Petition of the Companies belonging to the Morning Star and other Pirate Ships, n.d.

 

[From: SP 36-154-1-164 at National Archives in London]

To the Kings most Excell. Maj.tie

The most Humble Petition of severall of the Distressed Mothers of the Companyes late belonging to the Morning Star and - Brigantine Good Fortune now lying under the Ignominious Name of Pyrates

Sheweth

That John Ellard Ma.r of the Nightingale sometime since falling into the sd Companys hands on thne Banks of Newfound:land & detained there Did at the instigation of the sd Companys deliver a Petition to yo.r Maj.tie Signed by above 200 of them Which Petition now lyes before yo.r Majesty in Council.

That the sd Company haveing by their sd Petition Set forth their Unhappiness in being taken by the Pyrate Cap. Roberts and Forced into the same Vile Practises to their great Sorrow for Continueing therein and the Extreem desire of Submitting to yo.r Maj.ties Clemency. And yo.r Pet.rs being under the greatest grief for their Children as well in regard to their bodies as Souls And as the Pursuit of these Courses must be the Inevitable ruin of themselves tho' to the great Detriment of Quiet Tradeing Ships.

Yo.r Pet.rs therefore most Humbly Implore yo.r Sacred Maj.tie

that in order to put a Stop to these Notorious Practises, and that

the sd Companyes may return to their true Loyalty and 

Fidelity to yo.r Maj.tie and in Compassion to the Tears and 

Distresses of yo.y Pet.rs

Yor Maj.tie would be most graciously Pleased to 

receive The sd Companies to yor great Mercy

in such manner as shall be most Agreeable to

yor Maj.ties great Wisdom, That as they are now

the most Afflicted and Sorrowfull, so they may for 

the future be the most Dutifull and Serviceable of Yo.r Maj.ties Subjects and Serv.ts

And yo.r Maj.ties Pet.rs (as in the greatest duty bound) Shall ever pray er

To the Rt. Hon.ble the L.d Visco.t Townsend one of his Maj.ties Priciple Secretaries of State

The most Humble Petition of severall Distressed

Mothers of the Companies late belonging to the 

Morning Star and Brigantine Good Fortune

now lying under the Ignominious Name of Pyrates

Sheweth

That yo.r Pet.rs Children being under the Unhappy

Circumstances Specified in the Annexed Petition to his Maj.tie

Yo.r Pet.rs most Humbly pray yo.r Lordp.s to lay

the same before his Maj.tie in Council

And yo.r Pet.rs (as bound) shall ever

pray Ep. 

Without date - Petition of the Companies belonging |

to the Morning Star and other Pirate         |         45

Ships for leave to return to their                 |

allegiance and duty                         |

Declaration of Surgeon Jean Rousseau

 Declaration of Surgeon Jean Rousseau

6-gun, 63-man Sea King under Saint-Malo’s Montigny La Palisse - tied to history of Bartholomew Roberts.

On the 21st of October, 1720, there appeared before us in Guadeloupe Mr. Jean Rousseau, Surgeon aboard the ship from Honfleur named the *Bon Pasteur*—Captain Grout, also a burgher—who, having departed from Sainte-Anne (Grande-Terre) on this island and set a course for France, was captured by an English pirate vessel on March 5th of the current year at a latitude of 17 degrees 30 minutes, and was held captive by the said pirate—who was without a surgeon of his own—from the aforementioned 5th of March until the 1st of this month. During the time they were careening their ship at Carriacou [Curacoa], the said Rousseau, wishing to leave them, made several unsuccessful attempts to do so; having been caught during the first attempt, he was bound to a cannon on the said pirate vessel for three days, at the end of which time he was scheduled to have his head smashed in—a sentence that would indeed have been carried out had not a man named Montigny, from Dunkirk (the Captain of the said pirate vessel), untied him and told him to save himself by swimming ashore, which he fortunately managed to do. At the time the deponent was captured aboard the *Bon Pasteur*, the pirates were cruising off the coast of Barbados with a crew numbering only 48 men—all English, including six Negroes. On March 10th, having encountered an English patrol vessel from Barbados, their ship sustained three cannon hits below the waterline and was forced to flee and set sail for the Cape Verde Islands, where they repaired their vessel; subsequently, they set a course for the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, where they encountered a ship from Saint-Malo which they sank, having first rescued the entire crew and sent them back to France aboard another vessel. They also captured or sank—while on the said Grand Banks of Newfoundland—six other ships, both English and French, and plundered nearly two hundred vessels of various nations. Subsequently, having entered the Bay of Despair on the coast of Newfoundland, they detained nineteen English vessels there; of these, they burned the flagship and seized a 24-gun frigate to serve as their own vessel. Upon departing the said Bay, they encountered a ship from Granville named the *Pierre Auguste*, which they seized and exchanged for the vessel they had previously been sailing. They then set sail for Carriacou, and en route, they plundered three English vessels, taking from their crews the number of men they required.

