Pirate Nation. David Childs
Pirate Ships of War at Sea
Were I to choose a ship for myself, I would have her sail well, yet strongly built, her decks flush and flat, and so roomy that men might pass with ease; her bow and chase so galley like contrived, should bear as many ordnance as with convenience she could, for that always cometh most to fight, and so stiff, she should bear a stiff sail, and bear out her lower tier of guns in any reasonable weather.
Captain John Smith, A Sea Grammar
Visit any seaside resort in England and there will be an opportunity for the young, and the not so young, to dress up and participate in piratical re-enactments or visit pirate ships and grottos. Supreme amongst these, and host to hundreds of school parties, are the replicas of Golden Hind in both London and Brixham. Across the Atlantic youthful imaginations can be similarly stimulated by walking the boards of Elizabeth at Roanoke in North Carolina, a replica of a ship that sailed with the pirate Richard Grenville when he tried to establish a pirate base on that island in 1584. Further up the coast, at Jamestown, Virginia, are tied up replicas of Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery, the ships which brought the first permanent English settlers to Virginia and, although these were not pirate vessels, their commander Christopher Newport was an ex-pirate and a very successful one at that. The replica Pilgrim Fathers’ Mayflower, secured at Plymouth, Massachusetts, represents well the vessels of the English merchant fleet that were subject to piracy and, although she herself avoided such trouble, the Pilgrims suffered a major setback when their resupply vessel, Fortune, was taken by pirates on her voyage home, as was another of their ships, Little James, while heading for England richly laden with beaver-pelts.
Back in England the remarkable original timbers and artefacts of Mary Rose, preserved and displayed in Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, give a wonderful feel for what a medium-sized royal vessel was like and, although she was built in 1509 and sank in 1545, her shape, structure and, most certainly, many of the weapons and objects recovered, would have been similar to those aboard pirate vessels of Elizabeth’s time. Nothing, no lesson, however well-delivered, no book, however well-written, no film, however vivid, captures as well what life was like onboard a small ship of the late sixteenth century as these original or reconstructed vessels. This century’s generations are indebted to those who built them, for without them we would have a very limited idea of what such ships looked like, because although many travelled by sea in the sixteenth century, few described the ship beneath their feet. This is not so surprising for such ships were commonplace; in centuries to come few will be able to visualise an airliner from reading the works of travel writers. However, as with airline flights, comments were recorded when things went wrong: in the case of Richard Hawkins’s voyage to the Pacific in Dainty, plenty did, which he duly noted, and for which honesty subsequent generations must be duly grateful.1
Elizabethan England possessed four growing seagoing fleets. Smallest in size but not in number were her fishing boats, which were undertaking longer and longer voyages, as far as the kingdom of cod that was the Newfoundland Banks. Her merchant vessels, once the despair of their sovereign because of their unwillingness to venture much beyond Flanders with wool, and Gascony, for wine, gradually felt their way into the Mediterranean, seeking out more exotic cargoes. Merchant enterprise was also responsible for establishing the famous but forlorn English voyages into the northern ice where they fumbled, failing to find an eastward or westward passage to Cathay, until by the very end of the sixteenth century such endeavours were superseded by the establishment of the East India Company, whose vessels plied the longer route to the east via the Cape of Good Hope. The third fleet was the Navy Royal, which had been revived by Henry VII and grown large during the reign of his son, only to shrink thereafter, before the threat from Spain forced Elizabeth to restore its fortunes with her own. The fourth arm was the pirate fleet, which ranged from a single small vessel manned by a few men and their dog to squadrons of well-armed ships capable of taking several hundred men to sea. Their appearance marked the return of the privately-owned warship, which had all but disappeared between 1485 and 1543, and meant that the policy of state piracy could be practised with success.
These fleets were not mutually exclusive and although the fishing boats of all nations offered easy pickings to predators as diverse as Barbary pirates and England’s own Peter Easton and Henry Mainwaring, their skippers were not themselves averse to robbing from weaker foreign hulls. Neither, of course, were the merchants who became better armed the further they ventured, for as they traded to more distant ports they became open to attack, not only from the Dunkirkers on their doorstep, but also from the Barbary galleys that lay in wait off the Straits of Gibraltar, and their Turkish cousins who infested the eastern Mediterranean. To counter this they required to be well-armed and once so equipped could yield easily to the temptation to plunder a passing weaker seafarer. The result was a private arms race leading to many a merchant ship becoming as well-armed as most state warships.
The added armament of a letter of reprisal could provide justification for a most lucrative sideline, especially when the arrangements and understanding with the nation’s legal authorities almost guaranteed no awkward questions being asked and no restitutions being awarded. As far as her own fleet was concerned, Elizabeth was always looking for ways for reducing the costs of its manning and upkeep, unlike her father, Henry VIII, for whom the waging of war was so glorious an enterprise that it justified any expenditure so long as it bought honour. For Elizabeth, conflict, if it had to be undertaken, needed to be prosecuted at least cost to the Crown. This parsimony created a permeable membrane between the Navy Royal and the merchant and pirate fleet, so that in times of national crisis, most notably the Armada campaign, the sovereign could call on the latter to supplement her own ships, while in times of quiet the queen was content to loan her ships for pirateering operations, such as Drake’s West Indies raid, or explorative/settlement ventures such as Frobisher’s search for the northwest passage and Grenville’s voyage to Roanoke – provided, of course, that she had the promise of a profit from these ventures.
Many ships were thus given over to piracy at some time in their career, but a fair few were built specifically for this purpose. Of these, Drake’s Golden Hind was the most notorious, illustrious and successful; Richard Hawkins’s Dainty the least successful and most mismanaged; while Cumberland’s Scourge of Malice was the one that made the successful transit from the age of piracy to the age of trade. Hakluyt’s account of the tribulations endured by a fourth vessel, Desire, which having been Cavendish’s flagship during his successful circumnavigation also accompanied him on his disastrous second attempt, provided a very clear account of the far horizons of endurance to which both ships and their seamen could be driven when things went wrong.2
The Golden Hind
In 1573 Drake climbed up a tree at the invitation of a cimaroon, or escaped slave, named Pedro, and gazed upon the Pacific. Well-informed navigator that he was, he knew that nothing lay between the blue horizon to his west and the distant, fabulously wealthy Spice Islands or, to the northwest, the equally rich and distant shores of Cathay. Well-practised pirate that he was, he knew that close inshore a third fabulously rich treasure trove beckoned in the form of deep-draughted, poorly armed and unescorted merchant ships trekking towards Panama with cargoes of silver. All he needed to do was to sail a suitable ship on those seas to take prizes that would more than compensate for the losses, in ships, men, cargo and self-esteem, that he and his cousin John Hawkins had suffered in 1568 at San Juan de Ulua.
Drake and his partner John Oxenham returned to Plymouth in August 1573, rich beyond their expectations, but with the knowledge that further wealth lay ready for the taking. Oxenham, too impetuous to seek a suitable vessel for the proposed voyage, sailed to the Caribbean, crossed over the isthmus and seized a small ship on the further shore. He was soon caught, imprisoned and eventually killed. Drake, a better brain, took his time, drawing up plans for the sort of vessel he would need to sail the long route from England to the Pacific hunting ground via the seldom visited, but notorious, dangerous waters of the Straits of Magellan. He also spent time learning about the great ocean on which he planned to rove and built up a library of navigational works to improve his ability to sail out of sight of land on seas upon which no Englishman had ever floated.
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