Research trip, part IV: Civil War-era pirates in Mystic

The final broad category of pirate-related documents I looked at in Mystic, CT (home of the way-cool bascule drawbridge seen above) was Civil War-era accounts of privateering and piracy. These mostly pertained to perceived violations of British neutrality during the American Civil War, and all of them were concerned with the bounds of state authority.

English Neutrality: Is the Alabama a British Pirate? (1863)
This pamphlet deals with the case of two Confederate ships, the Oreto (later the Florida) and the Alabama, both of which were built and anchored in Liverpool after Britain had declared its neutrality. However, the author of the pamphlet categorizes the neutrality declaration as an empty -- and in fact counterproductive -- move in terms of non-involvement in American hostilities:

Upon the breaking out of the rebellion, the British government made haste to concede belligerent rights to the insurgents, and to declare its intention to observe strict neutrality. The state of English law was such that this proclamation was entirely uncalled for, as it could neither increase nor decrease legal obligations or penalties; and its only effect was to guarantee to adventurers, who might wish to enlist with the rebellion, that they should thereby undergo no greater risks than the ordinary chances of regular war. The promulgation of the first proposition was generally taken to be, and perhaps was, intended to relieve such persons from the character and ugly responsibility of pirates and freebooters. It became, in fact, an invitation, as it did not, on the other hand, enjoin vigilance upon officials or threaten punishment to offenders.

The question of whether or not these vessels, sailed as they were by almost exclusively British crews for the Confederate side, were pirates is a secondary one to the author of the pamphlet. He is much more concerned with documenting America's superior observance of the principles of neutrality when compared to Britain's allegedly profligate ways:

Thus stands the record of American neutrality. History may be fairly challenged to show another instance of such magnaminity, consistency, and fairness. Should we examine thoroughly the record of Great Britain upon this matter of maritime neutrality, it would be found entirely consistent on one point -- 'Britannia rules the wave.' To express the probable reasons for whatever inconsistencies on other points history might discover, would necessitate harsh allusions to that national greed and arrogance which the traditions of mankind have ascribed to that insular kingdom.

Towards the end of a rather lengthy rant on American superiority, the author does address the question of piracy, as follows, concluding that the question hinges on the status of the Confederacy -- much as Tindall's 1694 analysis of the legal status of sea robbers holding letters of marque from a deposed king, James II, depended on the monarch's sovereign authority. This pamphlet concludes that the Alabama was a pirate, but with little analysis of the Confederacy's sovereignty, other than to make note of its not being recognized by other states:

The English sea-rovers claim, doubtless, to cruise under some kind of commission from the self-styled and unrecognized 'Confederate States.' I do not propose to discuss, with much seriousness, here, a question, which being in this place of little import, may hereafter, in a different discussion, become of the first magnitude; still, I am compelled to say that, by the law and practice of nations, it appears that no commission from an unknown, unrecognized authority can relieve the persons upon those vessels from the character of pirates ...

The author concludes his essay, perhaps predictably by this point, with the following condemnation:

But, whatever may be the correct judgement on this point, one thing is certain, that all the character these vessels possess is British; and that if they are pirates at all, they are BRITISH PIRATES, roaming the seas, with the implied permission, if not actual connivance, of that government ...

Interestingly, one of the exhibit halls within Mystic Seaport itself had a short display on the CSS Alabama, with a sign explaining that "Rather than pirates, most of the Alabama's officers were southern gentlemen and skilled naval officers..." While this line made me laugh aloud, it is interesting that even today, the utter incompatibility of the identities of "pirate" and "gentlemen" remains commonsensical.

United States vs. William Smith on charges of Piracy, Speech of Hon. William D. Kelley (1861)
If the author of the pamphlet on the Alabama was comfortable sidestepping the question of Confederate legitimacy, William D. Kelley clearly felt differently. In his speech of over 20 pages, Kelley devotes considerable time to berating the unconstitutionality, illegitimacy, and general traitorousness of the Confederacy. The case in question involved an American merchant schooner called the Enchantress which was boarded by a ship falsely flying the French flag in 1861. The defendant, William Smith, allegedly participated in capturing the crew and transporting them to Cuba to be sold as slaves, all the while carrying a letter of marque from the Confederate States. Kelley directly speaks to why such a letter does not make Smith a privateer:

But it is said ... that the Southern Confederacy is an existing government, fostering the arts and sciences, administering law, and having its own system of revenue and finance; that foreign nations long since recognized it as a belligerent power, and that its people have been treated as belligerents in our own civil courts; and can it not, you are asked, grant letters of marque? No, gentlemen, if all this be true -- and for argument's sake I admit it all -- it gives no validity to the letter of Mr. Davis. Letters of marque can only be granted by a member of the family of nations -- by a State whose national existence is recognized, and which as, or may have, diplomatic relations ... [W[hat nation has recognized the Southern Confederacy? None.

But in addition to its head-on tackling of Confederate legitimacy, Kelley's speech is notable for several other reasons. First, it is one of the only legal documents I read (the other being the Savannah trial documents discussed below) which purposively eschewed applying the now-familiar hostis humani generis designation to pirates. Kelley deliberately sought to avoid the legal excesses that this term makes possible (see Jody Greene's "Hostis Humani Generis"):

The sole question for you to decide, I repeat, is, has this defendant been guilty of piracy under the laws of the United States, -- not under the common law, -- not is he the general enemy of the human kind, -- not has he the highwayman's heart and habits; -- but are you as a jury, satisfied that he has violated the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy.

Second, Kelley displays an acute awareness of the fuzziness of the "pirate" label, and pre-empts any possible defense that would invoke patriotic pirates like John Paul Jones. While his reasoning here is not particularly strong (it assumes the same jury would have convicted Jones on charges of piracy when the defense rests on the shared understanding that Jones was a Revolutionary War hero and not a pirate), that he rebuts this argument is indicative of the continued existence of acceptable non-fictional forms of piracy even into the mid-nineteenth century:

Is not Smith's case, you are also asked, precisely analogous to that of Paul Jones, and are you prepared to say that he should have been hung as a pirate? Let me answer that question, so adroitly put, by asking another. Is any one of the counsel for the defence prepared as a lawyer to say, that if before the recognition of our independence, Paul Jones had been taken on board a privateer by a British cruiser, the English law would not have condemned him as a pirate? The truth is, gentlemen, that Paul Jones, and all the American privateers of that day knew very well, that if they were taken, they would go into England and be tried for the crime of piracy.

Third, one section of the speech has absolutely nothing to do with our pirate research project at all but is such a striking and beautiful example of American patriotism that, reading it as I did right after the Fourth of July, I felt the need to make it more widely known. Here 'tis, and a very belated Happy Independence Day:

And what defence is set up and how is it received? It is that this defendant was aiding the cause of those who are arrayed in arms against our brethern; that he was aiding the cause of those who thus punish our people for loyalty to their government; that he was aiding the cause of those who have stricken down and dishonored the flag of our country, and made war upon its institutions and people. And that defence is pressed and listened to, and weighed, and strengthened even by presumptions. It is right that it should be so. Such scenes as this, will redeem our generation in history. They prove that it is not our democratic republican institutions, that have begotten a tendency to barbarism among a people once civilized, generous, and humane; that the love of law and order, justice, truth and right, still dwells in the hearts of the American people, and are the sure pledge of the ultimate realization of the best hopes of those who have most faith in man's capacity for self-government.

