Antigua

Leeward Islands sugar colony and a seat of the English Leeward Islands government, where commissioners appointed for the trial of piracies tried and hanged pirates at St John's in May 1723 and whose southern inlet at English Harbour became a naval yard from the mid 1720s, the legislature assigning the harbour to the Crown in 1725.

Also writtenAntigua (the modern English spelling); Antego (English map variant, eighteenth century); Antegoa (English variant in official correspondence, 1723)

Antigua is a small island of low, dry ground in the eastern Caribbean, English throughout the years this archive covers. It earns its place here for reasons that have less to do with pirates than with paper. It was a working seat of the Leeward Islands government, so its governors wrote constantly to London. And it had a court that could hang men.

The coastline was fixed; the jurisdiction attached to it was not. Antigua was one island inside the English Leeward Islands general government, which also took in Saint Christophers, Nevis and Montserrat. Governors moved between islands and dated despatches from wherever they were sitting. Hart's report of the Antiguan pirate trial of 1723 is headed from Saint Christophers. Search by dateline and you will miss half the business.¹

The names on the paper

English usage stayed unsettled into the middle of the eighteenth century. Governor John Hart wrote "Antegoa" on 8 June 1723, and map titles still carried the doublet "Antigua or Antego" in the 1750s. The variant forms are indexed here; the modern spelling alone will not find the period documents.²

Sugar, slavery and the sloops

By the last quarter of the seventeenth century the economy was sugar, which in Antigua meant slavery. Later in the eighteenth century enslaved labour built the naval infrastructure at English Harbour, as the World Heritage inscription states plainly. No island-wide count between 1690 and 1725 has been verified here.³

Sugar, rum and molasses went out to England and the North American colonies; provisions, timber and enslaved people came in. Antiguan sloops were routine prey.

The Bonetta, November 1716

On 9 November 1716 the sloop Bonetta of Antigua, Abijah Savage commander, was overhauled and plundered between St Thomas and St Croix. Two pirate sloops took her: the Mary Anne under Samuel Bellamy, who declared himself an Englishman born in London, and the Postillion under Louis de Boure, each of 8 guns and 80 to 90 men. De Boure is often identified with Olivier Levasseur, called La Buse; that identification is not made here.⁴

One thing this place did not see. Bellamy took the Whydah Gally after a three-day chase begun in the Windward Passage between Hispaniola and Cuba. Where it ended is contested: one account puts the capture in the Passage in spring 1717, the better-established alternative near Long Island in the Bahamas in late February. Neither reading involves Antiguan waters.

The despatch route to Whitehall

Governor Walter Hamilton wrote from Antigua on 14 December 1716, enclosing Savage's deposition and five other papers, among them Hornbe's estimate of pirate strength off Cuba. HMS Scarborough reached Antigua on 4 January 1717, and Hamilton at once put an officer and forty of the King's troops aboard her, to enable Captain Hume to annoy the pirates if he met them. On 18 February the Council of Trade and Plantations forwarded the extract and affidavits to Mr Secretary Methuen, with his report that the islands lay in a very defenceless condition, their forts and platforms very much out of order. On 1 March Hamilton put Bellamy at 26 guns with a sloop of 14 in company.⁵

The trial at St John's, May 1723

HMS Winchelsea surprised Thomas Anstis and John Fenn, the Calendar's Finn, careening at Tobago in April 1723. On 11 May Captain Orm brought nine of the pirates into Antigua. Two were found to have been forced and were made witnesses. The remaining seven were brought to trial on the 17th at the town of St John's, before fourteen persons named by His Majesty's commission for the trial of pirates. Captain Finn, an associate of the infamous Roberts the pirate in Hart's phrase, was tried first and convicted with six more of his associates; a Portuguese man was acquitted by the Court of Admiralty. Five were executed at high water mark, and one of the condemned, being very penitent, was reprieved at the gallows. Finn's body was hung in chains on Rat Island, in the mouth of the commercial harbour, addressed to every crew that entered or cleared.⁶

Roberts had been dead fifteen months, his company tried at Cape Coast Castle the year before.

