Anti-Slavery Politics in the Legend of "Goody" Hallett, "Witch of Wellfleet!"

The legend of “Maria” Hallet appears to have first begun in 1934 with a reprise in 1937 from Josef Berger, who wrote the 1930's classic Cape Cod Pilot.  On pages 193-197, he regales the story of the "simple Eastham farm girl" of Cape Cod - and supposed wife of legendary pirate Samuel Bellamy - whose fate was linked with the wreck of Bellamy's Whydah. 

Her name was said to be "Goody" Hallett. This has since been a legend concerning the Golden Age pirate from Devon, England, who captured the most prizes of any Caribbean pirate before the legendary Bartholomew Roberts six years after him. 

But where did this legend come from? It certainly was not as old as Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates.. coming up on 300 years! Halletts had been well-known and respected mariners in Massachusetts for more than a century – never even associated with maritime disaster until Elizabeth Reynard’s 1934 publication, The Narrow Land: Folk Chronicles of Old Cape Cod (1934). This legend has persisted to the present day. Indeed, in 1977, the Boston Herald published - on Halloween day, of course - the add below:

Boston Herald, 30 Oct 1777

This is almost certainly legend. It should be said that "Goody" or Mary or Maria Hallett has never been identified. No court records of her jailing or arrest have ever been found. Certainly, no bloody contract with Satan has ever appeared in print. And, no Cape Cod Hallett girl has ever been associated with "scuttling ships" off the Massachusetts coast.

Indeed, why make such pejorative slurs against a 15-year-old girl named "Goody" or Mary Hallett, the alleged “Witch of Wellfleet?” I thought only narcissistic, misogynistic, and pedantic jerks like Donald J. Trump were prone to abuse young women, either in bathrooms, or - like the 16-year-old Swedish climate-change activist girl - on his Twitter account - even as his statuesque Slavic model wife yells at Democrat witnesses to stop mentioning her young son, Barron Trump in hearings! Did such tribal politics also come into play with young Miss Hallett? 

Did she even exist for that matter?

Prior to 1935, the only similar reference – at least in Massuchesetts newspapers – was a shipping record for the vessel “Water Witch, of Wellfleet” in 1846. Furthermore, many vessels have carried "Witch" in their name. There have been as many as 2,899 newspaper references for both “witch” and “Cape Cod” together between 1716 and 1935, so the fairly recent Witch Trials of Salem in 1692 and the frequent devastating nor'easters probably left a lasting mark upon local Cape Cod maritime history. 

There was also Elizabeth Reynard’s other story about one Capt. Sylvanus of Cape Cod who blamed his oversleeping and allowing his sails to be ripped away in a storm upon the “Truro Hag” or witch – a woman in Truro who had sold him some milk – having drugged him by poisoning the milk! Truro is only a few miles north of both Wellfleet and Eastham), by the way. 

Another legend may have been influenced in 1851 by the wreck of Water Witch of Salem on those same shores. In fact, maritime disasters were so common in Massachusetts that 19^th century newspapers carried a “Disasters” column in their shipping section! 

Culturally, associating witches or other such ominous supernatural phenomenon with disasters has been quite common in maritime folklore and disasters on Cape Cod were indeed frequent. Marine insurance company rates of the 19^th century reflected Cape Cod’s shores as literally crawling with such “witches”  causing disasters to occur against their profit margins!

Still, why make the “witch” reference to a 15-year-old “Goody” Hallett girl (note that the term “Goody” made a timely cultural reference to the 1692 Witch Trials)? Was this simply a cultural recollection from 1692 - an attempt to demean the Hallett family as such a disaster? 

There may have been a coincident political reason to demean the Halletts of Cape Cod as possessing of some... “evil!” And, in this case, there was plenty of evidence... hanging in a Massachusetts train depot shortly before the Civil War!

A well-known Anti-Masonic (later Whig) politician Chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1848-1852 and US District Attorney for Massachusetts between 1853-57, appointed by President Franklin Pierce - and native of Cape Cod – named Benjamin Franklin Hallett suffered political derision as a “soldier of fortune,” a betrayer of “every party and faction,” and a “flaming, intolerant, persecuting, temperance (anti-alcohol) man, and called loudly upon all the friends of temperance” before his death in 1862. Long-time researcher of Hallet, Roberto Poli, tells that:

Hallet was a staunch abolitionist, and a militant protector of minorities such as the native Mashpee Indians of Cape Cod, whom he defended in court in 1833 against 'whites' stealing their property in their own land... The various slanderous epithets with which he was labeled come from an episode that drew great attention, both from the public and the press - the trial of Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave escaped from the estate of Charles F. Suttle in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1854, and arrested in Boston. The trial became one of the most controversial episodes involving slavery in the years leading to the Civil War. As an abolitionist, Hallett openly despised everything the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 stood for; as a man of law, he was forced to use “reasonable force or restraint as may be necessary under the circumstances of the case” (Fugitive Slave Law, 1850; Section 6) to return fugitives to the claimants. Predictably, northern Democrats, fiercely opposed to slavery, heavily criticized him. He was described as a political machine, and was accused of turning his back to the cause. (added 2-1-2020)

Aside from his nominal abolitionism, Hallett was seen in Massachusetts as often sided politically with Southern Whigs (ancestors of slavery proponents known as Southern Democrats) in the nationalist and anti-immigrant Know-Nothing party. He incurred northern wrath for this distinctly un-Massachusettian political position. 

Stauffer Miller, author of Cape Cod and the Civil War, mentioned that during one slave trial in Boston, an unknown Cape Cod party felt that Boston (but Cape Cod-born) politician Benjamin F. Hallett “was too allied with Southern interests and suspended his effigy at the West Barnstable Depot. A note pinned to the effigy, dressed in a black coat, fancy pants and black hat, read, ‘Benj. F. Hallett, Attorney General for Southern Kidnappers. Cape Cod disowns the traitor to liberty.’ Attached to the coattail was a copy of the Barnstabie Patriot, with this message: ‘We would have hung the editor of this paper along with him but for want of time.’ Hallett never saw the effigy, as it had been removed when his train stopped at West Barnstable.” 

Even for a "hardcore abolitionist," B. F. Hallet suffered terribly from this political misunderstanding, re: perceived sympathy for slavery, conservative slavers, or Southern Democrats, as Roberto Poli writes:

It's not difficult to see why Hallett would be completely character-assassinated simply for being forced to apply the law [- return a slave to his owner]. The Burns [Anthony Burns, a fugitive slave escaped from the estate of Charles F. Suttle in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1854, and arrested in Boston] case was at the very early stages of his position as US DA, and once riots began on the streets of Boston (thousands of people gathered in front of the courthouse, shouting, spitting at and insulting the guards), Hallett's fate was sealed. He received specific directives via telegraph from the White House to increase the number of guards protecting the courthouse and Burns himself as he left the building, which was of course interpreted as an affront to liberty and dignity. At the end of the trial, thousands of people marched in protest on the streets; business owners hang black drapes outside their shops. Hallett was insulted publicly, and even assaulted in front of his home.

