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18th century AD
American Visions, April-May, 1995 by Kenneth J. Kinkor
Owning the heritage of pirates--those legendary figures obscured by the mists of myth and myopia--is not easy. Most people see them as Errol Flynn caricatures, Disneyesque parodies, or simply criminals. Recognition of the black man's role in the maritime world of pirates has been slow to enter America's perception of its past.
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Piracy was not an articulate movement. It produced no theoreticians, manifestoes or apologists. Pirates were "marginal men" driven by desperation and rage to vengeful acts of theft, terrorism and violence against an oppressive society. Early 18th-century Europe, for instance, was in the throes of severe economic, socialpolitical and religious changes that did not benefit all sectors of society equally. If it can be said that many lives were thus "sacrificed on the altar of progress," then pirates belong in the ranks of those men and women who refused to die quietly. That some engaged in insurrection on the high seas as a reaction to political oppression, religious persecution, slavery or simple want, does not absolve them; it only emphasizes their historical existence independent of either romanticized entertainments or superficial condemnation.
Since 1984, scholars at Cape Cod, Mass., have worked to dispel some of the mystery swirling around the silhouettes of these long-dead men. Research accompanying the archaeological recovery of more than 100,000 artifacts from the wreck site of the Whydah galley, the only sunken pirate ship ever discovered and authenticated, has provided startling insights into 18th-century piracy, including radical new findings about the role of blacks as pirates.
Barry Clifford, the head of the Whydah project, began to recognize this role in the late 1970s, while reviewing 1717 reports of African bodies washed ashore after the wreck. Although the Whydah was a slaveship before being commandeered by the English pirate Sam Bellamy, Clifford knew her human cargo had been sold prior to her capture and that the drowned blacks must therefore have been pirates.
Clifford learned that among Bellamy's pirates were British, French, Dutch, Spanish, Swedes and American Indians; moreover, at least 25 were former captive Africans liberated by the pirates from an unidentified slaveship, while an estimated two dozen more were African Americans. They had no common religion, and they had no common language, yet nearly 200 men were united in a common enterprise transcending nationality, religion and race. Such cooperation was in stark contrast to the hatreds then ravaging 18th-century Europe and America.
Subsequent research confirmed that the Whydah crew was not unique in its cosmopolitan makeup. Blacks were an important part of most pirate crews, and statistical evidence suggests that 25 to 30 percent of an estimated 5,000-plus pirates active during the years 1715 to 1725 were of African descent.
There are hard, practical reasons why blacks made good recruits. Tough enough and smart enough to escape bondage, a runaway slave could be counted on to fight to keep his freedom. Indeed, at least two crews were entirely black, with the exception of a single white man apiece.
Piratical racial tolerance did not proceed from a vision of the fundamental brotherhood of man; instead, it sprang from a spirit of revolt against political, economic and social oppression. The shared experience of oppression was thus a solvent that broke down social barriels within a pirate crew. Shared feelings of marginality meant that the primary allegiance of pirates was given to their brethren. It is hardly surprising that so many blacks--confronted with far worse prospects by staying put within the European or American social order--chose piracy.
Sailors and slaves lived on the bottom rungs of society's ladder. Rightly or wrongly, many of them saw turning pirate as the only avenue of escape from the twin grindstones of poverty and tyranny. Some stayed in piracy only long enough to amass enough booty for a fresh start in a town where their faces weren't known. Others remained in "the sweet trade" year after year--long after their fortunes were made--apparently because they simply enjoyed the freedom of a life outside the constraints of master, church and king.
Bellamy was once a shipmate of Blackbeard, the fearsome ogre who personifies the pirate of popular imagination. Far less familiar are Blackbeard's 60 crewmen (out of 100) who were black. Before his last battle, Blackbeard swore he wouldn't be taken alive, and entrusted a black named Caesar with blowing up the ship in case of defeat. After Blackbeard was killed, Caesar was kept from carrying out his orders only at the last possible moment by prisoners who had broken free.
Some argue that blacks played only a servile role among pirates. That no known crew ever prohibited its black members from carrying firearms is blunt proof to the contrary. Indeed, on one occasion, armed black pirates successfully led a mutiny against a tyrannical white pirate captain and his cronies!
