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Anstis Splits from Roberts (1721)

The night desertion of the brigantine Good Fortune under Thomas Anstis from Bartholomew Roberts's two-vessel squadron on 18 April 1721, made in the open Atlantic on the passage from the West Indies to Guinea and placed by the General History about 400 leagues from the coast of Africa; the date is corroborated independently of that printed narrative by the deserters' own round robin petition of 14 June 1722 to Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica, which survives in the calendared colonial papers.

Also writtenThe desertion of the Good Fortune brigantine, 18 April 1721; Thomas Anstis leaves Bartholomew Roberts; The Anstis separation, 1721

On the night of 18 April 1721 the brigantine Good Fortune, Thomas Anstis commanding, took the opportunity of the dark and left Bartholomew Roberts. The squadron was two vessels crossing from the West Indies to Guinea. It reached Africa as one. The desertion has a day, and the day is given twice: by the printed narrative, and by the men who did it.1

The brigantine and her name

The Good Fortune is said to have been a Rhode Island brigantine taken at Dominica from a master named Norton, christened by the company after they burnt their own sloop. She is neither prize of the Trepassey cruise of the previous June: not the Bristol galley of 16 guns (18 in Renos's deposition) afterwards left to the French, nor the French ship of 26 guns christened the Fortune. Anstis was one of the six Providence men whose 1718 conspiracy aboard the Buck sloop founded the company that Howel Davis and then Roberts led.4

The quarrel behind it

Two causes are given, and the account does not choose between them. The standing one is rank: Anstis resented the inferiority he stood in with respect to Roberts, who "regard[ed] the brigantine only as a tender, and, as such, left them no more than the refuse of their plunder". The immediate one is a brawl at a West Indian watering island, where Roberts killed a drunken crewman, ran the dead man's messmate Jones through the body for cursing him, and was thrown over a gun and beaten by Jones; the company, holding that a captain's dignity had to be upheld aboard, sentenced Jones to two lashes from every man. Jones then corresponded with Anstis and found a majority aboard the brigantine for a vote to leave.5

About 400 leagues from the coast of Africa

The Roberts chapter is geographic: "About 400 leagues from the coast of Africa, the brigantine ... thought fit to take the opportunity of a dark night, and leave the commodore." The Anstis chapter is calendrical, and has him "separated the 18th of April 1721". Four hundred leagues, at three nautical miles to the sea league, is about 1,200 nautical miles, which puts the split in the mid-Atlantic and not on the African coast. The coastal parting implied by later writers is probably an artefact of compression.2

The date the deserters gave themselves

The day does not depend on Johnson. On 14 June 1722 the companies of the Morning Star and the Good Fortune petitioned Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica, that they had been taken and forced by Roberts and that "on, or about the 18th day of April 1721" they ran away from him in hope of the King's pardon. The copy was referred at Whitehall to the Council of Trade and Plantations on 9 November 1722 and read there on the 13th. Johnson prints one round robin, the names "writ in a circle, to avoid all appearance of preeminence"; the calendared copy is signed in the form of two. The plea is self-serving: it names the Morning Star among the vessels run away with that night, though she was taken months later, and it shows what the company expected would be believed.3

Seventy hands, or a hundred

The loss was a sensible shock to the crew, "she being an excellent sailor, and had 70 hands aboard". A round hundred, with no document behind it, is the complement put aboard the Morning Star months later, and it reads as a migration from the wrong page. Roberts did not turn back on either figure. He made Sierra Leone at the end of June 1721 and sailed down the coast in August. He was killed aboard the Royal Fortune off Cape Lopez on 10 February 1721/2, when HMS Swallow found him. The desertion cost him men and his fastest sailer, though several things went into his defeat.6

The petition and the price of amnesty

Richard Harris wrote from Tower Hill on 7 December 1722 that the considerable West India traders, the assurance offices and most others in trade were clear that "the soonest endeavours should be used to get the pirates ... called in or pardoned". Six days later John Hyde junior and 26 other merchants memorialised to the same effect. On 10 January 1722/3 the Board represented that there was no reason why a royal proclamation of pardon should not issue. No proclamation answering it appears in the calendar volume.7

Tobago, Antigua and the end of the company

By then the company had stopped waiting. The Morning Star, given to John Fenn, formerly the brigantine's gunner, was wrecked on Grand Cayman in August 1722; the brigantine escaped the men-of-war Hector and Adventure under oars. The pirates careened at Tobago in spring 1723 and HMS Winchelsea came in on them. Captain Henry Orme brought nine prisoners into Antigua in May; Governor John Hart examined them aboard; seven were tried at St John's on 17 May 1723 before fourteen commissioners; Fenn was convicted and hung in chains on Rat Island. Hart's own arithmetic does not close: seven tried, Fenn convicted with six more, five executed at high water mark, one man reprieved and a Portuguese acquitted.8

Anstis himself vanishes from the official paper. The brigantine is in the correspondence; the man is not. Johnson has him shot in his hammock by his own people after Tobago and the survivors surrendering the vessel at Curacao, while Hart on 8 June 1723 still had the Good Fortune at large with "but twelve men on board her, who run away with that vessell". Command is contested too: Johnson has Anstis keep the handier brigantine and pass the Morning Star to Fenn, Philip Gosse's Pirates' Who's Who is reported to reverse it, and Hart says of Fenn that "he had been three years in the brigantine Good Fortune, which he commanded". Popular accounts also send an Admiral Sir John Flowers after these pirates; no such officer appears in the colonial record.

