Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates Read online

  Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger

  HOWARD PYLE'S BOOK OF PIRATES

  Fiction, Fact & Fancy concerning the Buccaneers & Marooners of theSpanish Main: From the writing & Pictures of Howard Pyle:

  Compiled by Merle Johnson

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD BY MERLE JOHNSON

  PREFACE

  I. BUCCANEERS AND MAROONERS OF THE SPANISH MAIN II. THE GHOST OF CAPTAIN BRAND III. WITH THE BUCCANEERS IV. TOM CHIST AND THE TREASURE BOX V. JACK BALLISTER'S FORTUNES VI. BLUESKIN THE PIRATE VII. CAPTAIN SCARFIELD

  FOREWORD

  PIRATES, Buccaneers, Marooners, those cruel but picturesque sea wolveswho once infested the Spanish Main, all live in present-day conceptionsin great degree as drawn by the pen and pencil of Howard Pyle.

  Pyle, artist-author, living in the latter half of the nineteenthcentury and the first decade of the twentieth, had the fine faculty oftransposing himself into any chosen period of history and makingits people flesh and blood again--not just historical puppets. Hischaracters were sketched with both words and picture; with both wordsand picture he ranks as a master, with a rich personality which makeshis work individual and attractive in either medium.

  He was one of the founders of present-day American illustration, and hispupils and grand-pupils pervade that field to-day. While he bore nosuch important part in the world of letters, his stories are modern intreatment, and yet widely read. His range included historical treatisesconcerning his favorite Pirates (Quaker though he was); fiction, withthe same Pirates as principals; Americanized version of Old World fairytales; boy stories of the Middle Ages, still best sellers to growinglads; stories of the occult, such as In Tenebras and To the Soil of theEarth, which, if newly published, would be hailed as contributions toour latest cult.

  In all these fields Pyle's work may be equaled, surpassed, save in one.It is improbable that anyone else will ever bring his combination ofinterest and talent to the depiction of these old-time Pirates, any morethan there could be a second Remington to paint the now extinct Indiansand gun-fighters of the Great West.

  Important and interesting to the student of history, theadventure-lover, and the artist, as they are, these Pirate stories andpictures have been scattered through many magazines and books. Here, inthis volume, they are gathered together for the first time, perhapsnot just as Mr. Pyle would have done, but with a completeness andappreciation of the real value of the material which the author'smodesty might not have permitted. MERLE JOHNSON.

  PREFACE

  WHY is it that a little spice of deviltry lends not an unpleasantlytitillating twang to the great mass of respectable flour that goes tomake up the pudding of our modern civilization? And pertinent to thisquestion another--Why is it that the pirate has, and always has had,a certain lurid glamour of the heroical enveloping him round about? Isthere, deep under the accumulated debris of culture, a hidden groundworkof the old-time savage? Is there even in these well-regulated times anunsubdued nature in the respectable mental household of every one of usthat still kicks against the pricks of law and order? To make my meaningmore clear, would not every boy, for instance--that is, every boy of anyaccount--rather be a pirate captain than a Member of Parliament? Andwe ourselves--would we not rather read such a story as that of CaptainAvery's capture of the East Indian treasure ship, with its beautifulprincess and load of jewels (which gems he sold by the handful, historysayeth, to a Bristol merchant), than, say, one of Bishop Atterbury'ssermons, or the goodly Master Robert Boyle's religious romance of"Theodora and Didymus"? It is to be apprehended that to the unregeneratenature of most of us there can be but one answer to such a query.

  In the pleasurable warmth the heart feels in answer to tales ofderring-do Nelson's battles are all mightily interesting, but, even inspite of their romance of splendid courage, I fancy that the majority ofus would rather turn back over the leaves of history to read how Drakecaptured the Spanish treasure ship in the South Sea, and of how hedivided such a quantity of booty in the Island of Plate (so namedbecause of the tremendous dividend there declared) that it had to bemeasured in quart bowls, being too considerable to be counted.

  Courage and daring, no matter how mad and ungodly, have always aredundancy of vim and life to recommend them to the nether man that lieswithin us, and no doubt his desperate courage, his battle against thetremendous odds of all the civilized world of law and order, have hadmuch to do in making a popular hero of our friend of the black flag. Butit is not altogether courage and daring that endear him to our hearts.There is another and perhaps a greater kinship in that lust for wealththat makes one's fancy revel more pleasantly in the story of thedivision of treasure in the pirate's island retreat, the hiding of hisgodless gains somewhere in the sandy stretch of tropic beach, there toremain hidden until the time should come to rake the doubloons upagain and to spend them like a lord in polite society, than in the mostthrilling tales of his wonderful escapes from commissioned cruisersthrough tortuous channels between the coral reefs.

  And what a life of adventure is his, to be sure! A life of constantalertness, constant danger, constant escape! An ocean Ishmaelite, hewanders forever aimlessly, homelessly; now unheard of for months, nowcareening his boat on some lonely uninhabited shore, now appearingsuddenly to swoop down on some merchant vessel with rattle of musketry,shouting, yells, and a hell of unbridled passions let loose to rend andtear. What a Carlislean hero! What a setting of blood and lust and flameand rapine for such a hero!

