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Hurricanes and Wrecking

The storm regime of the western Atlantic and the economy that followed it: the West Indian hurricane season, the wrecks it made, and the gradient from licensed salvage through the unlicensed rush the period called wrecking to the armed seizure of another party's recovered treasure.

Also writtenHurricanes; The hurricane season; Wrecking; Salvage and wrecking; Storms and shipwreck

Hurricanes and wrecking are two halves of one subject the period treated as continuous: the storm regime of the western Atlantic, and the trade of getting goods off the ships it stranded. The 1715 Spanish convoys have their own record at the treasure fleet and are not retold here.

The season in the period's words

John Atkins, surgeon in the Royal Navy, printed the West Indian rule: "The West-Indians agree, that August and September is the Season to expect them." Hurricanes, he says, "give Warning by a preceding unusual Swell of Water", and blow "within a Chanel as it were, one Island feeling it, when the next (within 20 Leagues perhaps) has no Share". He also times them to the moon nearest the autumnal equinox, which is his day's physics, and wrong. The swell and the narrow track are observation, and modern meteorology bears them out.1

What one storm did to shipping

Atkins was ashore at Port Royal on 28 August 1722. "Of 50 Sail in this Harbour, only 4 Men-of-War and 2 Merchant-Ships rid it out, but with all their Masts and Booms blown away." That is forty-four vessels lost in one harbour in one day. Warning did not save the twenty men left on Gun Kay, whom the boats could not reach through the swell; all drowned but one. Johnson's General History of 1724 describes the same storm, agreeing with him on four particulars, though it never dates the storm and its own chronology would put it in July.2

Wrecking: the word and the rush

Wrecking was a period word, and a naval officer preserved it as slang he did not own. Captain Balchen of HMS Diamond wrote of "20 sloops fitted out for the wrecks" and of his own crew, "I lost ten in two days before I sail'd being all mad to go a wrecking as they term it." A representation in the same file speaks instead of "14 sloops mann'd with about 3,000 men" fitted out at Jamaica under the pretext of clearing the seas of pirates. The two counts have never been reconciled.3

The gradient from salvage to robbery

Salvage and piracy were divided by no boundary but by a gradient of four positions, and men moved along it without changing what they physically did. Recovery under title: the Spanish vessels working the Florida wrecks, in the General History's words "with diving Engines, to fish up the Silver". Wrecking without title: the Jamaican sloops. Armed seizure of goods another party has got in hand, which is robbery whatever the finder's title. And piracy proper. Two sums attach to the December 1715 raid: the 120,000 pieces of eight is what "the captors own themselves", a figure the Spanish envoy reporting it took as a floor, "from whence it is inferr'd, that there was a great deal more"; the 350,000 of modern writing is Johnson's figure for the silver at the camp before the raid.4

Cape Cod, 26 April 1717

The Whydah was lost on the outer shore of Cape Cod in late April, outside the hurricane season and its latitude; modern writing calls it a nor'easter, a label the period record does not use. Thomas Davis, ship's carpenter and one of two survivors, deposed at Boston that she lay at anchor, that "they cut their Cables and ran a shoar, in a quarter of an hour after the Ship struck, the Main-mast was carried by the board, and in the Morning She was beat to pieces", that "One hundred and forty-four in all" were lost, about sixteen of them prisoners, and that "The riches on board were laid together in one heap."5

The pink Mary Anne, of the same company, took the ground a few miles off opposite Slutts-bush in thick weather that same night, and her whole company walked off her at daybreak, the shore side of the vessel being dry. The two vessels struck in the same weather within hours of each other; the difference was what lay under the keel. Davis's one hundred and forty-four is a heavier single-day loss of life, even with the prisoners set aside, than the fifty-two hanged after the Cape Coast trial, a total that is itself disputed.6

The parish, the salvor and the sovereign

Governor Samuel Shute's proclamation charged the province's officers and subjects to seize the escaped pirates and the "money, bullion, treasure, goods and merchandizes" from the wrecked ship, and he sent Captain Cyprian Southack to the scene. Southack hired a sloop, sailed from Boston on 1 May 1717 and crossed the Cape by whale boat at four in the morning of 3 May; he posted notice on three meeting-house doors that he was authorised to break open doors, chests and trunks and seize what belonged to the wreck; he found the fragments of the ship scattered along nearly four miles of shore and the people "very Stife and will not [give up] one thing of what they Gott on the Rack"; and he recovered little. The coroner and his jury demanded 83 pounds as their due for burying sixty-two bodies.7

No period tabulation of shipping losses by cause has been found, so whether the sea took more of these men than the law did stays a question. Nothing yet found establishes the English law of wreck as it stood between 1690 and 1725, and no underwriter's book showing a seasonal surcharge on West Indian voyages has been found. Balchen's letter and the representation that counts the Jamaican sloops both come through the printed calendar, which mixes verbatim wording with summary. Shute's proclamation and Southack's letters are read here in a printed edition of 1923 that quotes them, and not in the Massachusetts Archives themselves.

