New York

Port town and provincial capital at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, in the 1690s the chief North American base, market and political shelter of the Red Sea and Madagascar trade, and by the 1720s a coastal port whose merchants sought protection against pirates.

Also writtenNew Yorke / New-York (period spellings of the English town and province, from 1664; the manuscript form should be recorded and normalised separately); Nieuw Amsterdam / New Amsterdam (the Dutch town, c. 1626 to 1664); New Orange / Nieuw Oranje (the town under the Dutch recapture, 1673 to 1674); Manhattan / Manhattans / Manhates / Manhatans (the island and, loosely, the town); New Netherland / Nieuw Nederlandt (the Dutch colony of which the town was capital, to 1664 and again 1673 to 1674); Province of New York (the English and British colony, 1664 onwards); Fort Amsterdam, Fort James, Fort Willem Hendrick, Fort William Henry (from 1691), Fort Anne (from 1703), Fort George (from 1714 to demolition in 1790) (the successive names of the fort on the point, which date documents issued from it); The North River (the Hudson, in period usage); The Great Dock (the principal East River landing place, later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; Possible)

Three things carry this name. The city is the town at the tip of Manhattan Island, the fort on the point, the East River wharves. The province is the royal colony running up the Hudson to Albany and out along Long Island. Third is the harbour, from the bar at Sandy Hook to Long Island Sound, where most of what follows happened.

New York's entanglement with piracy belongs to the 1690s. The town was then a haven, a market and a political shelter for the rovers of the Indian Ocean, and its governor and leading merchants were participants. In the second Golden Age, roughly 1716 to 1726, it was a coastal port whose merchants petitioned for protection against pirates.¹

The fort dates the document

Fort Amsterdam was begun on the point in 1626 and the town round it was New Amsterdam. An English force took the place in 1664 and renamed town and province for James, Duke of York. The fort became Fort James, and thereafter changed name with the reign, which dates the paper issued from it: Fort William Henry from 1691, Fort Anne from 1703, Fort George from 1714.

Fletcher's commissions

Benjamin Fletcher was commissioned governor in 1692. He was on friendly terms with Thomas Tew from April 1694, when Tew came home from the Red Sea a rich man, and that November, months later, he gave him a fresh commission. Tew was killed the following September near the Bab-el-Mandeb.²

The charges later laid against Fletcher say he took seven hundred pounds to let Edward Coates bring the Jacob up to the town in April 1693 and to protect her crew. Coates was separately reported to have put his total cost at thirteen hundred pounds.³

Read those sums with the politics in view. Leisler's rising of 1689 and his execution in 1691 split the province into factions, and much of the record survives because one faction was building a case against the other.

Philipse, Baldridge and the supply trade

The business was supply. Pirates working the Indian Ocean from bases around Madagascar wanted powder, shot, arms, rum and ship's stores, and held gold, gems and Indian textiles with nowhere legal to sell them. Frederick Philipse, the wealthiest merchant in the colony and a member of the provincial council, ran a supply trade to Adam Baldridge's settlement on Saint Mary's Island off Madagascar. Baldridge himself deposed to that traffic on 5 May 1699.⁴

By one count of the family's own records, Philipse vessels made at least five Madagascar voyages between 1693 and 1699, and more than eleven hundred African captives were bought in those years. Samuel Burgess, his shipmaster from April 1693, is credited with about fifteen thousand pounds of profit over two voyages and with landing roughly three hundred enslaved people at New York.⁴

The return cargo

Pirate commerce and slave trading were one system here, in the same hulls, financed by the same men. Madagascar lay outside the Royal African Company's monopoly, which made the route a deniable way into the trade in enslaved people, and the men at Saint Mary's were slavers themselves: Kidd's testimony accused Baldridge of luring islanders, men, women and children, aboard ship and selling them. The city's market was established by law in 1711 at the foot of Wall Street, and the burial ground north of the town was in use from the 1690s to the 1790s. The rising of 6 April 1712 left eight white colonists dead by the usual count, nine in some accounts, and brought about twenty-one executions.⁵

Kidd's memorandum

William Kidd left goods in the keeping of John Gardiner on Gardiners Island. His memorandum of what he left there, dated 4 September 1699, survives at The National Archives in CO 5/860.⁶

The bar at Sandy Hook

The approach ran past Sandy Hook and over the bar, the sill of shoals that controlled the port. Deep-laden ships worked the tides across it, and the province appointed the first licensed pilots on 9 March 1694. A ship in the Madagascar trade need not come up to the town at all, but could set her passengers and their chests ashore at a quiet landing down the coast, as Shelley did at Cape May in 1699. What brought a ship to the East River wharves was flour, biscuit and salt provisions, unobtainable at Saint Mary's.

A gold box for Captain Solgard

On 10 June 1723 HMS Greyhound, Captain Peter Solgard, engaged the vessels of Charles Harris and Edward Low off Long Island, well outside this harbour. Harris's sloop Ranger struck in the afternoon and Low got away after dark near Block Island. Twenty-six of the captured men were hanged at Gravelly Point, Newport, on 19 July 1723, the date the Newport account gives. On 25 July the Common Council gave Solgard the freedom of the city in an engraved gold box, at the instance of the city's merchants.⁷

What the sources cannot yet give is the other half of the correspondence. Baldridge's deposition survives and Philipse's own letters to him and to his shipmasters do not, so the best documented commercial relationship rests on museum synthesis; the money figures have not been followed back to the Colonial Office and Admiralty papers at Kew; and no excavated object from the city is securely linked to any named pirate, ship or event here.