  Piracy, such as was practiced in the flower of its days--that is, duringthe early eighteenth century--was no sudden growth. It was an evolution,from the semi-lawful buccaneering of the sixteenth century, just asbuccaneering was upon its part, in a certain sense, an evolution fromthe unorganized, unauthorized warfare of the Tudor period.

  For there was a deal of piratical smack in the anti-Spanish venturesof Elizabethan days. Many of the adventurers--of the Sir Francis Drakeschool, for instance--actually overstepped again and again the boundsof international law, entering into the realms of de facto piracy.Nevertheless, while their doings were not recognized officially by thegovernment, the perpetrators were neither punished nor reprimanded fortheir excursions against Spanish commerce at home or in the West Indies;rather were they commended, and it was considered not altogether adiscreditable thing for men to get rich upon the spoils taken fromSpanish galleons in times of nominal peace. Many of the most reputablecitizens and merchants of London, when they felt that the queen failedin her duty of pushing the fight against the great Catholic Power,fitted out fleets upon their own account and sent them to levy goodProtestant war of a private nature upon the Pope's anointed.

  Some of the treasures captured in such ventures were immense,stupendous, unbelievable. For an example, one can hardly credit thetruth of the "purchase" gained by Drake in the famous capture of theplate ship in the South Sea.

  One of the old buccaneer writers of a century later says: "The Spaniardsaffirm to this day that he took at that time twelvescore tons ofplate and sixteen bowls of coined money a man (his number being thenforty-five men in all), insomuch that they were forced to heave much ofit overboard, because his ship could not carry it all."

  Maybe this was a very greatly exaggerated statement put by the authorand his Spanish authorities, nevertheless there was enough truth in itto prove very conclusively to the bold minds of the age that tremendousprofits--"purchases" they called them--were to be made from piracy. TheWestern World is filled with the names of daring mariners of those olddays, who came flitting across the great trackless ocean in their littletublike boats of a few hundred tons burden, partly to explore unknownseas, partly--largely, perhaps--in pursuit
of Spanish treasure:Frobisher, Davis, Drake, and a score of others.

  In this left-handed war against Catholic Spain many of the adventurerswere, no doubt, stirred and incited by a grim, Calvinistic, puritanicalzeal for Protestantism. But equally beyond doubt the gold and silver andplate of the "Scarlet Woman" had much to do with the persistent energywith which these hardy mariners braved the mysterious, unknown terrorsof the great unknown ocean that stretched away to the sunset, there infaraway waters to attack the huge, unwieldy, treasure-laden galleonsthat sailed up and down the Caribbean Sea and through the BahamaChannel.

  Of all ghastly and terrible things old-time religious war was the mostghastly and terrible. One can hardly credit nowadays the cold, callouscruelty of those times. Generally death was the least penalty thatcapture entailed. When the Spaniards made prisoners of the English, theInquisition took them in hand, and what that meant all the world knows.When the English captured a Spanish vessel the prisoners were tortured,either for the sake of revenge or to compel them to disclose wheretreasure lay hidden. Cruelty begat cruelty, and it would be hard tosay whether the Anglo-Saxon or the Latin showed himself to be mostproficient in torturing his victim.

  When Cobham, for instance, captured the Spanish ship in the Bay ofBiscay, after all resistance was over and the heat of the battle hadcooled, he ordered his crew to bind the captain and all of the crew andevery Spaniard aboard--whether in arms or not--to sew them up in themainsail and to fling them overboard. There were some twenty dead bodiesin the sail when a few days later it was washed up on the shore.

  Of course such acts were not likely to go unavenged, and many aninnocent life was sacrificed to pay the debt of Cobham's cruelty.

  Nothing could be more piratical than all this. Nevertheless, as wassaid, it was winked at, condoned, if not sanctioned, by the law; and itwas not beneath people of family and respectability to take part in it.But by and by Protestantism and Catholicism began to be at somewhat lessdeadly enmity with each other; religious wars were still far enough frombeing ended, but the scabbard of the sword was no longer flung awaywhen the blade was drawn. And so followed a time of nominal peace, and ageneration arose with whom it was no longer respectable and worthy--onemight say a matter of duty--to fight a country with which one's ownland was not at war. Nevertheless, the seed had been sown; it had beendemonstrated that it was feasible to practice piracy against Spain andnot to suffer therefor. Blood had been shed and cruelty practiced, and,once indulged, no lust seems stronger than that of shedding blood andpracticing cruelty.

  Though Spain might be ever so well grounded in peace at home, in theWest Indies she was always at war with the whole world--English, French,Dutch. It was almost a matter of life or death with her to keep her holdupon the New World. At home she was bankrupt and, upon the earthquakeof the Reformation, her power was already beginning to totter and tocrumble to pieces. America was her treasure house, and from it alonecould she hope to keep her leaking purse full of gold and silver. So itwas that she strove strenuously, desperately, to keep out the world fromher American possessions--a bootless task, for the old order upon whichher power rested was broken and crumbled forever. But still she strove,fighting against fate, and so it was that in the tropical America it wasone continual war between her and all the world. Thus it came that,long after piracy ceased to be allowed at home, it continued in thosefar-away seas with unabated vigor, recruiting to its service all thatlawless malign element which gathers together in every newly openedcountry where the only law is lawlessness, where might is right andwhere a living is to be gained with no more trouble than cutting athroat. {signature Howard Pyle His Mark}

  HOWARD PILE'S BOOK OF PIRATES