It may be that Massachusettians – particularly in Cape Cod - were notably relieved by his death in 1862 as he left a foul memory of their political opposition to - and hatred of - the South's peculiar institution of slavery. For their descendants today, Benjamin Hallett remained a disgusting reminder of tribal politics that precipitated the Civil War. This probably remained with his former constituents for decades, especially when white-supremacist resurgence flared once again in the early 20th century. 

The resulting political recollections possibly gave rise to the legend of Goody or Maria Hallet, the “Witch of Wellfleet” – a posthumous way of damning Benjamin Hallett and his family forever and chastising them for ever giving birth to such a contemptible slavery-loving politician! 

A Hallett girl, like Eve with an apple, a truly evil “Witch of Wellfleet” may then have slithered upon the pages of Elizabeth Reynard’s Chronicles of Old Cape Cod in 1934.

References:

Elizabeth Reynard, The Narrow Land: Folk Chronicles of Old Cape Cod (1934), reprint (Boston: Houghton-Mifflen, 1968); Cape Ann Light and Gloucester Telegraph (Gloucester, MA), Jul 25, 1846, 4; National Aegis (Worcester, MA), Sep 30, 1840, 2; Nantucket Inquirer (Nantucket, MA), Aug 29, 1840, 3; Boston Shipping List, May 24, 1851, 1; Stauffer Miller, Cape Cod and the Civil War: The Raised Right Arm (Mount Pleasant, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2010); Email interviews with Roberto Poli.

Blackbeard in Philadelphia?

Quest for Blackbeard: The True Story of Edward Thache and His World attempts to right the wrongs of many past historians and authors, amateur and professional. One of those wrongs is warping the conservative war veteran Edward "Blackbeard" Thache into a virtual comic character, notorious and villainous, a "swaggering merciless brute," as Hugh Rankin called him, based upon simply the acts - as assumed by everyone but Thache, I might add - of the last two years of his life. But, in doing so, we tend to hide from our past and our true natures as citizens of a true "Pirate Nation."

Hiding from ourselves created modern America and destroyed the reputations of gentlemen like Edward Thache. Especially by the latter nineteenth century, a lot of our rhetoric was aimed against our former heroes – privateers and pirates - misunderstood founders of what "Capt. Charles Johnson" or Jacobite newspaper publisher Nathaniel Mist referred to as the "Commonwealth of Pyrates," or America. Still, holding pirates closely to our breasts, turn-of-the-century claims of a local origin for Blackbeard, in the United States, as opposed to Jamaica, appear greatly embellished – ahistorical, but sometimes directly covert.

Why? It seems that, in the latter nineteenth century, once the United States began to assert its own dominance and identity apart from England, Blackbeard became less of an historical figure and more of an ephemeral abstract object, about whom anything could be spoken or invented.

America "adopted" Blackbeard the Pirate! We liked the pirate... and probably his methods!

These literary inventions first appeared in 1844 in a book on Philadelphia – not his actual home of Jamaica – a book relying strongly on hearsay that incurred much damage to Edward Thache’s reputation, while also popularizing him as a local villain – perhaps to avoid the inevitable comparison to capitalists of the era, whose own methods were not so dissimilar.

John F. Watson, in writing the Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania in 1844, first claimed Blackbeard to be a member of a family in North America rather than Jamaica in the West Indies. Watson pulled his information from an informant who told him that he knew the family and that “Captain Drummond was a half-crazed man, under high excitements, by his losses and imprisonment by the French.”  This account gave great detail about being a privateersman out of Liverpool (not Bristol?) – even mentioned a doctor who served with him. Drummond supposedly had been the wild son of Gov. William Drummond, first governor of North Carolina, and was later executed by the governor of Virginia, which invited speculation upon local politics as a factor. Watson’s early work planted a seed: that Blackbeard was not from Bristol or Jamaica, but Virginia and/or North Carolina.

This seed grew through the years, with ex-Confederate Thomas T. Upshur’s twilight-year genealogical theories of an Accomack County, Virginia family of Teaches. It continued through many local theories to Robert E. Lee’s mid-twentieth-century version, until the present day with other local North Carolina-biased work. They all repeated and enhanced the demonized version of Johnson’s “villainous” Blackbeard while also oddly claiming him as one of their own. But, why? Why did demonization of pirates become so popular at this time as opposed to earlier? Was it simply entertainment to the masses or was it more broad – cultural in context? And, why love the demon so much?

Still, Philadelphia held the first and most "supportable" fascination over Blackbeard and it has spawned many a "midnight theory" of notoriety by centuries of authors. Thache and his semi-pirate acquaintance Stede Bonnet visited the Delaware Capes around October - November 1717. A local Pennsylvania councilman named James Logan, and/or his fellow councilman Jonathan Dickinson, apparently remembered Edward Thache when he was the mate of a brigantine from Jamaica who had recently visited their port. Logan wrote about his experience in his peculiar early eighteenth-century literary style:

Some of our Mastrs. Say, they knew almost every man aboard, most of them having been lately in this River [-] their Comandr. is one Teach who was here a Mate from Jamca. [Jamaica], about 2 yrs. agoe...

Note this phrase "Mate from Jamca." The Boston News-Letter, Thursday, Nov 11, 1717, Boston, MA, Issue: 708, on page 2 shows:

Note here the phrase "formerly Sail'd Mate out of this Port." It sounds similar to the James Logan quote above and I believe it was bastardized from his letter. The intent was probably "sailed mate of a Jamaican brigantine out of this port." Newspapers of the day were notoriously unreliable in this respect. But, that does not stop the many authors who would dearly love to have the notorious and villainous comic character as "one of their own."

It's my opinion that Blackbeard never lived in Philadelphia or on the American mainland - in any part of the current United States. He visited that port of Philadelphia about the year 1715 while serving as a "Mate" on a Jamaican brigantine, certainly. He may have remained for a few weeks, maybe a month, as he and the crew exchanged cargoes. This was routine for most mariners and their vessels. But, then he sailed back to his home in Jamaica.

I apologize to all Americans for dashing their "piratish" hopes!

-----------------------------

BLACKBEARD: 300 YEARS OF FAKE NEWS.
from BBC Radio Bristol
300 years ago on Thursday - 22 November 1718 - Bristol born Edward Teach (aka Blackbeard, the most famous pirate in the history of the world), was killed in a violent battle off the coast of North America. And after 300 years we can finally separate the truth from the myth. You can hear the whole story this Thursday at 9am in a one off BBC Radio Bristol special: BLACKBEARD: 300 YEARS OF FAKE NEWS. With new research by Baylus C. Brooks (found in Quest for Blackbeard: The True Story of Edward Thache and His World), narrated by Bristol born Kevin McNally - Joshamee Gibbs in PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, and produced by Tom Ryan and Sheila Hannon this is a very different Blackbeard from the one in the story books...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06s6zfx

You can hear it at https://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_radio_bristol

Author Spotlight

#Blackbeard #pirate #twitterstorians


Also:

Three Centuries After His Beheading, a Kinder, Gentler Blackbeard Emerges - Smithsonian Online

“The real story of Blackbeard has gone untold for centuries,” says Baylus Brooks, a Florida-based maritime historian and genealogist.

