Posts Tagged ‘Pirates’

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Aberdeen – From a Pirate?s Abode to Tourist?s Paradise

Having lived in the shadows of the main nerve centers; Kowloon and Hong Kong for some time; Aberdeen has now been transformed into one of Hong Kong Island’s premier residential areas and also a popular tourist destination. Aberdeen is an area on the south shore of Hong Kong Island that was once known as a hide out for pirates, it was named after the Fourth Earl of Aberdeen who was the British War and Colonies Secretary.

Aberdeen which was once a peaceful fishing village has been transformed in to an up and coming commercial centre following a construction of a tunnel that links the area with Happy Valley located on the north of Hong Kong Island. Aberdeen sees thousands of visitors arriving each week mostly for short stays. Being the largest satellite town of Hong Kong, people come here to experience life on a vibrant and eclectic waterfront.

Aberdeen is known for its floating seafood restaurants on the harbor, despite its economic affluence in recent times the harbor has maintained its old charm and still remains predominantly a fishing port. Tourists are also intrigued by the “boat people” that live in the harbor, though many of them are allied to the fishing industry a dozen or so foreigners have also chosen to make their home on board a floating ship moored in Aberdeen.

A popular attraction in Aberdeen is the Jumbo Kingdom, which is literally a theme park floating on the sea complete with a restaurant, bar, shopping malls and a plaza. The Jumbo Kingdom is particularly known for its bright lights and the breathtaking image that it creates when viewed from across the bay.

Another highly visited attraction is the Ocean Park amusement park, which is one of the most sought after attractions in Hong Kong. This amusement park which features a variety of different water slides and exciting roller coaster rides draws in almost 4.5 million tourists annually and is ranked seventh in the world.

The stunning transformation of Aberdeen into an entertainment centre today just two centuries after it was the haunt of pirates has made it a popular tourist destination. The recently constructed tunnel which reduces commuting travel from the north of Hong Kong Island makes this area accessible to many a hotel in Hong Kong such as Hotel Jen.

The Islands Of Pirates

From the scenery was nothing short of spectacular: some sixty green islands, islets and reefs. The first sensation I felt on the ground is just off the warm embrace of the wind light. We look around. Across the street, to greet us, there is a tiny airport. After the formalities for entry rented a car and just outside we see to have arrived in holidays paradise. The road that runs along the sea of endless beaches seem to follow … Stroke from time to time by the wind gently sways the palms look like elegant ladies and sinuous.

The British Virgin Islands have preserved intact for centuries throughout their shocking beauty still boast the most beautiful beaches and desert of the world, a sea warm and crystal clear with a thick barrier reef that encloses an extraordinary variety of fish and the remains of beautiful Spanish galleons lie on the bottom with great chests that are the delight of divers. For the less experienced enough to have a mask, suddenly, the sensation of swimming in an aquarium filled with coral and colorful fish. For the more fortunate can also happen to hear the calls of whales that number reaches these seas as early as November.one can spot from a boat, and in these cases it is good to switch off the engines, or from the sky, with Fly BVI departing from Beef Island. They allow you to attend for just 150 yards to one unforgettable sight: the girls take refuge in the coves where they give birth to children with whom then swim together, boys, off, competing for mating. Some whales sighted reach 15 meters and are able to do seem very small boats that cross many of those seas.

The BVI, so the habitue chiamano the British Virgin Islands, however, are primarily a vacation packages paradise for sailors around the world. Dotted with dozens of marine resorts and deserted bays, the coasts of the BVI are all a perfect harbor for the boats sailing on the sea are carried away by the constant trade winds blowing. For those who can not afford the luxury of a boat for himself, there are many rental companies that offer places for mini cruise boat to measure. The most beautiful anchorages are located in Sopers Hole Road and Harbor: the first is deep and sheltered and offers daily connections by boat to St. Thomas and St. John, the other is the largest port of the island and you can breathe atmosphere a little ‘retro thanks to the many colonial buildings that skirt and the swarm of people who work in the shipyards.

