Capt. Frances Hume - Pirate Hunter in a Commonwealth of Pyrates!

32-gun fifth rate frigate

Naval historians N.A.M. Rodgers and Rif Winfield generally regard fifth-rate frigates of the early eighteenth century Royal Navy, "were small two-deckers, generally either 40-gun ships with a full battery on two decks, or "demi-batterie" ships, carrying a few heavy guns on their lower deck (which often used the rest of the lower deck for row ports) and a full battery of lesser guns on the upper deck." HMS Scarborough was one such frigate of the Royal Navy, commissioned in 1711. She had a lower deck with four 9-pounders, a top deck with twenty-two 6-pounders, and a quarterdeck with six 4-pounders.

Her first captain was Francis Cooper, for half a year in 1711, then Edmund Hooke for a year, and back to Francis Cooper for almost two more years. Her next commander from 1715-1718 was a Scotsman of a quite controversial family! Capt. Francis Hume (1682-1753) would make his name as a "pirate hunter" in the Windward and Leeward Islands during the Golden Age of Piracy in what Charles Johnson referred to as a "Commonwealth of Pyrates!" He was referring to that colonial backwater across the pond - in America.

Capt. Francis Hume came from the Scottish Homes* of Blackadder, a family that split radically on two sides: loyal and traitorous Jacobite, after the Glorious Revolution of 1688! Another Francis Hume of Quixwood, was transported/exiled to Virginia in 1716 for his involvement in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715, an event that favored James Francis Edward Stuart or the "Pretender" over German-speaking King George I. This event also encouraged many Stuart conservatives in Great Britain as well as the Americas to turn against their government just as the Golden Age of Piracy began with a hurricane on 30 July 1715 in the Bahama or Florida Straits.

*The name is spelled "Home," but is pronounced "Hume" in Scotland. Thus, those serving in England were usually recorded as "Hume." 

Alexis Simon Belle, Portrait of James Francis Edward Stuart (1688-1766) - dated 1712

A George Hume was tried at Marshalsea in September 1716 and hanged for "High-Treason." A "Mr. Hume of Witfield" had also been found guilty and hanged, as was a brother to Earl Hume. Genealogy can be encouraging, however, and demonstrates that not all of one family were necessarily traitors. David Hume, the famous Scottish philosopher and atheist also comes from this same family.  

Capt. Francis Hume had left Scotland for London, became a mariner in the Royal Navy and avoided all those troubles - including the noose! The West Indies in the Golden Age gave him the opportunity to prove himself a loyal and faithful warrior subject of King George I - even though he was a German who spoke no English!

Scarborough was stationed at her home port of Sheerness, Kent through 1714 and most of 1715, undergoing repairs. By October 1715 the repairs, amounting to £1987.17.9d, came to completion. About the same time, Captains Edward Holland of the Bedford Galley, Francis Hume of the Scarborough and Digby Dent of the Lynn sought a tender to procure men and paper for muster records. 

While Barbados underwent a massive hurricane, Capt. Hume, of Edinburgh, Scotland, that October 1715 had just been assigned to Scarborough as her commanding officer. There was much to do to finalize the repairs -he immediately set to work inspecting them and making last-minute adjustments while manning and provisioning his ship. These final efforts still took time. Purser Thomas Townshend came aboard and Hume asked for a ship's master to be appointed. By 9th of November, Scarborough had moved to the Downs where Hume replaced his damaged longboat. By the middle of January 1716, Scarborough had docked in the Hamoaze at Plymouth and sent in her muster reports. She took on provisions there and later at Portsmouth, making her final preparations for her voyage to Barbados in the early summer of 1716. After a mountain of preparation, the warship under Capt. Hume's command finally sailed for her station - Carlisle Bay of Barbados in the West Indies, carrying the new governor, Robert Lowther.

32-gun fifth-rate HMS Scarborough, would make quite a name for herself as a pirate fighter in the West Indies. Even anti-government pirates themselves often held this ship as the iconic warship to be beaten as a test of their pirate metal. But, first, Hume dealt with a lack of crew and those he had were sick and growing sicker. No rest for the weary, as they say. Gov. Robert Lowther, in December 1716, got word that "there were several pirates in those partes [Antigua], and that they had not only taken several vessels, but also greatly molested the Colonies." Thus, he:

... order'd Captain Humes Commander of H.M.S. the Scarborough to go immediately in quest of them, but he represented that his ship was so much disabled by the mortality and desertion of his mariners, that he had not men sufficient to navigate her: upon this representation my friends and I gave him so much mony as inabled him to get pretty nigh his complement of men.