Trial of the Officers and Crew of the Privateer Savannah, on the Charge of Piracy, in the United States Court for the Southern District of New York. (1862)
The case of the Confederate privateer the Savannah is better known than the trial of William Smith, but much of the argumentation falls along the same lines (it is not surprising to find that Kelley references the Savannah case in at least one place in his speech). The library had the complete records of this trial, and while much of the several hundred pages of argumentation was long-winded and repetitive, the case really was a debate about what it is to be a "pirate" and was therefore absolutely fascinating, not to mention incredibly relevant to our project. On the matter of pirates as "enemies of all mankind," the District Attorney makes clear from the get-go that this is not the issue that the jury is asked to decide:

You have all, undoubtedly, heard more or less of the crime of piracy as generally and popularly understood. A pirate is deemed by the law of nations, and has always been regarded as the enemy of the human race, -- as a man who depredates generally and indiscriminately on the commerce of all nations. Whether or not the crime alleged here is piracy under the law of nations, is not material to the issue.

However, immediately thereafter, the defense blatantly ignores this statement and frames the debate precisely in terms of popular understandings of piracy:

And when the first deed of wickedness has been done which makes pirates and outcasts of the men who perpetrated it, what is their career from that moment to the time when they end their lives, probably on the scaffold? Is it not one of utter disregard to the laws of God and man, and to those of humanity? Is it not a succession of deeds of cruelty, of rapine, of pillage, of wanton destruction? Who ever heard of pirates who, in the first place, commenced the execution of their design by public placards posted in the streets of a populous city like Charleston, approved of by their fellow citizens of a great and populous city, and not only by them, but by the people of ten great and populous States? ... the Jury must certainly have seen how utterly preposterous it is to characterize as piracy acts of this kind.

The defense also evokes the spirit of John Paul Jones and the pirate heroes of the Revolutionary War, equating the crew of the Savannah with other, revered non-state actors:

But it is not necessary that the nation under whose commission he acts, shall be one which is already established and acknowledged among the family of nations. It may be a colony struggling for independence, and not yet recognized by the nations of the earth. Our own Courts years ago decided this case with a liberality which has eminently distinguished them, and established the principle in respect to the South American colonies -- colonies at that time not acknowledged by our Government as independent nations. So, gentlemen, it was with regard to the powers of Europe during the days of the American Revolution ... Their [American] letters of marque were recognized because they were the letters of a de facto Government ...

At this point, the trial turns into an incredibly protracted (though certainly Civil War-defining) debate on the precise legal and sovereign status of the de facto Confederate government and whether or not it could issue letters of marque. That debate, while quite engaging, does not really bear further summary here.

A final observation I took from the Savannah proceedings was the direct use of popular narratives in the lawyers' argumentation. While the defense's allusion to popular understandings of piracy drew upon several of the pirate-related commonplaces discussed on this blog before (pirates as violent agents of destruction; pirates as outside both human and divine law), they also make direct use of narrative when quoting from William Wordsworth's poem "Rob Roy's Grave." As a brief contextualization of the quote, Wordsworth presents the highwayman Rob Roy as a Scottish Robin Hood (interestingly, the pirate-as-Robin-Hood defense is used today in the context of Somali piracy) who lives by no law but that "graven on my heart" (surely an allusion to a Rousseau-ian conception of natural law). The verse cited by the defense in the Savannah case is as follows:

For why? Because the good old rule
Sufficeth him: the simple plan
That they should take who have the power,
And they should keep who can.

But, intriguingly, rather than deploy this verse to equate the accused pirates with heroic Robin Hood figures, the defense uses the verse to show that the Savannah's crew are not pirates at all since they do obey a human law: that of the de facto Confederate government.

A Treatise of the Relative Rights and Duties of Belligerent and Neutral Powers in Maritime Affairs, by Robert Ward, Esq., Barrister at Law (1875)
If the intimate connection between fictional narrative and state policy regarding pirates seems weak in the Rob Roy/Savannah trial example cited above, the introduction to this treatise offers a true "smoking gun" example of the influence that popular culture can have on official policy. According to the author of the introduction, one Lord Stanley of Alderly, popular novels were directly responsible (or at least created the condition of possibility) for the delegitimation of privateering in England by equation privateering with the well-established evil practice of piracy. Here is Lord Stanley at his plummiest. It's a long excerpt, to be sure, but well-worth reading:

The prejudice against privateers arises partly from ignorance of the safeguards provided by the Law for the protection of vessels which are not lawful prize, and partly from the writings of officers of Royal Navies who have been unconsciously biassed by a prejudice similar to that which is felt by regimental officers against militiamen, volunteers, and irregular troops. The following is a passage taken at random, which may serve as a specimen of this kind of writing: 'There is but a slight step from the privateersman to the pirate; both fight for the love of plunder; only that the latter is the bravest, as he dares both the enemy and the gallows.' It was only after such sentences had been written, and the nation prepared by a course of such romance reading, that Lord Aberdeen told the people of Aberdeen that privateering was the last shred of barbaris, and that the only difference between a pirate and a privateer was that the latter bore the Queen's Commission. A similar comparison might be made between brigands and soldiers. If the subject had been studied in law books and not in novels, Lord Clarendon could not have based his attempted defence of the Declaration of Paris on the proposition that England obtained a valuable consideration for the acknowledged loss incurred by the giving up of her right to seize enemies' property in neutral vessels, by the abolition of privateering! The paragraph from a novel above quoted is followed by another, which shows how the false notions generally entertained on the subject of privateers, have been fostered by confounding the deeds done in former times with those done in the days of our grandfathers: 'But in whatever school they had been taught, the Buccaneers who kept about the English colonies were daring fellows and made sad work in times of peace among the Spanish settlements and Spanish merchantment.'" (vi-vii) [Emphasis added. The novel in question is Tales of a Traveller, by Geoffrey Crayon (Washington Irving), vol. ii. pg. 241)]

Lord Stanley is, of course, violently opposed to the provision of the Declaration of Paris that outlawed privateering, calling it "the resignation of the means that had made England great and powerful." Undoubtedly his statement about the influence of novels is mildly hyperbolic but that he draws a direct connection between popular portrayals of piracy and something as undeniably "real-world" as the Declaration of Paris is very good evidence for the interconnectedness of cultural and legal understandings of piracy.

Research trip, part III: Fictional pirates in Mystic, CT

The first books I looked at in the Mystic Seaport library were a couple early editions of Treasure Island (first published in 1883), one from 1931 and one from 1949. The 1931 edition included a rather romanticized biography of Robert Louis Stevenson ("He inherited from his father a genial humor, a touch of Celtic melancholy, a sensitive conscience, a fondness for dogmatic statement, and a love for romance and for open-air activity; from his mother, a brilliancy, vivacity, and native grace, and a feminine sensitiveness to impressions; from her, likewise, a frail body and a predisposition to pulmonary disease, which he never outgrew, and which condemned him to a life of invalidism.") and also speculated as to popularity of Treasure Island at the time of its writing:

The major passion ... found little place in his stories; and his few women were not altogether satisfactorily drawn. For it was not love with its rewards and circumscribed plots and self-sufficiency that set best Stevenson's genius; but life with a hazard -- life kinetic under an open sky and on a broad field, full of struggle and "tailforemost morality"; life so circumstanced that the characters, driven forward through clean open-air adventure, act their parts in obedience to natural impulses and practical intelligence without the hesitations of conscience or the halting at questions of conduct ... Stevenson came at a time of 'spiritual fatigue'; when literature had lost much of its freshness and vigor, and was busy puzzling out the weightier problems of existence ... And the world, long since wearied by introspections and abstractions, was ready to turn away from gloomy forebodings to a more joyous mood.