Hart's covering letter of 8 June shows machinery that was standing rather than improvised, and an instrument gone astray. The commission under the Great Seal for the trial of pirates had gone to England among Hamilton's papers, so the court sat on the record of it kept in the Secretaries' Office, and Hart asked whether a fresh commission should be sent out for his government. Whitehall was pressing that summer for authentic minutes of such courts, though the instruction of 16 July went to the governor of Jamaica.

The count that will not close

Set the figures out and they do not add up. Nine taken, two made witnesses, seven tried, seven convicted, five executed, one reprieved at the gallows, one Portuguese acquitted, Finn gibbeted. Finn "convicted with six more of his associates" is a conviction figure, not a rival execution figure. The most economical reading makes the five additional to Finn, hanged and then hung in chains, leaving one reprieved and making seven. The name comes two ways as well: the Calendar prints Finn, later writers Fenn.⁷

Two harbours

St John's Harbour, on the north-western coast, held the town, the customs house and the courts. English Harbour, on the south coast, is the more consequential anchorage: a deep, almost land-locked inlet screened by hills, entered through a narrow mouth across which Fort Berkeley was built on a spit in 1704. One work could command that entrance. It gave careening ground, the limiting maintenance operation for a wooden warship in the tropics. And it was a hurricane hole. On 19 and 20 September 1723 a storm drove forty-seven vessels ashore at Antigua while HMS Hector and HMS Winchelsea took no damage. Later accounts have thirty-five ships lost in the other harbours while English Harbour's shipping went untouched; the contemporary list draws no such division, and never says where the two King's ships lay. Two years later the legislature assigned the harbour to the King, adjoining land followed in 1729, and the yard grew from there.⁸

What the sources cannot yet give is the trial itself. Nearly everything here reaches us through Cecil Headlam's printed Calendar of State Papers Colonial, which abstracts documents rather than transcribing them, so the executions are known by a summary that does not reconcile, the captain's name survives in two spellings, and even the archival citation for Savage's deposition is disputed. Colonial Office 152 and the court's own record, if it survives, would close the gap.

What the evidence does not settle

1723 Antigua trial numbers

Whether Finn counts among the five executed is unresolvedUnverified

Archival reference for Abijah Savage's deposition

Archival citation for Savage's deposition is not settled between sources

Founder of the 1632 settlement

1632 settlement founder unsettled: Edward Warner, Thomas Warner, Codrington

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.

