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Pirate Ports and Informal Economies

The shore side of piracy between about 1690 and 1725, read as one working system: the haven anchorages, the victuallers who fed and armed the companies, the receivers who turned stolen goods into money, the officials who sold or withheld protection, and the closing of that market by statute.

Also writtenPirate nests; The shore economy of piracy; Receivers and victuallers; Informal economies

A pirate company owned nothing ashore: no dockyard, no warehouse, no market, no mint, no court. It could take a ship at sea and still not clean her, feed her or sell her lading. The anchorages themselves are at careening and havens.

The chain has four links: the haven, the victualler, the receiver and the protector. Adam Baldridge's deposition, sworn at New York on 5 May 1699, shows all four at one island. He kept a station at Ile Sainte-Marie (St Mary's) off Madagascar from July 1690, sold cattle to careening crews, bought and resold what they brought in, and was supplied from New York by a merchant of the Governor's Council.1

What the victuallers sold

Of George Raynor's Batchelors delight in October 1691 Baldridge deposed that "while they Careened I supplyed them with Cattel for their present spending and they gave me for my Cattel a quantity of Beads, five great Guns for a fortification, some powder and shott". The price of fresh beef was ordnance. Most of the food came from the islanders, who sold fowls, rice and yams.2

The Bahamian version survives only as a calendar abstract. Captain Mathew Musson, cast away in the Bahamas, whose report was read at the Board of Trade on 5 July 1717, found at Harbour Island "about 30 families, with severall pirates, which frequently are comeing and goeing to purchase provissons for the piratts vessells at Providence", and two ships of ninety tons selling there whose sailors said they belonged to Boston.3

The outward cargo

The same deposition lists what Frederick Philipse's ship Charles brought out on 7 August 1693: stockings, carpenters' tools, rum, Madeira, three barrels of cannon powder, and "some books, Catechisms, primers and horne books, two Bibles, and some garden Seeds". Baldridge paid "1100 pieces 8/8 and Dollers, 34 Slaves, 15 head of Cattel, 57 barrs of Iron." A settlement's manifest, bought with coin, livestock, iron and thirty four human beings: see the plantation economies.4

Fencing, seen once in full

Receiving produced no paper by design, and is seen only where a prosecution made somebody describe it. In John Gardiner's sworn narrative of July 1699, Kidd's sloop lay off Gardiner's Island, victualled with sheep, cider and wood, and Kidd's men gave the boatmen "four pieces of gold for their trouble". A chest, a box of gold, a bundle of quilts and four bales went ashore for Gardiner to keep for Kidd or his order; the narrative's one receipt covers a separate delivery, two boxes of silver weighing about thirty pounds handed over by the crewmen Cook and Parrot.5

Coin, and why the colonies wanted it

The unit of account was the Spanish piece of eight, worth about four shillings and sixpence in London and rated above that in the colonies on purpose, Massachusetts at seventy-two pence by 1692, while Parliament barred the export of British silver to the plantations. A company home from the Red Sea carried the one commodity a colonial port could not otherwise obtain.6

Protection, and what it cost

Protection was purchasable, and two prices survive: Governor Fletcher's protections at New York at about a hundred pieces of eight each, and the Bahamian one in the pirates' own words. John Dann's examination of 3 August 1696 states that Every's company, off Eleuthera, wrote to Nicholas Trott, Governor of Providence, offering to bring their ship in if assured of protection, "which he promised them", and that they "made a collection of 20 peices of 8 a man and the Captain 40, to present the Governor with, besides Elephants Teeth and some other things". Philip Middleton's affidavit of 11 November gives the same transaction in more detail and adds two pieces of gold a man.7

The two deponents are not independent, having left Providence in the same sloop, and Trott's answer was a plea of duress: sixty resident men against a hundred and thirteen of Every's. Robert Snead's letter of 1697 has Deputy Governor William Markham of Pennsylvania saying that "if people came here and brought money he was not obliged to ask them whence they came", but Snead was an interested witness and no answer by Markham has been found. The sixty hogsheads of sugar said to have gone to Governor Charles Eden come from Johnson's General History and are not established as an event; the one tribunal that heard the charge, Eden's own council in May 1719, is reported to have acquitted his secretary Tobias Knight.

Closing the market

Suppression went at the market before the men. The far end of the Pirate Round closed in 1697, when the islanders rose at Ile Sainte-Marie and took all Baldridge had. The near end closed by 1701, under Bellomont's campaign against custom-house paper, bonds and receivers. Woodes Rogers at Nassau in 1718 filled his council by searching the inhabitants for "a few that were the least encouragers of trading with them", and in October held a merchant in irons for trading with Vane, having "not yet a power to make an example of them here". The 1700 Act had already made the receiver an accessory; the Piracy Act of 1721, assented to on 7 March 1722, made trading with or supplying a pirate piracy in itself.

No receiver, victualler or protector named in these papers is recorded as convicted. The two known to have been taken on the receiving side, Francis Dole at Boston in 1699 and the Nassau merchant of 1718, have no recorded outcome.