Gov. Walter Hamilton of the Leeward Islands also requested of Gov. Robert Lowther on Barbados "desiring he would order H.M. ship attending that station to cruize among these Islands for some time," to "to disperse those vermine." Capt. Hume sailed Scarborough to St. Christophers by 4th of January. Hamilton "immediatly ordered an officer, with 40 of H.M. troops on board, the better to enable Capt. Hume to secure his ship, and to annoy the pirates in case he met them." Hume was not only low on men - approx. 120 - but many of those were still sick. On January 16th, Hume "had the good fortune to find some of them [pirates] in the harbour of St. Croix, with a ship and a sloop."

Hume cut his teeth on these pirates, vessels of Jean Martel, a French pirate masquerading as an Englishman, who had decided to water at St. Croix in January 1717, some months after Scarborough's arrival in the Virgin Islands - from Antigua west to St. Croix. 

Colin Woodard, in Republic of Pirates, best tells this tale. He asserts there were six vessels in all belonging to Jean Martel and begins his tale on page 153,

Scarborough anchored at the mouth of the harbor and began battering [the pirates'] vessels with her guns. The pirates fought back from the four-gun battery they had set up on shore, but the Scarborough's guns soon took them out of action. For a short time, the pirates thought they might be spared: The fifth-rate frigate was too big to enter the harbor and retreated. The pirates piled aboard Martel's flagship, the twenty-two gun John & Marshall, to make a run for it, only to run aground on a reef.  Seeing the Scarborough tacking back toward them, Martel ordered the men to abandon and burn the galley.

Martel and about nineteen of his pirates mad their escape in the smaller prize sloop they had taken there. About 100 others, white, black, slave [from Greyhound Galley?], and otherwise, escaped in St. Croix's inland forests. Hume was not able to capture any pirates, but he was able to restore the English vessels to their respective masters. Hume became a local hero and built his reputation as a pirate fighter, but his greatest feat was a year and a half away! . 

Still, Hamilton warned of their nearly missing Samuel Bellamy in a 26-gun ship with Paul Williams in a 14-gun sloop. Hamilton requested of the Admiralty that they send him something bigger than the sloop currently on station in the Leeward Islands (St. Christophers and Nevis). That spring, however, also revealed that many English captains had also fallen prey to Spanish guarda-costas. Hostilities were once again building up that would soon break out in war.

The Admiralty responded on 4th of March. The 20-gun sixth-rate HMS Seaford had been dispatched. Admiralty Secretary Josiah Burchett wrote:

I am to acquaint you, that orders are sent to the Captains of H.M. ships employ'd at Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the Leeward Islands, upon intimation of any pirates in those parts, to advise with the respective Governours, and proceed in quest of them as shall be thereupon thought proper, and to use their utmost endeavours to seize or destroy them; the Seaford that sailed for the Leeward Islands in Dec. last was provided with Instructions of this nature, and must in all probability ... have reach'd her station; we are now fitting ships for the Colonies of Virginia, New England, and New York, and their Commanders will also have particular Instructions with relation to pirates. Signed, J. Burchett.

In April, Alexander Spotswood. Lt. Gov. of Virginia, reported Samuel Bellamy in Whydah raiding ships off his coast. In about two more weeks, Whydah wrecked off Cape Codd and most of her pirate crew was killed. Only a handful remained, were imprisoned, and later hanged. Still, a former consort of Samuel Bellamy's had earlier parted from him in the Leewards and sailed to the coast of Brazil: Olivier LeVasseur de la Buse would soon face Francis Hume's Scarborough. 

Meanwhile, in May 1717, two English traders complained that Marquis de la Varenne, the new governor of the French Islands in the Windwards, had arrested them simply for trying to water at Martinique. Varenne asurred Gov. Walter Hamilton that they had attempted to trade with the inhabitants, yet another violation of law. Nevertheless, one of these English captains had apparently come from Hamilton's government and he wrote to the Board that he "only anchor[ed] in their Roads without having in the least traded," which was probably not true. English traders were notoriously trading in those French Islands. 

Gov. Hamilton, also imperialistically inclined, complained that her majesty's warships were not allowed to fly his own flag on their masts! After all, warships belonged to the king and not to the king's arrogant colonies in America. He wrote:

... this Captain Rose, Commander of H.M. Seaford, has orders from the Admiralty board not to hoyst a flag on board of his ship for the Governour upon any account whatsoever which I take to be a diminution of the honour due to H.M. Commission besides that the Lt. Governours of the respective Islands can never have any notice of the approach of the Chief Governour till he is actually at anchor in their roads or harbours.

The Admiralty apparently had heard some warnings of colonial administrators assuming too much authority in the West Indies and told their captains not to fly any other flag but the British Jack. They may have given them further warnings about these untrustworthy provincial administrators as well... Hamilton may not have planned a revolt against Britain, but the mere suggestion of such imperialistic intent was deemed improper. Capt. Hume would later encounter even greater intransigence from Gov. Robert Lowther of Barbados.

