Pirates — Key Ideas to Explore

Sheppard were courtly or whimsical. And the terrible is a more vital affair than the whimsical. Is it, then, unnatural that, after a lapse of nigh on two centuries, we should shake our wise heads and allow that which is still nursery within us to deplore the loss of those days when we ran--before a favouring "Trade"--the very good chance of being robbed, maimed, or murdered by Captain Howel Davis or Captain Neil Gow? It is as well to remember that the "Captains" in this book were seamen whose sole qualifications to the title were ready wit, a clear head, and, maybe, that certain indefinable "power of the eye" that is the birth-right of all true leaders. The piratical hero of our childhood is traceable in a great extent to the "thrillers," toy plays, and penny theatres of our grandfathers. Here our Pirate was, as often as not, a noble, dignified, if gloomy gentleman, with a leaning to Byronic soliloquy. Though stern in exterior, his heart could (and would) melt at the distresses of the heroine. Elvira's eyes were certain to awaken in his mind the recollection of "other eyes as innocent as thine, child." In short, he was that most touching of all beings, the Hero-cum-Villain. And it was with a sigh of relief that we saw him at the eleventh hour, having successfully twitted the "Government Men" and the Excise (should he have an additional penchant for smuggling), safely restored to the arms of the long-suffering possessor of the other eyes.

Alas! this little book mentions no Poll of Portsmouth, nor does it favour us with a "Yeo, heave, oh!" nor is there so very much "cut and thrust" about it. It was written in that uninspiring day when Pirates were a very real nuisance to such law-abiding folk as you and I; but it has the merit of being written, if not by a Pirate, at least by one who came into actual contact with them. I am not at all sure that "merit" is the right word to use in this instance, for to be a Pirate does not necessarily ensure you making a good author. Indeed, it might almost be considered as a ban to the fine literary technique of an Addison or a Temple. It has, however, the virtue of being in close touch with some of the happenings chronicled. Not that our author saw above a tithe of what he records--had he done so he would have been "set a-sun-drying" at Execution Dock long before he had had the opportunity of putting pen to paper; but, as far as posterity was concerned, he was lucky in his friend William Ingram--evidently a fellow of good memory and a ready tongue--"who," as our author states in his Preface, "was a Pirate under Anstis, Roberts, and many others," and who eventually was hanged in good piratical company on the 11th of June, 1714.

The actual history of the little book, the major part of which is here reprinted, is as follows:

Its full title is "The History and Lives of all the most Notorious Pirates and their Crews," and the fifth edition, from which our text is taken, was printed in 1735. A reproduction of the original title-page is given overleaf.

As a matter of fact, the title is misleading. How could a book that makes no mention of Morgan or Lollonois be a history of _all_ the most notorious Pirates? It deals with the last few years of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth, a period that might with justice be called "The Decline and Fall of Piracy," for after 1730 Piracy became but a mean broken-backed affair that bordered perilously on mere sea-pilfering.

A little research into the book's history shows us that it is consistent throughout, and that it is a "piracy," in the publisher's sense of the word, of a much larger and more pretentious work by Captain Charles Johnson, entitled, "A General History of the Pyrates from their first Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to the Present Time; With the Remarkable Actions and Adventures of the two Female Pyrates Mary Read and Anne Bonny."

This was published in London, in 8vo., by Charles Rivington in 1724. A second edition, considerably augmented, was issued later in the same year, a third edition in the year following, and a fourth edition--in two volumes, as considerable additions in the form of extra "Lives," and an appendix necessitated a further volume--in 1725.