I'm not sure about the "spiritual fatigue" of the world, but certainly the association of pirates with a life of freedom from societal constraints has enjoyed long-standing popularity, manifesting itself today in insane libertarian schemes as those of the Seasteading Institute.

The early 20th century offered much in the way of speculation as to the popularity of pirates. Joseph Lewis French's 1922 introduction to Great Pirate Stories offers several interesting insights. The first of these is French's recognition of the important role temporal distancing plays in the romanticization of the men he himself calls savages:

There may be a certain human perversity in this, for the pirate was unquestionably a bad man -- at his best, or worst -- considering his surroundings and conditions, -- undoubtedly the worst man that ever lived. There is little to soften the dark yet glowing picture of his exploits. But again, it must be remembered, that not only does the note of distance subdue, and even lend a certain enchantment to the scene, but the effect of contrast between our peaceful times and his own contributes much to deepen our interest in him.

A second point to take from French's introduction is that in the early 1900s, piracy was seen as an almost exclusively historical phenomenon:

It is said that he survives even today in certain spots in the Chinese waters, -- but he is certainly an innocuous relic. A pirate of any sort would be as great a curiosity today if he could be caught and exhibited as a fabulous monster.

A final work of fiction worth mentioning was "The Pirate," published in an 1836 collection of stories entitled The Naval Annual: Or, Stories of the Sea. Both the description of the pirate ship and of the pirate captain (one Captain Cain) are indicative of the imagery associated with pirates at the time and that continues to hold sway. First, the description of the pirate ship the Avenger, which calls to mind Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, both in name and insofar as it is a former slaveship:

Alas! she was fashioned, at the will of avarice, for the aid of cruelty and injustice; and now was even more nefariously employed. She had been a slaver-- she was now the far-famed, still more dreaded, pirate schooner, the 'Avenger.' Not a man-of-war which scoured the deep but had her instructions relative to this vessel, which had been so successful in her career of crime -- not a trader in any portion of the navigable globe but whose crew shuddered at the mention of her name, and the remembrance of the atrocities which had been practised by her reckless crew. She had been every where -- in the east, the west, the north, and the south, leaving a track behind her of rapine and murder.

If the description of the ship likely drew upon the QAR, it's not hard to see traces of the following description of Captain Cain in Errol Flynn's 1935 silver screen portrayal of Captain Blood (disregarding the beard, of course, about which I imagine Jutta Weldes would have something to say):

In person, he was above six feet high, with a breadth of shoulders and of chest denoting the utmost of physical force which, perhaps, has ever been allotted to man. His features would have been handsome, had they not been scarred with wounds; and, strange to say, his eye was mild, and of a soft blue. His mouth was well formed, and his teeth of pearly white; the hair of his head was crisped and wavy,, and his beard, which he wore, as did every person composing the crew of the pirate, covered the lower part of his face, in strong, waving, and continued curls. The proportions of his body were perfect; but, from their vastness, they became almost terrific. His costume was elegant, and well adapted to his form: linen trousers, and untanned yellow leather boots, such as are made at the Western Ilser; a broad-striped cotton shirt; a red Cashmere shawl round his waist as a sash; a vest embroidered in gold tissue, with a jacket of dark velvet, and pendant gold buttons, hanging over his left shoulder, after the fashion of the Mediterranean seamen; a round Turkish skull-cap, handsomely embroidered; a pair of pistols, and a long knife in his sash, completed his attire.

Research trip, part II: The BPL, continued

Buccaneers of America aside, one of my most interesting finds at the lion-guarded BPL was a 1726 publication entitled A Discourse of the LAWS Relating to Pirates and Piracies, and the Marine Affairs of Great Britain. This was one of the few documents we've come across that offers an explicit definition of piracy, which is, of course, very useful to tracking changing perceptions of piracy. The author of the booklet begins with the now-familiar exhortation of British maritime supremacy:

The Sea was given by Almighty God for the Use of Man, and is subject to Dominion and Property, as well as the Land … the Kings of Great Britain have a Right to the Sovereignty or Dominion of the British Seas … But if any Nation shall presume to deny it, and actually go about to dispossess the Crown of this undoubted Right, or shall usurp or incroach upon the British Sovereignty of the Seas, which it so highly concerns the Honour and Safety of the Nation to maintain; the Crown of Great Britain will, without a doubt, be never unprovided with a Fleet, nor backward of putting them to Sea, to vindicate the Right which all our Kings have insisted upon, which the Laws and Customs of this Kingdom have ratified and confirmed, and which all Foreign Nations have, one Time or other readily acknowledged.

The introduction goes on to specify that piracy is a crime subject to universal jurisdiction by virtue of its well-documented, historically-evidenced heinousness:

Piracy and Robbery at Sea is an Offense of that Nature, and is so destructive of all Commerce between Nation and Nation, that all Sovereign Princes and States have thought it their Interest, and made it their Business, to suppress the same; this they have done from the Time of Minos King of Crete to this very Day, as it testified by most Historians.

Finally, pirates are explicitly referenced as "enemies of all mankind" (hostis humani generis) and effectively dehumanized as follows:

A Pirate has been always deemed, by all civilized Nations, to be one who is a Rover and Robber upon the Seas; and Piracy is termed committing Robberies upon the Seas; and from the Nature as well as the Wickedness of the Offence, a Pirate is looked upon as an Enemy to all Mankind, with whom neither Faith nor Oath is to be kept; and in our Law Books they are term’d Brutes and Beasts of Prey; and it is allowed to be lawful for those who take them, to put them to Death, if they cannot, with Safety to themselves, bring them under some Government to be try’d.

[As an interesting side note -- and perhaps a future blog post -- Matthew Tindall's fascinating 1694 Essay Concerning the Laws of Nations and the Rights of Soveraigns has this to say about the long-standing international legal norm of piracy as a crime against humanity: "Hostis Humani Generis, is neither a Definition, or as much a Description of a Pirat, but a Rhetorical Invective to shew the Odiousness of that Crime." This insightful observation was clearly still relevant in 1726, and as Jody Greene argues in "Hostis Humani Generis" (Critical Inquiry 34, Summer 2008: 683-705), remains so today. She writes, "Even if we cannot determine what precisely a pirate is, even if pirate is nothing more than a term of opprobrium, the place occupied by the pirate in legal discourse can nonethless produce measurable effects." Greene makes a comparison between the catachrestic historical usage of "hostis humani generis" and today's usage of "war on terror" as "endlessly generative fictions." While I don't completely agree with her comparison of pirates and terrorists -- even as legal categories (the idea that the terms are misapplied troubles me as it suggest there is an objectively "correct" application of these terms) -- her statement that the deployment of the term "pirate" creates observable conditions of possibility for state action is compelling and, I would argue, should be expanded beyond its narrow legal implications.]