Add to these troubles that the Dutch clandestinely shipped slaves into the islands as well, which damaged the English slave market to their own islands. Capitalism or private free-trade and raiders of a pecuniary sort caused its own problems, not unlike the problems we still face today in America!

Meanwhile, merchants in Bristol made a coordinated effort to alert the Board of Trade to the increasing pirate problem - and, of course, their annoyance. Southern Secretary Joseph Addison wrote to the Council of Trade and Plantations "report to H.M. what expedient you shall think proper for suppressing the pirates in those parts." Lt. Gov. Alexander Spotswood argued for the pirate nest of the Bahamas as the locus of the problem (a problem he exacerbated himself by commissioning his own man to raid the Spanish wrecks on the coast of Florida - a man soon captured by the Spanish) and the Board repeated this belief:

They further proposed that H.M. be graciously pleased to pardon the said pirates provided they come in and surrender by a certain time to be limited. They took notice to us, that the pirates had made a lodgement at Harbour Island, one of the Bahamas, where they raised a battery and kept a guard of 50 men; and that their usual retreat was at Providence the principal of those Islands, and the general receptacle for pirates at all times.

Warships to America in 1717

Former Jamaican privateer Capt. Matthew Musson was commissioned again by South Carolina to gain intelligence of the "Flying Gang" of pirates at the Bahamas. He reported back in July:

... five pirates made ye harbour of Providence their place of rendevous vizt. [Benjamin] Horngold, a sloop with 10 guns and about 80 men; [Henry] Jennings, a sloop with 10 guns and 100 men; [Josiah] Burgiss, a sloop with 8 guns and about 80 men; White, in a small vessell with 30 men and small armes; [Edward "Blackbeard"] Thatch, a sloop 6 gunns and about 70 men.

The Board was firmly convinced that the Bahamas must be brought under submission to the crown, but they were determined that a pardon, or Act of Grace, combined with a new company of capitalists who would take over the island and bring it to order, would do the job. They responded by late August of that year, which resulted in the vessels being sent to America in the notice shown. Scarborough, already stationed at Barbados, might no longer be as thinly spread as before. Jamaica, maritime trade's crown jewel of the West Indies would get the most support - or scrutiny, depending on your point of view.

Capt. Bartholomew Candler of 20-gun HMS Winchelsea (stationed then at Jamaica) reported from Virgin Gorda, in the Virgin Islands, that:

When we came they hid themselves in the Rocks, one Ham a notorious villain living on Beef Island was on board of [Samuel] Bellame the Pirate when he was here, and as soon as they fired a gun at Virgin Gorda, he betook himself to a Bermuda boat he has and his negroes, and lurkt about the creeks and islands, until we were gone, there are no other Islands here inhabited by H.M. subjects, but those three, nor by any other people except St. Thomas, which is pretty well improved, they have a good harbour, and a fort of about 40 guns, belonging to the King of Denmark, but all rogues and pirates and are compounded of all nations, and yet poor they make some sugar but not good.

Joseph Addison then wrote to Gov. Walter Hamilton of the Leewards that Marquis de la Varenne, the new governor at Martinique, had just suffered a coup d'etat and to warn the English governors not to encourage the rebellion. The Board noted this occurrence nervously and reaffirmed their decision about flying flags just as they sent Tryal sloop to assist in the Leewards! 

Gov. Robert Lowther wrote that there were many problems with Royal Navy warships that he had witnessed: they were prone to sickness, laziness, and complained bitterly "as the law now stands can any mariner in the West Indies be impressed into the King's service upon any account whatever[?]" He also complained that pirates couldn't be tried outside of Great Britain, but that was untrue since 1690 with the advent of Vice-Admiralty Courts.

By February 1718, Capt. Vincent Pearse in HMS Phoenix, arrived at the Bahamas with the King's Act of Grace. He wrote 3 June 1718 that 209 pirates surrendered to him. Gov. Benjamin Bennet of Bermuda also wrote to the Board of the surrender of Henry Jennings, who had raided Spanish Florida on Christmas of 1715, which originally alerted the Board to the troubles caused by the wrecks.Still, these defiant actions of pirates fueled yet another war with Spain...

