Captain William Kidd and Others of the Buccaneers

This extraordinary devotion of Frank to her comrade the Fleming, attracted the attention of the whole company. As no one suspected, in the slightest degree, her disguise, it was supposed that there must be a vein of insanity in the nature of the quiet, retiring, handsome soldier boy.

One morning, in her tent, she made known to her fellow soldier that she was a woman. The Fleming was speechless with astonishment. Here, then, was the secret of the wild devotion that had led her to expose her life recklessly wherever his own had been in peril.

The strangeness of the situation added to its romance. From being a warm friend he became a devoted lover. As his memory went back to the many scenes of danger they had together faced, and the cool bravery she had shown, he could not but see that here was a helpmeet worth having. Mary was instinctively proud. Though for years she had led the rough life of the camp with all its hardships, she was no whit less a true woman. She was more than ready to be wooed and won as a wife. But no lady in the parlor of home could be more modest and reserved in receiving the addresses of a lover, than was Mary in her intercourse with the lover who shared her tent. Her good sense taught her that if she would secure and maintain his love, she must, by indubitable proof, win his highest confidence and respect.

Strange as this story may appear to the reader there seems to be no reason to doubt its accuracy. The young Fleming urged her to become his wife. To this proposal she did not long hesitate to accede. They plighted their mutual faith. The campaign soon ended. The regiment went into winter quarters. The two lovers united their purses, and purchased a woman’s wardrobe as the bridal outfit for Frank. She assumed her new garb, and announced her sex to her amazed fellow-soldiers.

These strange tidings created great excitement an the camp. They were publicly married. A great crowd attended the espousals. Many of the officers assisted in the ceremony, and the bride received many presents. There was a general contribution among all her comrades to raise a sum to assist her in commencing housekeeping. Frank had been a universal favorite, and had secured the esteem of all.

Being thus comfortably established, they both had a desire to quit the service. The circumstances were so romantic and peculiar that they found no difficulty in obtaining their discharge. They then established themselves in Flanders, in a restaurant or eating house. Their little inn, kept with British neatness, was near the Castle of Breda, and was known far and wide by the name of its sign, “The Three Horse Shoes.” They had a large run of custom, and were particularly patronized by the officers of the army.

They were very happy. But prosperity, in this world, does not long shine upon any one. Peace came. The army was dispersed. There were no longer any guests at “The Three Horse-Shoes;” and Mary’s husband was taken sick, and died. She was left childless and without any means of support. She had been trained to the pursuits of manhood. She was a young widow, but little more than twenty years of age. As a woman, she knew not in what direction to turn to obtain a living. Only for a few months had she assumed the character of a woman, and worn the garb of a woman. All the rest of her years she had worn the dress and followed the pursuits of a man. As a man, there were many opportunities opening before her, and all congenial ones, for obtaining a support.

Again she assumed her masculine attire, sold out all her effects, and with gold enough in her purse to meet her immediate wants, set out for Holland, where, a perfect stranger, she entered again upon her masculine career, without any fear of detection. Quartered upon one of the frontier towns of Holland there was an English regiment of foot. It was a time of peace, and the soldiers were living in indolence, with nothing to do. It was easy, under these circumstances, to join the regiment, and to purchase a release, at any time when one might wish to do so.

Again Frank enlisted. After a few months, weary of the monotonous life, she obtained a discharge, and shipped herself, as a common sailor, on board a vessel bound for the West Indies. It was a Dutch vessel. Frank was the only English person on board. On the voyage, an English pirate hove in sight and ran down upon the merchant-ship. The pirate was so well armed, and such a throng of desperate men crowded its decks, that resistance would have been but folly. The ship was captured without a struggle.

The pirate, after plundering the ship of all its treasures, impressed the English Frank as an addition to its own crew; and then turned the despoiled ship adrift, inflicting no personal injury upon the officers or sailors. As we have before mentioned, these buccaneers did not regard themselves, at that time, neither were they regarded by others, as ordinary pirates would now be judged. They were acting in a certain sense under the royal commission. They were authorized to plunder all Spanish ships. And if they occasionally made a mistake, and did not read the flag aright, it was an irregularity not entirely unpardonable.