Leaving the sea from where to explore Tortola. The island has 15 thousand inhabitants, its old city is Road Town, the administrative capital of the BVI. The city looks cheerful dozens of pastel houses alternate with stalls of fruit and colorful coral beaches: from Long Bay to Smuggler’s Cove up to Apple Bay, the surfer’s beach. Nearby is the Bombas Shack Bar sgangheratissimo a bar decorated with things picking up here and there. The owner, a former surfer, is rivers of beer and rum to the patrons, an accomplice to the Caribbean music and the roar of the surf. The local rum is now a rarity. The only distillery on the island is the old remains Call wood Distillery in Cane Garden Bay, producer of the famous Arundel. It was owned by a buccaneer, Richard Call wood, great grandfather of the owner and still the rum is produced following the old recipes handed down from generation to generation by the Afro-Caribbean population: the sugar cane is cut and pressed, the juice collected in large boilers and boiled, and after a series of steps the rum is finally ready for the aging of four years in old oak casks.

On the island, near Mount Sage, you can also go trekking. The area also contains an ancient rainforest. Along the paths, some practices, even on horseback, meet rare species of colorful birds, frangipani trees, agave plants and ginger. From Road Town, in the direction of MacNamara, take an old mule track that leads to the ruins of Fort Charlotte, an old fort built during the years when the pirates infested those seas. Strategically located on Sir Francis Drake Passage, the place is a great lookout point for the whole island. To the south, however, the gaze is lost in the vast expanses of plantations of sugar cane, bananas and pineapple.

From Tortola reach in half an hour, with a ferry boat, Virgin Gorda. Columbus named the island “Fat Virgin” because of its slender shape the sides and round the center, is long and 16 km wide just three.It has excellent docks: from North Sound, a veritable oasis for those who practice water sports in Anguilla Point famous for the spa overlooking the sea where you can enjoy huge lobsters and oysters just caught up to Calquhon Reef suitable for boats that exceed five feet of draft. Near Spanish Town, the marina, is The Baths, a beach characterized by huge granite rocks as high as ten meters that form caves and coves of exceptional beauty, unspoiled natural pools and lagoons. Just go up a bit ‘inwards to enjoy a wilderness: twisted mangrove roots provide an excellent refuge for pelicans, herons and iguanas whose presence is marked by characteristic signs that read “Caution Iguana Crossing”.

But you can not leave without first having BVI Anegada. The best way to achieve it to travel by sea. This can be seen just, its highest point so far only eight meters and is for this reason that Columbus called it “Anegada”, or submerged. The tiny coral atoll is also accessible by small planes from Beef Island or Tortola, in just 15 minutes. From above, what you see is only a thin strip of white sand lost in a turquoise sea. Its reef over the centuries has caused the sinking of numerous sailing ships and for this motivoera formerly inhabited by the buccaneers who used it as a basis for spotting ships in distress and pillage. The island is now home to just 150 souls who live by cultivating the land and fishing.

Simple people, the courteous and quiet, dallandatura almost dancing. Their days are punctuated by the rise and the sunset. There are few tourists, no fun at night but only untouched nature and silence. At sunset, near Flamingo Pond, will be showcased dozens of pink flamingos, undisturbed, fishing in the lagoon small fish. Continuing along the road, you come across a small wooden resort run by a lovely lady who has left the English to England to settle on the island. Lives alone with a kid named Charlie and leisure that is written in the local newspaper. Facilities include exotic breakfast on the beach and dinners of lobster and crab that she fisheries. He has a gentle manner, but the view is a bit ‘sad, like someone who has fled from God knows what. Even Steven, a former U.S. Navy Seals, a kind of Rambo, lives on organizing tours for tourists from sharks in search of strong emotions. He left behind a life certainly not common. With him, lives his brother, a fire-eater who suddenly shows on the beach.