On the 1st of April 1718, Capt. Frances Hume had been ordered to proceed to Puerto Rico to collect on a debt owed to a slave merchant in London named Richard Harris, second only to Humphrey Morice of the Bank of England. But, Hume would encounter a serious problem. Capt. Hume wrote "So Soon as I arrived before the City I sent my Officer with the pinnis [pinnace; a small boat, with sails or oars] to acquaint them the Reason of my Coming there, and to Desire a Pilote." But the Spanish officers would not allow them even to land their boat. They told him that they "had orders from the King of Spain which" came "about the Second of Aprill, Directing that no English Shipp whatever Should be Admitted to come into any of His harbours and that if I would Come in I must expect to fforce My Way Through 200 pr Cannon." This was no small threat. Hume wondered why the Spanish officers at Puerto Rico would tell him this... unless they had already had enough!

Note: Capt, Hume would receive another communication on 22nd of April 1718 from the Admiralty relating to his dealings with Gov. Robert Lowther at his station of Barbados. This would be of great help to him quite soon when dealing with the legalities involved in the taking of another pirate!

War was then brewing again between England and Spain. As I write in the second e-version of Quest for Blackbeard (to be published later this year), 

The outbreak of war, which caused the seizure of English goods,” noted Elizabeth Donnan, “may be dated from the spring of 1718, though there was no official declaration of war until December.”  Even Johnson-Mist referred to Stede Bonnet planning his return to piracy in Revenge, then renamed Royal James, just after the grounding of QAR in Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina about 10th of June 1718 and wrote “War was now broke out between the Tripple Allies and Spain.”  Johnson-Mist referred here to the last step before war broke out in the War of the Quadruple Alliance, finally declared on 17th of December 1718.

Ejected from Puerto Rico, Hume took Scarborough to the northern South American coast. He made a week-long stop in Amsterdam Harbor of Curaçao in late April, "Chaueven on the Main" by May 8th, past La Guira, spent a week at Awalla Bay 16-23 May, along the north coast of Barcelona, moving east on his way back to his home waters. They watered at "Baratyras" or perhaps Borracha from 2-5 June, to Santa "Fez"/Fe Bay where they careened the 10th of June. Their northward course taken the 11th of June from the bay after careening soon brought him past the western end of Isla Margarita to Isla La Blanquilla, known at this time as the "Island of Blanco." [Analysis of the log records confirm this as the location of "Island of Blanco," as opposed to "Isla Morro Blanco," a little more to eastward.]

On the 13th of June, 1718, Scarborough entered from the western shore of Blanco, and reported in his log "We Saw Ridng under ye West Eand of ye Isle of Blanko a Ship & a Sloop." The Ship was a pirate vessel, ironically named Blanco and the sloop was Boneta of Nevis, Capt. James Davis. The pirate vessel was manned with 70-80 men and commanded by "Lewis Le Bour" or Olivier LeVasseur de la Buse, "a ffrench Man." Thomas Hall, from Scarborough's boarding party, testified "he Was ye Second Person that boarded The Said Pirate Ship w.ch Said Pirate Ship Was Mounted w:th Six Gunns."

La Buse had taken Davis' Boneta the day before who was turtling in those waters, as James Moor testified that Le Buse took "ye Said Sloop Boneeta And Did Put on Board her Same Goods & Went aboard her Armed w.th Musketts Cutlasses & Pistolls." Edward Hunt, a mariner aboard Boneta, testified on 5th of July "Said Pirates finding they Could not With Stand ye Man of Warr Quitted [Blanco] & Went aboard the Said Sloop & Made their Escape Therein haveing first put on board her a Considerable Quantity of Gold & Silver."

After taking Blanco and Boneta, with seventeen captured pirates in their hold, Hume sailed northward for St. Christophers, reaching within five leagues of the east end of St. Croix on the 17th, where they caught Jean Martel the year before. Then, setting course eastward, they reached Saba by the 24h, and finally St. Christophers or St. Kitts on Sunday, the 29th.

Portion of Moll's Map of St. Christophers Ialand

Capt. Hume immediately sent a letter ashore at Basseterre, but the council and assembly were not available. John Davis wrote back to Capt. Hume that day, telling him "We have Noe Preson [Prison] Nor Any Where To Secure the Pirats in [and] Soe Dare Not Medle w.th them." Davis also told him that it would be Thursday, or four more days until he could meet with them. He suggested that Hume go back northward to Antigua, where "there is Proper Accomadations" for his seventeen prisoners.

Annoyed, Hume still waited until Thursday, 3rd of July. Refused again, he wrote "Shall carry them to Nevis, where they have likewise a power to try them and, afterwards Shall Proceed to my Station [Barbados]." They made Nevis on the 5th and a trial for the pirate ship commenced.

Blanco was condemned at Nevis on the 5th of July by William Woodropp, Vice Admiralty Judge surrogate. Still, Nevis' Council also refused to take the prisoners:

... our Act Cant Possibly give any Jursidiction farther them the Legislative Power Your Island reaches, and your letter having Informed us that they were Taken at the Island Blanco, which is West and by South at Least one hundred and fifty Leagues of all the Leeward Islands it must be Absolutely out of our Jurisdiction.

