Time, though a good Collector, is not always a reliable Historian. That is to say, that although nothing of interest or importance is lost, yet an affair may be occasionally invested with a glamour that is not wholly its own. I venture to think that Piracy has fortuned in this particular. We are apt to base our ideas of Piracy on the somewhat vague ambitions of our childhood; and I suppose, were such a thing possible, the consensus of opinion in our nurseries as to a future profession in life would place Piracy but little below the glittering heights of the police force and engine-driving. Incapable of forgetting this in more mature years, are we not inclined to deck Her (the “H” capital, for I speak of an ideal), if not in purple and fine linen, at least with a lavish display of tinsel and gilt? Nursery lore remains with us, whether we would or not, for all our lives; and generations of ourselves, as schoolboys and pre-schoolboys, have tricked out Piracy in so resplendent a dress that she has fairly ousted in our affections, not only her sister profession of “High Toby and the Road,” but every other splendid and villainous vocation. Yet Teach, Kid, and Avery were as terrible or grim as Duval, Turpin, and Sheppard were courtly or whimsical. And the terrible is a more vital affair than the whimsical. Is it, then, unnatural that, after a lapse of nigh on two centuries, we should shake our wise heads and allow that which is still nursery within us to deplore the loss of those days when we ran—before a favouring “Trade”—the very good chance of being robbed, maimed, or murdered by Captain Howel Davis or Captain Neil Gow? It is as well to remember that the “Captains” in this book were seamen whose sole qualifications to the title were ready wit, a clear head, and, maybe, that certain indefinable “power of the eye” that is the birth-right of all true leaders. The piratical hero of our childhood is traceable in a great extent to the “thrillers,” toy plays, and penny theatres of our grandfathers. Here our Pirate was, as often as not, a noble, dignified, if gloomy gentleman, with a leaning to Byronic soliloquy. Though stern in exterior, his heart could (and would) melt at the distresses of the heroine. Elvira’s eyes were certain to awaken in his mind the recollection of “other eyes as innocent as thine, child.” In short, he was that most touching of all beings, the Hero-cum-Villain. And it was with a sigh of relief that we saw him at the eleventh hour, having successfully twitted the “Government Men” and the Excise (should he have an additional penchant for smuggling), safely restored to the arms of the long-suffering possessor of the other eyes.

Alas! this little book mentions no Poll of Portsmouth, nor does it favour us with a “Yeo, heave, oh!” nor is there so very much “cut and thrust” about it. It was written in that uninspiring day when Pirates were a very real nuisance to such law-abiding folk as you and I; but it has the merit of being written, if not by a Pirate, at least by one who came into actual contact with them. I am not at all sure that “merit” is the right word to use in this instance, for to be a Pirate does not necessarily ensure you making a good author. Indeed, it might almost be considered as a ban to the fine literary technique of an Addison or a Temple. It has, however, the virtue of being in close touch with some of the happenings chronicled. Not that our author saw above a tithe of what he records—had he done so he would have been “set a-sun-drying” at Execution Dock long before he had had the opportunity of putting pen to paper; but, as far as posterity was concerned, he was lucky in his friend William Ingram—evidently a fellow of good memory and a ready tongue—“who,” as our author states in his Preface, “was a Pirate under Anstis, Roberts, and many others,” and who eventually was hanged in good piratical company on the 11th of June, 1714.

The actual history of the little book, the major part of which is here reprinted, is as follows:

Its full title is “The History and Lives of all the most Notorious Pirates and their Crews,” and the fifth edition, from which our text is taken, was printed in 1735. A reproduction of the original title-page is given overleaf.

As a matter of fact, the title is misleading. How could a book that makes no mention of Morgan or Lollonois be a history of all the most notorious Pirates? It deals with the last few years of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth, a period that might with justice be called “The Decline and Fall of Piracy,” for after 1730 Piracy became but a mean broken-backed affair that bordered perilously on mere sea-pilfering.

A little research into the book’s history shows us that it is consistent throughout, and that it is a “piracy,” in the publisher’s sense of the word, of a much larger and more pretentious work by Captain Charles Johnson, entitled, “A General History of the Pyrates from their first Rise and Settlement in the Island of Providence to the Present Time; With the Remarkable Actions and Adventures of the two Female Pyrates Mary Read and Anne Bonny.”

This was published in London, in 8vo., by Charles Rivington in 1724. A second edition, considerably augmented, was issued later in the same year, a third edition in the year following, and a fourth edition—in two volumes, as considerable additions in the form of extra “Lives,” and an appendix necessitated a further volume—in 1725.

This two-volume edition contained the history of the following Pirates: Avery, Martel, Teach, Bonnet, England, Vane, Rackham, Davis, Roberts, Anstis, Morley, Lowther, Low, Evans, Phillips, Spriggs, Smith, Misson, Bowen, Kid, Tew, Halsey, White, Condent, Bellamy, Fly, Howard, Lewis, Cornelius, Williams, Burgess, and North, together with a short abstract on the Statute and Civil Law in relation to “Pyracy,” and an appendix, completing the Lives in the first volume, and correcting some mistakes.

The work evidently enjoyed a great vogue, for it was translated into Dutch by Robert Hannebo, of Amsterdam, in 1727, and issued there, with several “new illustrations,” in 12mo. A German version by Joachim Meyer was printed at Gosslar in the following year, while in France it saw the light as an appendix to an edition of Esquemeling’s “Histoire des Avanturiers,” 1726.

But little is known of the author, Captain Charles Johnson, excepting that he flourished from 1724 to 1736, and it is more than probable that the name by which we know him is an assumed one. It is possible that his knowledge of Pirates and Piracy was of such a nature to have justified awkward investigations on the part of His Majesty’s Government.

There is one thing that we do know for certain about him, and that is that the worthy Captain’s spelling, according to the pirated version of his book, was indefinite even for his own day. He was one of those inspired folk who would be quite capable of spelling “schooner” with three variations in as many lines. In this edition the spelling has been more or less modernized.

Lastly, it is to be remembered that the ships of this period, according to our modern ideas, would be the veriest cockle-shells, and so that we should know what manner of vessel he refers to in these pages, I had recourse to a friend of mine whose knowledge of things nautical is extensive enough to have gained for him the coveted “Extra Master’s Certificate,” and who was kind enough to supply me with the following definitions:

A vessel rigged as a cutter, but with one head-sail only set on a very short bowsprit.

A two-masted vessel, square rigged on fore-mast.

GALLEY.

A large vessel rowed by oars and sometimes having auxiliary sail of various rigs.

PINK.

Probably a small, fast vessel used as a tender and despatch boat for river work.

A two-masted vessel with a stay, known as a “Horse,” from the main-mast to the poop on which the trysail was set. Sometimes a spar was fitted instead of a stay. The rig was most likely of a brig (i.e., a two-masted ship, square sails on both masts), and the triangular trysail set on the stay in bad weather or when hove to.]

C. L. F.