 By Andrew Lawler
smithsonian.com
November 13, 2018----------------------------

Exciting new detail, including information from French and English depositions, appears in a new book, Sailing East: West-Indian Pirates in Madagascar, now available!

Find further details at baylusbrooks.com
Author's Bookstore
Author's Amazon.com  page

Blackbeard and Henry Timberlake of Boston

Boston Harbor

Henry Timberlake, born c. 1680, son of Corporal Henry Timberlake of Rhode Island, married Mary Langdon on November 22, 1709 in Boston, Suffolk County, Massachusetts. On the 27th of January, 1711, the couple's first son, Henry Jr. was born. Indeed, the Timberlakes had a moderate family of mostly sons: Henry, Daniel, James, and Sarah.   

Henry Timberlake provided for his family as a mariner, working for various ship owners of Boston. During 1715-1716, he generally followed the Jamaican run. On April 13, 1715, he returned from sugar plantations of Dutch Suriname on the northern coast of South America in Leopard, 50 tons, with 101 hogsheads of molasses and 2 hogsheads of rum to his home port in Massachusetts. Massachusetts had quickly become an importer of molasses for Boston's distilleries and rum manufacturers. 

Afterward, as master of the sloop Adventure, of 35 tons, he departed June 6th for Jamaica. On the same page of Boston's outgoing vessels, future pirate of Bermuda, then living on Jamaica, Henry Jennings in the Rhode Island-built Bathsheba (AKA Barsheba), departed July 7th for home (see photo). Another record shows that Timberlake again departed Boston on September 27th for Jamaica and again in Leopard. 

By November of 1716, he sailed the brigantine Lamb. Shipping records are no longer remaining for 1716. Still, the details of Timberlake's November-December Jamaica run are known because his brigantine Lamb was the first vessel captured on record for the famed pirate Edward "Blackbeard" Thache. 

June-July departures from Boston, 1715

Capt. Timberlake departed Boston on November 16, 1716, bound for Jamaica, as usual, with a load of staves and shingles. The trip usually took about a month, having to sail against the northward current of the Gulf Stream in the Florida Straits. Timberlake would have passed the eleven Spanish wrecks on the Florida shores (wrecked in a hurricane July 30, 1715) south of Cape Canaveral before opting for a southeastward course over Cuba. Here, he entered along the Windward Passage. He then turned south between Capes Maize (Cuba) and Nicholas (Hispaniola), on his way to Port Royal, Jamaica. 

Path of Henry Timberlake's brigantine Lamb, Dec 1716

 As Timberlake passed between Navassa Island and the western or French end of Hispaniola, at eight o'clock the night of the 13th of December, a sloop fired several warning shots at him, ordering him to come to. The pirate sloop that faced Timberlake was a small one of 8 guns and about 90 men named Delight and was commanded by pirate Benjamin Hornigold of Harbour Island, Eleuthera, Bahamas. Hornigold was an older man, about fifty years of age whose family was from the maritime town of Ipswich, England with family, including a sister, in Massachusetts. He probably settled on Harbour Island about 1710-1714. 

As Lamb and Delight came alongside, Hornigold signaled for Capt. Timberlake to come aboard Delight. Timberlake and two of his men climbed into a dory or launch and paddled to the pirate's sloop. Once aboard, Capt. Timberlake was treated to a couple of brags: that Hornigold had just that Thursday, taken a 40-gun Spaniard (quite the feat in an 8-gun sloop!) and a ship from Bristol, Capt. Quarry, days before that, but also that fifteen of his men had absconded with a canoe and 40,000 pieces of eight! This was quite an admission from Hornigold to his captive. Then, Hornigold blustered a bit and declared "give my Service to the Captn of the man of warr [HMS Diamond, Royal Navy vessel at Jamaica] and tell him I design to have his Ship from him if I meet him." 

Hornigold himself led a party of about a dozen men aboard Lamb to take her cargo. He ordered Timberlake to remain on Delight as he unloaded the Bostonian's brigantine. This went on for about six hours, requiring two or three trips in Hornigold's boat. After the first hour, another pirate by the name of Edward Thache [ex-Royal Navy man from Spanish Town, Jamaica] arrived in his own sloop, equal in size and power to Hornigold's. Thache sent his own boat to plunder Lamb as well. Two crews then plundered Timberlake's food supply and clothing. 

From: Deposition of Henry Timberlake, 17 December 1716, 1B/5/3/8, 212–3, Registrar General’s Department, Spanish Town, Jamaica - This is the first official document that shows Edward "Blackbeard" Thache engaged in piracy!

The pirates informed Timberlake that they were after provisions and Timberlake's later description confirms this: "Three Barrils of Porke, one of Beef, two of peese, three of Markrill [fish?] five Barrils of onions Several Dozen Caggs of oysters most of his Cloaths and all his Ships Stores Except about Fforty Biskets and a very Small quantity of meat just to bring them in [to Jamaica, about 150 miles or 50 leagues] and threw Some of their Staves over board." 

The provisions made sense - but throwing staves overboard was unnecessary, unless they intended to make a pirate vessel of Lamb. Timberlake later guessed that the loss was about £60 worth. 

When Hornigold returned to Delight after pirating Lamb, he told Timberlake about news he learned from the Bristol ship the week before. The news vexed the old pirate somewhat. Hornigold "understood... that Captn [John?] Quarry was in Goal [in Jamaica] for being concerned in a Pyracy with him but Said he was wrongfully accused therein." The pirate captain further informed Timberlake that "Quarry did not act [in this piracy] and was by [Hornigold] forced to be in their Company." Hornigold "declared that it was him and his Crew alone that had robbed that Spaniard."

Hornigold charged Timberlake that so "Soon as he got into Jamaica" he would inform the authorities there that they might set Quarry free. If he would do this, Hornigold told him, then he had a mind to let him go with his own brigantine. 

Four days later, after traversing the last 150 miles of his nearly 2,000-mile journey, Henry Timberlake gave his deposition on December 17th before Peter Heywood, who had just assumed the acting governorship of Jamaica. Gov. Lord Archibald Hamilton had been removed by the king and recalled to London for his alleged involvement in piracies against the Spanish government. This involved Henry Jennings' raid of their salvage camps on the Florida shores. More than likely, however, Heywood and the other "piratish" gentlemen of Jamaica bad-mouthed Hamilton in an attempt to have him removed - they wanted the British appointee out of the way so they could profit fully from the lucrative wrecks on the Florida coast. Almost everyone in America was a pirate - land or sea! 

A few years later, Henry Timberlake could be found on the Boston - St. Christopher's (St. Kitts) run... he quite gave up on that "nest of pirates," Jamaica!

---------------------------------------------------------

"Quest for Blackbeard" is now available in ebook format and can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online booksellers, including Apple iTunes.

Quest is already previewable on Google Books.

baylusbrooks.com

Blackbeard's Fatal Battle with Politics - Lies!

