In June 1719, Bartholomew Roberts was in his thirties, uncommonly old for a junior officer on a slave ship. The African slave ports were places of filth and disease, and unpleasant for the often press-ganged crews, as well as for the slaves.
But this trip visited upon the crew of Roberts’ ship, the Princess, another hazard: piracy. They were captured by a pirate vessel which plundered the ship’s human cargo and stores, and also recruited – with dubious volition – members of the crew, including a reluctant Roberts.
Atlantic Pirate Captain
Reluctant or no, Roberts was able to gain command of the pirate ship into which he’d been adopted, the Royal Rover. His pirates ransacked ports and ships off Africa (where he notoriously set fire to several loaded slave ships) to Newfoundland and the Caribbean. He ran an unusual ship in that he forbade alcohol. Formidable discipline and sobriety may have helped make his one of the most successful careers in the history of piracy.
Command and Style
Roberts’ style of was one vaguely reminiscent of modern racketeering. Encountering choice ships, he would offer them the opportunity to surrender and cooperate, even offering gifts, with an alternative of massacre. He also tended to swap ships with captains whose vessel outclassed his own. He ended up with three ships, the Ranger, Royal Fortune and the Good Fortune and over 250 men.
By such means, he sought to garner a blind eye and cooperation from merchants who regularly traversed the Atlantic, and even minor colonial governors. The governors of Martinique and Barbados in particular incurred his wrath. It was upon his ransom being refused by the ship Porcupine in the slave port of Whydah that Roberts burned the ship and its human cargo.
Defeat and Death
However, the Whydah incident also was the last great gesture of his career. After a long pursuit, the Royal Navy, specifically the state-of-the-art man o’ war HMS Swallow had nearly caught up with him. His fleet had scattered, and the Ranger was picked off, and, undercover of rough weather and false colours, the Swallow closed in on the Royal Fortune. Facing a battle he had no chance of winning, Roberts arranged himself in his best dress, and whipped his crew up to do their duty.
The two ships clashed in the midst of a gale early in 1722, and a blast of grapeshot from the Swallow tore away Roberts’ throat. Per his commonly-stated wishes, his crew promptly threw his body overboard. It was customary at the time to hang the corpses of pirates on display as a warning. Not wishing to be a tool of some “pathetic moral lesson,” his last request was to avoid that fate.
Aftermath
His crew eventually surrendered, and the British still managed to make a statement about the unacceptability of piracy in the British Imperial era. Fifty-six of Roberts’ newer crewmen were acquitted, seventeen sentenced seven years hard labour. But an unprecedented seventy-two men were hanged in a matter of a few days.
Legacy
Between just 1719 and 1722 Roberts captured over 400 ships. Oddly, the amount of human suffering he caused as a pirate was far less than when he was a slaver. Perhaps this is one reason why his reputation has been overshadowed by the more brutal and melodramatic Blackbeard. But his death marked the imminent demise of the classic era of piracy.
Sources:
Pirates! Dir. Henry Chancellor, Discovery Civilization Channel, 2000
Platt, Richard, Pirate, Eyewitness Books, 2007.
Lane, Kris E. Pillaging the Empire: Piracy in the AmericasNew York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998.
Ellms, Charles, “Black Bart,” in The Mammoth Book of Pirates edited by Jon E. Lewis, Carroll and Grant, 2006.
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