Under the Black

Were the 18th-century pirates racist or anti-racist?

I’ve been reading a lot. I bought like 30 books about pirates and have read books about the history of the West Indies. Some may seem repetitive, but each one brings up something new or adds a different perceptive.

Speaking of perspective…

I tweeted about this a few days ago and I would like to elaborate on the question: Where the 18th-century pirates racist or anti-racist?

Several sources (books and also the Whydah Exhibition museum) discuss racism and 18th-century pirates. Some, like the Whydah museum, emphasize pirates freeing slaves and having men of color serve in leadership roles. Others, like Under the Black Flag, acknowledge pirates freed slaves but explain pirates also sold slaves and sometimes forced men of color to “go on the account.”

So… were they racist or not?

The short answer: Neither. They were mostly just opportunists who were tired of being treated like crap and not making any money.

The long answer: It’s impossible to say because racism, as it’s defined today, did not exist in the Golden Age of Piracy (1715-1725).

Context is always important, but it’s especially important when analyzing history. Because cultures, words, meanings, etc., evolve over time. Something we say today may not have been used three centuries ago. So while we can perhaps equate our definitions of a newer term to a way society functioned back then, it requires much more nuance and thought.

The 1700s is an incredibly important time period, and the Caribbean is probably the most important place in the world because of its role during the “age of exploration.” Because the Caribbean was so vital in so many ways, there are a lot of intertwining elements. And it gets complicated.

Here is the simplified context:

There was discrimination in the 1700s, and earlier. But it was religious discrimination, which sailed out of Europe and into the Caribbean, where Europeans brought their battles. (The Caribbean was essentially a war ground for European cultures, especially since the Spanish thought non-Catholics were heathens and the British were full into protestants)

Discrimination wasn’t centered around the color of your skin, just on your religion. So indigenous cultures may have been seen as less-than because of their religious practices and not necessarily their skin color (like the Mayan sacrifices).

In this sense, the pirates were fair. They didn’t care about your national origin, political leanings or religion. So yes, they were much more accepting and welcoming than the “civilized” European societies at the time.

So there was discrimination. And there was slavery. How is that different from our definition of racism today?

As I mentioned above, the Caribbean was critical in world globalization. (You could trace the American Revolution to the colonization of the Caribbean if you were so inclined to.) There were many elements that led to the use of only African slaves.

Europeans brought indentured servants to work on Caribbean plantations
They participated in the slave trade because Europe loved its capitalism and would do anything to make money.
They brought African slaves to the Caribbean
The indentured servants could not handle the Caribbean climate, and a lot of them died from tropical disease. They either died or their servitude term ended.
Which left the Europeans with a shortage of labor
Europeans discovered that Africans handed the climate much better and died less frequently than European indentured servants
So they intensely turned to African slavery

Much was happening in the Caribbean at the time, like the discovery of tobacco. But one other export became crucial: SUGAR

Sugar became a status symbol for the wealthy and was purely a luxury good. It yielded a tremendous profit.
But it was also a very labor-intensive crop to harvest, so Europeans used African slaves, less likely to die than indentured servants, for this task
To summarize: Sugar was profitable, European servants couldn’t stay alive long enough to harvest it but the African slaves could.
So: Demand for money and sugar –> Reliance on African slaves

In the latter half of the 18th century:

The morality of slavery was being questioned
Plantation owners still wanted to make money of free labor – especially at the very profitable but labor-intensive sugar plantations.
So they started coming up with lies and myths to justify enslaving, especially, Africans.
This is when the racism we see today began to develop; slavery defenders claimed Africans were built for this labor, that they were inferior people, that they needed to be looked after, etc.

And that’s how we got racism as we define it today.

I’m not trying to claim that pirates were anti-discriminatory or were discriminatory. I just want to emphasize the importance of context when it comes to history.

You can’t say pirates were racist but you also can’t say they weren’t racist, because that kind of racism didn’t exist back then.

And ultimately, these people have all been dead for three centuries and written accounts of their behavior only exist from witnesses who had their own biases. So, we will never truly know.

(If any of this was unclear, please reach out to me and I will edit to make it clearer!)

Sources:

Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly
Exhibition Whydah Museum

The Whydah Museum

Last week I was in Boston to visit friends, which was really just an excuse to do pirate research. There were two parts to my research- the Whydah Museum in Cape Cod and the microfilm archives at the Boston Public Library.

I went to Cape Cod, where the Whydah crashed, first.

The Whydah Galley was a slave ship captained by Lawrence Prince. It was fast and powerful, one of the best ships in that age. It was taken by pirate Sam Bellamy without any bloodshed.

On April 26, 1717, the Whydah crashed while trying to navigate Cape Cod’s shores in a storm.

The wreck was discovered in the 1980s, and the museum features found artifacts. While I knew most of, if not all (I mean, I’ve researched a lot about pirates) of the information, it was incredible to see these artifacts.