Haematoxylum "bloodwood" campechianum or Logwood

Capt. William Wyer of Boston traded in Jamaica routinely for at least a decade in the early 18th century. After a brief stop in that island about the middle of March 1718, he left the Jamaican port of Port Royal in his ship, Protestant Caesar, bound for the Bay of Honduras. Like many before him, his intent was to load with logwood, a 30-40 foot tall, irregular-trunked tree whose dark heartwood is still used today as a source of dark bluish-red dye, nearly black, most notably in the biological stain hematoxylin. 

This profitable tree was found from southern Mexico to Central America, straddling the Bay of Campeach north of the Yucatan Peninsula, and to the south in the Bay of Honduras, both territories that long belonged to Spain. English crews, either under treaty with the Spanish or not, had often illegally cut the lucrative wood for nearly a century, despite the dangers from their Spanish owners.*  

* Later, Dr. Henry Barham Jr. (once husband of Elizabeth Thache before her death, presumed daughter of the famed pirate Edward "Blackbeard" Thache),  transplanted logwood to his plantation in St. Elizabeth Parish, Jamaica in the mid-18th century. This Henry was the son of naturalist and author Henry Barham and his wife Alice, who made their home in Spanish Town, Jamaica in the late 17th century.

Stealing Spanish trees was only part of the ideology of the times. The formative years of America was the century of Stuart rule (former Scottish king James VI or England's James I from 1603 to Queen Anne, ending in 1713). Virginia, New England, and Carolina were all settled by the Stuarts during this period. Furthermore, in the England and West Indies of the Stuarts, the main point was treasure - greed and profit - to steal everything Spain and France owned, including the land and the trees that grew there. Piracy was policy.

William Wyer, master of briganteen Adventure, shown in this 1712 Jamaican shipping record on the same page as later pirate Henry Jennings, then master of the sloop Diamond.

After departing Port Royal and sailing 360 miles (120 leagues) toward the Bay of Honduras, Protestant Caesar encountered a pirate sloop of ten guns off the island of Rattan [Roatan] nearly two weeks later. Protestant Caesar well over matched and outgunned the 10-gun sloop, at 400 tons and 26 guns. Still, at nine o'clock on the evening of March 28, 1718, the daring pirate sloop came under Wyer's stern and fired several cannon and a round of small shot into Protestant Caesar. 

 

Determined to resume his voyage, Wyer returned fire with two stern chase guns and a similar volley of small shot. The pirate hailed Wyer in English that if he fired again, they would "give him no Quarter." Not intimidated by the smaller vessel, Wyer continued his defense. The two vessels exchanged fire for three hours, with the pirate sloop breaking off the engagement and making sail northward. Wyer's Protestant Caesar must have been alone, for the pirate sloop would not have dared take on more ships!

Wyer continued his course for the southern coast of modern Belize to gather the logwood, arriving on the first of April. He remained there for a week, loading his ship. On the 8th, Wyer and his crew had already loaded 50 tons with more cut and ready to load waiting on shore. On the following 12th, Capt. Wyer's Protestant Caesar would see its demise... again, at the hands of pirates. The pirate sloop would return... with a much larger companion.

While Capt. Wyer loaded his wood, north of Roatan, near the island of Turneff, Thomas Newton in the sloop Land of Promise, spied a large ship accompanied by several sloops approaching him on April 5th. As they neared, he must have recognized the "black flags with death's heads" in them and realized they were pirates. It may have been a relief to Newton that they were not Spaniards because the Spanish would probably not treat them as well as Englishmen, pirate or not! He would soon surrender and come face to face with Blackbeard himself - Capt. Edward Thache of the Queen Anne's Revenge. With Newton in tow, Thache continued on to the Bay of Honduras. He was in search of Protestant Caesar, specifically, and he had a score to settle! He found Wyer and his crew loading their cargo of logwood.

Artist's conception of QAR at Bequia in the French Windward Islands, ca Dec 1717

A Little About Edward Thache:

These events seem incidental, but they are very important in regards to a part of Blackbeard's tale that has maligned him for 300 years! Specifically, the "notorious" parts found in a long-revered text of 1724 and added to his final days in North Carolina: beginning with the alleged purposeful wrecking of his flagship, Queen Anne's Revenge. The details following this event of his sexual carnage and evil behavior are legend - they are probably also outright lies.

Son of wealthy plantation owner Capt. Edward Thache, Edward Thache, Jr. of St. Jago de la Vega or Spanish Town, Jamaica, was an ex-Royal Navy man who had served aboard HMS Windsor during Queen Anne's War. After the war and the end of Stuart rule, this Jamaican gentleman turned pirate for probable political reasons against the new Whiggish or liberal German King George I (who spoke no English) and to fish highly lucrative Spanish wrecks on the coast of Florida - an unprecedented 11 wrecked vessels in all with 14,000,000 pesos worth of silver alone! A fortune for thousands and, for Thache and gentlemen like him, a damned good reason to defy a liberal or anti-Stuart government 3,000 miles away!

Before coming to the Bay of Honduras, he had just captured the French slaver La Concorde about four months earlier. That was 60 miles northeast of Martinique. Captain Charles Johnson, in the questionable A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724), stated that Benjamin Hornigold (the supposed mentor) and Edward Thache (surprisingly, the alleged "pupil" of a common pirate) together had accomplished this feat. 

This story had long held favor among pirate enthusiasts for lack of records to admonish Johnson's account. French records, however, do just that and completely dispel this rumor, stating that the two pirate vessels were 12-gun (Revenge) and an 8-gun sloop (probably Thache's older vessel), both under Thache's command. Still, Johnson's derogatory account persists. See French record excerpt for the capture of La Concorde below:

Actual copy of French record showing that "tous les deux," or "both vessels were commanded by Edward Thache, Englishman."

After taking La Concorde, Thache fitted her with extra guns and assumed command. He quit the sloop Revenge, in which he had captured the undermanned and undergunned slaver, giving command of Revenge to one Richards. Thache's pirates had lingered among the French Windwards until nearly Christmas, when the pirate forces in America had supposedly plotted an attack upon the French capital of St. Domingue (modern Haiti and long an old enemy of Jamaica). Rumors told to the French authorities by French pirate Jean Martel (also declared to be English by the fallible Johnson) were that as many as 17 pirate vessels planned the attack on Pètit Goâve. Martel had been worried that his brother and sister-in-law, who lived there would be in danger. 

Apparently, the massive attack on Pètit Goâve never occurred. Pirates, especially wealthy gentlemen with much to lose, likely lost interest in such radical endeavors after the king offered his pardon. Thache, though, as a staunch Stuart conservative, obviously wanted to continue the fight. La Concorde was the perfect weapon to do just that. He renamed her Queen Anne's Revenge, signifying his intent to fight against the liberals in a new Britain who wanted piracy eradicated in America. 

The newly -formed Board of Trade passed reforming legislation to that effect since the day it formed in 1694, following in the footsteps of William of Orange a few years earlier. Piracy, the tool of older Stuart Tory conservatives no longer served the national purpose - indeed, pirates hampered Britain's endeavors in times of peace. The days of pirate heroes ended - at least for England - poetically coinciding with the death of Sir Henry Morgan on Jamaica in 1688. Still, America, 3,000 miles away from a government they began to despise, still remembered the ideology that made them great and profitable. They longed for the glory days of the Stuarts to return!