Antigua was one island inside the English Leeward Islands general government, which also embraced Saint Christophers, Nevis and Montserrat; governors moved between the islands and dated their despatches from wherever they were then resident, so that Governor John Hart's report of the Antiguan pirate trial of 1723 is headed from Saint Christophers and Leeward Islands business is scattered across island datelines. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. State papers via calendar: Governor Hart to the Council of Trade and Plantations, St Christophers, 8 June 1723, CSP Colonial vol 33 entry 576 (C.O. 152, 14); Hart's despatches of 3 and 11 December 1723, entries 771, 772, 784 and 785
The island's name was written unstably in English administrative and cartographic usage, Governor Hart writing "Antegoa" on 8 June 1723 and English map titles carrying the doublet "Antigua or Antego" as late as the middle of the eighteenth century. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. State papers via calendar: Governor Hart to the Council of Trade and Plantations, 8 June 1723, CSP Colonial vol 33 entry 576; Emanuel Bowen, A new and accurate map of the island of Antigua or Antego, 1752, Library of Congress G5050 1752.B6
Antigua's economy in the period was sugar produced by enslaved Africans, and enslaved labour built the naval infrastructure at English Harbour; no island-wide count of enslaved people for any year between 1690 and 1725 has been verified. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Statutory heritage documentation: UNESCO World Heritage List no. 1499, Antigua Naval Dockyard and Related Archaeological Sites, for the enslaved labour that built the yard (Confirmed)
The sloop Bonetta of Antigua, Abijah Savage commander, was overhauled and plundered between St Thomas and St Croix on 9 November 1716 by two pirate sloops, Samuel Bellamy commanding the Mary Anne and Louis de Boure the Postillion, each of 8 guns and 80 to 90 men, Bellamy declaring himself to be an Englishman born in London; the identification of de Boure with Olivier Levasseur, called La Buse, is not verified and is not asserted. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. State paper via calendar: Deposition of Abijah Savage, enclosure to Governor Hamilton to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Antigua, 14 December 1716, CSP Colonial vol 29 entry 425 (C.O. 152, 11. Nos. 45, 45 i.-vi.)
The Leeward Islands governors at Antigua were a principal channel of pirate intelligence to Whitehall: Walter Hamilton wrote from Antigua on 14 December 1716 enclosing Savage's deposition and other papers, put an officer and forty of the King's troops aboard HMS Scarborough when she reached Antigua on 4 January 1717, and reported on 1 March 1717 that Bellamy commanded a ship of 26 guns with a sloop of 14 in company; the Council of Trade and Plantations forwarded an extract and the affidavits to Mr Secretary Methuen on 18 February 1717 with Hamilton's report that the islands lay in a very defenceless condition, their forts and platforms very much out of order. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. State papers via calendar: Governor Hamilton to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Antigua, 14 December 1716 and 1 March 1717, CSP Colonial vol 29 entries 425 and 484 (C.O. 152, 11); Council of Trade and Plantations to Mr Secretary Methuen, 18 February 1717, entry 473 (C.O. 152, 39. No. 126)
Antigua hosted a documented pirate trial in 1723: HMS Winchelsea, Captain Orm, arrived at Antigua on 11 May with nine pirates taken on the island of Tobago, two were found to have been forced and were made witnesses, the remaining seven were brought to trial on 17 May at the town of St John's before fourteen persons named by His Majesty's commission for the trial of pirates, Captain Finn, an associate of the infamous Roberts the pirate, was convicted with six more of his associates while a Portuguese man was acquitted by the Court of Admiralty, five were executed at high water mark in the town, one of the condemned was reprieved at the gallows, and Finn's body was hung in chains on Rat Island in St John's Harbour. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. State paper via calendar: Governor Hart to the Council of Trade and Plantations, St Christophers, 8 June 1723, with enclosure 576.i, minutes of Council April to May 1723, CSP Colonial vol 33 entry 576 (C.O. 152, 14. ff. 223-225, 226v.-230v., 232v.)
The Calendar's own figures for the 1723 Antigua trial do not reconcile, giving nine taken, two made witnesses, seven tried, seven convicted, five executed, one reprieved at the gallows, one Portuguese acquitted and Finn gibbeted, so the execution total is carried as unsettled and the phrase "convicted with six more of his associates" is a conviction figure that must not be quoted as a rival execution figure; the pirate captain's name is likewise unsettled, printed Finn in the Calendar and Fenn by later writers, and both forms are indexed. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. State paper via calendar: Governor Hart to the Council of Trade and Plantations, 8 June 1723, CSP Colonial vol 33 entry 576 (C.O. 152, 14), for the Calendar reading. The reconciliation itself is disputed and awaits C.O. 152, 14 and the Antigua minutes of Council
English Harbour on Antigua's south coast, a deep and almost land-locked inlet whose entrance was commanded by Fort Berkeley, built on the spit in 1704, was assigned to the King by the Antigua legislature in 1725 with adjoining land added in 1729, two years after the hurricane of 19 and 20 September 1723 drove 47 vessels ashore on the island while HMS Hector and HMS Winchelsea took no damage; the widely repeated claim that 35 ships were destroyed in the other harbours while English Harbour's shipping was untouched is not supported by the contemporary list, which never states where the two King's ships lay. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. State paper via calendar: Mr Smith to [Lord Carteret], Antigua, 4 October 1723, with enclosure 721.i, list of vessels driven ashore in the hurricane of 19 and 20 September, CSP Colonial vol 33 entry 721 (C.O. 7, 1. Nos. 26, 26 i.), Confirmed; UNESCO World Heritage List no. 1499 for Fort Berkeley and the 1725 and 1729 assignments, Probable

"A large draft of the island Antegua", printed and sold by Mount and Page, London, from The English Pilot, The Fourth Book, 1737 A working English sea chart of Antigua from the standard English chart book of the West India navigation, in the spelling Governor Hart himself used when he wrote "Antegoa" in his despatch of 8 June 1723. Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, Boston Public Library, via Digital Commonwealth. Public domain (1737 work).

Antigua, 17.0747, -61.8175. On the map