Pirates of the Caribbean (Part 2)

Pirates of the Caribbean (Part 2, No Zombies)

By Brian J. Lancaster (September 2022, Updated Feb 2023)

Website: www.laughingcoyote.net

The Golden Age of Pirates lasted from the 1650s to the 1730s, according to Wikipedia. The age ended with some bureaucracy on the Brits' part, making it illegal to plunder those juicy Spanish vessels. But there were pirates that lingered on, the stragglers. The first was the most successful, Bartholomew Roberts. Then we have pretty much the only female pirates, and then a Columbian pirate who wanted to fuck with the USA for fun.

Also, I may have been wrong about Blackbeard's flag in the previous article. Apparently, his flag was the "vanilla" skull and crossbones according to this video, by someone who knows a lot more than me about pirates flags:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjREjwUhmug

#4) Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart)

The second Welshman on the list, Bartholomew Roberts (born John Roberts) was perhaps the most successful pirate in the Caribbean, plundering up to 470 vessels (according to Wikipedia). He was nicknamed Black Bart, not to be confused with the American stage coach robber. Pretty sure all famous criminals give themselves their own nicknames, and they like to change their names a lot. His reign of piracy came near the end of the "Golden Age of Piracy" in the Caribbean.

He was Shanghaied on the African coast while looking for slaves, and conscripted into the crew of the pirate Howell Davis. Davis was killed in 1719 and Bart's career of piracy began, which was probably better than his job kidnapping Africans for the British crown.

I was probably wrong in the previous article about Blackbeard's flag, but I'm pretty sure this was Bart's flag, depicting death holding an hourglass, meaning he didn't give a fuck, and he knew he was going to live a short life. I imagine he was coughing up blood like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino.

Black Bart's flag

In fact, the "Jolly Roger", or "Black Standard", the skull and crossbones, probably originated with the Barbary pirates on the east coast of Africa sometime in the early 1600s. It came through the Middle Passage mostly with the slave trade. Andrew Jackson would later start a failure of a war with pirates on the Barbary Coast.

Robert's motives remain unclear, but it's known that he hated the Pope, and he came to despise his job in the British navy. While serving in the British navy without a captain, he once said that he didn't care who became captain next, as long as it wasn't a "papist". One of his quotes: "Since I've dipp'd my hands in muddy water, and must be a pyrate, I find it better to be a Commander than a common man." It could also be that he changed his first name from John to Bartholomew because it was the name of one of the slaves he became friends with.

In Brazil, at the Bayo de Todos os Sanctos (The Bay of the Saints), a Portuguese ship reportedly asked Black Bart where he was bound. His response: "Your ship."

Bayo de Todos os Sanctos

In addition to the Catholic Church, Roberts also hated the Irish. He captured a Sloop from Rhode Island, and left it in the hands of his Irish quartermaster who had been with him since his career in piracy began, Walter Kennedy, while he went on another raid. Kennedy then left to the mainland on a raft to get water, and decided to abandon the crew. This led Roberts to write a new draft of the pirate code, commanding a strict curfew on ship (though drinking was allowed at night on deck if you were quiet), no gambling, the usual bullshit.

 

Black Bart's Code (I hope it's verbatim, I tried)

His pirate code is probably the most well-known, as well as his flags, which he changed numerous times depending on which country he currently hated. Again, spite is the #1 motivation to do anything, in the 1600s, 1700s, and today. He did burn slaves alive, so his motivation is probably that he just hated his superiors telling him what to do.

John/Bartholomew/Bart "Black" Roberts was killed by the British navy off the African coast by a grape-shot of cannon balls while his crew was drunk. Whether or not he turned against the navy because he thought human trafficking was fucked up, or just because he was bored, remains a mystery.

#5) Anne Bonny + Mary Read

Anne Bonny was born in Ireland around 1702, then arrived in South Carolina when she was about 10 years old. Very little is known of her early life, but according to A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724 and considered largely apocryphal), she was the daughter of a lawyer named Cormac and his servant girl. Cormac was cut out of his mother's will, so he dressed Anne like a boy in the hopes of collecting his inheritance money. When the scheme was discovered, Cormac went out of business and moved with Anne and her mother to the Bahamas.

Anne was considered beautiful with red hair and blue eyes, and she quickly gained a reputation for having a bad temper, once threatening a servant with a knife and allegedly beating a man half to death after an attempted sexual assault.

Anne Bonny

Her father betrothed her to a man, but she refused, instead running away to the island of Nassau, known at the time as the Republic of Pirates (now called New Providence), with a man named James Bonny. After being disowned by her father, she began her life of piracy. This "Republic of Pirates" was founded in large part by Benjamin Hornigold, who first hired Blackbeard shortly before Anne's arrival.