But, I digress. The 1726 booklet in question goes on to document laws for punishing pirates and accessories to piracy; laws punishing ship capitains who fail to fight back against attacking pirates; laws rewarding commanders and officers for successfully defending their ships against pirate attacks (as the author notes, "In the time of King Charles II, it was common for masters and commanders not to fight back, even if they had sufficient force to defend themselves."); and laws against trading with pirates and receiving stolen goods; and laws aimed at deterring people from becoming pirates.

The conclusion of the pamphlet leaves little doubt as to the author's (rather non-legal) opinion of pirates:

It is a melancholly Consideration, that any of those Persons, who have given themselves over of late Years, to the committing of Robbery on the High Seas, should not have been content with taking what Money they have found, or Things they might stand in need of aboard of any Ship which has fallen into their Hands; but run into such Extravagancies, as to throw the rest of the Goods into the Sea, set fire the Vessels, and murder the Company, without any manner of Provocation, on the Part of those they have destroyed. This many of the piratical Crews have done, in cold Blood, and as if it were only for Pastime, and for their Diversion …

This is followed by a lengthy religious condemnation of piracy, promising firey hell to sea robbers and concluding that "whosoever sheddeth Man’s Blood, by Man shall his Blood be shed."

A second, more entertaining find was the 1824 masterwork The Atrocities of the Pirates; being a Faithful Narrative of the Unparalleled Sufferings Endured by the Author during his Captivity among the Pirates of the Island of Cuba; with an Account of the Excesses and Barbarities of those Inhuman Freebooters. By Aaron Smith, (Who was himself afterwards tried at the Old Bailey as a Pirate, and acquitted.). Really, the title itself should be give you a pretty good sense of the general tenor of this, uh, faithful narrative, but in case there was any doubt, it is chock full of "horrid cruelties," "merciless monsters," brutal torture scenes, and an angelic Spanish maiden named Seraphina. Smith's physical description of the Pirate Captain offers clear evidence of the "pirate as uncivilized savage" commonplace that was so prevalent in the early 19th century:

He was a man of most uncouth and savage appearance, about five feet six inches in height, stout in proportion, with aquiline nose, high cheek bones, a large mouth, and very large full eyes. His complexion was sallow, and his hair black, and he appeared to be about two and thirty years of age. In his appearance he very much resembled an Indian, and I was afterwards informed that his father was a Spaniard and his mother a Yucatan Squaw.

Smith's descriptions of the pirates' actions are similarly fraught with inhumanity:

I saw that his brutal temper was excited by this information; his eyes flashed fire, and his whole countenance was distorted. He vowed destruction against the whole party, and rushing upon deck, assembled the crew, and imparted what he had heard. The air rang with the most dreadful imprecations; they simultaneously rushed below and dragged the helpless wounded wretch upon deck, and, without taking into consideration that the accusation against him might be unfounded, proceeded to cut off his legs and arms with a blunt hatchet, then mangling his body with their knives, threw the yet warm corpse overboard.

The doubtful historical accuracy of Smith's yarn aside, it is nonetheless a useful articulation of the popular mythicization of the pirate at the time of his writing.
And as a final note on the subject of pirates in fiction, the Mystic Seaport bookstore provided ample evidence of the enduring popularity of pirates in children's fiction: the legacy of works like Peter Pan and Treasure Island:

Research trip, Part I: Buccaneers of America at the Boston Public Library

My quest to trace the evolving presentations of Alexander Exquemelin's Buccaneers of America took an exotic turn with the BPL's French-, Spanish-, and Dutch-language copies of this work. The French edition (Histoire des Aventuriers, des Boucaniers et de la Chambre des Comptes établie dans les Indes 1686) was from 1686 and the translator's note and preface were much more concerned with establishing the veracity of the account and explaining its utility both for voyagers to the West Indies and armchair travelers -- probably the influence of the early Enlightenment:

Car on peut dire en passant qu’il [Exquemelin] n’avance rien dont il ne rende raison bien éloigné de la manière de certains Autheurs, qui reduisent ceux qui les lisent à deviner ou du moins à les croire sur leur parole.
[Incidentally, we note that the author presents nothing that is not grounded in reason, as opposed to certain other authors who force their readers to guess or even just to take them at their word.]

The translator's brief mention of the buccaneers themselves makes clear their heroic virtues:

Il nous convainc encore par beaucoup d’exemples, de la valeur & de l’intrepidité de ces mesms Avanturiers, qui seulement avec des fusils, des sabres, & d’autres armes ordinaires, prennent des Navires, des Forts & des Villes, qu’on ne pourroit prendre qu’avec des Armées & des Sieges, qu’avec du Canon, des Mines, & d’autres moyens semblables qui sont d’un grand secours à la guerre …
[Using numerous examples, he (the author) convinces us further of the bravery and intrepedness of these adventurers, who took ships, forts, and towns with only rifles, swords, and other small arms when they ought to have needed armies and sieges, cannons, mines, and other such arms of war.]

The illustrations of this edition stuck to this theme; whereas English-language editions from the same time period depicted almost exclusively the pirates featured in Exquemelin's account and their more memorable atrocities (sacking cities, cutting out people's hearts), the 1686 French edition included only three illustrations: one of a sea turtle being stabbed, one of what I think was a manatee, and one of a buccaneer roasting meat over an open fire. This edition also contained a beautiful fold-out map the Caribbean with a detailed map of Tortuga:

I also read a Spanish-language edition from 1793 (Piratas de la America y luz a la defense de las costas de Indias Occidentales) which was notable chiefly for its (predictable) nationalist appeal to the strength of Spain. As noted in the title, its brief translator's note includes a description of how the work will help Spain continue to defend its North American territories as well as several verses (the latter presumably written by the translator himself) highlighting Spain's brave and warrior-like fight against pirates:

Nunca el Leon se muestra temeroso,
Aunque tenga ventaja el enemigo:
Siempre Espana al Pirata cauteloso,
Aun rugiendo da horrífero castigo.
[The Lion never shows fear
Even if the enemy has the advantage:
Spain is always on guard, roaring against pirates,
Even when it brings about horrific punishments.]

and

Tú, ó Alonso, mas doctor y verdadero,
Descbribes del América ingenioso
Lo que asalta el Pirata codicioso:
Lo que defiende el Espanol guerrero.
[O Alonso, truthfully and wisely
Describe the America
That the covetous pirate attacked
And the Spanish warrior defended.]

I also took a look at a 1931 Dutch-language edition of Buccaneers of America (De Americaensche Zeerovers). The introduction begins by noting the enduring popularity of the book, its many reprints and translations, and its influence on pirate and adventure stories, as well as the difficulty of tracking down the original:

Het boek, dat hier voor het eerst sinds 1709 herdrukt wordt, is de Hollandsche "oer-tekst" van het over de geheele wereld vermaarde werk, door Exquemelin over de bedrijven der vrijbuiters in de West-Indische wateren geschreven, een tot op heden nog veel gelezen, in de Fransche, Engelesche, Duitsche en Spaansche vertalingen nog steeds herdrukt avonturen-boek, dat in de latere jaren de stof heeft geleverd voor tallooze piraten- en avonturen-romans. De populariteit van dit boek maakte het des to opvallender, dat van de oorspronkelijke, door een Hollander in het Hollandsch geschreven uitgave, nog steeds geen nieuwe herdruk bestond, te meer waar die oorspronkelijke eerste uitgave vrijwel onvindbaar is geworden en slechts enkele bibliotheken ten onzent er een exemplaar van bezitten.
[This book, which is reprinted here for the first time since 1709, is the Dutch "ur-text" which is known throughout the whole world, written by Exquemelin about the buccaneers of the West Indies, most often read until now in the French, English, German, and Spanish translations, and that in later years provided the material for countless pirate and adventure stories. The popularity of this book, written originally by a Dutchman in Dutch, makes it all the more surprising that there have been no recent reprintings. The original first edition has become almost impossible to find and only a few libraries have a copy of it.]