Upon having the present declaration read aloud to him, the said Rousseau affirmed that it contained the truth and that he had nothing to add to or subtract from it, save that—after having reached the island of Carriacou, where he spent the night in the woods—he subsequently boarded a French boat arriving from Tobago, which transported him to Martinique. Executed on the day and in the year hereinbefore stated. Signed: Jean Rousseau. 

Collated against the original, which is in our possession. 

De Pas Fequieres Benard

Pirate Reference in Le Nouveau Mercure - April 1719

p. 206-207:

In Cadiz on April 12.

We got advice from Vigo, that the two [frigates] crossing along from the Galician [NW Iberian Peninsula] coast, had brought there two Ostend shipowners whom they had removed [taken] on the 3rd of this month, 20 miles beyond the Canary Islands: they had taken up at the same time a Spanish vessel coming from Mexico, richly loaded. A [frigate] of 40 pieces of cannon & 200 men of Crew, similarly led in the port of A Coruña [port in Galicia] a large merchant vessel, carrying the imperial flag, which it had taken towards the Cape of Saint Mary [Newfoundland]. This same [frigate] to have brought an English forban [pirate] there that she had met near Cape S. Vincent.

By Letters from Barcelona of the 4th of this month, we learned that the convoy which was in the harbor of this place, had been held there for 10 days by the headwinds. There were still 15 ships from Alicante [port of Valencia, Spain] waiting for them, under the escort of a warship & a frigate.

Two Engineers were ordered to go to Terragona [Mediterranean coast of Spain], to hasten the works on this Place, & to add new works there. These Engineers must then go to the Isles des Alsache [Alsace, France]; which are at the mouth of the Ebro [river in Spain], to build some redoubts there.

Dictionary of Pyrate Biography - in the Works!

Roberts, Thomas – served as third mate of a Guinea-man or slave ship out of London, Capt. Plummer, and taken by a pirate – he thus became a pirate himself and was voted Captain in Nov 1718; in Rhode Island-built sloop with briganteen pirate consort, near Barbados – fought with governor’s forces: Capt. Rogers, in 20-gun galley and Capt. Graves in a sloop, which wounded his sloop and ran off the briganteen, Jan 1720; Roberts then sailed to Granada to careen, and in spring of 1720, with 45 men, came to Newfoundland, first to Ferryland, ca. 14 Jun 1720; into harbor of Trepassey, a small fishing community located in Trepassey Bay on the south eastern corner of the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland and Labrador - Roberts ran the narrow harbor with 22 sails and 250 Shallops with flag of “Death’s Head and Cutlash,” 1,200 men fleeing all ships to the shore – pirates burned all ships but a Bristol Galley, Capt. Capleston, which they kept – nine or ten sail of Frenchmen which Roberts burned except a 26-gun Frenchman, to whom Roberts traded his galley, 21 Jun 1720; in the latitude of 44 degrees, about 30-40 leagues east of Newfoundland, in command of two pirate vessels, one ship of 26 guns and a sloop of 10 guns, with about 100 English men, took ship Samuel of London, Capt. Samuel Carry, 13 July 1720; captured a snow from Bristol, Capt. Bowls, and forced his crew as they did with Capt. Carry, 14 July 1720; designed for Western and Canary Islands and southward to “Island of New Providence, possest by Negroe’s, in South Latitude 17 [more like 25] which they say is the Pirates General Rendezvous, where they have a Fortification and a great Magazine of Powder, &c. where they intend to spend their Money with the Portuguize Negro Women.”[1]

Guineaman or Slave Ship, similar to Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge

Excerpt from Boston News-Letter, 22 Aug 1720, account about Carry’s vessel:

