Under the Black Flag: The Romance and Reality of Life Among the Pirates

358 Pages·1996·8.202 MB·English

by  David Cordingly

PRAISE FOR
U B F
NDER THE LACK LAG
“Folks who began reading about pirates in their childhood
(remember Long John Silver and Captain Hook?) have no reason to
stop now. Under the Black Flag provides a satisfying and salty
overview of nautical badmen (and a few women too) going back
some 500 years.”
—Parade
“Cordingly provides some fresh insights into the rough democracy of
pirate life.”
—The New York Review of Books
“An excellent description of the methods, means of recruitment, way
of life and generally dismal ends of the pirates who �ourished from
the sixteenth to the end of the eighteenth century.”
—The Boston Globe
“Even if you don’t know a corsair (a Mediterranean-based pirate)
from a buccaneer (a Caribbean pirate), this book will delight and
inform.”
—Publishers Weekly
“[This] expert and deftly written history of the golden age of piracy
… e�ortlessly expands its scope to become social, cultural, literary,
and even cinematic history, through which Steven Spielberg and J.
M. Barrie wander shoulder to shoulder with Blackbeard and Captain
Morgan. Cordingly brilliantly and engagingly demonstrates how
myths are formed—and how very much we live by them.”
—C C , author of The Alienist
ALEB ARR
“A distinguished specialist in maritime history has written a
fascinating narrative.… Informative, engrossing.”
—Booklist
“A vivid account of the glory days of buccaneers.”
—Civilization

2006 Random House Trade Paperback Edition Copyright © 1996 by David Cordingly
Maps copyright © 1995 by Alec Herzer All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The
Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE TRADE PAPERBACKS and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Random House, an imprint of
The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., in 1996.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cordingly, David.
Under the black �ag: the romance and reality of life among the pirates / David Cordingly.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
eISBN: 978-0-307-76307-5
1. Pirates. I. Title.
G535.C635 1995 95-41414
910.4′5—dc20
www.atrandom.com
v3.1
P
REFACE AND
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
In May 1992 an exhibition entitled Pirates: Fact and Fiction opened
at the National Maritime Museum in London. It was scheduled to
last four months but proved so popular that it remained open for
three years. The exhibition was organized by my colleague John
Falconer and myself, with help from many members of the museum
sta� and support from a great number of contributors. Exhibits
included artifacts from the sunken pirate city of Port Royal,
Jamaica; Captain Kidd’s privateering commission from the Public
Record O�ce; �ne portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson and William
Dampier from the National Portrait Gallery; Byron’s manuscript
copy of The Corsair; the Peter Pan costume worn by Pauline Chase in
the 1909 London production, and the pirate costumes worn by
Dustin Ho�man and Bob Hoskins in Steven Spielberg’s �lm Hook;
W. S. Gilbert’s annotated prompt copy of The Pirates of Penzance;
pieces of eight, ducats, and doubloons from the British Museum; and
charts, weapons, logbooks, ship models, and buccaneer journals
from the National Maritime Museum.
As a result of the widespread publicity which accompanied the
opening of the exhibition I was approached by Suzanne Gluck of the
New York literary agents ICM, and urged to write a book which
contrasted the �ctional image of piracy with the reality. I would like
to thank Suzanne for starting me on a most enjoyable project, and to
record my debt to Ann Godo�, my editor at Random House, who
persuaded me to transform my �rst manuscript into a book which
will, I hope, have a wider appeal beyond those interested in
maritime history. I am grateful to Alan Samson and Andrew Gordon
at Little, Brown, my publishers in England, for helping me to clarify
my thoughts in a number of areas. I would also like to record my
thanks to Giles O’Bryen, Clinton Black, Gillian Coleridge, John
Falconer, Enrica Gadler, William Gilkerson, Alec Herzer, Helga
Houghton, Kevin McCarey, David Marley, Julia Millette, Dian
Murray, Peter Neill, Richard Pennell, Linda Silverman, and Norman
Thrower, as well as the sta� at the Library of Congress, the British
Library, the Institute of Jamaica, the London Library, the Public
Record O�ce, and my former colleagues at the National Maritime
Museum. Above all I would like to thank my wife and family for
their encouragement, advice, and numerous suggestions during the
preparation of this book and the exhibition which preceded it.
The sources used in the text are given in the Notes and
Bibliography at the end, but I would like to acknowledge my
particular debt to four books which I would recommend to anyone
wishing to pursue the subject in more depth. The �rst is Robert
Ritchie’s book Captain Kidd and the War Against the Pirates, which
must be the most thoroughly researched and documented book on
the life of a pirate ever written. The second is Marcus Rediker’s
Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Apart from its revelations
about the life of the ordinary seaman, this contains a penetrating
analysis of the Anglo-American pirates in the early eighteenth
century. The third is The Sack of Panama by Peter Earle, which
features a vivid and balanced account of Sir Henry Morgan’s
expeditions, and is based on research in the Spanish archives. The
fourth is Nicholas Rodger’s The Wooden World. This scarcely
mentions pirates but provides an extraordinary insight into how the
Royal Navy worked and what went on above and below deck. In
quoting from seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts and
printed books, I have followed Rodger’s example and used modern
spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. I have only broken this
rule when it seemed to me that the original spelling and use of
abbreviations provided additional information about the writer and
the circumstances under which the document was written.
D.C.
Brighton, Sussex
February 1995
C
ONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Preface and Acknowledgments
List of Maps
Introduction

1 Wooden Legs and Parrots
2 Plundering the Treasure Ports
3 Sir Henry Morgan
4 Women Pirates and Pirates’ Women
5 Storms, Shipwrecks, and Life at Sea
6 Into Action Under the Pirate Flag
7 Torture, Violence, and Marooning
8 Pirate Islands and Other Haunts
9 Sloops, Schooners, and Pirate Films
10 Captain Kidd and Buried Treasure
11 Hunting Down the Pirates
12 Trials, Executions, and Hanging in Chains
Afterword: The Romance of Piracy
Photo Insert
Dedication
Appendix I
Appendix II
Appendix III
Appendix IV
Notes
Glossary of Sea Terms
Bibliography
About the Author