The introduction goes on to attempt to figure out who Exquemelin really was and to document the history of the book's translations and reprintings. This edition included many illustrations, all done in a black-and-white cartoonish style that indicates that by 1931 in the Netherlands, pirates were well-established in the realm of children's stories and buffoonery (though it should be noted that the illustrations of Lolonois cutting out a man's heart and beheading captives aboard a ship remain thoroughly macabre):

Finally, we took a look at a 1914 English-language edition of Buccaneers of America intended for a young audience, as the George Alfred Williams, the author of the introduction notes:

In arranging this edition, the original English text only has been used, and but a few changes made by cutting out the long and tedious descriptions of plant and animal life in the West Indies, of which Esquemeling had only a smattering of truth. But, the history of Captain Morgan and his fellow Buccaneers is here printed almost identical with the original English translation, and we believe it is the first time this history has been published in a suitable form for the juvenile reader with no loss of interest to the adult.

As is so often the case in reprintings of Buccaneers of America, this edition too was at least partially motivated by current geopolitical events:

The world wide attention at this time in the Isthmus of Panama and the great canal connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean lends to this narrative an additional stimulus.

The most striking elements of this edition, however, were the wonderful illustrations by George Alfred Williams, which appear to be strongly influenced by those of Howard Pyle and help show where modern ideas of what a pirate looks like come from:

We're baaaaaaaaaack!

Catherine and I are now happily back in DC after several long weeks of research travel. We visited the Rare Books Department of the Boston Public Library as well as the G.W. Blunt White Library at Mystic Seaport's Museum of America and the Sea in Mystic, CT, and interviewed David Moore, an expert on Blackbeard and nautical archaeologist with the North Carolina Maritime Museum who is currently excavating Blackbeard's flagship, the Queen Anne's Revenge in Beaufort, North Carolina. While in North Carolina, we also delighted in our visit to the Knights of the Black Flag exhibit at the North Carolina History Museum, where we discovered just how much we have learned about pirates, demonstrated an uncanny ability to correctly identify the source of a good 80% of the pirate images used in the exhibits, and conducted important pirate research in the hands-on dress-up-like-a-pirate-and-play-on-the-model-pirate-ship section. Rather than post an extensive run-down* of the results of our whirlwind of archival work (we're only just starting to organize, analyze, categorize, et ceterize our veritable library of reading notes right now), I'll post a series of highlights from my findings and some pictures to illustrate them (click here to see photos from our Boston and Mystic trips and here for photos from North Carolina).

*Update: It appears that my attempted series of highlights predictably and more closely resembles an extensive run-down. Apologies.

Deconstructing the vegetable-pirate nexus

Aaargh-tichokes, Piradishes, and Cuke-aneers: Deconstructing the vegetable-pirate nexus
Erin Lockwood, American University
From: The Journal of Critical Leguminous International Inquiry, 1, (2009): 1-2.

Introduction
Political discourse and official policy have shown an increased openness to discussions of fruits and vegetables previously considered outside the boundaries of civilized consumption practices, often rhetorically delegitimized through the heteronormative interpellation of such legumes as "crooked," or, colloquially, "wonky." Taking advantage of this recent discursive trend towards the re-introduction of vegetable-based rhetoric into the political sphere and drawing exclusively upon the methodologies of scholars whose names begin with "J" -- specifically J. Weldes, J. Derrida, J. Bially-Mattern, J. Butler, J. Baudrillard, J. Habermas and, perhaps unconventionally, J. Child -- this article analyzes the nexus between the identities of two intersubjectively constituted and otherized social actors -- pirates and vegetables and, more significantly, suggests that the deployment of rhetorical linkages between pirates and vegetables is no different from a patriarchal hegemonic deployment of traditional, weapons-based forms of "power" and "control."

Literature Review
A Google Scholar search of pirate + vegetable reveals that there is no current scholarship on this subject. A troubling find, and one indicative of the extent to which the association of pirate with vegetable has become one characterized by the Gramscian conceptualization of "commonsense."

Methodology
This study is occasionally a small n (n = 2) case study of cultural representations of pirates and vegetables and draws upon the theories and methods of the scholars whose names start with "J" cited above, some of whom say that methodology is inherently Western and rational and that deconstruction is non-method, and some of whom think this is pretty silly. In a performative acknowledgment of the aporetic interpretations of "method" and the liminal identity of both pirates and vegetable in the contemporary collective consciousness my meta-(non)method is therefore to oscillate very quickly between method and non-method while eating my not organic-certified carrot sticks in a politically aware manner.

Findings
Case 1:
One of the seminal basic disourses of the pirate-veggie nexus is found in a deceptively simple 20th century cinematic work of neo-Christian theology ostensibly aimed at children (though like so many other instantiations of so-called popular culture, this work is, to my mind, indicative of much more deeply buried -- indeed, repressed -- processes of repression and dehumynizaton) . This minimalist musical performance rhetorically links these societally marginalized identities with Weber's conceptualization of the capitalist-enabling Protestant work ethic -- or rather, in the Hegelian tradition, with its antithesis. But my interpretation -- indeed, any interpretation -- can only take us so far. Here is the piece in contention:


Case 2
The second basic discourse examined in this study engages in a similarly cartoon-like visual depiction of vegetable pirates -- a form of representational distancing between the perceived "reality" of the politically problematic nature of vegetable consumption and violent non-state actors and the harmless simulacra of the cultural deployment of these identities:

If you have fond memories of playing Pac-Man in your youth, your kids now have an opportunity to discover the fun of controlling a large-mouthed character who likes to eat. With Namco Bandai's The Munchables for the Nintendo Wii, kids come to the rescue of a world being attacked by alien veggies and fruits.All this eating is done in the context of a story about the peaceful but voracious Munchables society whose food is provided to them in great abundance by a set of Legendary Orbs. Space pirates shaped like fruits and vegetables and led by Don Onion have attacked the Munchables' world and stolen their Orbs. These bad guys are now arriving in hordes to put down their vegetarian roots. Luckily, they taste good to your Munchable character who has been recruited by the Great Elder to save the Munchables' world.

But whereas the previous discourse playfully acknowledges the religious origins of modern capitalist oppression by poetically and rhetorically linking the antithesis of the Weberian ethic to vegetable simulacra in a Christian-infused hyperreality, the second case deploys similar representations in a normatively hegemonic wielding of inherently Western nutritional values. By exploiting the commonsense associations of pirates with vegetables, this text implicitly but transparently associates the forbidden fruit (if you will) of these otherized identities with its aggressive imperialist vegetable-consumption agenda while normalizing violence by reifying the character of postmodern warfare in a seductively deceptive simulation of death and destruction:

Like Pac-Man,The Munchables creates addictive game play — it's fun to eat everything in sight. For parents concerned about violence, this is an E-rated game. But it does contain mild violence because you do eat cute anthropomorphized fruits and vegetables. There is no blood or agony — the interloping pirates just disappear into your character's maw as you become the hero for restoring order in your world.