What the evidence does not settle

Money figures in 1690s New York

The Jacob sum is reported as 700 or 1300 poundsDisputed
The 15,000-pound figure attributed to Burgess's voyages traces to no document

Philipse's correspondence with Baldridge

Philipse's own letters to Baldridge are not known to surviveUnverified

Kidd letters dated June 1698

Two letters to Kidd dated June 1698 conflict with the 1699 chronology

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.

New York's entanglement with piracy belongs to the 1690s, when the town was a haven, a market and a political shelter for the rovers of the Indian Ocean and its governor and leading merchants were participants, and by the second Golden Age of about 1716 to 1726 its position had reversed to that of a coastal port and naval station whose merchants petitioned for protection against pirates, so that no statement about the 1690s town can stand as a caption for the 1720s one. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Museum research and secondary account: The Philipse Family and the Slave Trade, People Not Property, Historic Hudson Valley; Twenty-Six Pirates Hanged at Newport in 1723, Online Review of Rhode Island History
Benjamin Fletcher, commissioned governor of New York in 1692, granted commissions and protection to men engaged in the Red Sea trade, was on friendly terms with Thomas Tew from April 1694, on Tew's return rich from the Red Sea, and gave Tew a fresh commission months later in November 1694. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. State paper calendar: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volumes covering 1693 to 1701, for the charges against Fletcher
The charges laid against Fletcher state that he accepted seven hundred pounds to allow Edward Coates to bring the Jacob up to New York in April 1693 and to protect her crew, while Coates was separately reported to have put the whole cost of his protection at thirteen hundred pounds; both are figures asserted in adversarial testimony and neither is an audited sum. Disputed The sources disagree, and we say how. The Fletcher charges, with the state paper calendar: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies
Frederick Philipse ran a documented supply trade from New York to Adam Baldridge's settlement on Saint Mary's Island off Madagascar, sending arms, powder, spirits and ship's stores and receiving enslaved people and plunder-derived payment, and Baldridge's deposition of 5 May 1699, printed by John Franklin Jameson as document number 68, is the single most important surviving narrative of that trade and of its New York end; museum research based on the Philipse family's own records counts at least five Madagascar voyages by Philipse-owned vessels between 1693 and 1699 and more than eleven hundred African captives purchased in that window, and credits Samuel Burgess, who reached New York in April 1693 and entered Philipse's service as a shipmaster, with about fifteen thousand pounds of profit for his employer over two voyages and with landing roughly three hundred enslaved people at New York. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed primary compilation and museum research: Deposition of Adam Baldridge, 5 May 1699, document 68 in Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents, ed. John Franklin Jameson, 1923; The Philipse Family and the Slave Trade, People Not Property, Historic Hudson Valley
New York's pirate commerce and its trade in enslaved people were one commercial system, carried in the same hulls and financed by the same men, with enslaved Malagasy people a principal return cargo of the Madagascar voyages and the Royal African Company's monopoly evaded by the Madagascar route; the city held one of the largest enslaved populations in British North America, established a public market for the hire and sale of enslaved people at the foot of Wall Street by law in 1711, and buried free and enslaved Africans in the ground north of the town, now the African Burial Ground National Monument, from the 1690s to the 1790s. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Museum research with agency heritage sources: The Philipse Family and the Slave Trade, People Not Property, Historic Hudson Valley; New York's Municipal Slave Market, Mannahatta Park, NYC Parks; African Burial Ground National Monument, National Park Service
William Kidd left goods in the keeping of John Gardiner on Gardiners Island, his own memorandum of them, dated 4 September 1699, surviving at The National Archives in CO 5/860. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Manuscript state paper: Captain William Kidd's memorandum of treasure left on Gardiner's Island, 4 September 1699, The National Archives CO 5/860
On 10 June 1723 HMS Greyhound, Captain Peter Solgard, engaged the vessels of Charles Harris and Edward Low off Long Island and took Harris's sloop Ranger while Low escaped after dark near Block Island, and on 25 July 1723 the Common Council of the City of New York gave Solgard the freedom of the city in an engraved gold box at the instance of the city's merchants; the Newport account puts the executions of twenty-six of the captured men at 19 July 1723. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Secondary account of the Newport trials: Twenty-Six Pirates Hanged at Newport in 1723, Online Review of Rhode Island History

John Miller, plan of the city of New York, 1695, from New Yorke Considered and Improved The plan drawn by the garrison chaplain in 1695, during Fletcher's governorship and at the height of the Red Sea trade: a compact town below and just above the old palisade line, the fort on the point, the East River. Original manuscript reproduced from the British Museum copy by I. N. Phelps Stokes; the accessible image is the 1852 Valentine and Hayward lithographic facsimile in the Seymour B. Durst Old York Library, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University. The 1695 original and the 1852 lithographic facsimile are both public domain.

New York, 40.7128, -74.006. On the map

Connected records

Adam Baldridge connected to New York
Greyhound connected to New York