This piratic ship continued its cruise of plundering for several months. Frank had been impressed on board, and could not escape had she wished to do. Probably her moral sense was not sufficiently instructed to lead her to make any remonstrances, which would, of course, have been entirely unavailing, or to feel any special qualms of conscience. Accustomed as she ever had been to the masculine dress, and to all the habits of the sailor and the soldier, she did not feel the least embarrassment in her new situation. No one moved about the decks or clambered the shrouds with more free motion than Frank.

Just about this time the royal proclamation, to which we have referred, came out, offering pardon to all pirates who would surrender themselves, excepting Kidd and Avery. The crew of this ship of buccaneers decided to take advantage of this proclamation.

The West-Indian group, called the Bahamas, consists of several hundred islands of various magnitudes. One of these, San Salvador, was the first land, in the New World, which was discovered by Columbus. The most important of the group, from its excellent harbor, and its situation in reference to Florida, is New Providence. The island was originally settled by the English in 1629. It was captured by the Spaniards, and the English were expelled, in the year 1641. The merciless Spaniards murdered the governor, and committed many other great outrages. Again, in the year 1666, the thunders of British broadsides echoed along its shores, and the banners of England were again unfurled over its mountains and fertile vales. Forty-seven years passed away, over this war-cursed globe, when, in 1703, a united fleet of French and Spanish ships expelled the English, and, neglecting to take military possession of the island, it became a rendezvous for pirates, where scenes of revelry, sensuality, and crime were perpetrated which no pen can describe.

Thus for eighty years Heaven looked down upon its enormities. It was then again formally ceded to the English, and has since remained in their possession. At the time of which we are writing, England held the island, and a British governor was in command there. The buccaneers, with their purses well filled with gold, the result of their cruises as freebooters, ran into the harbor of New Providence. They made their surrender to the governor, and received the royal pardon.

Frank had been but a short time among them. Her purse was not a heavy one. It is not known that she added anything to it during her short and compulsory cruise on board the buccaneer. Her money was soon expended. The British governor at New Providence was at that very time fitting out several armed vessels to cruise against the Spaniards, as privateersmen. He was eager to enlist any of the bold buccaneers who could be lured to enter that service. Nothing could be more congenial to the wishes of these desperate men. Frank, being out of employment, enlisted as privateersman, on board of one of these Government ships.

CHAPTER XIII

Anne Bonny, the Female Pirate

Rackam the Pirate. – Anne Bonny his Wife. – Reasons for Assuming a Boy’s Dress. – Infamous Character of Rackam. – Anne falls in Love with Mary. – Curious Complications. – The Duel. – Chivalry of Frank. – The Capture. – The Trial. – Testimony of the Artist. – Death of Mary Read. – Rackam Dies on the Scaffold.

There was upon the island of New Providence, at that time, a very consummate villain by the name of Rackam. He had been captain of a pirate ship, and shared his cabin with his wife, a very depraved woman, who was disguised in boy’s clothes. She apparently discharged the duties of a cabin-boy. This Captain Rackam had taken advantage of the king’s proclamation, had surrendered himself as a pirate, and had received a pardon.

Eagerly he enlisted, with his wife in man’s garb, as a messmate, in one of the governor’s privateers. No one on board the ship was aware of the sex of his companion. She was truly his wife, and her real name was Anne Bonny. She had been a rude, ungovernable girl, and her parents were so displeased that she should have married such a worthless wretch as Rackam was known to be, that they would no longer recognize her. Having nothing to live upon, she assumed a sailor’s dress, and they both shipped for New Providence. He doubtless intended there to resume the career of a pirate.

Rackam and Anne Bonny enlisted on board the same ship. Here then there were two women in male attire, neither of whom had any suspicion of the real sex of the other. No one could associate with such companions as those of Mary Read, or encounter the influences to which she was constantly exposed, without becoming in some degree corrupted.