Barbados was closer - why come to the Leewards before Barbados?

Hume departed Nevis with his condemned prize and seventeen pirates growing "gamey" locked in his hold, on the 10th for Montserrat, moved south passed St. Vincent the 13th and St. Lucia the 14th, still with Blanco. Carrying his prize, he made an eastward or larboard turn and moored in Carlisle Bay at 7 pm on the 22nd of July.

Analysis of captain's and master's log data for HMS Scarborough

On the 24th of July, Hume informs that he has brought the pirate ship Blanco "his Maj:ties Court of Admiralty in ye Island of St. Christophers Condemn'd ye Said Ship Blanco as a prize To him." Barbados Collector Henry Lascelles said that "Frances Hume has brought Said Ship Blanco into Carlisle Bay & has refused To Surrend.r her To me for his Maj[es[ties Use but Gives out that he will Dispose of her as a prize," which deprived Lowther and his cronies of the spoils.

The imperial Robert Lowther did not like such defiance - even from a Royal Navy captain! He wrote to Lascelles, ordering him "In his Majestys Name To Command You ye Said Henery Lascelles To Seize Forthwith ye Sd Ship Blanco Now Rideing at Anchor in Carlisle Bay... w.th all her Lading Gunns Tackle Apparell & furniture & To Secure ye Same for his Majesties Use Till You Receive my further Directions." Lowther was probably more concerned with securing the goods for his own use. Just to drive the point home, he also told Lascelles to use "all & Singular, ye Justices of the Peace Majestrat Custome House officers Marshalls Constables & all ye Rest of his Majesties faithfull Ministers officers Subjects And Leise? People Within ye Maritime Jurisfictions of Vice Admiralty of Barbados To Assist & Obey You the Said Henery Lascelles in ye Execution of the Premises... Und:r ye Penalty of the Law!" Lowther would have that ship and its cargo - which included "on Board abundance of Chests of Gold and Silver" all totaling upwards of £4,000 - if he had to rip it from the bay!

Word of pirate ship Blanco reaches Boston - Capt. MacDowell apparently relayed some blustery information and got a few details wrong. Capt. Bedlow (below) fared little better, although he got the "17" prisoners part right and suggested (new info) they were all French! He was probably right about Blanco having been a Portuguese ship taken on the coast of Brazil.

Capt, Hume wrote back two days later informing Lowther that his instructions from the Admiralty received "of late Aprill ye 22d 1717 thatt Pyrates Goods now perqussites [responsibility] of Adm:ty and thatt I Should [take?] his care To [allow] no embezelments," including from the governors themselves! Apparently, HMS Shoreham's dealings in South Carolina in 1716 had made some changes in Admiralty rules (see Quest for Blackbeard) Furthermore, Hume told him "I adrestt his Maj:e judge of ye Admiralty then att Stt Christophers for a legall tryall of the prize, her Condemnation I herewith Send a Copy."

I had wondered why Capt. Frances Hume carried his pirate prize to the Leewards, rather than directly to his station of Barbados. This was the reason:

Hume, and likely the Board of Trade and Admiralty (re: 22 April 1718 instructions), suspected that the governor would "embezzle" whatever prize Hume took - including the £4,000 worth of ship and goods - for himself and his friends. Hume had the ship condemned first and then took the vessel to Barbados where it would already have been legally placed in his hands by a court of law. Hume's plan was brilliant! Hume also wrote that he ordered the "Officer on b[oar]d here to use no resistance butt to oversee ye Collectors directions when he orders ye people outt of the Ship" to make certain that, if anyone on Barbados committed a piracy of the pirate ship, it would be a clear violation of the law.

Lowther and Lascelles grumbled for days while they debated how much trouble they could actually handle. They made repeated attempts to sway Capt. Hume. Finally, on 6 August 1718, Capt. Frances Hume made a formal protest against:

... all manner of Proceedings Stopage or Seizure had, made, or done, or caused to be had made, or done, by His Excellen:y Rob:t Lowther Esq:r Gov:r of Barbados or Henry Lascelles Esq:r Collector of the Customes here, or any Marshall, Agent or Agents, by them Employed or Directed as well for all Losses Damages Dettriments, or Hindrances whatsoever, that may in any wayes happen or Accrue to him the said Francis Hume, Officers and Ships Company, by any wayes or means whatsoevewr in, or by Seizing or causing to be Seized the Ship Blanco Pyrate... All which proceedings of the s:d Rob:t Lowther & Hen:y Lasscelles & the ?? of their Agents is hereby declared contrary to Law & Justice.