What the sources cannot yet give is the paper behind the petition. The originals at C.O. 323/8, Nos. 32 and 32.i have not been inspected. Reading them would settle whether Johnson's text is a faithful transcript, whether there was one circle of names or two, and how many men signed, a direct test of the 70 hands figure. The place of the split rests on a single sentence in a single chapter. The identity of Jones is unresolved: the man flogged aboard the Royal Fortune and the boatswain of the Good Fortune may not be the same person. The crewman Roberts killed at the watering island is not named in the printed account, which says the name has been forgotten. Anstis's own death is fixed by no document seen here, and every quotation above from the General History is verified against a modernised-spelling transcription rather than the 1724 sheets.

What the evidence does not settle

The petition's text

  • Whether Johnson's printed petition faithfully transcribes the original
  • Whether the signatures form one circle or two

Number who left with Anstis

  • Reports give seventy hands, or a possibly mistaken hundredDisputed

Location of the split

  • Split placed 400 leagues from Africa, uncorroboratedUnverified

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. Thomas Anstis, commanding the brigantine Good Fortune, deserted Bartholomew Roberts's squadron on the night of 18 April 1721, leaving Roberts to continue to Guinea with a single vessel while the brigantine returned to the West Indies. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Period narrative and state paper: A General History of the Pyrates (1724), chapter X, Of Captain Anstis, and His Crew, and chapter IX, Of Captain Bartho. Roberts, and His Crew, attributed to Captain Charles Johnson; Petition of the ship's companies of the Morning Star and Good Fortune, 14 June 1722, Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 33, 1722-1723, C.O. 323, 8. Nos. 32, 32.i
  2. The parting took place at sea, in the dark, about 400 leagues from the coast of Africa, that is roughly 1,200 nautical miles out in the mid-Atlantic, on the squadron's passage from the West Indies to Guinea; the distance rests on a single sentence in the Roberts chapter and nothing corroborates it. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates (1724), chapter IX, Of Captain Bartho. Roberts, and His Crew, attributed to Captain Charles Johnson; A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates
  3. The date is attested independently of the General History by the deserters themselves: the companies of the Morning Star and the Good Fortune petitioned Sir Nicholas Lawes, Governor of Jamaica, on 14 June 1722, stating that they had been taken and forced by Roberts and had run away from him on or about the 18th day of April 1721 in hope of the King's pardon, and the copy was referred at Whitehall to the Council of Trade and Plantations on 9 November 1722, read there on 13 November, and calendared as signed in the form of two round robins at C.O. 323, 8. Nos. 32 and 32.i. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Calendared state paper: Order of Committee of Council, 9 November 1722, item 333, with enclosure 333.i, in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 33, 1722-1723, ed. Cecil Headlam (HMSO, 1934), C.O. 323, 8. Nos. 32, 32.i; the printed round robin in A General History of the Pyrates (1724), chapter X
  4. The General History makes the Good Fortune brigantine a Rhode Island vessel taken at Dominica from a master named Norton and christened by Roberts's company after they burnt their own sloop, and therefore neither the Bristol galley of 16 guns (18 in Renos's deposition) taken on the Trepassey cruise of June 1720 and afterwards left to the French, nor the French ship of 26 guns the company christened the Fortune. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates (1724), chapter IX, Of Captain Bartho. Roberts, and His Crew, attributed to Captain Charles Johnson
  5. The General History gives two intertwined causes for the desertion, Anstis's standing resentment at Roberts regarding the brigantine only as a tender and leaving her company no more than the refuse of their plunder, and the immediate quarrel in which Roberts killed a drunken crewman, ran the dead man's messmate Jones through the body and was beaten by him, after which the company sentenced Jones to two lashes from every man; causation here is plural and no single strand is confirmed. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates (1724), chapter IX, Of Captain Bartho. Roberts, and His Crew, attributed to Captain Charles Johnson; A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates
  6. The General History states that the brigantine carried away 70 hands and was an excellent sailer whose loss was a sensible shock to Roberts's crew; the figure of about a hundred carried in this archive's own research brief and printed by neither later account consulted matches the complement later put aboard the Morning Star and is not supported by any document read for this record. Disputed The sources disagree, and we say how. Period narrative: A General History of the Pyrates (1724), chapter IX for the 70 hands and chapter X for the Morning Star's complement of a hundred men, attributed to Captain Charles Johnson; A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates
  7. The petition drew a commercial rather than a punitive response in London: Richard Harris reported on 7 December 1722 that the considerable West India traders, the assurance offices and most others in trade were clear that the soonest endeavours should be used to get the pirates called in or pardoned, John Hyde junior and 26 other merchants memorialised the Council of Trade and Plantations to the same effect on 13 December 1722, and the Board represented on 10 January 1722/3 that there was no reason why a royal proclamation of pardon should not issue, though no proclamation answering this petition appears in the calendar volume. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Calendared state paper: Mr Harris to Mr Popple, 7 December 1722, item 376, C.O. 323, 8. No. 35; Memorial of John Hyde and other merchants, 13 December 1722, item 387, C.O. 323, 8. No. 34; Council of Trade and Plantations to the Lords Committee of the Privy Council, 10 January 1722/3, item 411, C.O. 324, 11. pp. 3-6, all in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 33, 1722-1723
  8. HMS Winchelsea under Captain Henry Orme carried nine of the company from Tobago into Antigua in May 1723, where Governor John Hart examined them aboard and seven were tried at St John's on 17 May before fourteen commissioners; John Fenn, formerly gunner of the brigantine, was convicted and afterwards hung in chains on Rat Island, and Hart's own account of the sentences does not reconcile, so this record states no execution total. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Calendared state paper: Governor Hart to the Council of Trade and Plantations, St Christophers, 8 June 1723, item 576, with enclosed Antigua Council minutes, C.O. 152, 14. ff. 223-225, 226v.-230v., 232v., in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 33, 1722-1723