For most of December 1717 and the winter to come, Thache and Richards probably remained in the Caribbean. They also probably had contact with Thache's family in Spanish Town, Jamaica, perhaps to dispose of slaves they had taken in La Concorde. Capt. Jonathan Bernard, whose family was also of Spanish Town, and some of his vessels probably accompanied Thache and Richards to the Bay of Honduras the next Spring 1718, flying "bloody red flags," usually meant to indicate "no quarter" to be given. 

By late March and early April, Thache and his flotilla cruised the Bay of Honduras. Revenge and QAR briefly split up, Revenge meeting with Protestant Caesar on the 28th of March and losing the fight. After Richards in Revenge rejoined Thache and informed him of the lost battle, the experienced pirate searched for Protestant Caesar, finding Land of Promise first at the Island of Turneff.

Details of these events in the Bay of Honduras are supplied through Thomas Newton and William Wyer, both of whom found their way to Rhode Island in Newton's sloop. Their story is found in the Boston News-Letter issue of June 16, 1718. No one had reason to dispute them.

Deception?

There is, however, another contradictory tale of these events from a few months later. It is found in the deposition of David Herriot at pirate Stede Bonnet's trial at Charleston, South Carolina, in October 1718. This tale is probably not entirely true - having evolved through an elaborate deception by Herriot, trying to avoid the noose, and colonial administrators to ruin Capt. Edward "Blackbeard" Thache. The Board of Trade wanted more than to capture the dangerous Thache. As a pirate, he was certainly dangerous to British shipping concerns, but perhaps there was also a political reason to stop this ex-Royal Navy pirate.

David Herriot's trial deposition in Charleston was a key piece of evidence used by Johnson in his book - evidence against Blackbeard. Still, Herriot appears to have lied in that deposition about his own innocence and - probably through coercion of Board-appointed Admiralty authorities in Charleston - about Edward Thache's actions in North Carolina. Johnson's list of Thache's foul deeds in North Carolina is unparalleled for its ruthlessness - and also for its lack of proof - other than this deposition!

Events surrounding Herriot's joining with Thache, Bonnet, and Richards, allegedly at the Bay of Honduras, may not have occurred as Herriot told in his deposition. He probably joined them freely in Jamaica, but wanted to exonerate himself, to be sure. Freely joining pirates would not look so innocent to the Admiralty. The Admiralty was after Thache and Herriot likely recognized similar goals between them. They developed a pact. 

The following is Herriot's version of events at the Island of Turneff in early April when Thache and his partners arrived and took Land of Promise. Herriot explained in his deposition:

That about the 4th or 5th of April last this Deponent [Herriot] came into the Bay of Turneff, about ten Leagues from the Bay of Honduras, and there saw a Ship and two Sloops [Newton mentioned no other ships with him in his version], which this Deponent first apprehended to be Capt. Wyar, who came out of Jamaica with four other Sloops about a Week before this Deponent, and designed to come to an Anchor there. But soon after he perceiving the said Ship did not belong to the said Wyar, this Deponent took them for Spaniards, and then tacked about, and then the Ship fired a Gun at this Deponent's Sloop [Adventure]; and the said Sloop Revenge, then commanded by one Richards, a Pirate, slipped her Cable, and came up to this Deponent with a Black Flag hoisted, and ordered this Deponent to hoist out his Boat, and come on board them, which he did; and then the said Sloop Revenge sent five of their Hands in this Deponent's Boat back again to this Deponent's Sloop, and brought this Deponent's Sloop to an Anchor under the Ship's Stern. [Herriot testified - probably falsely - that he was taken on April 4th or 5th, 1717.]

Says, That the Ship which this Deponent imagined to belong to Mr. Wyar, was a Ship of forty Guns mounted, named the Queen Anne's Revenge, commanded by one Edward Thatch, a Pirate. And says, He then was inform'd by the Pirate Crew, that the said Major Stede Bonnet was on board the said Thatch, but out of Command, being some time before turn'd out of his Command by the said Thatch and the Pirate Crew, as he was inform'd.

Herriot had likely worded his version of the tale to make it appear that he had been innocently passing by when Thache and Richards captured him and forced him and his ship to join their pirate band. Still, Daniel Axtell, the man who contracted for Herriot to go to that location was the co-owner of pirate sloop Barsheba and co-conspirator with Capt. Henry Jennings, gentleman pirate of Bermuda and Jamaica. According to one deposition [Joseph Eels], the future Jamaican Assemblyman was complicit in disposing of the French goods stolen by Jennings in April 1716 and was then arrested for it. Axtell was likely also friends with Thache and Bernard. Axtell was an important man, so Herriot probably felt confident by mentioning him in his deposition.

David Herriot feared that he may be hanged for piracy at White Point in Charleston. His testimony, offered in trade for his release, differed greatly from the story told by Thomas Newton and William Wyer to port authorities in Rhode Island. Herriot said that Bernard's three ships had accompanied Wyer earlier to the Bay of Honduras. He also indicated two other sloops with Newton. The Boston News-Letter's account, however, suggests that there were no other ships with either Wyer or Newton. Herriot's Adventure probably sailed with Thache, Richards, and Bernard's vessels when they left Jamaica, also suggested by the newspaper article. Furthermore, neither Wyer nor Newton, nor any other witnesses to these events were present in Charleston during the trial and would not be able to dispute Herriot's testimony - nor was this Bay of Honduras part ever questioned. Following is the Boston News-Letter article of June 16, 1718, shown in its entirety below: 
 

Boston News-Letter article from issue of June 16, 1718, page 2

Though seen as innocent and immune to prosecution because of this deposition's benefits to him, David Herriot must have still felt some guilt. He yet attempted to escape custody with Stede Bonnet and was killed in the attempt - not the act of an innocent man! 

As for the Board of Trade's wishes to damage Thaches reputation, Herriot also deposed (probably at the urging of Admiralty officers): 

'Twas generally believed the said Thatch run his Vessel a-ground on purpose to break up the Companies, and to secure what Moneys and Effects he had got for himself and such other of them as he had most Value for.

Note that Herriot and Ignatius Pell were the only two of Stede Bonnet's pirates immune to prosecution because of their testimony. They were also the only two (actually one) of forty odd pirates to say that Thache wrecked QAR on purpose. Herriot gave the almost 5-page deposition that indicated this - Pell, in the last paragraph, merely agreed with him. As witnesses for the prosecution, neither of these men were listed in the indictment, nor were they to ever be charged for their piracies. 

Johnson took this deposition at face value and quoted these trial records closely, elaborating on this specific damning sentence. Still, why would Thache wreck his own vessel on purpose when it should have been his greatest advantage to keep QAR intact. 

It simply does not make sense. QAR should have been of enormous advantage to Thache - assuming he planned to keep pirating. He even refused an offer of pardon from the governor of South Carolina a week earlier because he intended to continue his fight. 