Nassau – Haven of the Caribbean Pirates

Nassau – Haven of the Caribbean Pirates

by Cherie Pugh

Cherie Pugh discovered the true story of the Nassau pirates when sailing through the Caribbean on a traditional wooden ship. She found the court records of their trial in London, and spent years researching and writing

â??Mary Read â?? Sailor, Soldier, Pirateâ?.

This ultimate pirate yarn is now available as an ebook or paperback from www.womanpirate.com

After Queen Anneâ??s war, European, and particularly British soldiers and sailors, were left to beg for their bread all over the far-flung European colonies. Many of those stranded in the Caribbean were forced to cut logwood in the jungles, the desperate life uniting them into tight-knit brotherhoods. When they took to the sea as pirates, they were united by the Welsh Captain Henry Jennings, who led them in an attack on a Spanish salvage camp, and made off with a fortune.

[For more information on the pirate life, see my article

â??The Real Pirates of the Caribbeanâ?]

But the war with Spain was over, and the pirates were now outlaws, with the Navies of all the European powers against them. So Jennings led them to Captain Mission’s old pirate base: the port of Nassau on the island of Providence in the Bahamas. This stood directly in the line of trade from Europe to the American colonies and Africa, the triangle of goods, sugar and slaves that made England rich, and built her western cities, such as Bristol and Liverpool. As every ship had to sail the ‘trade winds’ in this direction, every ship would have to run the pirate gauntlet. Those merchants rich enough paid heavily for Naval protection, and their ships sailed in convoys.

Jennings united the pirates under Captain Mission’s code. He insisted on the honour of the Brethren of the Sea, claiming they were the only true gentlemen, those well-born being but a pack of wolves that gorged on the helpless and weak. The pirates came from the 80% of Britain that lived in desperate poverty and lawlessness, and having suffered from terrible injustice, they chose not to tolerate it.

Each pirate company aboard each ship elected a captain, to lead them when ‘chasing or being chased’ and a quartermaster, who was to protect the rights of the men from the captain. When in Nassau, these captains and quartermasters formed the Nassau council, that heard complaints, and attempted to keep the peace, not just between the pirates, but between the pirates and islanders and the occasional Governor appointed by the British government.

Those pirates such as Edward Teach, or Blackbeard as he styled himself, who could not conform to humane standards, were not welcome in Nassau. Indeed, Blackbeard and his crew were based on Saint Thomas, and then the American mainland.

Some of the pirates, such as Captain Cockram of Harbour Island, married island women, founded families, and made significant contributions to their small settlements. Captain Cockram compiled an accurate chart of the Bahamas from notes and scraps of navigator’s maps, and presented his life’s work to the ungrateful Governor Woodes Rogers. He was also involved in building the small forts that saved the islanders when they were attacked, and in organising the islanders’ effective defense.

John Haman designed and built the pirate ships at Harbour Island in the Bahamas, and he based his designs on the sloops of the Malacca pirates, ‘fast to attack, faster to run’, which were themselves based on the Arab dhow. Shallow draughted and agile, the pirate sloops were much more suited to sailing the treacherous reefs and shallows of the Caribbean. Their fleets of small, quick sloops and schooners, all with the new bird-wing sails and longer prows, glided across the water under the lightest of breezes. Despite, or because of, their smaller size, they easily outran, out-sailed and out-fought the clumsy, square-rigged, massive Navy ships. The Dutch had provided an effective defense against Spanish invasion using small, lightly-armed fishing boats against huge Spanish galleons, and these lessons were not lost on the pirates. Thousands of them flourished in the Caribbean by 1715, in companies of hundreds of men, in fleets of fast ships.

