A GENUINE ACCOUNT OF FOUR NOTORIOUS PIRATES. (continued 4)

At length he came to Boston, in New England, and seemed to have a desire of settling in those parts, and some of his companions went on shore there also, but he changed his resolution, and proposed to the few of his companions who were left to sail for Ireland, which they consented to. He found out that New England was not a proper place for him, because a great deal of his wealth lay in diamonds, and should he have produced them there he would have certainly been seized on suspicion of piracy.

In their voyage to Ireland they avoided St. George’s Channel, and sailing north about, they put into one of the northern ports of that kingdom; there they disposed of their sloop, and coming on shore they separated themselves, some going to Cork, and some to Dublin, eighteen of whom obtained their pardons afterwards of King William. When Avery had remained some time in this kingdom he was afraid to offer his diamonds for sale, lest an inquiry into his manner of coming by them should occasion a discovery; therefore, considering with himself what was best to be done, he fancied there were some persons at Bristol whom he might venture to trust; upon which he resolved to pass over into England; he did so, and, going into Devonshire, he sent one of these friends to meet him at a town called Bideford. When he had communicated himself to his friends, and consulted with them about the means of his effects, they agreed that the safest method would be to put them in the hands of some merchants, who, being men of wealth and credit in the world, no inquiry would be made how they came by them. This friend telling him he was very intimate with some who were very fit for the purpose, and if he would but allow them a good commission would do the business very faithfully. Avery liked the proposal, for he found no other way of managing his affairs, since he could not appear in them himself; therefore his friend going back to Bristol and opening the matter to the merchants they made Avery a visit at Bideford, where, after some protestations of honour and integrity, he delivered them his effects, consisting of diamonds and some vessels of gold; they gave him a little money for his present subsistence, and so they parted.

He changed his name and lived at Bideford without making any figure, and therefore there was no great notice taken of him; yet let one or two of his relations know where he was, who came to see him. In some time his little money was spent, yet he heard nothing from his merchants. He wrote to them often, and after much importunity they sent him a small supply, but scarce sufficient to pay his debts; in fine, the supplies they sent him from time were so small that they were not sufficient to give him bread, nor could he get that little without a great deal of trouble and importunity; wherefore, being weary of his life, he went privately to Bristol to speak to the merchants himself, where, instead of money he met a most shocking repulse, for when he desired them to come to an account with him they silenced him by threatening to discover him, so that our merchants were as good pirates on land as he was on sea.

Whether he was frightened by these menaces, or had seen somebody else he thought knew him, is not known; but he went immediately over to Ireland, and from thence solicited his merchants very hard for a supply, but to no purpose, for he was even reduced to beggary. In this extremity he was resolved to return and cast himself upon them, let the consequences be what it would. He put himself on board a trading vessel, and worked his passage over to Plymouth, from whence he travelled on foot to Bideford, where he had been but a few days before he fell sick and died, not being worth as much as would buy him a coffin.

Thus have I given all that could be collected of any certainty concerning this man, rejecting the idle stories which were made of his fantastic greatness, by which it appears that his actions were more inconsiderable than those of other pirates since him, though he made more noise in the world.

Now we shall turn back and give our readers some account of what became of the two sloops.

We took notice of the rage and confusion which must have seized them upon their missing of Avery. However, they continued their course, some of them still flattering themselves that he had only outsailed them in the night, and that they should find him at the place of rendezvous. But when they came there, and could hear no tidings of him there was end of hope. It was time to consider what they should do with themselves; their stock of sea provision was almost spent, and though there was rice and fish, and fowl to be had ashore, yet these would not keep for sea without being properly cured with salt, which they had no conveniences of doing; therefore, since they could not go a-cruising any more, it was time to think of establishing themselves on land; to which purpose they took all things out of the sloops, made tents of the sails, and encamped themselves, having a large quantity of ammunition and abundance of small arms.

Here they met with several of their countrymen, the crew of a privateer sloop which was commanded by Captain Thomas Tew; and, since it will be but a short digression, we will give an account how they came here.