The privateersman had been out but a few days when Rackam, who had many of his old confederates on board, formed a conspiracy, rose upon the officers, set them adrift, seized the ship, and turned to his old trade. Mary Read, in the character of Frank, was, as we have mentioned, a very handsome young fellow. The captain’s cabin-boy, Anne Bonney, fell desperately in love with Frank, and revealed to him, as she supposed, her sex. She approached Frank with all the seductions and allurements with which Potiphar’s wife solicited Joseph. Thus importuned, Frank confided to her that she was also a woman in disguise. This led to increased intimacy between the two young sailor women.

Captain Rackam became intensely jealous of his wife, in consequence of her familiarity with Frank. He threatened Anne that he would certainly cut Frank’s throat. Anne, well aware of the desperate character of the pirate, felt constrained, that she might save Mary’s life, to let the captain into the secret also. He did not divulge it, knowing that she might be exposed to very cruel treatment from the unprincipled wretches who thronged his decks.

But again the all-devouring passion took possession of the bosom of Frank. Many vessels were captured. After being plundered they were generally turned adrift again, with their crews. If the pirates, however, found on board these ships any one who could be of use to them, he was detained on board their ship. It so chanced that one day they took a ship where there was a young English artist. Rackam, thinking that the artist might be of service to him, in sketching scenes and drawing charts, detained him as a captive. He was a genteel young fellow, handsome, of fascinating manners, very skilful with his pencil, and possessed of very attractive conversational powers. Frank and the young artist were instinctively drawn toward each other.

And when Frank told her companion that she loathed the life of a pirate, that she was one of the crew by compulsion, and that she should embrace the first possible opportunity to escape, a new bond of union was formed between them. They became messmates, and were always together. He never had a doubt that the masculine pronoun, he, belonged to his bronzed but smooth-cheeked and soft-voiced companion.

Even on board a pirate ship there are many opportunities for seclusion. In the dark and tempestuous night, when the wine-heated officers were carousing in the cabin, and the crew were rioting in the forecastle, Frank and the artist, wrapped in those thick sailor-jackets which defy both wind and rain, would seek some retired position upon the deck, beneath the stormy sky, and beguile the weary hours in relating to each other the story of the past, and in planning measures for escape. Frank was the younger of the two, and in these hours of midnight communings, loved to recline with her head in the lap of her unsuspecting comrade.

The inevitable result ensued. The whole passionate nature of the woman, still almost in her girlhood, became aglow with love of the young artist. In one of these midnight communings she revealed to her astonished friend her sex. His friendship was speedily converted into impassioned love. He had ever, under her assumed character, had occasion to respect her. He could not recall a single action of immodesty or impropriety. Alone in the darkness of the night, upon the solitary deck with the stars alone looking down upon them, they went through the ceremony of what they both deemed a secret marriage.

Mary Read ever averred that she regarded those nuptials as sacred as if the rite had been performed in the church, by the robed priest, and in the presence of any number of witnesses. She was never accused of being unfaithful to her marriage vows, or of ever having been even indiscreet in her conduct.

Still the months passed away. The ship continued its piratic cruise. Frank, though secretly the wife of the artist, had excited no suspicion of her disguise. In her sailor’s garb she still performed every duty imposed upon others of the crew. There were several bloody actions fought. In these engagements both she and Anne Bonny were called upon, like the rest, to work at the guns.

It was one of the laws of the ship, that if any quarrel arose between any two of the crew, there should be no contention on board the ship, but that when they next approached an island, they should, with their friends, land in a boat, and settle the quarrel in a duel on the shore. The artist was so grossly incited by one of the pirates, that he either challenged him, or accepted a challenge from him to fight a duel. Frank would not have had her husband, on any account, refuse the hostile meeting. Public sentiment was such among the pirates, that had he done this, there would have been no end to the insults and abuse he would have received as a reward.

