The Republic of Pirates: Being the True and Surprising Story of the Caribbean Pirates and the Man Who Brought Them Down (35 page)

Many pirates had no intention of quitting piracy at all and soon started to show signs of their impatience with the
Phoenix
's presence. On March 1, Pearse raised all the frigate's signal flags, decking her out in celebration of the birthday of King George's eldest son and heir, the Prince of Wales. Some Jacobite-minded pirates responded by setting an English merchant ship on fire, spoiling the festive atmosphere.

Meanwhile, Vane and his followers were quietly preparing a return to piracy. Late on the night of the sixteenth, he and sixteen men climbed into a boat on Nassau's landing beach and rowed quietly past the
Phoenix
and out past the harbor's wide western entrance. The next night, twenty-four more pirates left to rendezvous with the Bahamas' new pirate commodore.

Vane took stock of his men. Edward England, his quartermaster, was smart and courageous, a veteran mate in the merchant marine who had been forced by Christopher Winter some time earlier. He had since become a committed pirate, though he was more moderate than Vane himself. "England was one of these Men who seemed to have such a share of reason as should have taught him better things" than to turn pirate, the author of the
General History of the Pyrates
wrote of him."He had a great deal of good nature and did not want for courage. He would have been contented with moderate plunder and less mischievous pranks ... but he was generally over-ruled and, as he was engaged in that abominable society, he was obliged to be a partner in all their vile actions." Vane's "abominable society" consisted of forty men. John Rackham stood out from the rest because of his strange habit of wearing clothes made from brightly printed Indian Calico; the other men had already taken to calling him Calico Jack. All Vane's company had were two boats and a pile of small arms but, then, that was all Hornigold, Blackbeard, and Bellamy had had when they started out. If Captain Pearse and Governor Bennett thought piracy in the Bahamas was over, Vane had some surprises in store for them.

***

For several days, Vane's company lurked east of Nassau, waiting for an opportunity. On March 21, perfect conditions presented themselves. The wind was light and kept changing direction, making it possible for the pirates to overtake a sailing vessel with their rowboats. A trading sloop from Jamaica came around the eastern end of New Providence, slowly drifting toward the narrow, eastern entrance of Nassau harbor. As she passed nearby, Vane's men rowed the boats out of their hiding place and, with ropes and grappling hooks, swarmed aboard the little sloop. Her crew surrendered without a fight. The pirates now needed somewhere secure to plunder and refit their prize. They decided on Nassau Harbor, right under the nose of the troublesome Captain Pearse.

Vane's men were to exploit the peculiar geography of Nassau Harbor. One of the reasons the pirates had chosen Nassau as their base was that in addition to its main entrance to the west, the harbor offered a back door—a narrow but passable channel at its eastern end, through which a knowledgeable navigator might pass in a sloop. Near this entrance, a low sandbar called Potter's Cay split the harbor nearly in two: Any vessel drawing more than eight feet of water could not pass over the sandy shoals on either side of this islet. The
Phoenix
was anchored on the western side of this shoal and was too large to cross. The pirates could sail their sloop through the eastern passage and plunder their prize behind Potter's Cay in full view of Captain Pearse.

It was political theater par excellence. The renegade pirates came into the harbor, a red or "bloody" flag flying from the top of their mast, dropped anchor in the secure basin, and began boisterously plundering their prize in full view of the
Phoenix.
Vane put the sloop's crew ashore on Potter's Cay, from where they could swim to town, but they kept her captain, promising to return his little vessel as soon as they captured another more to their liking. They celebrated through the evening, the sounds of their revelry beckoning the pirates ashore to resume their illicit trade.

Captain Pearse knew he was being made to look the fool. All of the Bahamas knew that he had released Vane from captivity and signed his certificate of pardon. Now he had the audacity to taunt him. Something had to be done, and quickly. He called his officers together and outlined a plan.

At one in the morning, after the sound of the pirates' festivities had died down, Pearse armed a contingent of his men and ordered them into the largest of the
Phoenix's
boats. As silently as possible, they rowed across the darkened harbor, around Potter's Cay, and on toward the pirate sloop, hoping to catch her by surprise. Vane had posted a watch, however, and as the naval party came within musket range they were greeted with a fusillade of small-arms fire. The
Phoenix
's men returned fire, but after a few exchanges it was clear that the pirates were far too strong for them, and they had to make a hasty retreat. The Royal Navy had tried to flex its muscles but had been forced to run instead.