Captain George Dew and Captain Thomas Tew having received commissions from the then Governor of Bermudas to sail directly for the river Gambia in Africa, there, with the advice and assistance of the agents of the Royal African Company, to attempt the taking the French factory at Goorie, lying upon that coast. In a few days after they sailed out, Dew, in a violent storm, not only sprung his mast, but lost sight of his consort; Dew therefore returned back to refit, and Tew, instead of proceeding on his voyage, made for the Cape of Good Hope, and doubling the said Cape, shaped his course for the Straits of Babel Mandel, being the entrance into the Red Sea. Here he came up with a large ship, richly laden, bound from the Indies to Arabia, with three hundred soldiers on board, besides seamen; yet Tew had the hardiness to board her, and soon carried her; and it is said by this prize his men shared near three thousand pounds a-piece. They had intelligence from the prisoners of five other rich ships to pass that way, which Tew would have attacked, though they were very strong, if he had not been overruled by the quartermaster and others. This differing in opinion created some ill blood amongst them, so that they resolved to break up pirating, and no place was so fit to receive them as Madagascar; hither they steered, resolving to live on shore and enjoy what they got.

As for Tew himself, he, with a few others, in a short time went off to Rhode Island, from whence he made his peace.

Thus have we accounted for the company our pirates met with here.

It must be observed that the natives of Madagascar are a kind of negroes; they differ from those of Guinea in their hair, which is long, and their complexion is not so good a jet; they have innumerable little princes among them, who are continually making war upon one another; their prisoners are their slaves, and they either sell them or put them to death as they please. When our pirates first settled amongst them their alliance was much courted by these princes, so they sometimes joined one, sometimes another, but wheresoever they sided they were sure to be victorious, for the negroes here had no firearms, nor did they understand their use; so that at length these pirates became so terrible to the negroes that if two or three of them were only seen on one side when they were going to engage, the opposite side would fly without striking a blow.

By these means they not only became feared, but powerful; all the prisoners of war they took to be their slaves; they married the most beautiful of the negro women, not one or two, but as many as they liked; so that every one of them had as great a seraglio as the Grand Seignior at Constantinople. Their slaves they employed in planting rice, in fishing, hunting, &c., besides which they had abundance of others who lived, as it were, under their protection, and to be secure from their disturbances or attacks of their powerful neighbours, these seemed to pay them a willing homage. Now they began to divide from one another, each living with his own wives, slaves, and dependents, like a separate prince; and as power and plenty naturally beget contention, they sometimes quarrelled with one another, and attacked each other at the head of their several armies; and in these civil wars many of them were killed; but an incident happened which obliged them to unite again for their common safety.

It must be observed that these sudden great men had used their power like tyrants, for they grew wanton in cruelty, and nothing was more common than, upon the slightest displeasure, to cause one of their dependents to be tied to a tree and shot through the heart—let the crime be what it would, whether little or great, this was always the punishment; wherefore the negroes conspired together to rid themselves of these destroyers all in one night; and as they now lived separate the thing might easily have been done had not a woman, who had been wife or concubine to one of them, run near twenty miles in three hours to discover the matter to them. Immediately upon the alarm they ran together as fast as they could, so that when the negroes approached them they found them all up in arms; wherefore they retired without making any attempt.

This escape made them very cautious from that time, and it will be worth while to describe the policy of these brutish fellows, and to show what measures they took to secure themselves.

They found that the fear of their power could not secure them against a surprise, and the bravest man may be killed when he is asleep by one much his inferior in courage and strength; therefore, as their first security, they did all they could to foment war between the neighbouring negroes, remaining neuter themselves, by which means those who were overcome constantly fled to them for protection, otherwise they must be either killed or made slaves. They strengthened their party, and tied some to them by interest; when there was no war they contrived to spirit up private quarrels among them, and upon every little dispute or misunderstanding push on one side or other to revenge, instruct them how to attack or surprise their adversaries, and lend them loaded pistols or firelocks to dispatch them with, the consequence of which was that the murderer was forced to fly to them for the safety of his life with his wives, children, and kindred.

Such as these were fast friends, as their lives depended upon the safety of the protectors; for, as we observed before, our pirates were grown so terrible that none of their neighbours had resolution enough to attack them in an open war.

By such arts as these, in the space of a few years their body was greatly increased; they then began to separate themselves and remove at a greater distance from one another for the convenience of more ground, and were divided, like Jews, into tribes, each carrying with him his wives and children (of which by this time they had a large family), as also their quota of dependents and followers. And if power and command be the thing which distinguish a prince, these ruffians had all the marks of royalty about them; nay more, they had the very fears which commonly disturb tyrants, as may be seen by the extreme caution they took in fortifying the places where they dwelt.