The first thing the Pirates did, was to strip both Passengers and Seamen of all their Money and Cloths which they had on board, with a loaded Pistol held to everyone’s breast ready to shoot him down, who did not immediately give an account of both, and resign them up. The next thing they did was, with madness and rage to tare up the Hatches, enter the Hould like a parcel of Furies, where with Axes, Cutlashes, &c, they cut, tore and broke open Trunks, Boxes, Cases, and Bales, and when any of the goods came upon Deck which they did not like to carry with them aboard their Ship, instead of Tossing them into the Hould again they threw them ober board into the Sea; The usual method they had to open Chests was by thooting a brace of Bullets with a Pistol into the Key hole to force them open: The Pirates carried away from Capt. Carry’s Ship aboard their own 40 barrels of Powder, two great Guns, his Cables, &c. and to the value of about nine or ten Thousand Pounds Sterling worth of the Choicest Goods he had on board. There was nothing heard among the Pirates all the while, but Cursing, Swearing, Dam’ing and Blaspheming to the greatest degree imaginable, and often saying they would not go to Hope point in the River of Thames to be hung up in Gibbets a Sundrying as Kidd & Bradish’s Company did, for if it should chance that they should be Attacked by any Superiour power or force, which they could not master, they would immediately put fire with one of their Pistols to their Powder, and go all merrily to Hell together! [And, in utter defiance of the king’s authority:] They often ridicul’d and made a mock at King GEORGE’s Acts of Grace with an Oath, that they had not got Money enough, but when they had, if he then did grant them one, after they sent him word, they would thank him for it.[2]

Excerpt from American Weekly Mercury, 22 Sep 1720:

… a small Sloop of 12 Guns and 160 Men, Entered Trepassy on Tuesday the 21^st Instant, and made himself Master of the said Harbour, and all the Ships there, being 22 Saill, and 250 Shallops. He made the Masters all Prisoners, and beat some of them heartily for their Cowardice in not making any Resistance… The Captain was never on shoar himself but 40 or 50 of his Men go on shoar at a time, and gets all Hands Drunk, along with such Fishermen as remains in the Harbour. He fires his Evening and Morning Gun at which last all the Masters are to go on Board to receive their Orders for the Day, one was that no House, Chest, or Locker, &c., should be locked while he remains there, under Pain of severe punishment… on Saturday last the 25^th… they saw a great smoak in the Harbour, which they believed was occasioned by the burning of the Ships, which the Pirats had threatened to set on Fire, &c.[3]

 

Image extracted from page 694 of North Atlantic Directory. The physical geography and meteorology of the North Atlantic …, by ROSSER, William Henry (1869). Original held and digitised by the British Library.

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

Thomas Roberts seems incredibly fortunate, if surreal. He is an example of the more "piratish" of the New England pirates of the Golden Age, and is clearly a different type of pirate from the earlier gentlemen like Thache, Jennings, Ashworth, and other wealthy men of Jamaica and Bermuda. There is also the hint of continued use of New Providence Island by Roberts and other pirates two years after Woodes Rogers had supposedly run them off... assuming that the pirates had not referred to a new rendezvous just south of Jamaica - equal in latitude to Roatan Island or Martinique - a place filled with exotic ladies of the evening and, no doubt, other expensive distractions on which to spend their ill-gotten gains! America was a pirate abode - a virtual Disneyland for these wild English outcasts... 

This entry on Thomas Roberts is an example of one of the entries in Dictionary of Pyrate Biography, derived from primary source references to pirates and the celebrities effected by them. This volume is the first and includes the years 1713-1720, or from the end of Queen Anne's War to two years after the death of Edward "Blackbeard" Thache. 

Essentially, during this period, American piracy had gone from the idea of revolution to outright rebellion or wild abandon. 

The earliest pirates from the Caribbean fished the eleven Spanish wrecks of 1715 on the Florida coast and found a glorious opportunity in this to finance their separation from a differentiating British Empire. The time, however, was not right... they had quit early thanks to lack of desire to defy their government and the king's generous pardon or Act of Grace, a chance to start over with a clean slate. By 1720, however, the idea of revolt had caught on with many pirates of the less-restrained or poorer sort, from New England and the Bahamas, a place of utter destitution. The study of primary sources alone make this clearer than reading the biases of many pirate writers, especially the polemical Charles Johnson, who was merely trying to seek his own brand of literary treasure. Johnson never mentioned Thomas Roberts, by the way.

Look for this book to be published in late 2017. Been pushed up to 2020 - 1/19/2020.

---

[1] Boston News-Letter, 22 Aug 1720, 2; American Weekly Mercury, 22 Sep 1720, 3.

[2] Boston News-Letter, 22 Aug 1720, 2.

[3] American Weekly Mercury, 22 Sep 1720, 3.

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

"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