Barbados' Notary Public, John Lenoir, had received this protest of Hume's in his office and must have read it with wide eyes. He wrote back to Hume:

Finding some Scruples within my self, whether I ought to act as a Notary Publick here - not knowing any Authority for soe doeing; and Likewise observing that you was pleas'd to leave Evidences to take Notice that you tender'd your Protest to me, and Desired to have it Recorded in the Notary's Books in the Secretary's Office, I thereupon applied my self to the Kings Attorney Gen:ll Who is of opinion, that I cannot act as Notary Publick, and that I ought not to Record the Paper you left Yesterday, in the Office.

The same day, he sent his letters and paybooks home by way of a merchant vessel, March Catt, Capt. Thomas Ward.

The very next day, Hume wrote the governor and made excuse: that, because of the dangers of this hurricane season, he was moving Scarborough and, by association with, Blanco pirate ship and its treasures. A week went by without hearing from Lowther, so Hume wrote again. This time, he suggested that he may need to go to St. Lucia to better "Secure his Maj:tie Ship Und.r my Com:d the better from bad Accidents of that Nature." Finally, by the 20th of August, Hume - still with pirate prisoners aboard - wrote "Att My first Arrival from Leeward [Nevis and St. Christophers] I Acquainted Your Excellency that I had on board 17 Prisoners Taken on board the Pirate Ship[.] You Was pleased To Tell me that there were No Commissions To try Them" which was not true and Hume knew it. Hume Was going to have the prisoners off his ship and into a Barbados prison! He shamed the governor, but gave him a way out when he wrote "I hereby Conceive that in Case Yo.r Excellancy Wil Direct the proper officer for their being Committed To the Common Goale [Jail] of this Island it Will the better Enable me on all Urgent Ocassions To Answer the Service."

That same day, Hume heard from a sloop from Tobago that he was taken there by pirates, but upon investigating at Tobago, Hume determined that the ships were Spanish guarda-costas, for there were no pirates heard of in that locale.

What happened with the seventeen prisoners is still not known! 

Scarborough continued his cruise around the Caribbean. Hume visited Curacao again by February 1719 and sent his "Muster Books with the Captain of the Harper Galley." By that August, HMS Scarborough was back in Deptford, England, leaving a properly chastised pirate-governor Robert Lowther behind him.

Sorta makes Donald Trump appear fairly common, huh? In America, that is - our "Commonwealth of Pyrates!"

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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, 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.youtube.com/watch?v=AnaYDaNoufE&t=6s

Previously 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

By Andrew Lawler
smithsonian.com
November 13, 2018



Read about the final end of Edward Thache:
Murder at Ocracoke! Power and Profit in the Killing of Edward "Blackbeard" Thache



In commemoration of "Blackbeard 300 Tri-Centennial":

As always, drop by baylusbrooks.com and check out the primary source transcriptions

America: Savage Shackles of Trump's South!

Donald Trump's support comes primarily from the traditional and conservative ex-slaving South and rural agricultural states founded since the Civil War. Why is this support primarily Evangelical Christian? Indeed, how can a pro-slavery culture also call themselves "Christian?" These questions are not simple and they go far back in the history of our democracy itself... assuming that America can claim to be wholly democratic in the first place! We may still suffer from a cultural "mental illness!"

English adventurers who wanted to gain profitable advantage from the New World came to the West Indies, as Spain had before them. They had lived a century in the shadow of the more powerful Spain and planned to take what they could from their rival, especially after Elizabeth I's defeat of the mighty Spanish Armada in 1588. John Hawkins, Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Francis Drake and others were the famed pirates of Queen Elizabeth! Pirating became their blood, their raison d'etre. They stole gold, silver, land, and slaves from their long-time rivals. These pirates began a tradition of savagery and brutality, officially supported by their monarch in England. English America began "beyond the lines of amity" as a wild place where even the most civilized of men became unwelcome to their friends and relatives back home in European. Furthermore, these pirates said that every act they committed was endorsed by God, but they truly used "God" as rhetoric and established their dominion in the New World based on this "Evilly-Christian" ideology:

Despite defying his Queen, subjugating peoples around the world, bullying, threatening, and then lavishing gifts upon his victims, Sir Francis Drake epitomized the English hero of the age as a “Sea Hawk.”  Of Drake, historian Wade Dudley remarked that he used God as a fear-invoking device, personally conducted religious services on his ship, despite the presence of clergy on board.  After the execution of one of Drake’s own crew in the Straits of Magellan, Dudley remarked “Though Drake certainly used God’s words to bend his crew to his will, he may well have been salving his own troubled soul.”