Thache was not the monster presented to the new king by the new Board of Trade and the Admiralty or later written about in A General History. As indicated by Wyer and Newton, Thache's fair treatment of his captives exonerates him from the damaging rhetoric of Charles Johnson. And, by contrast to the Board and Admiralty, the king seemed fairly inclined toward all his subjects, even Edward Thache!

As the Boston News-Letter continues...

After securing Land of Promise with Newton and his crew aboard QAR, Thache's flotilla weighed anchor in search of Protestant Caesar. Newton later related the tale to port authorities in Rhode Island, that Thache intended that "Wyer might not brag when he went to New England that he had beat a Pirate," referring to Capt. Wyer's battle with the sloop Revenge a week earlier at Roatan Island. There would be more to tell of Thache's not-so-brutal thinking. 

On the 8th of April, as Wyer and his crew loaded their logwood, cut from the surrounding forest ashore, several vessels rose from the horizon in the bay. Wyer called his crew together. Wyer saw the black and red flags and believed them to be pirates and still intended to defend his ship. The crew agreed that, if they were Spaniards, they would fight every man to the death, but if they were English pirates, they should just surrender, no doubt expecting better treatment from their own. They were, after all, stealing Spanish trees from Spanish land.

Wyer acquiesced and sent his second mate in their pinnace to greet the ships, discovering that they were indeed pirates, in five vessels, the largest of which, QAR, had 40 guns and 300 men! Wyer had to agree that their 26 guns and 50 men were certainly no match for all five of these ships. Wyer's officer then informed Capt. Edward Thache of their surrender. 

Thache requested that Wyer come aboard, promising no harm to him or his men. Once aboard, Thache learned of their origin. Unfortunately for its owners, Protestant Caesar was a ship of Boston. Thache informed Wyer that he burned all vessels from Boston. He informed the captain that he good reason for this. Some months earlier, a storm had driven Samuel Bellamy's Whydah into the rocks off Cape Codd in Massachusetts, destroyed her, and killed almost all of Bellamy's pirate crew. The few survivors were captured and placed on trial by the Admiralty Court there, who hanged them. For Thache, this offense needed an answer - so, he burned ships belonging to Bostonians who allowed it.

Wyer's crew were then all removed and sent ashore from Protestant Caesar, which Thache set ablaze before them in the bay on April 12th. Newton and Wyer and their crews who had not joined with pirates, returned to Rhode Island on Newton's sloop, given back to them by Thache, who had not harmed a soul. Edward Thache had his Stuart-conservative political views, but still behaved as a reasonable man.

After the events at the Bay of Honduras, Thache and his flotilla headed north to Charleston for his famous blockade, the wrecking of his flagship in Beaufort Inlet, and his final destiny in the colony of North Carolina at the hands of Virginian forces. David Herriot's false accusations would ring in American's ears for another 300 years, thanks to Johnson's polemical reinforcement. 

Par for the course, Virginia's Lt. Gov. Spotswood violated colonial sovereignty, the king's wishes, and murdered Edward Thache on November 22, 1718. Spotswood's personally-paid assassin, Lt. Robert Maynard cut Thache's head from his body and displayed it in triumph on his Ranger. It was mounted on a poll at Lynhaven Bay - a symbol of Spotswood's control and domination over his little piece of America.

Blackbeard died less than a month before the start of the War of the Quadruple Alliance, a war that King George knew was coming and in which he would again need the experienced ex-Royal Navy man, Capt. Edward "Blackbeard" Thache. Anticipation of that war was probably the very reason that he extended the pardon to August 18, 1718 - to include Blackbeard's continued piracies from the Charleston blockade that May. The king must have hoped that losing the QAR might make Thache see reason. 

With the new war looming, the Admiralty finally had to agree. London merchant Micajah Perry, in close communication with the Admiralty, sent Capt. Joshua Lirland in Avarilla in haste to Virginia with the newly-dated pardon, leaving England in October. He arrived too late - by then, Thache's gruesome rotting head welcomed him at the mouth of James River. 

Head of Edward "Blackbeard" Thache hanging from Lt. Robert Maynard's Ranger

 A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates (1724) - the final rhetorical nail in Thache's reputation - 52 years to successful revolution.

Thache's death was not the end of his troubles, "for the evil that men do lives long after them while the good is oft interred with their bones."

The Board of Trade probably influenced Capt. Charles Johnson, or Nathaniel Mist as he is known to readers of his Jacobite (Stuart favoring) polemical newspaper, Weekly Journal of London. Mist suffered arrest by their agents quite often, accompanied with heavy fines. He was in great need of money and was easily influenced to do their bidding. 

Eventually, he had gone too far and fled Britain in 1728 for France. But, before he left, a few years before his flight, in 1724, having possibly been convinced by the Board of Trade six years after Blackbeard's death, Johnson-Mist wrote these harsh words about Edward "Blackbeard" Thache:

Captain Teach, assumed the Cognomen of Black-beard, from that large Quantity of Hair, which, like a frightful Meteor, covered his whole Face, and frightened America more than any Comet that has appeared there a long Time. 

If he had the look of a Fury, his Humours and Passions were suitable to it; we shall relate two or three more of his Extravagancies, which we omitted in the Body of his History, by which it will appear, to what a Pitch of Wickedness, human Nature may arrive, if it’s Passions are not checked.

Some of his Frolicks of Wickedness, were so extravagant, as if he aimed at making his Men believe he was a Devil incarnate; for being one Day at Sea, and a little flushed with drink:—Come, says he, let us make a Hell of our own, and try how long we can bear it; accordingly he, with two or three others, went down into the Hold, and closing up all the Hatches, filled several Pots full of Brimstone, and other combustible Matter, and set it on Fire, and so continued till they were almost suffocated, when some of the Men cried out for Air; at length he opened the Hatches, not a little pleased that he held out the longest.

One Night drinking in his Cabin with Hands, the Pilot, and another Man; Black-beard without any Provocation privately draws out a small Pair of Pistols, and cocks them under the Table, which being perceived by the Man, he withdrew and went upon Deck, leaving Hands, the Pilot, and the Captain together. When the Pistols were ready, he blew out the Candle, and crossing his Hands, discharged them at his Company; Hands, the Master, was shot thro’ the Knee, and lam’d for Life; the other Pistol did no Execution. —Being asked the meaning of this, he only answered, by damning them, that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was.

Teach began now to think of breaking up the Company, and securing the Money and the best of the Effects for himself, and some others of his Companions he had most Friendship for, and to cheat the rest: Accordingly, on Pretence of running into Topsail Inlet to clean, he grounded his Ship, and then, as if it had been done undesignedly, and by Accident; he orders Hands’s Sloop to come to his Assistance, and get him off again, which he endeavouring to do, ran the Sloop on Shore near the other, and so were both lost.

Few of these details are supported by any evidence. For Edward Thache, specifically, perhaps the single most damning words against him, also unsupported, are these:

His Behaviour in this State, was something extraordinary; for, while his Sloop lay in Okerecock Inlet, and he ashore at a Plantation, where his Wife lived, with whom after he had lain all Night, it was his Custom to invite five or six of his brutal Companions to come ashore, and he would force her to prostitute her self to them all, one after another, before his Face.

