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Pirates - Action!

8/9/2014

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Pirates wanted an easy life. Contrary to popular opinion they were not warlike cut-throats intent on murder and mayhem. Well, not all of them! When they hoisted the black flag or 'jolly roger' the message was 'Surrender and we will give quarter. If not, we spare none.' And they usually kept their word. As a result, merchant ships usually 'struck their colours' that is, they lowered the flags on their masts in surrender. After all, unless the master of the merchant was actually the owner and therefore had a vested interest in the cargo, his life and ship were not more valuable than his life.

However, at times some merchant vessels tried rashly either to outrun them, or to stand and fight. This put the pirates to a good deal of trouble and being basically lazy, they didn't want it. If they'd wanted danger and hard work, they'd have stayed on the merchant vessels from which they were recruited! However, in the eighteenth century many seamen on  merchant vessels had likely been in the royal navy. The war of the Spanish Succession saw a great many English sailors in action, but when it ended in 1713 vast numbers of naval seamen found themselves out of work. Finding berths on merchant ships and then recruited by the pirates they were battle-trained and experienced. 

When it came to battle the pirates had many advantages over the merchant ships. In the first place, they were faster. A captain would deliberately choose a fast ship and have rigging and sails altered if necessary. A pirate ship had flush decks. As an ordinary merchant vessel, which they all were, it would perhaps have had a raised fore deck and also a raised deck aft. Once a pirate captain decided to use the ship for himself, he would have the decks made flush so as not to hamper the easy movement of men in times of battle. He would also put more guns on her, and mount man-slaughtering swivels on the bow gunwales and also on the stern too. Swivels were small cannon able to move in all directions, and filled with murderous grapeshot. If the aim was right, a swivel could mow down a crew, tear holes in the sails and even bring down a mast.

When the order to beat to action came from the captain, the drummers (yes, pirates had musicians including fiddlers, pipers and drummers on board!) would sound the same drum roll as a naval vessel to summon everyone to their stations and they would clear for action. Since the gun deck was also the mess-deck, where the pirates slept and ate and relaxed, this meant stowing everything away to leave the space free for firing the guns. Someone threw sand on the decks to stop the men from slipping in the blood of those unfortunate enough to get themselves injured or killed. Others brought water, others gunpowder charges (powder tied up in a cloth bag), and of course the cannon balls.

Each man knew what job he had to do. The sailing crew sailed the ship, and was under the control of the sailing master, who usually had the helm. The gunners were also in crews, with a master-gunner over them. Often two, one for each 'watch'. The captain co-ordinated it all. If any man failed to obey the captain in times of action, or deserted his post, he would later be shot by firing squad. Just like on a man-of-war.

Each gun had its own crew of four to six men, and they covered their ears with wadding tied in place. No-one wanted burst eardrums. To fire a gun, they needed first to cover the air vent lest a spark ignite the new charge. Next they inserted a wet sponge on a stick into the muzzle to get rid of any residual sparks, and to cool down the barrel from the previous firing. Failure to do this could result in the charge exploding as it was loaded, killing the men or starting a fire. Then the charge (remember the gunpowder in the bag) was put into the muzzle and rammed down to the end with a ramrod, and the cannonball followed. Uncovering the air vent, they put in a fuse far enough so that it touched the charge. All this took two minutes on the Victory, Nelson's flagship.

Now they could 'run out the gun', usually on that command, that is, pull on the ropes which held it so that it rolled forward until the muzzle was protruding from the gunports in the ship's side. If they could aim it, they would do that now, but the 'aim' really was the domain of the captain, and this was where his skill lay. When the captain yelled 'Fire!' and the gun captains repeated it, someone would light the fuse and then they would all stand well back. The gun's recoil could easily kill a man. The fuse would take two seconds to burn down and fire the gun. Meantime the ship would be rolling in the sea, pitching in the waves. With the wrong pitch of the sea, the gunfire would be useless. The Captain's job was to judge the pitch and roll of the ship and the timing from the word 'fire!' to the actual blast, and at the same time have the sailing master manoeuvre the ship into position.

The aim of firing on a ship was, of course, to disable a ship, or cause enough damage that the captain would 'yield'. If they could put enough holes in the enemy ship's side, coming in close and firing all the cannons on the side closest to the enemy in a broadside, they might well achieve that aim. A broadside was not all the guns firing at once - the resulting explosion would shake their own ship apart! So they fired them one after the other down the whole length of the ship. Another manoeuvre would be to pass behind the enemy ship at right angles to her with a view to putting at least one shot through the stern windows. As the cannonball tore through the length of the ship on the gun deck it would knock out all the guns and cause carnage among the men. Game over.

Once the ship surrendered, or if they could get in close enough, it would be grappling irons and the order to 'Board!' or 'Boarders away.' The quartermaster was in charge of the prize ship, and he would put a prize crew on board and take it in convoy with the pirate ship to the nearest haven where they could loot it in peace. The prisoners were usually released without harm, although not in all circumstances. Crews were offered the option of joining the pirates, but usually not forced. They formed an orderly queue!

The pirates had surgeons on board to deal with the wounded; Roberts had a surgeon on each of his ships. 

And if that sound like a naval battle, well, in effect, that's exactly what it was. 


GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE The Adventures of Bartholomew Roberts, Pirate is out now through Amazon.
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ONE SMALL CANDLE The Story of William Bradford and the Pilgrim Fathers
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HISTORICAL RESEARCH PART 2 – THE PILGRIM FATHERS

8/3/2014

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Lists! Endless lists! That’s what historical research is all about! And the bigger the cast of characters, the more lists there seem to be.

While researching ONE SMALL CANDLE The Story of William Bradford and the Pilgrim Fathers, I discovered that within the group they were nearly all related by a system of marriage and re-marriage. This created a major research headache for me. I had lists on my walls of family trees with dates and offspring, because the children were often inter-related. I had to remember whose sister was whose wife. I also had to know where they came from, and at what point they joined the story

To begin with in 1608 the Pilgrims were a congregation of Separatists numbering 125  in Scrooby, a village situated at the point where Nottinghamshire met Yorkshire and the Lincolnshire town of Gainsborough was just ten miles east. Their ‘ruling elder’ was Richard Clifton, and John Robinson and William Brewster were also elders. Young William Bradford was in this congregation. Another congregation of Separatists was located in Gainsborough under the pastorship of John Smith.

In the early years of the 17th century, the religious persecution of Separatists was so bad that they lived in constant fear of being arrested, and others of their persuasion in London had been hanged at Tyburn. As a result, they decided to leave England for Holland, which country, unlike England, allowed freedom of worship. The congregation in Gainsborough were the first to move to Holland and they settled in Amsterdam. The Scrooby congregation followed in dribs and drabs in 1607-9 and at first joined themselves to John Smith’s group.

However, there was a huge difference of opinion between the Scrooby elders and John Smith’s idea of scriptural truth, so the Scrooby contingent attached themselves to yet another group of Separatists in Amsterdam called the Ancient Brethren. They did not agree with them either, and there was trouble brewing there when one of the elders was accused of child molestation. In short order, they decamped again and moved to Leyden to form their own group under the leadership of John Robinson, taking quite a few of the Ancient Brethren with them.

By this time, they had mixed with three hundred or more other Separatists. William Bradford later married Dorothy May in1613 whom he had met in Amsterdam, and their son Jonathan was born in 1615. Years later William Bradford married Alice Carpenter in Plymouth, NE, and they too first met in Amsterdam.

The Carpenter family, under the head Alexander, were Separatists from Somerset. After being associated with the second congregation in Amsterdam, they too moved to Leyden. Alice Carpenter (1590-1670) first married Edward Southworth, and had two sons by him, Constant (1615-1679) and Thomas (1616-1669). Her sister Agnes (d. c. 1615) married Samuel Fuller (d.1633) , while another sister, Julianna, married George Morton in 1612 and Manasseh Kempton in 1627 in New England, and Priscilla Carpenter married William Wright (1588-1633 m. in New England in 1627).

The Whites were another large family. Catherine, born 1580 married George Leggatt first, and John Carver secondly (before they ever left England.) The Carvers were passengers on the Mayflower and John became the first governor of the Plymouth Colony. Sadly he died in 1621, and William Bradford became the next governor. The Carvers had two children, but both died in infancy in Leyden.

Catherine’s sister Bridget White married John Robinson the ‘ruling elder’ of the Leyden congregation. John Robinson was the driving force behind the emigration to New England, although he never made the voyage. The White clan included Charles, Thomas, Roger (who married Elizabeth Wales), Edward, Jane, who married Ralph Thickens in Leyden and Frances who married Francis Jessop. Their cousin William White married Susannah Fuller, sister of Edward and Sam Fuller. When he died of the sickness in Plymouth, she married Edward Winslow in May 1621.

If you’ve lost track by this point, then perhaps you can sympathise with me. I have lists of Mayflower passengers, Speedwell passengers, Anne passengers, Little Fortune passengers. Lists of congregation members in Scrooby, in Amsterdam, in Leyden, in London (before they left for America), who died in the sickness of 1620-21, who survived the sickness. You get the picture.

These days, all these lists are available on the internet. In the days when I did my research, there was no internet! Or if there was, I had not discovered it yet. It took me two years to write ONE SMALL CANDLE and I tried to record the events are as accurately as possible. However, my aim was not to make a dry history book. I wanted to discover what drove these people to such desperate lengths, what life must have been like for them.

Within historical information there is always room for interpretation. From the snippets of information available I had to devise personalities for the characters, understand their personal achievements or tragedies. I had to fabricate some conversation—although in some cases fabrication was unnecessary.

ONE SMALL CANDLE is not intended to be a definitive history book. It is intended to give an overall picture of the events, to bring the people to life.

I hope you enjoy it.

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    Evelyn Tidman, the author of REBELLION, Roger L'Estrange and the Kent Petition, the second in the Roger L'Estrange series; FOR THE KING, Roger L'Estrange and the Siege of King's Lynn, the first in the Roger L'Estrange series based on a true story of the English Civil War, GENTLEMAN OF FORTUNE, The Adventures of Bartholomew Roberts, Pirate. a historical swashbuckling romance; and ONE SMALL CANDLE The Story of William Bradford and the Pilgrim Fathers.  All based on true stories.

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