Frank was in a state of great agitation and anxiety for the fate of her lover. She was an admirable swordsman, and no one of the piratic crew was a truer shot with the pistol. Her love was so passionate that she felt that she could not live without that husband, whose union with her was so enhanced by the attractions which secrecy and romance give. She was far more ready to peril her own life than to have his endangered.

She therefore deliberately provoked such a quarrel with the pirate who was soon to have a hostile meeting with her husband, as to compel him to an immediate and angry challenge. Adroitly she succeeded in having the time appointed for their meeting two hours before the duel was to be fought with her husband. In her intensely excited frame of mind she resolved to make sure work of it.

They were to meet at but a few paces distance, discharge their pistols at each other, and then, with drawn swords, advance and fight until one or the other was effectually disabled or killed. The pistols were discharged. Neither of them was seriously wounded. They then crossed swords. There was a fierce clashing of the weapons for a few minutes and then the agile Frank passed her sword through the body of her adversary, and he fell before her a bloody corpse.

Such rencontres were too common with that ship’s crew, and Frank had been too conversant all her days with such scenes of blood to have it produce any serious impression upon her mind. With much composure she wiped her crimsoned sword and returned to the ship, exulting in the thought that she had saved her husband’s life. The attachment between Frank and her lover before this seems to have been very strong. But this event bound them more firmly together than ever before.

Almost invariably, even in this world, retribution follows crime. After many successful captures, and much rioting and revelry with this godless crew, the hour of vengeance came. One day a swift-sailing English frigate, of powerful armament, caught sight of the pirate and gave chase. The vessel was overtaken and captured, and all her crew, in irons, were carried to England for trial. There was no disposition to deal tenderly with these wretches, whose crimes could scarcely be numbered. The trial was expeditious and the execution prompt. The young artist easily proved that he was a prisoner on board the ship, and had never taken any part in their piratic exploits. He was promptly released. Frank was one of the pirates. Her assertion that she was reluctantly so, was of no avail. She had been of their recognized number; she had been identified with them in all the employments of a sailor; she had taken an active part in their battles.

One of the witnesses, who had been taken a prisoner by Rackam, and detained for some time on board the pirates’ craft, gave the following testimony against Frank, or rather against Mary Read; for during the trial her sex had been divulged, and the embarrassing fact had been discovered that, ere long, she was to become a mother. The testimony was as follows:

“I was taken prisoner by Rackam, and was detained for some time on board the pirate ship. One day I accidentally fell into discourse with the prisoner at the bar. She was dressed like the ordinary seamen, and I did not suppose her to be anything different. Taking her for a young man, I asked her what pleasure she could find in such enterprises, where her life was continually in danger by fire or sword; and not only so, but she must be sure of dying an ignominious death if she should be taken alive?

“She replied, that as to hanging, she deemed it no great hardship; for were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate, and so infest the seas that men of courage must starve. She said that were it put to the choice of the pirates, they would not have the punishment less than death; for it was only the fear of death which kept many dastardly rogues honest. Many of those, she said, who are now cheating the widows and orphans, and oppressing their poor neighbors who have no money to obtain justice, would then rob at sea. Thus the ocean would be crowded with rogues like the land. No merchant would venture out. Trade in a little time would not be worth following. It is the fear of hanging alone which restrains thousands from piracy.”

When we consider the impossibility of making an exact report of conversation, and when we consider the situation of Frank among the pirates, and that her life would instantly have been forfeited if they had suspected her of unfaithfulness, we can imagine that essentially these remarks might have been made, without indicating any special moral delinquency. Frank did not deny having made them.

Several of the crew, however, brought forward much more damaging testimony. When, to the astonishment of all, the sex both of Mary Read and Anne Bonny was made known to the court, the pirates seemed very desirous that their fate should be inseparably connected with their own. The testimony against Anne Bonny was very strong. She had accompanied her infamous husband in most of his adventures, and had rendered herself very conspicuous by her courage and her energetic action.