Conclusions
I need to spend less time in the library.

Newport News Part II: The People

So, this is my second, more travel-memoir style post on our adventures in Newport News. I think it's safe to say that Erin and I got a very entertaining introduction to southern culture.

We arrived in Newport News in the evening only to discover that our hotel, the always popular for the budget conscience Super 8, was on the wrong side of the tracks. Literally. There were train tracks, and as far as we could tell, we were on the wrong side of them. The woman who handled our check-in at said Super 8, provided our first encounter with the supremely friendly Newport Newsians. She wanted to know all about why we were visiting Newport News, while at the same time telling us that the motel was unusually full thanks to a weekend jazz festival, and trying to ply us with brochures to area attractions such as Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg, which we had no way to get to given our car-less situation. After insisting (at least three times) that yes, we would for sure call her if there was anything we needed once we got to the room, Erin and I settled in for our first night on the road.

The next morning, we arose bright eyed, bushy tailed, and more than ready to take on the Newport News public transportation system and the Mariners' Museum archives. A rather uneventful bus ride landed us at the front of Christopher Newport University, a lovely campus with a spectacular library where the Mariners' Museum archive is housed. Upon arriving at the campus, Erin and I asked one of the people working on the summer landscaping if she could point us in the direction of the library. The woman did us one better and got her companion to drive us right to the library in his golf cart. This ride, while welcome, was slightly uncomfortable as all three of us were squished into the front seat due to the plants that were occupying the back area of the vehicle.

Once we were deposited at the library, Erin and I were able to quickly make our way to the archive, where we met Mr. Bill Edwards-Bodmer, the library researcher. Mr. Bodmer turned out to be a lovely person and a great help to our project. He provided us with a list of all of the library's piratical materials and was more than happy to let us look at anything we wanted to. He even gamely put up with our very un-library appropriate excitement over the many editions of Exquemelin's Buccaneers of America and constant habit of reading especially good bits of what every document we happened to be working on out loud.

The seven hours we spent in the Mariners' Museum archive that day passed by in the blink of an eye and Thursday evening found Erin and I wandering the grounds of the Mariners' Museum itself. During our exploration, we stumbled upon a lake where we were presented with the opportunity to set sail in a pirate paddle boat for $5 per half hour. Given the subject of our research, how could we refuse? Erin and I quickly boarded our craft after the wonderful paddle-boat people snapped a photo which can be seen here. Our trip took us past charming bridges, mysterious coves, and a really oddly shaped tree. We briefly entertained the idea of trying to take the other paddle boat on the lake as a prize, but lack of speed and any real navigational talent persuaded us not to proceed in this endeavor.

Paddle boating is hard work, and after this adventure Erin and I decided that it was time to hunt down some victuals. The first restaurant we came across was the Warwick Restaurant, a local diner which provided us with a truly unique and entertaining dining experience. The meal began with a perusal of our menus where it was stated that with our entree we would have our choice of two vegetables. The veggie choices were as follows: mashed potatoes, french fries, potato salad, cole slaw, apple sauce, pickled beets, baked potatoes, and "vegetable of the day", which turned out to be collared greens. The experience only got better from there. Our waitress was a fabulous woman who took our order in an exceptionally friendly manner, and then proceeded to ask if we had hear about the death of Michael Jackson. Since Erin and I had been holed up in the library all day, this was news to us, and we had a nice bonding moment as the three of us commiserated over the loss of the controversial legend. Our waitress then proceeded to personally break the sad news to every other individual table in the diner, and soon a restaurant wide discussion of Michael Jackson ensued. After learning some valuable lessons about life, death, and the importance of cable television from the locals, Erin and I called it a night and headed back to the Super 8.

Once we reached the hotel, we quickly realized that our room keys had been demagnetized and I headed downstairs to get them fixed. Our friend from the night before was once again manning the desk and was more than happy to help me. She was thrilled that Erin and I seemed to be enjoying our stay in Newport News. The highlight of our conversation came right as I was about to head upstairs when she called after me with the words, "Child, do you know that Michael Jackson passed?". And on that rather odd note, our first and only full day in Newport News ended.

The next morning passed much in the same fashion as the first, with a bus ride and hours spent buried in the Mariners' Museum archive feverishly trying to work our way through all of the great pirate resources available to us before our inevitable trip back to DC. Erin and I quitted the library, in sort of a dazed state of pirate overload later in the afternoon. We made it safely to the Amtrak station where we boarded our train back to the big city and proceeded to spend our journey refusing to read, or even look at anything with the word "pirate" in it.

So ends our great adventure in Newport News. Stay tuned for the next installment of our travels, detailing what is sure to be a thrilling expedition to Boston and Mystic Seaport!

Newport News Part I: The Archives

While Erin was occupied with every edition of The Buccaneers of America ever printed in English, I spent my two days in the Mariners' Museum archives reading 30 page pamphlets from the early 19th century chronicling the trials and executions of various pirates.

I won't subject you to all of the many wonders included in works such as: Mutiny and Murder- Confession of Charles Gibbs: a native of Rhode Island- Who, with Thomas J. Wansley, was doomed to be hung in New-York on the 22nd of April last, for the murder of the Captain and Mate of the Brig Vineyard, on her passage from New Orleans to Philadelphia in November 1830. Gibbs confesses that within a few years he participated in the murder of nearly 400 human beings! or A Most Wonderful Providence, In Many Incidents at Sea: An Engagement with a Pirate and a Mutiny at Sea, of Board Ship Ann of Boston, Commanded by Captain Eliah Holcomb: Written By Himself, And to the Truth of which he is willing to qualify at any time. Instead, I will be treating you to a cliffnotes version of my most interesting findings.

Because most of the documents that I read were all published around the same time, the first half of the 19th century, I was able to notice several interesting continuities between the ways in which pirates were portrayed in each of the works. As Erin pointed out in her earlier post, pirates and privateers were viewed as something akin to national heroes in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Well, let me tell you, by the time the 1800s rolled around there were no references to the "Heroick exploits of our own Countrey-men, and Relations". Instead, the forces of Victorian era were in full swing and a pirate was much more likely to be described as, "an active participator in the commission of crimes that are stamped with the most shocking barbarity!" (a particular gem taken from the trial of Charles Gibbs).

The accounts of trials and executions that I read were probably one third actual fact, one third sensationalized fiction, and one third warnings against the complete moral depravity of piracy. The authors seemed to relish reporting the heinous crimes committed by these pirates. For example, during the trial of Charles Gibbs, the pirate was reported to have recounted the following passage relating to the treatment of the crews belonging to ships captured by pirates:

"...as soon as we got a ship's crew in our power, a short consultation was held, and if it was the opinion of a majority that it would be better to take life than to spare it, a single nod or wink from our captain was sufficient-- regardless of age of sex, all entreaties for mercy were then made in vain-- we possessed not the tender feelings to be operated upon by the shrieks and expiring groans of the devoted victims!-- there was rather a strife among us, who, with his own hands, should dispatch the greatest number, and in the shortest period of time."

It was also impossible to miss the religious undertone that ran through almost all of these accounts. A plan to mutiny that resulted in the death of the captain and and several officers aboard the Plattsburg in 1816 was described in the following words: "...which, from its diabolical nature, we think ourselves warranted in saying, must have had Lucifer for its projector!", and the judge in the Charles Gibbs case followed his sentence of death with the advice that the convicts should use their time in prison to "seriously think and reflect on their FUTURE STATE!".