The British Navy found itself totally at a loss, too far from home, with ill and dispirited crews, who were only kept in line with a discipline so harsh it caused mutinies. The poor, starving sailors, most shanghaied by their own governments, probably dreamed of being captured by pirates, and becoming rich and free, and they could certainly not be relied upon to fight with the desperation of the pirates. And as the navy commanders made fortunes from convoying merchant ships, sometimes demanding up to a quarter of the cargo, and further contributing to the demise of trade in the area, their commitment to the actual destruction of the pirates might be questioned.

When King George lost patience with his Navy’s inability to deal with the pirates, he cleverly offered an unconditional Pardon to the pirates first. Within a few months, half the Nassau pirates had gone home, glad to end a long exile away from their families. Governor Bennett of Bermuda sent his own son to sail straight into Nassau harbour, and invite the pirates to Bermuda to take the Pardon. Henry Jennings immediately set sail for Bermuda, hundreds of pirates with him.

Then the King sent Captain Woodes Rogers to take Nassau back from the pirates. During Queen Anne’s War, Rogers had captured enough Spanish gold to finance Englandâ??s entire campaign against French domination. When he sailed his fleet into Nassau, Captain Vane met him with fireships, and forced him out again. Yet that night, Vaneâ??s supporters melted away from him. Given their love of freedom, and Vaneâ??s reputation for arrogance, they chose to live as Englishmen, in an English colony, with a Governor, rather than as the subjects of a pirate King. When the Governor sailed in again the next morning, Vane only stayed long enough to fire a volley at him, and then fled through the impossibly narrow eastern channel. Anne Bonny and Jack Rackam sailed with him. The pirate Mary Read remained in Nassau, still dressed as a man, and sought the Pardon.

[For more information on pirate women, see my article

â??Mary Read and Anne Bonny - Pirate Women of the Caribbeanâ?]

Governor Woodes Rogers was an ambitious Puritan, with little time for women, and none for the Brethren. He didnâ??t understand the piratesâ?? readiness to surrender, and was sure they would mutiny against him. Rogers had brought hundreds of colonists with him from war-ravaged Europe, but the rains brought fever, and he buried most of them within weeks. The Brethren would not farm, and when he insisted that they slave to erect forts against an expected Spanish attack, many returned to the sea.

After a successful cruise, Vane’s arrogance and disdain for the pirate code saw him lose the leadership of his pirate fleet to the handsome and popular Jack Rackam. Under Rackam’s captaincy, the pirates prospered, and after a wild revel with Tom Moody on Tortuga at Christmas, during which Anne Bonny disclosed her true identity to Rackam, he proposed that they divide their plunder and ships, and seek the Pardon.

They returned to Nassau, persuaded the Governor that they would defend his colony from any invasion by Spanish forces, and set up a trading company. As there was a new war with Spain looming, the Governor was rightfully terrified of a Spanish attack, and had to accept them. When the Spaniards finally did attack, the pardoned Brethren easily beat them off, but Governor Rogers still distrusted them.

Then the Governor heard that Jack Rackam intended to pay off Anne Bonnyâ??s first husband, as she was now the mother of Jack’s child, and he wanted to marry her. Rogers denounced Anne as a whore, threatened her with a whipping, and declared that Jack would wield the lash. Within days, Anne had tricked her way aboard the fastest ship in the harbour, one of John Haman’s own sloops, and Rackamâ??s old crew were back on the account.

When the Naval commanders based in the colonies appealed to the local Governors for money to equip small fleets of sloops, they were finally able to challenge the pirates. When Rogers sailed into Nassau, he had sloops with him, though they did not dare follow Vane through the narrow eastern channel out of Nassau harbour. Yet Blackbeard and Stede Bonnet were both captured by naval sloops that trapped them in the shallow mudflats of rivers on the American Main, and blasted them to pieces. Jack Rackam was also finally captured by a Jamaican Navy sloop, though the wild women in his crew almost fought off their attackers single handed.

[For more information on the British Government's slaughter of these pirates,

see my article â??The End of the Pirates of the Caribbeanâ?]