This brief engagement greatly boosted the morale of Nassau's pirates. Suddenly the man-of-war looked vulnerable, and Vane's men heroic. Overnight the mood shifted from resignation to defiance. "I several times summoned the inhabitants together in His Majesty's name and used all the arguments possible to prevail with them to assist me in suppressing the said pirate," Pearse later wrote."But they always rejected all methods I proposed. [They] entertained and assisted [Vane's company] with provisions and necessaries, and on all occasions showed no small hatred to government."

From then on, Pearse's situation deteriorated. On the evening of March 23, he left the harbor to convoy four sloops safely out of the Bahamas; he had a personal interest one of them, Vane's sloop, the
Lark,
which he had crewed with sailors from the
Phoenix
for a private for-profit trading mission to St. Augustine. When he returned six days later, he discovered a further affront to his authority. Nassau's pirates had burned the
Younge Abraham
and the
Mary Galley,
and had run the twenty-six-gun Dutch ship aground on Hog Island. On March 31, Vane returned to his sanctuary in the eastern basin of Nassau Harbor to taunt Pearse with his latest prize, the
Lark,
which he had captured despite Pearse's efforts. Most worrisome, three of the Royal Navy sailors he had put aboard the
Lark
had defected to Vane's crew. Not only was Pearse outmanned and outgunned, he had to worry that his own sailors were regarding the pirates as heroes.

As they transferred cannon and supplies to the
Lark,
Vane's men yelled insults at the
Phoenix,
which Vane loudly threatened to burn. Then they boldly rowed across the western basin to town, passing near the man-of-war. Pearse opened fire at the boat with both cannonballs and partridge shot and ordered the pirates to come aboard the
Phoenix.
They ignored these orders and the ordnance splashing in the water around them and proceeded to town.

In just three days, Vane's gang grew from nineteen to upward of seventy-five. During this time he also captured two more sloops whose captains, unaware of the danger, had anchored alongside the pirates. Pearse tried to warn the sloops by hoisting his topgallant sails "with sheets flying," but to no avail.

On April 4, Vane raised a black flag to the masthead of the
Lark,
and sailed out to sea. With a nimble six-gun sloop and a proper company of men, Vane was in a position to bring all commerce in the Bahamas to a standstill. He had little sympathy for his victims, especially the merchant-smugglers of Harbour Island, who had capitulated to Pearse the moment he showed the British ensign. They would pay a price for their disloyalty to the pirate republic.

Even with Vane gone, Captain Pearse found himself in an untenable position. The pirates "have altered their treatment and sent threateningly to the Captain ... to be gone or it should be worse for him," Governor Bennett reported after debriefing pirates who sought pardon in Bermuda. "I conclude all have surrendered that intends [to] and ... I fear they will soon multiply for too many [sailors] are willing to join with them when [their vessels are] taken."

Pearse did his best not to show weakness, but on April 6 his carpenter accidentally set the
Phoenix
on fire while boiling tar in the galley. The crew quickly got the fire under control, but the symbolic damage was irreparable. Two days later, the
Phoenix
raised its anchors and, in the company of five merchant sloops, sailed out of the harbor, bound for New York. In a final embarrassment to the captain, he ran aground on the way out. For a few hours, the residents of Nassau watched the
Phoenix's
men work to free her. Then she was gone, leaving Nassau in pirate hands once again.

***

Blackbeard and Bonnet spent the winter of 1717–18 in Spanish territory, their movements and activities lost to British authorities. Spanish mariners told their Jamaican counterparts that a pirate known only as "the Great Devil" was cruising the Gulf of Mexico, his ship filled with "much treasure." Not long thereafter, Bonnet and Blackbeard were reported to be "cruising about" the Mexican gulf port of Vera Cruz with four sloops and "a ship of 42 guns." They were said to be hunting for a galley called the
Royal Prince,
and to have boasted that "they would have the Adventure man-of-war if they can." It was quite a boast: the thirty-six-gun HMS
Adventure,
a 438-ton fifth-rate based in Jamaica, was the most powerful Royal Navy frigate in the entire Western Hemisphere at the time.

By late March, Blackbeard and Bonnet had separated in the Bay of Honduras. Blackbeard took the
Queen Anne's Revenge
to Turneffe Island, a great ring of mangroves and islets of coral sand located twenty-five miles off the coast of what is now Belize, and a popular rest spot for English merchantmen. Bonnet sailed the
Revenge
a hundred miles further south and was cruising for prizes off the Bay Islands, three coral-ringed islands off the coast of what is now Honduras.

