A Government in the Papers of Its Enemies

… obliged to sign the articles that night, for that a pistol was laid on the table to force him to it.

… because all are obliged to it.

… voted by the pirates to be burnt.

… acts done by orders of officers of your own election are your own acts.

A Full and Exact Account of the Tryal of all the Pyrates, Lately taken by Captain Ogle, on the Coast of Guinea, printed for J. Roberts, London, 1723.

The mass trial of Bartholomew Roberts's crew, printed for J. Roberts, London, 1723 In one printed record the court sets down a government it is prosecuting: the articles a man was compelled to sign, its own note that a man who had not signed was worth remarking on because all were bound, a company voting the fate of a prize, and a named quartermaster ordering provisions out of a prize and allotting each man his share. It is the richest surviving record of pirate self government, and it was made to hang the men whose government it records. Original in the surviving copies of the printed book, held in major libraries. Public domain.

Fifty two of the men whose government that court set down were hanged after the trial, one of the largest mass executions of pirates of the Golden Age. Likely Their company's own story is told in the Roberts Collection.

A note from the curator

I set out to describe how a pirate crew ran itself and kept finding that the clearest witnesses to it were the men prosecuting the pirates and the man selling books about them. The courts recorded the articles, the votes, the councils and the quartermasters because they were building cases, and the surviving words of a pirate constitution reach us because a bookseller reconstructed them for a curious public after the men who signed the original had thrown it into the sea.

Four separate courts across four years describe that institution without collusion, and its reality is not in question. The record still asks to be read with its makers in view, to keep the votes on the same page as the forced men, and to let the one document a company drew up for itself stand in the record as an absence, thrown overboard, its terms too dangerous to keep.

Neil Johnson, Curator

How did a pirate company govern itself, and how much of that governance can be shown from the only records that survive it, the trials that hanged these men, the depositions sworn against them, and one early history written for sale?

The pirate republic of the retellings, with its parliament and its election speeches, is the popular picture this walk sets out to test. Behind it stands a narrower and better attested thing: a company bound by written articles it signed and swore to, choosing and unseating its captain, setting an elected quartermaster against him, and putting its great questions to a council of the whole. Almost everything known about that government was written down by the men who prosecuted it or by a bookseller who sold its story, and the walk sets the courts' record first and the bookseller's after it.

None of this was a commonwealth of equals, and the same records that carry the votes carry the coercion, the forced men and the pistol on the table. The walk sets the collective procedures and the coercion on the same page, because they sit on the same page in the sources.

The finding this walk carries appears throughout in one form of words. In the sources read for this Collection, the institution of pirate self government is carried by the sworn depositions of the piracy trials, independently of Charles Johnson, while the word for word text of any company's articles and the set piece scenes of pirate senates and election speeches survive only in Johnson's General History of 1724 and 1728; every one of these records was made by the pirates' prosecutors, by witnesses giving evidence against them, or by a bookseller writing for sale.

The institution is attested by four companies in four courts across four years, resting on no single witness and no single author.

The election: Bellamy's company, the Boston court, the examination of 1717, chosen by a great majority. Highly probable.
The deposing: Vane's company, the Jamaica court, 1721, turned out onto a small sloop.
The council of the whole: Every's company, the Old Bailey, 1696, calling a council they agreed.
The vote on a prize: Roberts's company, the Cape Coast court, 1722, voted by the pirates to be burnt.

The rooms

What it adds up to

Each strand carries a different weight of evidence, and the rooms say which. The signing of articles, the deposing of a captain, the council of the whole and the quartermaster's custody of plunder are carried by sworn depositions in three courts across three years, the Old Bailey in 1696, Jamaica in 1721 and Cape Coast in 1722, so the case rests on no single witness and no single author. The election of a captain by a great majority is very likely, carried by a fourth court, Boston in 1717, on the single best deposition, with the month and the mechanism disputed. The divided authority of captain and quartermaster is very likely, corroborated beyond Charles Johnson by a firsthand narrative and the trial records. The word for word text of any company's articles survives only in Johnson's General History of 1724 and 1728, which admits that for the fullest set the men had thrown the signed original overboard. The set piece oratory and the mock parliament are possible, one early chronicler's telling. And the division of shares, the thing the articles existed above all to fix, comes down in fractions of a share; what a whole share came to in money the articles never say.

The shipboard institutions this walk describes have their own galleries: the election and deposing of a captain and the council of the whole company, the written articles that bound a crew, and the quartermaster's divided authority. This Collection leans on them and treats each company it names, Roberts, Every, Kidd, Bellamy and Vane, as one instance of a shared institution rather than the invention of any one of them.

Enter the first room