The message was clear - pirates of America could not be trusted! Does this sound like the Edward Thache just described above? Johnson-Mist abused Thache in especial fashion. Charles Vane deserved Thache's reputation, but was never treated so roughly by this author. It was in his section on Blackbeard that Johnson-Mist also wrote a message directly about piratical America:

In the Commonwealth of Pyrates [America], he who goes the greatest Length of Wickedness, is looked upon with a kind of Envy amongst them, as a Person of a more extraordinary Gallantry.

It was a warning to all of civilized Europe that America was wild - an unsafe, despotic abode of pirates! It may also have been intended to wake America up - to come to their senses!

Many threw accusations at Jamaica's gentleman Edward Thache, but Johnson-Mist truly created the evil character of Blackbeard, the "notorious" Pirate! Despite all of Britain's greatest efforts with rhetoric - untrue words - however, their attempts to eradicate America's love of Stuart piracy and policy apparently failed. Fifty-two years later, Thache's "Stuart" nation, a gentleman's nation of profit and freedom, became reality. Unfortunately, the new independent America lost the West Indies in the 1783 treaty that ended the Revolution - and the logwood that came with it.


See more at  Capt. Charles Johnson's Dishonesty!
And more at American Pirates in the News!
And again at French Pirate Jean Martel

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The book is already previewable on Google Books.

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American Pirates in the News!

The Boston News-Letter first published in 1704. The first issue of April 24th on page 2 showed mention of an alarm given by a French privateer on the 18th near Boston. As England was then at war with France and Spain, this occurrence did not overly surprise anyone. French and Spanish privateers commonly appeared off English ports as English privateers appeared off Martinique, French St. Domingue (present Haiti), and Spanish ports all around the Caribbean like Porto Bella. "Privateer" was a commonly-occurring word in the news between 1702-1713, during Queen Anne's War or the War of Spanish Succession and during any official conflict. 

Boston News-Letter, 24 Apr 1704 - first issue

Oddly enough, the word "pirate" or its variant "pyrate" did not occur in the Boston News-Letter (BNL) but once in an entire decade and this solitary occurrence referred to a "French pirate" or, most likely, a privateer. A privateer was essentially a legally-commissioned fighter for one particular sovereign nation, usually during a war. They preyed upon shipping and other privateers of other nations. Essentially, a "pirate," or a fighter who worked for themselves, literally had not been used before 1715... in an American newspaper.  

The word "pirate" had been used many times in official English and British records - even in British newspapers. For instance, the Board of Trade referred to "those pirates now in New England" in March 1705 and two "pirates" captured in New England in April 1705, but this did not get mentioned in the BNL those months. In March 1706, the Governor of New England wrote to the Lord Chancellor of the Exchecquer about "prosecuting a notorious pirate and sending over his effects to England." Indeed the Board discussed at length the procedures for trying pirates - not privateers - and even issued circular letters to the colonies about pirates. In November 1710, they also discussed a "pirate" named James Briggs of Bermuda at length, including depositions taken in Bermuda. Again, no mention in BNL. In March 1715, the Marquis of Cassatorres, Spanish governor at Havana, wrote to Thomas Walker of New Providence in the Bahamas his "thanks for his arrest of 8 pirates who have done much damage on that coast and taken several Spaniards." The BNL only mentioned Walker's appointment as customs agent at that time - no hint at all in the newspapers of the troubles with pirates. Also, there were eleven mentions of "marquis," but not the Spanish governor plagued by pirates and only one mention of "Havana."

Weirdly, the term's lack of use in the first decade of the first American newspaper indicates that America may have had a different viewpoint as to what "pirate" actually meant, as opposed to the standard meaning used by the mother country... or they did not care as much as England about pirate depredations in America. If true, why?

In Quest for Blackbeard, I demonstrated that government officials, since the 1690s had argued for reducing piracy, which used to benefit the empire:

On October 13, 1696, Sir Charles Hedges, judge of the Admiralty Court under William III, changed piracy, at least from England’s point-of-view. It was no longer seen, or needed as, the heroic efforts used by “Sea Dogs” to deprive Spain of her wealth. Piracy had become a threat to English commerce. Official objectives became less one of theft and more one of protecting ones products from theft. Thus, the labeling of pirates as “Hostis Humani Generi,” or “enemy of all mankind,” in the modernized Act for the More Effectual Suppression of Piracy of 1698. Hedges revised Admiralty law so that “Now piracy is only a sea term for robbery, piracy being a robbery committed within the jurisdiction of the Admiralty.”

Historian Douglas R. Burgess Jr., however, goes much further and asserts that most English authorities viewed all of America, not just the Bahamas as “pirate nests.” English administrators asked how could such uncivilized persons claim the right to convene courts over themselves? Pirates could not try pirates…

… an English administrator [Edward Randolph] described the colonies as nests of "vice and lawlessness," and an American colonial governor warned his fellow colonists not to fall within the bonds of slavery… an open breach had appeared between Crown and colonies, and some observers predicted incipient rebellion… [the Crown recognized] that its American colonies had developed a system of laws startlingly different, and contradictory, to those communicated by the King, his ministers, and Parliament. More specifically, the colonies had appropriated admiralty jurisdiction—the law of all things related to the sea—and used this prerogative to adopt a definition of piracy that was both eminently suited to their own commercial purposes and anathema to those of the Crown.

If true, then America would be seen as a "Commonwealth of Pirates" and view their heroes quite differently - well... as "heroes!" That is, until even the colonies began to see them as a nuisance. America probably had help changing their mind, too. This view may have been aided by the newspapers and in other British print media aimed at reducing American violence.

Captain Charles Johnson, pseudonym of Jacobite newspaper publisher Nathaniel Mist, wrote in A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates that:

I shall not repeat what I have said in the History concerning the Privateers of the West-Indies, where I have taken Notice they live upon Spoil; and as Custom is a second Nature, it is no Wonder that, when an honest Livlyhood is not easily had, they run into one so like their own; so that it may be said, that Privateers in Time of War are a Nursery for Pyrates against a Peace.

It's true that, in wartime, those that would be pirates generally found official wartime employment on a privateer or as a privateer. It was Johnson's belief that out of work privateers devolved into pirates in peacetime. He quoted the loss of income and resources following a peace treaty as the reason for the flood of illegal pirate activity in which Edward "Blackbeard" Thache, Stede Bonnet, Samuel Bellamy, and other notable pirates came to be known generally as "Golden Age" pirates. Also interesting, an ironically Jacobite Johnson's words chastised America, not as a part of a kingdom such as Great Britain, but as a "Commonwealth of Pyrates" where "he who goes the greatest Length of Wickedness, is looked upon with a kind of Envy amongst them, as a Person of a more extraordinary Gallantry." This is, of course, a definite opinion - and perhaps a peculiar pirate-loving anti-government Jacobite one at that. Perhaps reflecting a piratical endearment, the BNL did not mention pirates for two years after the war.