Later, these merchant-pirates (with troubled souls) came to mainland America from Barbados, a colony that found it more expedient and profitable to work slaves to death and replace them, rather than preserve their lives - still, God supported this crime against humanity. They founded a colony in 1671 called Carolina - still with this same cruel conservative ideology. That colony became the womb of the South, spreading slavery and their brutal brand of Christianity across the lower half of North America. It would later follow the path of rural agricultural states formed after the Civil War, roughly the same region as shown in this map of Trump's support at the time of his inauguration:

Founding Carolina was not the gilded venture found in most early history textbooks, but an oft-ignored and religiously-justified immoral and bloody affair. To begin this new approach, to understand Barbadian ideology as it contributed to the Lower Cape Fear, necessitates a study of the commencement of America in the Caribbean. The sugar islands and the capital that they created contributed significantly to Carolina and the Lower Cape Fear’s development.  Tied in a great portion to West Indian sugar production, laissez-faire capitalism also developed “with the convergence of agricultural improvements, global explorations, and scientific advances.”

"Laissez-faire" or "to let be" these brutal institutionalized practices could never be truly justified by any benevolent God, but they still became recognizably American. These brutal merchant-kings, accurately styled "pirates" by the rest of the world, intended to create their own mini-monarchies away from England - independent of, and far from the control of the English civility, after 1713, led by a German foreigner who didn't even speak English. This racist American culture produced buccaneers like Sir Henry Morgan, a brutal governor who sacked Panama and abused the Spanish citizenry - also, pirates like Blackbeard, Henry Jennings, Charles Vane, and the brutal Edward Low.

These men were not only racist, but also greedy profiteers, desiring to be independent kings in the New World, with huge tracts of land (a rare commodity in England) worked by massive numbers of slaves that they had grown so dependent upon for their sugar plantations in Barbados. They did not shy away from theft as a means of supplying their needs. Independent authoritarian land-owners, with visions of great avarice, they would establish their immense profitable fiefdoms all across the South.The society that they created was strongly feudal in ideology - with haves and have-nots, each class decided by God primarily upon the color of their skin. African slaves, treated no better than animals, were the serfs that would work the plantations of the new American nobility, authoritarian and unquestioned - literally dictators of the New World.

In 1776, at the time the American colonies decided to make their break from Britain, these new Nobles of the South saw their opportunity to have their own domains to themselves once and for all. They would reaffirm their new American feudal society, without a king to tax them and free of British abolitionists - those who annoyingly told them that slavery was immoral. When the colonies proposed a unanimous "Declaration" against a king “whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people,” Thomas Jefferson realized that a "free nation" could not also enjoy slavery. Jefferson included an anti-slavery clause in that document to avoid hypocrisy and to form a true democracy that any benevolent "creator" would endorse. This did not sit well with Southern colonies. South Carolina and North Carolina held the rest of the colonies hostage... holding their vote until Thomas Jefferson's anti-slavery clause was removed from the "unanimous" Declaration. True "democracy" would have to wait. Even afterward, the South strangled the nascent "democracy" again in 1789, demonstrating, like Sir Francis Drake on the deck of his ship, that their "Godly" support was merely a political device. He exposed the true desire of these early brutal capitalists - profit:

Upon the Constitutional debate following the American Revolution, John Routledge of South Carolina argued that “Religion and morality have nothing to do with this… interest [profit] alone is the governing principle with Nations.” Routledge, with an eye toward protecting their lucrative institution of slavery, represented the Deep South as Woodard described.  Morality, or lack thereof, most certainly influenced his argument.  He used the South’s great plantation wealth, derived from slave labor, as leverage at the Constitutional Convention, leverage to force its legitimization.  “The true question,” he said, “is whether the Southn. States shall or shall not be parties to the Union.”   Routledge held the Union hostage to officially accept slavery and Deep South whims.

In only 70 years, the South eventually fought a Civil War against their old ideological enemy- the slavery-damaged democracy of the United States - over protecting slavery, firing the first shot in that bloody war that killed 600,000 Americans.  

The political device invoked by Drake reappeared once again: their more monarchical Constitution invoked "the favor and guidance of Almighty God," contrary to the United States' "separation of church and state" and the doctrine of "religious freedom." The Confederacy was to be a "Godly" nation that also protected their "peculiar" brutal and profitable institution of slavery by making it the law of the land. The conservative capitalists would even protect their profits from non-slave states: "Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy."

Wikipedia's article on the CSA Constitution explains "Whereas the original U.S. Constitution did not use the word 'slavery' or the term 'Negro Slaves,' but used instead 'Person[s] held to Service or Labor' which included whites in indentured servitude, the Confederate Constitution addresses the legality of slavery directly and by name." The Confederacy also sided with our old enemies England and France (much like Trump does with Russia today) against us. 