On March 28, 1718, Bonnet's men spotted a large ship near Roatán, the largest of the Bay Islands. The ship, the
Protestant Caesar
of Boston, was an enormous 400-ton merchantman, the muzzles of twenty-six cannon protruding from her gunports. She was more than four times the size of the
Revenge,
which carried just ten guns and fifty men. Despite the odds, Bonnet and his crew decided to attack, risking a replay of the eccentric planter's disastrous engagement with the Spanish man-of-war the year before. They caught up to the
Protestant Caesar
at nine at night, cleverly cutting behind the big ship's vulnerable stern. Bonnet's men fired five cannon and a volley of musket shot, only to be answered by two stern guns and a hail of bullets. As the smoke cleared, Bonnet yelled out that if the ship fired another gun, they would give "no quarter," a threat to kill everyone aboard. The
Protestant Caesar's
veteran captain, William Wyer of Boston, knew a bluff when he saw it. He let off another salvo of his cannon. The running battle continued for three hours, cannon flashing in the night, until Bonnet finally gave up and retreated into the darkness.

Bonnet's men were disgruntled: Clearly their commander had learned little from his yearlong apprentinceship with Blackbeard. They voted to travel to Turneffe, where they could recuperate from their ill-advised battle. They also made it clear to Bonnet that his command was on very thin ice.

On April 2, the
Revenge
sailed into Turneffe's five-mile-wide lagoon. To the crew's relief, the
Queen Anne's Revenge
was anchored inside. A number of them begged Blackbeard to use his influence to terminate Bonnet's command. Blackbeard asked Bonnet's men to call a meeting of their company, where he proposed they replace Bonnet with one of Blackbeard's officers, a man named Richards. The men accepted the plan, whereupon Bonnet was transported to the
Queen Anne's Revenge.
There Blackbeard reportedly told his wayward colleague that "as he had not been used to the fatigues and care of such a post," it would be better for him to stay with Blackbeard, where he could "live easy, at his pleasure, in such a ship as [this], where he would not be obliged to perform the necessary duties of a sea voyage." Bonnet had been placed under house arrest and would remain so for many months to come.

The pirates stayed at Turneffe for several more days, recuperating, gorging on fish and sea turtle, and capturing wayward vessels. Their first prize was an eighty-ton logwood-cutting sloop from Jamaica called the
Adventure
that had blundered into Turneffe lagoon. The pirates found the sloop to their liking and kept it, and made its commander, David Herriot, a prisoner aboard the
Queen Anne's Revenge.
Blackbeard's mate, Israel Hands, took control of the
Adventure
in his stead. A few days later they seized at least four more sloops, three from Jamaica and one, the
Land of Promise,
from Rhode Island. Blackbeard's men burned one of the Jamaican sloops because of a grudge against its captain, but they raised red flags aboard the others and added them to what was now a five-vessel fleet. Around April 6 they left Turneffe, Blackbeard telling one of his captives that they were "bound to the Bay of Honduras to burn the ship Protestant Caesar" to ensure that Captain Wyer "might not brag when he went to New England that he had beat a pirate."

On the morning of April 8, the pirates found the
Protestant Caesar
at anchor off the coast of Honduras, her holds half-filled with freshly cut logwood. When Wyer spotted the pirates—"a large ship and a sloop with Black Flags and Deaths Heads and three more sloops with bloody flags"—he called all his men on deck to ask if they were willing to defend the ship from the attackers. According to Wyer, his men answered that "if they were Spaniards they would stand by him as long as they had life, but if they were pirates they would not fight." When it became clear that the attackers were the sloop they had fought earlier, now backed by the infamous Blackbeard, Wyer's men "all declared they would not fight, and quitted the ship, believing they would be murdered by the sloop's company." For three days, Captain Wyer and his men sheltered amid the jungle foliage and piles of logwood on shore, watching the pirates plunder their massive ship. On April 11, Blackbeard sent a messenger to Wyer, telling him that if he surrendered peacefully, no harm would come to him. Blackbeard had a fearsome reputation among the merchant captains of the Americas, but the pirate had never been known to go back on his word and, as far as anyone knew, had never killed a man. Wyer decided to trust him, and surrendered. He was taken to Blackbeard, who told him he had been smart not to burn or sabotage the
Protestant Caesar,
"else his men on board his sloop would have done him damage for fighting with them." Unfortunately Blackbeard also had some bad news. He had to burn the
Protestant Caesar
because she was from Boston, and his gang was committed to destroy all Massachusetts vessels in revenge "for executing the six pirates" who had survived the Cape Cod shipwrecks. The next day Wyer watched as the pirates went aboard his ship and set her alight, logwood and all. True to his word, Blackbeard released Wyer and his men unharmed, along with the crew of the sloop
Land of Promise;
all the captives eventually got back to Boston.