I proposed in Quest for Blackbeard: The True Story of Edward Thache and His World (new ebook version available) that the end of the war probably did not primarily influence the buildup of piracy in America. Another event coincided more closely and had a much more "American" reason for the beginning of the "Golden Age"... Treasure! GREED!

On pages 207-213, can be found:

Many factors contributed to make the Golden Age special, but one factor stands out as most significant. Furthermore, it began precisely on July 30, 1715 and, ironically, it was about gold and silver – quite like the 1690s and Puritan New England’s attack upon Muslim shipping and treasure in the Red Sea. “Golden Age of Greed” might be more apt in describing this period and it involved more than just lowly wreckers and pirates from the Bahamas. It also involved a direct political element somewhat tied to Jacobitism, anti-authoritarinism, and independence from a liberalizing Britain. It became America’s first almost revolution!

As Arne Bialuschewski writes in “Between Newfoundland and the Malacca Strait,” Spanish treasure fleets found it nearly impossible to transport their New-World wealth home during the war, from 1702-1713. “Thus, at the close of war, huge amounts of silver piled up in Veracruz, Mexico’s major port,” he tells, and early in 1715, one expedition alone accounted for a massive fortune worth more than £12,000,000.
...
[This] squadron of Ubilla and Echeverz totalled eleven vessels plus one Frenchman. They transported “merchandise, 14,000,000 pesos in silver, and significant quantities of gold; much-needed bullion for merchants whose trade had been victimized by the war and the long delay since the 1713 Peace of Utrecht, and by a monarchy overwhelmed with war debts.”  Only one of the vessels, the French ship La Grifon, ever reached home.

Four days out of Havana, on July 30, 1715, the fleet met with a hurricane near Cape Canaveral, at latitude of 28 [deg] north. Two ships sank in deep water, one went down in the shoals near shore, another ran ashore (Urca de Lima, now one of Florida’s Underwater Archaeological Preserves), two ships destroyed, and the flagship got off a single boat before taking 225 people, including Juan Esteban de Ubilla, to the reputed Davy Jones’ locker.

One Spanish treasure ship that wrecked on Point Pedro Keys near Jamaica in the 1690s produced enough "pieces of eight" for the Jamaican wrecker crews for more than a year. The 1715 wrecks consisted of eleven heavily-loaded treasure galleons and all of them wrecked in the shallow waters on the Florida coast. The silver was quite easy to reach! The response was enormous! Page 216 of Quest shows:

News of the Spanish wrecks in 1715 spread like wildfire. The news of eleven Spanish wrecks attracted everyone’s attention – this would not remain a local affair or the project of a small group of investors. The Bahamas, Bermuda, Jamaica, indeed the whole Atlantic community learned of these wrecks and planned to fish them for the gold and silver. Even the most upstanding of gentlemen would not be able to avoid the call of the treasure gleaming from the Florida shores!

The most infamous efforts of Jamaican privateers-turned-wreckers occurred by late fall. Captain John Balchen of HMS Diamond testified that in November 1715, two sloops fitted out of Jamaica, under authority of six-month commissions by Hamilton. These commissions, however, did not give privateers the right to steal – only to take other pirates who did. One privateer was under command of Capt. Edward James and another under Capt. Henry Jennings [two wealthy gentlemen merchants - like Edward Thache]. Dr. Samuel Page testified that Jennings and James were commissioned on November 21st and the “tawny Moor” Fernando on December 12th. Balchen stated that they had declared to hunt for pirates, but had instead pilfered the Spanish wrecks and their ships. He told the secretary of the Admiralty that Jennings and James “went to sea and in a shorter time than cou'd be expected, return'd again with a considerable sum of mony.”  This, however, was not prize money from captured pirates. 

Veteran merchants, gentlemen privateers from Jamaica began fitting out vessels under commissions from Gov. Archibald Hamilton ostensibly to “take pirates,” but actually, to fish wrecks and, moreso, to take the gold and silver from the Spanish salvors on the Florida coast – to steal it. This theft quickly devolved into outright piracy – taking Spanish ships – then any ship that carried away the silver, whatever the nationality. Even Virginia’s [anti-pirate] Lt. Gov. Spotswood specifically suggested fishing the wrecks as a way of increasing British income, despite the dubious legalities. Eventually, Bermudans and ships from all over the Atlantic sailed for a piece of “Spanish demise.” The reaction was so intense that Balchen stated “at least 20 sloops fitted out for the wrecks, and if I had stay'd a week longer, I do believe I shou'd not have had men enough to have brought home, I lost ten in two days before I sail'd being all mad to go a wrecking as they term it.” 

Indeed, the 1715 wrecks shone as the most significant profit opportunity in the Americas in several decades, perhaps that century! These wealthy privateers and ship-owners did not lack for food - they were not hungry - and they had family money to fall back upon. The logwood cutter vessels at the Bay of Campeache had even deserted their operations in that modern Mexican location just north of the Yucatan peninsula to fish the Florida wrecks. A stranded skeleton crew was all that remained there in 1716. 

As for the response in the Boston News-Letter, the word "pirate" finally became much more popular and remained part of the usual lingo in the American colonial paper ever since. 

The first mention of these wrecks came from a Boston News-Letter (BNL) report of December 19th in the January 2, 1716 issue (No. 611!), just before the infamous Christmas event of former privateers Henry Jennings, Edward James, and James Wills when they attacked the Spanish salvage camps on the Florida shores, beginning the definitive acts that could be called nothing but piracy! That's 610 issues of no English pirate news in America, a place the British clearly understood as piratical!

Events of December 19th in the January 2, 1716 issue of BNL

 
Note that attacking the Spanish was hardly viewed as a "bad thing" by American merchants. An element of xenophobia developed as a result of the old Stuart English national goal of stealing everything belonging to Spain in the Americas, which they had held since 1492!

The chart below shows chronological events and mentions of the terms "pirate" and "privateer" in the American newspapers. The faint red line shows the occurrence of the word "privateer" in the BNL between 1710-1726 and the solid blue line represents the word "pirate" and variants. The occurrence of "pirate" usage began directly after Jennings et al made their attack and afterward. A second war with Spain is also shown that effects the usage of "privateer" versus "pirate," especially that "privateer" use fades dramatically after the war while "pirate" increased as dramatically and remained high for the first time! 

Table researched and created by Baylus C. Brooks and copyrighted 2017

The Spanish wrecks popped a cork for American violence! Greedy and already wealthy pirates like those who infested the wrecked 1715 Treasure Fleet were here to stay in the media - even influencing the name of the Spanish treasure ship (Urca de Lima) in the opening episodes of the popular Starz! television series Black Sails! These Spanish-hating brigands never left America, the "Commonwealth of Pyrates," and may still be lurking among the treasure-laden shores of Wall Street and Washington, DC!

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"Quest for Blackbeard" is now available in ebook format and can be found on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Alibris, and other online booksellers. Look for it on my Lulu site at: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/bcbrooks
  The book is already previewable on Google Books.

baylusbrooks.com