Artifacts in the museum included:

Cannons: English Long cannons were originally mounted on the ship. The wreck also had a Dutch cannon.
Muskets and pistols: Muskets were 3.5-4.5 feet long. Pistols, the weapon of choice, where roughly 1.5 feet long.
Grenades.
Every day items: Brass clothes hooks, leather shoe sole, brass scissors, gold rink, brass and pewter belt buckles, copper cufflinks.
Navigational tools: Ring dials to calculate attitude and navigation dividers converting distance on a map to distance in real life.
Silverware: Pirates used pewter plates, forks and spoons. Each pirate had their own plate, and some inscribed their initials onto their plate.
A syringe. It was possibly pewter and also looked like using it would really hurt.
And of course, PIRATE TREASURE! Gold jewelry and silver Spanish pieces of eight.

Bellamy has become one of my favorite pirates because he was against the system and brutality of British captains and conditions on English ships.

The exhibit also gave attention to the men of color who served on Bellamy’s ship. People of color (and I will really expand on this later) received freedom and equality on ships that they did not receive elsewhere.

It was a pleasant experience and enriching to see these artifacts in real life. It’s especially helpful when you’re trying to discover fine, everyday details like what pirate plates were made out of. There was also a life-size replica of a portion of the ship itself, which gave me a good perspective of, you know, what it would actually be like to walk on that ship.

While not much was dedicated to the night Bellamy crashed, it was still a really important piece in the Golden Age of Piracy. The few survivors of the storm were chased down and hung in Massachusetts, which earned the rage of several pirates.

Note: This is just my experience at the exhibit. I will have a lot more in-depth about the ship, it’s crew, etc.

The Urca de Lima didn’t have “treasure,” but it did help create some pirates

Hey everyone! Sorry I’ve taken so long to update this. I’m still reading through The Republic of Pirates, mostly because I’ve been stopping every five seconds to take notes. (I’ve decided to just read it through now and take notes later.) But I’ve found out some interesting things so far.

First of all – for anyone who watches Black Sails – the Urca de Lima did exist, and it did run afoul of a storm and become shipwrecked. It wasn’t, however, carrying the gold and silver. But it was still part of the shipwrecked Spanish fleet that became the origin story for some pirates.

What followed is an array of domino incidents. The years 1715-1716 shaped the pirate republic and alliances/rivalries. There were three main pirate pairs of captains and partners or captains and mentees:

Sam Bellamy and Paulsgrave Williams (Partners)
Benjamin Hornigold and Edward Teach (Teach was Hornigold’s protegee)
Henry Jennings and Charles Vane (Jennings mentored Vane)

Jennings considered himself still a privateer, despite the fact that privateers weren’t really a thing anymore. His belief caused him to look down on Hornigold, causing friction between the two.

The three pairs crossed paths while chasing down French prizes. Jennings partnered with Bellamy to capture a ship. But when Hornigold arrived, Jennings sailed off the meet him, and Bellamy took that opportunity to steal Jennings’ prize and then team up with Hornigold.

Now, Hornigold considered himself a British patriot and refused to attack English ships. He would only attack Spanish and French ships. Bellamy, on the other hand, was fighting against the British and the system that left him poor.

Eventually, Hornigold’s crew grew angry over his unwillingness to attack English ships. So they deposed him and joined Bellamy’s crew.

And that’s where I left off. Hornigold is in New Providence Island, trying to rebuild Nassau’s fort. And Bellamy is on his way to capturing the Whydah, a ship he wants to use to destroy the British man-of-war Scarborough.

Day 2? NYPL Update & The War of Spanish Succession

I went to the New York Public Library on Wednesday and met with a research specialist, who showed me many resources I can use to chase down primary research. It’s a lot, so I will probably be spending… the rest of my life? Looking for information.

Right now I’m searching for primary sources, not only to be as authentic as possible, but also because I’m curious. Unforuntately, it’s hard to track down primary source documents written by pirates, so I know this may be fruitless. But it’s cool anyway to see some of these things – like letters of marque, etc.

I’m still in the stage of formulating a timeline (this is much harder than it sounds, because there are many different historical characters and events that influence each other, and in turn influences my story) and gathering as much general research as possible.

So far I’ve really only learned about the poor conditions of working in the British navy and impressment (they basically chased people down and forced them into very horrible conditions on the ship.)

The other main event is the War of Spanish Succession. The wars leading up to the Golden Age of Piracy played monumental roles in creating pirates like Blackbeard, etc. The wars did a couple of things: They raised the number of privateers and forced people into working in the British Navy.

Privateers were basically legal pirates, emboldened by their government during times of war to sack ships from other countries. Some privateers did become pirates.

British naval conditions were so brutal that crew members left for piracy instead, where they received a vote on the ship and faced better conditions.

I’ll write more on both these topics later, but for now I’m just fascinated by these events. The world is always changing, but the early 17th and 18th centuries saw the world shifting in many different ways.

Day 1: Primary Source Adventures

I’m not a historian, but I was a history minor! I actually almost double majored in history and journalism, but decided I didn’t want to take the four math classes required by BU’s College of Arts and Sciences.

I’ve never lost my love for history — especially U.S. pre-Civil War history — but I haven’t looked for primary sources in six years.

I reached out to the New York Public Library and asked to meet with a research specialist, and I’m actually quite surprised they took my request for “primary sources on pirates” seriously.

I’m meeting with them today, and I am very excited. The NYPL has a vast archive or resources, but I have no clue how to navigate them. Or what I’m even looking for…