Thomas Jefferson's old thoughts come back, reflecting the old split-personality of a damaged democracy... how can any democracy, a desired humane and "free" society, be filled with slavers who own an entire population of people who are certainly not free? How can these slavers claim to be "Christian"?

This is cultural and not easily changed. American award winning journalist and writer Colin Woodard, best known for American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (2011) writes that artificial boundaries “mask the cultural lines along which attitudes toward violence fall.”  Social violence today, he thinks, has distinct ideological origins. Woodard’s view politically divides our nation into several parts, examples of which are “Yankeedom,” “Tidewater,” and “Deep South.” He ignores traditional state boundaries in an effort to analyze ideological variation in North America to understand its predilection for conflict. He affirms that the Deep South received their ideology almost directly from Barbados, a West-Indian style slave society, “where democracy was the privilege of the few and enslavement the natural lot of the many.” By great contrast, Yankeedom in the north put “great emphasis on perfecting earthly civilization through social engineering, denial of self for the common good, and assimilation of outsiders.” By far, the dominant ideological divisions were "Deep South" and "Yankeedom." These ideologies would never work well together - most notably, because the South was feudal and not democratic! Their original plantation/serfdom brutality was passed down through the generations, threatening our democracy at every turn.

Many profited from slavery, but only the South politically maneuvered to maintain this profit, insincerely citing God as an investor and promoter. At no time than the present is this ideological division more strenuous than in the political disunion we now experience.

Plainly put, a conservative culture which made profits on the whipped backs and deaths of other human beings could not truly be expected to rise to the level of humanitarian - especially not when they used the Bible to justify these acts. Southern Evangelist support for Donald Trump demonstrates the split-personality problem still infecting America today.

Trump's adopted ideology is the most conservative and the most inhumane that America has faced since 1861! 

Yes, this ideology is conservative. It is also the living embodiment of Barbadian or West-Indian Slave Society... it still exists - even if the original slavery has been forbidden, replaced by a searing desire to profit on the backs of the less fortunate - even still. The minds of these ex-slavers would take much more time to change - especially after their "property" had been forcefully taken from them - and especially if they, even insincerely, saw their culture as just - decreed as right and proper, even holy, by God himself! The uneducated of their society see nothing of the nuance between God and profit, only support the wealthy protectors of their time-honored feudal ideology.

In traditional Southern Evangelism, these pirate-descendants reinforce a violent, destructive, and vindictive God in great contrast to the “emphasis on perfecting earthly civilization," of Yankeedom or the North, "through social engineering [education], denial of self for the common good, and assimilation of outsiders, [or immigrants].” Deep South culture denies the fact that increased education provides better citizens -  ignorance makes for more obedient slaves or later, low-paid workers. Furthermore, Deep South culture fears outsiders. Southerners traditionally do not welcome other cultures to increase their variety - rather, they prefer to preserve their own possessions and purity of blood - an old desire descending from the days of their animosity toward Spain. In every respect, this ideology is definitely not democratic! But, the South still belongs to an American democracy? America attempts to progress and move forward, but is continuously held back by conservatives. 

Time have changed today, but little has changed to subdue the South's ideology or predilection for anti-democracy. When Pres. Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act in June 1964, he told his aide Bill Moyers that Northern Democrats just "gave the South to the Republicans." And, he was right, dwindling Republican numbers encouraged Republican president Richard Nixon in 1968, to offer extremely conservative Southern Democrats, who were once the original slave owners of the South, to join the GOP, or the Republican Party.

This party has ignored all precedent in American History to support an authoritarian Donald Trump and many of his most fervent supporters come from traditional Southern states: Texas, Louisiana, and particularly Alabama, with alleged sexual abuser Roy Moore and his Attorney-General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

Donald Trump drew his support from these Barbadian descendants and their extreme brutal conservative ideology. Look again, consider geographically the maps of slavery in the United States before the Civil War and those of his supporters, expanding to include rural states formed since 1860 - states with similar ideology. Combine maps of the slave states in the Civil War to Trump's support in January 2017:

The conclusion is clear. Trump's support comes from brutal, inhumane, undemocratic ,and crude, but "Godly," West Indian Pirate-Slaver ideology. The recent Trump policy (authored by Alabamian Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III) of separating children from their families at our Southern border with Mexico (a nation traditionally founded by the old English enemy of Spain) only illustrates the persistent cultural trends of racism and fear of outsiders brought to our shores by pirates! Trump and his supporters' reaction to our first African-American president is all too obvious. Many still believe that their brutal God endorsed this, too.

Recent Facebook meme.. about some Alabama Christian conservative ideology.

Note that this was written by a Southerner who understands his savage culture and wants it to be better! This has infected our democracy for far too long! Let's make new strides toward a true democracy! #BlueWave2018