anchored in any friendly, quiet cove or creek. This picture purports to show the return of Sir Edward Michaelbourne, after a piratical, interloping voyage to the Far East in 1606. (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
The circumnavigators Drake and Cavendish and the doyen of English transoceanic travel, John Hawkins, all relied on piracy to replenish their ships and return a profit. (Author collection)
The Portuguese trading fort of Sao Jorge da Mina provided an open prison for Frobisher and later a point of contact for Hawkins when he entered the slave trading business. (Author collection)
Contrary to Victorian romantic notions, Ralegh’s boyhood was not spent listening to salty tales of adventure, but in a household that practised piracy. (Author collection)
Until Hawkins, Drake and their fellow pirateers learned the art of navigation, there would have been no Englishman qualified to pose for portraits such as this, showing a professional navigating officer with globe and dividers. (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
This drawing of Golden Hind reflects both the smallness of the vessel and its movement even in a modest sea. (© National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London)
By the time that the queen loaned Jesus of Lubeck to John Hawkins, the ship was an old and cranky vessel; nonetheless, its presence in his fleet indicated her open approval of both piracy and slave-trading. (Peter Kirsch)
Ark Ralegh was too magnificent a vessel for the commoner, Ralegh, to retain as his pirate flagship, and he was soon forced to donate her to the queen. (Author collection)
Pirate ships deployed far from home needed to find secluded harbours where their ships could have their bottoms, scraped clean of weed, inspected for worm, and be tarred and caulked. (Author collection)
Scourge of Malice, as magnificent a ship as Ralegh’s Ark, remained in the earl of Cumberland’s fleet until he sold it to the East India Company, in whose service, renamed Red Dragon, and commanded by Lancaster, an ex-pirate, she continued her career of attacking Portuguese carracks, as this contemporary print shows. (RN Museum, Portsmouth)
A replica of Elizabeth that sailed with Grenville to establish the pirate base at Roanoke that became England’s first, but short-lived, settlement in the Americas. (Author collection)
In 1607 the ex-pirate, Christopher Newport, in Susan Constant, led a small fleet of three ships into the Chesapeake and founded Jamestown, England’s first permanent settlement in America. (Author collection)
The culverin or demi-culverin was the professional pirate’s heavy weapon of choice, although it could only be carried in larger vessels whose exploits were, probably, state-approved. (Mary Rose Trust)
This saker, at St Mawes Fort, Cornwall, is presumed to have come from the ship carrying the goods of the incoming Venetian ambassador to London. Most embarrassingly, it was sunk by pirates. (Author collection)
Bows and arrows, spears and grenades, such as those shown here, could be modified to hurl incendiaries into a potential prize. Unfortunately for prey and predator alike the resulting conflagration could easily get out of control, destroying the former and threatening the latter. (Author collection)
The upper deck of the replica Golden Hind at Brixham, showing the small-calibre guns that could be safely carried higher up in a light vessel. (Author collection)