What the sources cannot give is the trade nobody denounced. Almost every document here was made to punish somebody, so quiet dealing left no paper and the silences are not random. No tavern or lodging house kept for pirate custom at Nassau, Port Royal or Boston can yet be named from a primary source, and no prosecution under the 1721 Act has been traced.

What the evidence does not settle

Markham's rebuttal

  • Whether Markham answered Snead's charges

Sugar sent to Governor Eden

  • Sixty hogsheads of sugar sent to Eden rest on Johnson aloneLikely

The 1721 Act

  • Whether the 1721 Act against supplying pirates was ever used

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. A pirate company held no dockyard, warehouse, market, mint or court, so the shore side of the trade operated as a chain of four links, the haven, the victualler, the receiver and the protector, all four of which can be seen working at one island in Adam Baldridge's station at St Mary's off Madagascar between 1690 and 1697. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Sworn deposition and archive analysis: Deposition of Adam Baldridge, sworn at New York 5 May 1699 (Public Record Office C.O. 5:1042, no. 30 II), printed in J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents (1923), no. 68
  2. Baldridge's deposition records that he was paid in ordnance and stores for cattle supplied to careening pirate crews, receiving from George Raynor's company in October 1691 "a quantity of Beads, five great Guns for a fortification, some powder and shott" and further guns, shot and flour from Edward Coats's company in 1692, while the bulk of the fresh provisions, fowls, rice and yams, was sold to the crews by the islanders. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Sworn deposition: Deposition of Adam Baldridge, 5 May 1699 (Public Record Office C.O. 5:1042, no. 30 II), in Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period (1923), no. 68
  3. Captain Mathew Musson's report, read at the Board of Trade on 5 July 1717 and surviving as a calendar abstract, states that at Harbour Island he "found about 30 families, with severall pirates, which frequently are comeing and goeing to purchase provissons for the piratts vessells at Providence", and that two ships of ninety tons whose sailors said they belonged to Boston sold provisions to the same market. Very likely Strong evidence, short of proof. Calendared state paper: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 29 (1716 to 1717), July 1717, entry 635, Captain Mathew Musson to the Council of Trade and Plantations (The National Archives C.O. 5, 1265, no. 73)
  4. Baldridge's deposition itemises the cargo Frederick Philipse's ship Charles brought from New York to St Mary's on 7 August 1693, comprising footwear, hosiery, shirts and breeches, hats, carpenters' tools, rum, Madeira, cased spirits, stills, grindstones, saws, oil, iron pots, three barrels of cannon powder, books including catechisms, primers and hornbooks, two Bibles, garden seeds and hoes, and records that he returned for it "1100 pieces 8/8 and Dollers, 34 Slaves, 15 head of Cattel, 57 barrs of Iron." Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Sworn deposition: Deposition of Adam Baldridge, 5 May 1699 (Public Record Office C.O. 5:1042, no. 30 II), in Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period (1923), no. 68
  5. This narrative records that Kidd gave the boatmen four pieces of gold for bringing the cider and wood, with no description of the gold as Arabian; it separately records that Kidd left a chest, a box of gold, a bundle of quilts and four bales of goods with Gardiner to keep for him or his order, and that the one item explicitly covered by a receipt was a different delivery, two boxes of silver weighing about thirty pounds handed over by the crewmen Cook and Parrot; the narrative contains no mention of goods being transferred at anchor into two New York sloops that lay by three days together. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Sworn narrative: Narrative of John Gardiner, July 1699 (Public Record Office C.O. 5:860, no. 64 XXI), in Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period (1923), no. 79
  6. The unit of the informal economy was the Spanish piece of eight, worth about four shillings and sixpence sterling in London and rated deliberately above that value in the colonies in order to attract and retain coin, Massachusetts rating it at seventy-two pence by 1692, while Parliament prohibited the export of British silver coin to the plantations, so that pirate silver answered a legally created scarcity. Possible Consistent with the evidence, not established. Reference resource on colonial currency: University of Notre Dame, Colonial Currency collection, The Comparative Value of Money between Britain and the Colonies (coins.nd.edu)
  7. John Dann's examination of 3 August 1696 states that Henry Every's company, lying off Eleuthera, wrote to Nicholas Trott, Governor of Providence, offering to bring their ship in if assured of protection, "which he promised them", and that they "made a collection of 20 peices of 8 a man and the Captain 40, to present the Governor with, besides Elephants Teeth and some other things", and Philip Middleton's affidavit of 11 November 1696 gives the same transaction in more detail and adds two pieces of gold a man; the two deponents left Providence in the same sloop and are not independent witnesses, and Trott's recorded answer was a plea of duress rather than a denial. Confirmed Directly supported by the record. Examination and affidavit: Examination of John Dann, 3 August 1696, and Affidavit of Philip Middleton, 11 November 1696 (Public Record Office C.O. 5:1257, no. 47 I), in Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period (1923), nos. 63 and 64