What the evidence does not settle

Southack's salvage records

  • Southack's letters and journal on the Whydah salvagePossible

Law of wreck

  • The English law of wreck that applied in this periodLikely

Storm of 26 April 1717

  • The storm's wind, wave and sandbar figures are unsourcedConfirmed

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. The West Indian hurricane season was public knowledge and was stated in the period's own words by John Atkins, surgeon in the Royal Navy, who printed the rule that "The West-Indians agree, that August and September is the Season to expect them", recorded that hurricanes "give Warning by a preceding unusual Swell of Water" and blow "within a Chanel as it were, one Island feeling it, when the next (within 20 Leagues perhaps) has no Share", and also timed them to the moon nearest the autumnal equinox, which is the physics of his day and is wrong. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed contemporary narrative, eyewitness: John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies, London, 1735; A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies
  2. Atkins, ashore at Port Royal for the storm of 28 August 1722, recorded that "Of 50 Sail in this Harbour, only 4 Men-of-War and 2 Merchant-Ships rid it out, but with all their Masts and Booms blown away", from which forty-four vessels lost in one harbour in one day follows as an arithmetical derivation from his figures rather than as a number he states, and he further recorded that of the twenty men left on Gun Kay, whom the boats could not reach through the swell, all were washed off and drowned but one. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed contemporary narrative, eyewitness: John Atkins, A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil and the West Indies, London, 1735; A Voyage to Guinea, Brasil, and the West-Indies
  3. Wrecking was a period word for going to a wreck to get goods off it with or without title, preserved as slang by a naval officer: Captain Balchen of HMS Diamond reported "20 sloops fitted out for the wrecks" and of his own crew "I lost ten in two days before I sail'd being all mad to go a wrecking as they term it", while a separate representation in the same calendared file speaks instead of "14 sloops mann'd with about 3,000 men" fitted out at Jamaica under the pretext of clearing the seas of pirates, the two counts describing different fittings-out and not being reconciled here. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Calendared state paper: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 29, 1716 to 1717, item 158 with enclosures, C.O. 137/11
  4. The record supports a gradient of four positions rather than a boundary between salvage and piracy, since the men moved along it without changing what they physically did: recovery under title, as in the Spanish vessels working the Florida wrecks "with diving Engines, to fish up the Silver"; wrecking without title, as in the Jamaican sloops; armed seizure of goods another party had already reduced to possession, which is robbery whatever the finder's original title; and piracy proper, with the two sums attached to the December 1715 raid carried apart, the calendared 120,000 pieces of eight being what the captors owned themselves, a figure the Spanish envoy reporting it took as a floor "from whence it is inferr'd, that there was a great deal more", and the 350,000 of modern writing being Johnson's figure for the silver lying at the camp before the raid. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Period narrative and calendared state paper: A General History of the Pyrates, second edition, London, T. Warner, 1724; Calendar of State Papers Colonial, vol. 29, item 158 with enclosures
  5. Thomas Davis, ship's carpenter and one of two survivors of the Whydah, deposed at Boston that the ship lay at anchor when she was lost on the outer shore of Cape Cod on the night of 26 April 1717, that "they cut their Cables and ran a shoar, in a quarter of an hour after the Ship struck, the Main-mast was carried by the board, and in the Morning She was beat to pieces", that "One hundred and forty-four in all" were lost including about sixteen prisoners, and that "The riches on board were laid together in one heap." Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Printed trial record containing sworn depositions: The Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy, Justiciary Court of Admiralty, Boston, 1717, printed 1718, Evans N01688
  6. The pink Mary Anne, of the same company, took the ground opposite Slutts-bush south of Cape Cod in thick weather the same night and her whole company walked off her at daybreak, the shore side of the vessel being dry, so that two strandings in one weather hours apart differed in outcome according to what lay under the keel rather than the force of the storm; and Davis's figure of one hundred and forty-four is the largest single-day loss of life aboard a pirate ship in this archive, larger even with the prisoners set aside than the fifty-two hanged after the Cape Coast trial of 1722, a total that is itself disputed. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Printed trial record containing sworn depositions: The Trials of Eight Persons Indited for Piracy, Boston, printed 1718, Evans N01688, depositions of Thomas Davis and Thomas Fitz Gyrald
  7. Governor Samuel Shute issued a proclamation charging all the province's officers and subjects to seize and apprehend not only escaped pirates but the "money, bullion, treasure, goods and merchandizes" from the wrecked Whydah, and dispatched Captain Cyprian Southack to the scene. Southack hired a sloop and sailed from Boston on 1 May 1717, reached Cape Cod harbour the next afternoon and crossed the Cape by whale boat at four in the morning of 3 May; he posted notice on three meeting-house doors that he was authorised to "go into any house, shop, cellar, warehouse, room or other place and in case of resistance to break open any door, chests, trunks and other packages" and seize plunder belonging to the wreck; he found the people "very Stife and will not [give up] one thing of what they Gott on the Rack"; he found the fragments of the ship "scattered along the shore for a distance of nearly four miles"; and he recovered little. The coroner and his jury demanded 83 pounds for burying sixty-two bodies, not one hundred and two; the figure of one hundred and two is supported by nothing read here. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Documentary compilation quoting the Massachusetts Archives: George Francis Dow and John Henry Edmonds, The Pirates of the New England Coast, 1630-1730 (Salem, Marine Research Society, 1923), chapter on Samuel Bellamy, pages 127 to 129, quoting Governor Shute's proclamation and Southack's letters in the Massachusetts Archives, read in a scanned copy on the Internet Archive; the coroner and his jury are there said to have ordered the victims of the wreck to be buried and to have demanded 83 pounds as their due for the cost of burying "the sixty-two bodies"