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Buccaneers were a kind ofprivateer or free sailors,[further explanation needed] andpirates particular to theCaribbean Sea during the 17th and 18th centuries. First established as early as 1625 on northwestern side ofHispaniola after thedevastations of Osorio, their heyday was fromthe Restoration in 1660 until about 1688, during a time when governments in the Caribbean area were not strong enough to suppress them.Martinique was a home port for French buccaneers as well as pirates likeCaptain Crapeau.[2]
Originally the name applied to the landless hunters of wild boars and cattle in the largely uninhabited areas ofTortuga andHispaniola. The meat they caught was smoked over a slow fire in little huts the French calledboucans to makeviande boucanée –jerked meat orjerky – which they sold to thecorsairs who preyed on the (largely Spanish) shipping and settlements of the Caribbean. Eventually the term was applied to the corsairs and (later) privateers themselves, also known as theBrethren of the Coast. Although corsairs, also known asfilibusters orfreebooters, were largely lawless, privateers were nominally licensed by the authorities – first the French, later the English and Dutch – to prey on the Spanish, until theirdepredations became so severe they were suppressed.[3]
The termbuccaneer derives from the CaribbeanArawak wordbuccan, which refers to a wooden frame on whichTainos andCaribs slowly roasted or smoked meat, commonlymanatee. The word was adopted intoFrench asboucan, hence the nameboucanier for French hunters who used such frames to smoke meat fromferalcattle andpigs on the western part ofHispaniola after thedevastations of Osorio.English colonistsanglicisedboucanier tobuccaneer.[4]
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About 1630, French interlopers were driven away from the island ofHispaniola and fled to nearbyTortuga. French buccaneers were established on northern Hispaniola as early as 1625,[5] but lived at first mostly as hunters rather than robbers; their transition to full-time piracy was gradual and motivated in part by Spanish efforts to wipe out both the buccaneers and the prey animals on which they depended. The buccaneers' migration from Hispaniola's mainland to the more defensible offshore island ofTortuga limited their resources and accelerated their piratical raids. According toAlexandre Exquemelin, the Tortuga buccaneerPierre Le Grand pioneered the settlers' attacks on galleons making the return voyage to Spain. The Spaniards also tried to drive them out of Tortuga, but the buccaneers were joined by many more French,Dutch, and English adventurers who turned to piracy.[6] They set their eyes on Spanish shipping, generally using small craft to attackgalleons in the vicinity of theWindward Passage. With the support and encouragement of rival European powers, they became strong enough to sail for the mainland ofSpanish America, known as theSpanish Main, and sacked cities.
Perhaps what distinguished the buccaneers from earlier Caribbean sailors was their use of permanent bases in the West Indies. During the mid 17th century, the Bahama Islands attracted many lawless people who had taken overNew Providence. Encouraged by its large harbour, they were joined by several pirates who made their living by raiding the Spanish on the coast of Cuba. They called this activity buccaneering.[7] Their principal station was Tortuga, but from time to time they seized other strongholds, like Providence, and they were welcomed with their booty in ports likePort Royal inJamaica. At first they were international. In 1663 it was estimated that there were fifteen of their ships with nearly a thousand men, English, French, and Dutch, belonging to Jamaica and Tortuga. As time went on and the European governments asserted their authority, the buccaneers first became separated by nationalities and then in time were suppressed altogether, leaving behind only dispersed bands of pirates.[2]
The French buccaneers and settlers fromParis established a settlement which has now occupiedMartinique, the French word forbuccaneer was "boucanier," which directly relates to the island as the term originates from the Caribbean Arawak word "buccan," especially for the French pirates likeÉtienne de Montauban andMathurin Desmarestz.
English settlers occupyingJamaica began to spread the namebuccaneers with the meaning of pirates. The name became universally adopted later in 1684 when the first English translation ofAlexandre Exquemelin's bookThe Buccaneers of America was published.
Viewed fromLondon, buccaneering was a budget way to wage war on England's rival, Spain. The English crown licensed buccaneers withletters of marque, legalising their operations in return for a share of their profits. The buccaneers were invited by Jamaica's GovernorThomas Modyford to base ships at Port Royal. The buccaneers robbed Spanish shipping and colonies, and returned to Port Royal with their plunder, making the city the most prosperous in the Caribbean. There were evenRoyal Navy officers sent to lead the buccaneers, such asChristopher Myngs. Their activities went on irrespective of whether England happened to be at war with Spain or France.