The authors of these pamphlets also took every opportunity to issue "Solemn Addresses to Youth" in order to entreat upon the youngsters of America to never turn to piracy as a means of seeking their fortune. All of these addresses cautioned youth to show "filial respect" to their parents and act wisely in "choosing your connexions". Above all though, these addresses stressed the merits of virtue and the necessity of this trait in living a successful, fulfilling life (or in other words, one that doesn't end with a trip to the gallows).

I think that this poem included at the end of The Pirates- A brief account of the HORRID MASSACRE of the Captain, Mate, and Supercargo of the Schooner Plattsburg of Baltimore, on the High Seas in July 1816 By a part of the crew of said vessel really sums up the spirit of my findings quite nicely.

Written on the Condemnation of the Pirates

How my heart with bitter anguish
Sinks in melancholy gloom;
Pensive and sad my muse must languish
As I sing the Murderer's doom.

Lo! In gloomy cells confined,
Shut from light and wholesome air,
Are four Outlaws, in chains entwined,
Who must for speedy death prepare.

All moral ties they burst asunder,
No laws could these vile wretches bind;
For nought but murder, guilt, and plunder,
In their vile hearts could refuge find.

As on Ocean, in soft slumber,
Three devoted victims sleep;
Ah! their hours are few in number,
Soon they're destined for the deep!

Ere the midnight watch is called,
Sudden alarm is quickly spread;
The victims rise- they are enthralled,
Soon to be numbered with the dead.

Cruel ruffians now surround them;
In vain for mercy do they cry;
With heavy blows the fiends astound them;
All hope has fled- alas!-- they die!

But what a final retribution
Soon the murderers will await;
Speedy, for their vial pollution
Will the wretched meet their fate.

Let our youth by them take warning;
Shun the path those murd'rers trod--
Lest, they should be by virtue scorning,
Call'd to the awful bar of God.

Channeling Indiana Jones in the Mariners' Museum archives

Catherine and I have returned from a riotously absurd trip to the Mariners' Museum Library in Newport News, Virgina, safe, sound, and bursting with exciting findings on matters piratical. I'll leave the eccentricities of the good hamlet, its residents, and its public transportation to Catherine to recount and concentrate on what I spent most of my time reading while there: Six editions of what is today known as The Buccaneers of America by Alexander O. Exquemelin (though the title and the author's name have undergone several shifts since the book was first written in Dutch in 1678). I had the distinct pleasure and privilege of reading English translations from 1684, 1699, 1741, 1856, 1891, and 1924 (in addition to the 2000 Dover publication I had already read from the AU library).

While I did not have time to compare the various translations themselves, I spent an extensive amount of time reading and taking notes on the different introductions and prefaces to each edition. The manner in which the exact same work was presented varied incredibly dramatically and provided a better means of tracking changes in the pirate discourse than we had expected to find (though not necessarily how those changes happened). Here are some of my excerpts from, and notes on, each edition:

1684: Exquemelin's account was presented as an exhortation to the bold and adventurous English national spirit in the face of the devious Spanish. From the Translator's Note to the Reader:

The present Volume, both for it's [sic] Curiosity, and Ingenuity, I dare recommend unto the perusal of our English Nation, whose glorious Actions it containeth ... and besides, it informeth us (with huge novelty) of as great and bold attempts, in point of Military conduct and valour, as ever were performed by mankind; without excepting, here, either Alexander the Great, or Julius Ceasar, or the rest of the Nine Worthy's of Fame ... We having here more than half the Book filled with the unparallel'd, if not unimitable, adventures and Heroick exploits of our own Countrey-men, and Relations; whose undaunted and exemplary Courage, when called upon by our King and Country, we ought to emulate.

To be clear, the "Countrey-men" in question include, most notably, Captain Henry Morgan, perhaps best known for his brutal attacks on Maracaibo and Panama that left hundreds of men dead and entire towns burned. In the preface to the second volume (Containing The Dangerous Voyage and Bold Attempts of Captain Bartholomew Sharp, and others; performed upon the Coasts of the South Se, for the space of two years, &c. From the Original Journal of the said Voyage. Written by Mr. Basil Ringrose, Gent. Who was all along present at those Transactions.) the anonymous publisher addresses apparent inaccuracies in Exquemelin's account of Morgan's burning of Panama thusly:

And what disgrace were it, to that worthy person, if he had set fire unto it, for those reasons he knew best himself? Certainly no greater dishonour than to take and plunder the said City. Thus are these persons so far transported with passion towards Sir Henry Morgan, as to bereave him of the glory of his greatest Actions, whether true or false ... Thus both the English Nation, and the Spanish having agreed, to give the honour of this Action either truely or falsely, unto Sir Henry Morgan, I cannot but admire those who pretend to be the greatest admirers of his merits, should endeavour to devest him of it.

1699: The preface to the 1699 edition echoes the 1684 admiration of Morgan and the buccaneers, but it is more qualified than the earlier praise, providing a glimpse of the characterization of pirate as immoral savages that will later become dominant in the pirate narrative:

It would be superfluous to say much by way of Preface to the following Work, since a great part of it has some Years ago been Exposed to Publick view with a general Applause; and indeed the wonderous Actions and daring Adventures therein related, are such as could not but transport the most stupid minds into an Admiration of them, tho many times they were not attended with that Justness and Regularity that became Christians, or even men of any Tolerable Morals.

However, the passage from the 1699 edition that caught my attention most acutely (which is a professional way of saying that I lept up from the table and shouted in excitement) was as follows:

I will not take upon me to Apologize for many of the Actions done, and here related, since even in the most regular Troops and best disciplined Armies, daily Enormities are committed which the strictest vigilance cannot prevent; However it is very remarkable, that in such a lawless Body as these Bucaniers seemed to be, in respect to all others; that yet there should be such an Oeconomy (if I may so say) kept and regularity practiced among themselves, so that every one seemed to have his property as much secured, as if he had been a member of the most Civilized Community in the World; tho at the same time when I consider of some of their Laws, such as those against Drunkenness and the like immoralities, I believe I have a great deal of reason to remain suspicious of their Sincerity. But be these things as they will; a bolder Race of Men, both as to personal Valor and Conduct certainly never yet appeared on the liquid Element, or dry Land; and I hope it will be taken neither for an Affront nor a Complement, to say the English were always the leading and prevailing party amongst them.

This passage represents an elegant distillation of so many pirate tropes (some abandoned, others still very much around) that I could hardly sit still. In it we have not only the distinction between pirates and the "civilized world" that later became so dominant, but also an appeal to the greatness of the English identity, and, perhaps most remarkably, a 17th century nod to the political economy of piracy that so fascinates Peter Leeson today. Incredible!

1741: But the plot thickens! The next edition the library had was one from 1741. It appeared to have the identical preface to that of the 1699 edition but on closer examination I noticed that the phrase that read "tho at the same time when I consider of some of their Laws, such as those against Drunkenness and the like immoralities, I believe I have a great deal of reason to remain suspicious of their Sincerity" was entirely gone from this edition, thereby significantly strengthening the preface's (non) apology for piratical atrocities. It's worth noting too that the earlier appeals to English nationalism were well intact, and that the 1741 publication date occurred not insignificantly right in the middle of the English War of Jenkins' Ear against their old enemies the Spanish and which had included, in 1739 a state-based capture of Porto Bello, Panama by the British navy.