Mary Read, who eventually worked with Anne Bonny, was also dressed as a boy in her childhood. Her widowed mother did this to pass her off as her dead son from another father and collect inheritance, something of a pattern. Mary had to get a job and start supporting her mother from age 13. Disguised as a male, she worked for a French nobleman as a foot soldier, then joined the British navy, then army, and eventually cavalry.

Mary fell in love with a Flemish soldier, and rumors of her being gay eventually led her to confessing she was female. She got married and they opened an inn in Holland called the Three Horseshoe Inn. After her husband died, she once again pretended to be male and joined a British Man-O-War setting sail for the West Indies. Her ship was captured by pirates, and she joined the crew.

In 1718, the British raided Nassau to restore order and eliminate the rights of people to gamble and pay for sex (because Nevada hadn't been invented yet). The British captain Woodes Rogers came to the Republic of Pirates with a cease and desist order: they could keep all their plunder and wealth, but promise to never do it again. They put bounties on pirates' heads, even commissioning Hornigold to hunt down his former partners in crime. Anne's husband, James, also decided to take the pardon offered by the king of England, which Anne was not too thrilled about. She left him for another pirate named Captain James

It's believed that in 1720, Anne Bonny and Calico Jack captured/hired the crew of Mary Read's ship. Anne was trying to get her fuck on with Mary before learning that she was, in fact, a woman, not a clean-shaven suspiciously-attractive dude. Calico Jack became jealous and threatened to cut Mary's throat. He then learned Mary's true sex, and the three of them allegedly became an item.

The two women briefly worked together on the Revenge, and people soon heard rumors of two women working on Calico Jack's crew. They had other affairs, one leading to a duel with both "pistols and sword" (unclear), but generally living a good life at the end of the Golden Age of Piracy. Eventually they were arrested by a sloop commissioned by the governor of Jamaica, Nicholas Lawes.

Everybody on Anne's ship was shitfaced. Calico Jack and his crew were hanged in Port Royal, then gibbetted (stuffed into a hanging public cage for everyone to see). In his final meeting with Anne Bonny, the legend goes that she told him, "If you had fought like a man, you wouldn't die like a dog."

Gibbetting

Bonny and Read were both sentenced to death, then spared because both of them were pregnant. Read was charged with sexual misconduct due to her pregnancy, and she died in prison, probably from childbirth or sickness (not Epsteined). What happened to Anne Bonny remains a mystery. According to Wikipedia, there was a 1733 record of "Ann Bonny" dying on 29 December in Jamaica, but it was very clear that she wasn't executed, as she "pled the belly."

The standard version of her death is that she died in South Carolina in 1782, but nobody knows for sure. I like to think she went on living the good life, fucking pirates, until old age.

#6) Don Pedro Gilbert

One of the last successful pirates to be raiding ships in the western hemisphere was Don Pedro Gilbert, commissioned by the Colombian government. He was raiding American ships off the coast of eastern Florida well into the 1800s with his schooner the Panda. He managed to seize the Mexican, an American brig bound for Rio de Janeiro carrying $20,000 in silver (about $250,000 today).

When asked what to do with the captives, he reportedly replied, "Dead cats don't mew. You know what to do." He then locked the crew inside the forecastle and tried to BBQ them alive. The crew somehow escaped and extinguished the fire, letting just enough smoke rise until Gilbert's ship was out of sight. They managed to report the incident.

Don Pedro Gilbert was eventually arrested off west Africa by a British vessel captained by Henry Dundas Trotter. He was extradited to the United States and hanged in Boston. His reign was short-lived, about two years, but he can tell all the Angels in heaven, he was probably the last real pirate in the western hemisphere.

Gilbert's Bar is a sandspit on Hutchinson Island in southern Florida, where he used to lure victims.

Gilbsy

Sources

https://www.thepirateking.com/bios/roberts_bartholomew.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGDPKwuMOzk

http://www.cindyvallar.com/ifpirate.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOiUgXyk0Fs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Bonny

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_Gilbert

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Anne-Bonny

https://podbay.fm/p/the-dollop-with-dave-anthony-and-gareth-reynolds/e/1675149518

FOOTNOTE #1: My next article will be about how Captain Jack Sparrow was not gay and in fact just acting gay to get chicks.

FOOTNOTE #2: I would assume the duel with both "pistols and swords" means there's, like, two rounds of the duel or something? So if they didn't kill each other in the pistol round, they would then resort to swords for the second round? Just guessing.

FOOTNOTE #3: I was really hoping Pablo Escobar had pandas so I could make a joke or something, but nope. He did have hippos that have since escaped and are reproducing in Colombian rivers. So don't go swimming in Colombian rivers.