Among the leaders of the buccaneers were two Frenchmen, Jean-David Nau, better known asFrançois l'Ollonais, andDaniel Montbars, who destroyed so many Spanish ships and killed so many Spaniards that he was called "the Exterminator".
Another noted leader wasWelshmanHenry Morgan, who sackedMaracaibo,Portobello, andPanama City, stealing a huge amount from the Spanish. Morgan became rich and went back to England, where he wasknighted byCharles II.
While the buccaneers were powerful it was not only hostility to Spain, but also lack of authority, that prevented the other states from ending the old state of affairs in which, even when they were at peace with Spain and Portugal in Europe, there was 'no peace beyondthe Line'. The West Indies were beyond the range of the European international system. Sometimes this was for their advantage but on the whole, with the intermingled possessions, trade rivalries, and disputes about territorial rights, the local conditions led to conflicts. The West Indies continued to be one of the centres of international strife throughout the eighteenth century although by that time it was regulated in the same way as in Europe, and had become inseparable from the European wars.[2]
During theSecond Anglo-Dutch War in 1665,de Ruyter attackedBarbados with a strong squadron, and the English had no choice but to base their defence on the buccaneers whom the governor of Jamaica had previously been trying to suppress. They were unmanageable and destroyed where they conquered, but they mastered the Dutch colonies ofSt. Eustatius andTobago. In 1666, however, when the French joined the Dutch in the war, the weakness of this policy was proved. The English hoped to capture the French plantations ofSt. Kitts, where there were new settlers of both nations, and so they declined to make a new agreement for neutrality. They made what was intended to be a surprise attack, but was an ignominious failure, and the English settlers in the island had to surrender unconditionally. More than 8,000 of them were shipped away, and their property was seized by the French.Lord Willoughby, the able governor of Barbados, got together an expedition for a counter-stroke, but his fleet was broken up by a hurricane in which he perished. The French captured one island after another. In 1667 naval ships from England regained the command of the sea and made various conquests, but thePeace of Breda re-established the status quo in March of that year.
Henry Morgan was knighted in 1674 and became lieutenant-governor of Jamaica. In the late 1670s there was a succession of raids on Spanish ports. In 1680 a party made its way across theIsthmus of Panama and, sailing in captured Spanish ships, pillaged the coasts and commerce of the Pacific. They had not been long on their journey when the Anglo-Spanish treaty of 1680 was signed, which at last stipulated for a real peace beyond the Line and indirectly recognised the right of the English to trade in West Indian waters. When the buccaneers returned by way of Cape Horn in 1682, the survivors found themselves treated as pirates. The French, within a very few years, also controlled their buccaneers, and in theNine Years' War (1688-1697) they were no longer an important factor. Until about 1688 the governments were not strong enough, and did not consistently attempt, to suppress the buccaneers.[2]
In January 1684, Havana responded to the attacks by the buccaneers of the Bahamas in the event known as theRaid on Charles Town.[citation needed]
In the 1690s, the old buccaneering ways began to die out, as European governments began to discard the policy of "no peace beyondthe Line".[citation needed] Buccaneers were hard to control; some even embroiled their colonies in unwanted wars. Notably, at the 1697 joint French-buccaneersiege of Cartagena, led byBernard Desjean, Baron de Pointis, the buccaneers and the French regulars parted on extremely bitter terms.[citation needed] Less tolerated by local Caribbean officials, buccaneers increasingly turned to legal work or else joined regular pirate crews who sought plunder in the Indian Ocean, the east coast of North America, orWest Africa as well as in the Caribbean.