In this plan of fortification they imitated one another. Their dwellings were rather citadels than houses; they made choice of a place overgrown with a wood, and situate near a water; they raised a rampart or high ditch round it, so straight and high that it was impossible to climb it, and especially by those who had not the use of scaling ladders; over this ditch there was one passage into the wood; the dwelling, which was a hut, was built in that part of the wood which the prince who inhabited it thought fit, but so covered that it could not be seen till you came to it; but the greatest cunning lay in the passage which led to the hut, which was so narrow that no more than one person could go abreast, and contrived in so intricate a manner that it was a perfect maze or labyrinth, it being round and round, with several little cross-ways, so that a person that was not well acquainted with the way might walk several hours round and cross these ways without being able to find the hut; moreover, all along the sides of these narrow paths certain large thorns which grew upon a tree in that country were struck into the ground with their points uppermost, and the path itself, being made crooked and serpentine, if a man should attempt to come near the hut at night he would certainly have stuck upon these thorns, though he had been provided with that clue which Ariadne gave to Theseus when he entered the cave of the Minotaur.

Thus tyrant-like they lived, fearing and feared by all; and in this situation they were found by Captain Woods Rogers when he went to Madagascar in the Delicia, a ship of forty guns, with a design of buying slaves, in order to sell to the Dutch at Batavia or New England. He happened to touch upon a part of the island where no ship had been seen for seven or eight years before, where he met with some of the pirates, at which time they had been upon the island above twenty-five years, having a large motley generation of children and grandchildren descended from them, there being about that time eleven of them remaining alive.

Upon their first seeing a ship of this force and burthen they supposed it to be a man-of-war sent to take them; they therefore lurked within their fastnesses; but when some from the ship came on shore without any show of hostility, and offering to trade with the negroes, they ventured to come out of their holes, attended like princes; and since they actually are kings de facto, which is a kind of a right, we ought to speak of them as such.

Having been so many years upon this island it may be imagined their clothes had long been worn out, so that their majesties were extremely out at the elbows; I cannot say they were ragged, since they had no clothes—they had nothing to cover them but the skins of beasts without any tanning, but with all their hair on, nor a shoe nor stocking, so they looked like the pictures of Hercules in the lion’s skin; and being overgrown with beard, and hair upon their bodies, they appeared the most savage figures that a man’s imagination can frame.

However, they soon got rigged, for they sold great numbers of those poor people under them for clothes, knives, saws, powder and ball, and many other things, and became so familiar that they went aboard the Delicia, and were observed to be very curious, examining the inside of the ship, and very familiar with the men, inviting them ashore. Their design in doing this, as they afterwards confessed, was to try if it was not practicable to surprise the ship in the night, which they judged very easy in case there was but a slender watch kept on board, they having boats and men enough at command; but it seems the captain was aware of them, and kept so strong a watch upon deck that they found it was in vain to make any attempt; wherefore, when some of the men went ashore they were for inveigling them and drawing them into a plot for seizing the captain, and securing the rest of the men under hatches when they should have the night-watch, promising a signal to come on board and join them, proposing, if they succeeded, to go a-pirating together, not doubting but with that ship they should be able to take anything they met on the sea. But the captain, observing an intimacy growing between them and some of his men, thought it could be for no good; he therefore broke it off in time, not suffering them so much as to talk together; and when he sent a boat on shore with an officer to treat with them about the sale of slaves, the crew remained on board the boat, and no man was suffered to talk with them but the person deputed by him for that purpose.

Before he sailed away, and they found that nothing was to be done, they confessed all the designs they had formed against him. Thus he left them as he found them, in a great deal of dirty state and royalty, but with fewer subjects than they had, having, as we observed, sold many of them; and if ambition be the darling passion of men, no doubt they were happy. One of these great princes had formerly been a waterman upon the Thames, where, having committed a murder, he fled to the West Indies, and was of the number of those who ran away with the sloops, the rest had been all foremast men, nor was there a man amongst them who could either read or write, and yet their Secretaries of State had no more learning than themselves. This is all the account we can give of these kingdoms of Madagascar, some of whom it is probable are reigning to this day.

THE END.

UNWIN BROTHERS, THE GRESHAM PRESS, CHILWORTH AND LONDON.