1856: The 1856 American edition of Buccaneers is most notable for its distancing of the contemporary world from the piracy of old. Piracy here is presented as an historical phenomenon. The 1856 edition kept the 1699 preface (and the line about being suspicious about the sincerity of pirate codes has made a miraculous return), but added an introduction lauding the civilized age in which its readers lived:

Read the following pages, and compare the state and transactions of the world at the times on which it treats with those of the present. If, when they have done this, they are not satisfied that the general character of mankind has been greatly ameliorated within the last three centuries, nothing, it is thought, would satisfy them of the fact... there has been a complete revolution of the seas. Sea-kings are no longer known or acknowledged ... it is only necessary to survey our own American coast within the space of two hundred years after its settlement by Europeans, to learn what terrors awaited all those who attempted voyages by sea.

By now, the perception of pirates as dangerous and acting well outside the bounds of acceptable behavior is well in place -- a startling contrast with the hero-worship of the same actions from a century before. We've gone from references to "the valour of our famous Bucaniers" (1684 translator's note) to stating that "the records of our admiralty courts are full of trials of pirates, with the most revolting accounts of their cruelties and their executions."

1891: This edition was the second one which led me to jump up and exclaim aloud, so incredible a find was its introduction by editor Howard Pyle. Listen to how it begins:

Why is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantly titillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes to make up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to this question another -- Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had, a certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about?

As early as 1891, Pyle was asking (in unfortunately purple prose) some of the same questions we were about the romanticization of piracy! And he goes on:

Is there, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden ground-work of the old-time savage? Is there even in these well-regulated times an unsubdued nature in the respectable metnal household of every one of us that still kicks against the pricks of law and order? To make my meaning more clear, would not every boy, for instance -- that is every boy of any account -- rather be a pirate captain than a Member of Parliament? And we ourselves; would we not rather read such a story as that of Captain Avery's capture of the East Indian treasure-ship, with its beautiful princess and load of jewels ... than -- say one of Bishop Atterbury's sermons or the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of "Theodora and Didymus? It is to be apprehended that to the unregenerate nature of most of us, there can be but one answer to such a query.

Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always a redundancy of vim and life to recommend them to the nether man that lies within us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against tremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order have had much to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black flag. But it is not altogether courage and daring that endears him to our hearts. There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that lust for wealth that makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the story of the division of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the hiding of his godless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic beach, there to remain hidden until the time should come to rake the dubloons up again and to spend them like a lord in polite society, than in the most thrilling tales of his wondrous escapes from commissioned cruisers through tortuous channels between the coral reefs. And what a life of adventure is his to be sure! A life of constant alertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, he wanders for ever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, now careening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearing suddenly to swoop down on some merchant-vessel with rattle of musketry, shouting, yells, and a hell of unbridled passions let loose to rend and rant. What a Carlislean hero! What a setting blood and lust and flame and rapine for such a hero!

It's not that Pyle's answers to these questions are convincing or even entirely helpful to our research program, but the fact that he thought to ask them indicates a fascinating degree of self-awareness -- even 100 years ago -- of the grip piracy held on the popular imagination. Too, Pyle provides a wonderfully clear and detailed articulation of what "pirate" meant at the end of the 19th century:

During the early eighteenth century the Spanish main and adjacent waters swarmed with pirate crafts, and the fame of their deeds forms a chapter of popular history that may almost take rank with that which tells of Robin Rood, Friar Rush, Schinderhammes, and other worthies of the like kidney of a more or less apocryphal nature. Who has not heard tell of Blackbeard? Who does not know of the name of the renowned Captain Kid? Who has not heard the famous ballad which tells of his deeds of wickedness?

The introduction is quite lengthy and dominated by the twin themes of "savagery" ("Among the buccaneers were to be found the off-scourings of all the french and English West Indies -- a mad, savage, unkempt phase of humanity, wilder than the wildest Western cow-boys -- fierce, savage, lawless, ungoverned, ungovernable") and "blood" ("In ten or twelve years Spain had lost millions upon millions of dollars, which vast treasure was poured in a golden flood into those hot fever-holes of towns, where Jews and merchants and prostitutes battened on the burning lusts of the wild hunters whose blood was already set aflame with plunder and rapine"), repeated over and over again. Finally, Pyle's explanation of why he has kept the original translation of Buccaneers largely intact bears repeating:

One touch of the modern brush would destroy the whole tone of dim local colours of the past made misty by the lapse of time. It needs the quaint old archaic language of the seventeenth century to tell of those deeds of blood and rapine and cruelty, and the stiff, formal style of the author-translator seems in some way to remove those deeds out of the realms of actuality into the hazy light of romance. So told the adventures of those old buccaneers still remain a part of humbler history, but they do not sound so cruel, so revolting as they would be told in our nineteenth-century vernacular.

Incredible! The temporal distancing that is evident beginning with the 1741 edition, but most notably in the 1856 one is self-consciously and deliberately articulated here.

1924: The 1924 edition includes a remarkably awful introductory essay by Andrew Lang, noteworthy first of all for its Cordingly-like approach to the putative gap between the "romance" and "reality" of piracy:

Most of us, as boys, have envied the buccaneers ... The buccaneers is 'a gallant sailor,' according to Kingsley's poem [Canon Kingsley, "The Last Buccaneer"] -- a Robin Hood of the waters, who preys only on the wicked rich, or the cruel and Popish Spaniard, and the extortionate shipowner. For his own part, when he is not rescuing poor Indians, the buccaneer lives mainly 'for climate and the affections'... Yet the vocation [!] was not really so touchingly chivalrous as the poet would have us deem ... The buccaneers were certainly models of diligence and conscientiousness in their own industry, which was to torture people till they gave up their goods, and then to run them through the body, and spend the spoils over drink and dice ... they were the most hideously ruthless miscreants that ever disgraced the earth and the sea.

The second element of note in Lang's essay is the unremittingly negative light in which the buccaneers are portrayed and his efforts to warn youth that "pieces of eight do not grow on trees." This compulsion to warn youth against the temptations of piracy is something that Catherine noted in much of the reading she did, especially in sensationalist 19th century accounts of the lives and trials of some famous pirates, but I'll let her tell about that.

The various editions of Buccaneers of America were not the only readings I did at the Mariners' Museum -- Catherine and I read and took notes through a fairly impressive collection of piracy-related documents -- but this post has gone on for far too long, so I think I'll wax enthusiastic over such masterpieces as The Life, Trial, Confession and Execution of Albert W. Hicks, The Pirate and Murderer, Executed on Bedloe's Island, New York Bay, On the 13th of July 1860, For the Murder of Capt. Burr, Smith and Oliver Watts, on Board the Oyster Sloop E.A. Johnson. Containing the History of his Life (Written by himself) from childhood up to the time of his arrest. With a full account of his piracies, murders, mutinies, high-way robberies, etc., comprising the Particulars of nearly One Hundred Murders another time.

To conclude, here is a picture of Catherine and I with our trusty pirate-themed pedal boat (ahem, hijacked sloop) at the lake outside the Mariners' Museum after a long day in the archives:

Real pirates always wear their life jackets. For further photo documentation of our trip (and an unwarranted number of pictures of trains and Leifr Eiriksson) click here.