Sometimes the buccaneers held more or less regular commissions as privateers, and they always preyed upon the Spaniards; but often they became mere pirates and plundered any nation.[2] As a rule, the buccaneers called themselves privateers, and many sailed under the protection of aletter of marque granted by British, French or Dutch authorities.[citation needed] For example,Henry Morgan had some form of legal cover for all of his attacks, and expressed great indignation at being called a "corsair" by the governor of Panama.[8] Nevertheless, these rough men had little concern for legal niceties, and exploited every opportunity to pillage Spanish targets, whether or not a letter of marque was available. Many of the letters of marque used by buccaneers were legally invalid, and any form of legal paper in that illiterate age might be passed off as a letter of marque.[9] Furthermore, even those buccaneers who had valid letters of marque often failed to observe their terms. The legal status of buccaneers was still further obscured by the practice of the Spanish authorities, who regarded them as heretics and interlopers, and thus hanged or garroted captured buccaneers entirely without regard to whether their attacks were licensed by French or English monarchs.[citation needed]
Simultaneously, French and English governors tended to turn a blind eye to the buccaneers' depredations against the Spanish, even when unlicensed.[citation needed] But as Spanish power waned toward the end of the 17th century, the buccaneers' attacks began to disrupt France and England's merchant traffic withSpanish America, such that merchants who had previously regarded the buccaneers as a defence against Spain now saw them as a threat to commerce, and colonial authorities grew hostile.[citation needed] This change in political atmosphere, more than anything else, put an end to buccaneering.[citation needed]
A hundred years before theFrench Revolution, the buccaneer companies were run on lines in whichliberty,equality andfraternity were the rule. In a buccaneer camp, the captain was elected and could be deposed by the votes of the crew. The crew, and not the captain, decided whether to attack a particular ship, or a fleet of ships. Spoils were evenly divided into shares; the captain received an agreed amount for the ship, plus a portion of the share of theprize money, usually five or six shares.[10]
Crews generally had no regular wages, being paid only from their shares of the plunder, a system called "no purchase, no pay" by Modyford or "no prey, no pay" by Enqueueing. There was a strongesprit among buccaneers. This, combined with overwhelming numbers, allowed them to win battles and raids. There was also, for some time, a social insurance system guaranteeing compensation for battle wounds at a worked-out scale.[11]
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Buccaneers initially used small boats to attack Spanish galleons surreptitiously, often at night, and climb aboard before the alarm could be raised. Buccaneers were expertmarksmen and would quickly kill thehelmsman and any officers aboard. Buccaneers' reputation as cruel pirates grew to the point that, eventually, most victims would surrender, hoping they would not be killed.[12][better source needed]
When buccaneers raided towns, they did not sail into port and bombard the defences, as naval forces typically did. Instead, they secretly beached their ships out of sight of their target, marched overland, and attacked the towns from the landward side, which was usually less fortified. Their raids relied mainly on surprise and speed.[12][better source needed] Thesack of Campeche was considered the first such raid and many others that followed replicated the same techniques including theattack on Veracruz in 1683 and theraid on Cartagena later that same year.[citation needed]
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Spanish authorities always viewed buccaneers as trespassers and a threat to their hegemony in the Caribbean basin, and over the second half of the 17th century, other European powers learned to perceive them in the same way. These new powers had appropriated and secured territories in the area and needed to protect them. Buccaneers who did not settle down on agriculture or some other acceptable business after the so-calledGolden Age of Piracy proved a nuisance to them, too. Spanish anti-pirate practices became thus a model for all recently arrived colonial governments. Some expanded them.
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When caught by anti-pirate English authorities, 17th and 18th century buccaneers received justice in a summary fashion, and many ended their lives by "dancing the hempen jig", a euphemism for hanging. Public executions were a form of entertainment, and people came out to watch them as they would for a sporting event today. Newspapers reported details such as condemned men's last words, the prayers said by the priests, and descriptions of their final moments in the gallows. In England, most executions took place atExecution Dock on theRiver Thames inLondon.
In the cases of more famous prisoners, usually captains, their punishments extended beyond death. Their bodies were enclosed iniron cages (for which they were measured before their execution) and left to swing in the air until the flesh rotted off them—a process that could take as long as two years. The bodies of captains such asWilliam "Captain" Kidd,Charles Vane,William Fly, andJohn Rackham were all treated this way.
It is doubtful many buccaneers got off with just a time in the pillory. However, a pirate who was flogged could very well spend some time in the pillory after being beaten. "The most common shaming punishment was confinement in the pillory often with symbols of their crimes."[13]
After the threat began to abate, literature brought buccaneers to glory as example of virility and self-reliance.Daniel Defoe’s works likeRobinson Crusoe (1719),Captain Singleton (1720), andA General History of the Pyrates (1724) (purportedly written by Defoe) set the tone for the glamorous ways in which later generations would perceive them.[14][page needed]
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