When the frigate took the pirate there was a short conflict. But the great guns of the frigate swept the pirate’s deck with such a storm of grape-shot, that every one rushed into the hold, excepting Mary Read and Anne Bonny. Mary Read, it was said, called upon those under the deck to come up and fight like men. As they refused, in her rage she fired her pistol down among them, killing one and wounding others. This latter charge, which went far to condemn her, she utterly denied. Such bravado was not at all in accordance with her general character. But it was just the conduct to be expected of Anne Bonny. She was a desperado, as robust in person as she was masculine in character. Rumor said that before she entered upon her piratic career she stabbed a servant-maid with a carving-knife, and so severely beat a young fellow whom she disliked that he narrowly escaped with his life.

They were both pronounced guilty of piracy, and condemned to be hung. As it was not deemed right that Mary Read’s child should forfeit its life in consequence of its mother’s sins, Mary was allowed a reprieve, until after the birth of her child. Being remanded to her gloomy and solitary cell in Newgate prison, she awaited, with anguish, her approaching maternity, to be immediately followed by an ignominious death upon the scaffold. The horror of her situation threw her into a fever, of which she fortunately died. Thus she escaped the scaffold: and she and her unborn babe slept in the grave together.

Rackam was hanged just before the time appointed for the execution of his wife. The morning on which he was led to the scaffold, he was first conducted to the cell of Anne Bonny. Her characteristic speech to him was:

“I am sorry to see you here; but if you had fought like a man, you need not have been hanged like a dog.”

In an hour from that time he was struggling in death’s agonies. Anne was reprieved from time to time, and finally escaped execution. What at last became of her no one knows.

CHAPTER XIV

Sir Henry Morgan

His Origin. – Goes to the West Indies. – Joins the Buccaneers. – Meets Mansvelt the Pirate. – Conquest of St. Catharine. – Piratic Colony there. – Ravaging the Coast of Costa Rica. – Sympathy of the Governor of Jamaica. – Death of Mansvelt. – Expedition of Don John. – The Island Recaptured by the Spaniards. – Plans of Morgan. – His Fleet. – The Sack of Puerto Principe. – Horrible Atrocities. – Retreat of the Pirates. – The Duel. – They Sail for Puerto Velo. – Conquest of the City. – Heroism of the Governor.

Though the name of Sir Henry Morgan has not attained equal notoriety with that of Captain William Kidd, his achievements were far more wonderful and infamous. He was born of a good and wealthy family in Wales. Early developing a roaming disposition, he left his home for the seacoast, and there took passage for Barbadoes. In those days any man could obtain a passage to the colonies; by agreeing to pay the fare in service on the other side. Labor was in great demand. Upon the arrival of the ship the planters would hasten on board and pay the passage money, which the emigrant was to repay by certain stipulated months of labor.

In this way Henry Morgan reached Barbadoes. Here his labor was sold to pay his passage, and he faithfully served out his term. He had come from a virtuous home, but rapidly the reckless boy yielded to the influences which surrounded him, until he became the worst of the bad. From Barbadoes he wandered over to Jamaica, seeking his fortune. Though there was then peace between England and Spain, the British Government was encouraging private piratical excursions against the commerce of Spain. As we have had frequent occasion to mention, these buccaneers had nothing to fear from the English courts so long as they confined themselves to robbing the Spanish ships.

At Jamaica, Morgan found two vessels openly fitting out for these buccaneering expeditions. He shipped on board one of them, and made two or three very successful voyages. Some men seem born to command. Such do not long remain in a subordinate position. Morgan was a man of the imperial mould. As he now had considerable money at his disposal, he proposed, to some of his comrades, that they should join stocks, purchase a vessel, and cruise on their own account. This was promptly done, and Morgan was unanimously chosen commander.

Morgan was already a desperado. With a numerous crew and a well-armed vessel he set out to cruise along that portion of the Mexican coast called Campeachy. After an absence of a few months, he returned triumphantly to Jamaica, his ship laden with the spoil of many captures. This pirate took refuge beneath the flag of England and under the guns of her fort. At that time the British Government was the most atrocious pirate earth had ever known; for while at peace with Spain, the Government encouraged all private piratical expeditions against her commerce.