Any historian of the Caribbean pirates must wonder what would have happened if the pirates had refused to surrender Nassau. The ease with which half of them beat off the Spanish attack confirms that it would have been beyond the powers of the British Navy to take Nassau in their massive, square-rigged ships. If Charles Vane had not been so high-handed, and if Henry Jennings had not been so convinced that the Pardon was in the pirates best interest, they could have held the port indefinitely. That most of them chose to abandon this stronghold and return home proves that they were indeed exiles, forced into piracy to survive. That the rest found it hard to give up a life of freedom and riches is hardly surprising, in a time when to be rich and free was beyond the hope of a poor man, unless his dream came true, and he was captured by pirates.

This ultimate pirate yarn is now available as an ebook or paperback from www.womanpirate.com

The Real Pirates of the Caribbean – Heroes of Justice and Democracy

The Real Pirates of the Caribbean – Heroes of Justice and Democracy

by Cherie Pugh

Cherie Pugh discovered the true story of the Nassau pirates when sailing through the Caribbean on a traditional wooden ship. She found the court records of their trial in London, and spent years researching and writing her novel

“Mary Read – Sailor, Soldier, Pirate”.

This ultimate pirate yarn is now available as an ebook or paperback from www.womanpirate.com

The real pirates of the Caribbean were mostly desperate British sailors, abandoned by their government after they had fought and won Queen Anne’s war. From 1702 to 1713, England, Holland and Germany challenged the might of Catholic France, in a terrible war waged in Flanders and Spain. This war, fought nominally over the succession to the Spanish throne, raised England to a super power, won her entrance to the immensely profitable slave trade, and ended the centuries old dominance of France. Yet England now required no more than skeleton crews to sail her ships back, and her well-trained sailors were left begging for bread in all her scattered colonies. Other European powers also abandoned soldiers and sailors, and there were many Dutchmen, Frenchmen and Spaniards who had deserted their posts, and were now without a home.

Many of the sailors stranded in the Caribbean were forced to cut logwood in the jungles, the desperate life uniting them into tight-knit brotherhoods, sworn to protect each other through malaria, Indian attack and starvation. When the captain of a trading ship tried to cheat Charles Vane’s Company, Vane killed him, and commandeered the ship. And all over the Caribbean, the brethren followed suit, and returned to the sea as pirates.

At the same time, a massive fleet sailed from Cartagena on the Spanish Main, carrying the treasure stripped from South America during the years of the war. Now that peace had been declared, the Spaniards decided to take the immense risk of getting it home. Yet they had barely set sail when a terrible cyclone smashed into them, leaving corpses and gold littering the beaches of Florida.

The pirates heard about the treasure when Captain Henry Jennings rescued a drowning Spanish sailor. When the gallant Welshman refused to throw him back overboard, despite the mutterings of his crew, the grateful Spaniard revealed the fate of the treasure fleet. Jennings then united the pirates, and led them in an overwhelming attack on the Spanish salvage camp. They sailed off together with a fortune.

Jennings then led them to Captain Mission’s old pirate base – the port of Nassau on the island of Providence in the Bahamas. Because of the trade winds, the Bahamas stand directly in the line of sail from Europe to the New World colonies, and every merchant ship would have to run the pirate gauntlet. Nassau harbour, with its reefs and shallows and extreme tides was also too dangerous for a large, square-rigged Navy ship to enter.

Urged by Jennings, the pirates united under Captain Mission’s code, which insisted on the honour of the Brethren of the Sea. The pirates claimed they were true gentlemen, and those well-born were but a pack of wolves that gorged on the helpless and weak. Mostly poor sailors, most had been shanghaied by their own government, that required hundreds of men for each ship in their navy, yet in never managing to feed them properly, due to the corruption of the Navy commanders, killed thousands of their own men every year, many times more than were ever killed in battle.

It is within a cultural disdain for the life of the ordinary man or woman, that the pirates evolved. These men came from the 80% of Britain that lived in desperate poverty and lawlessness, and having all suffered from injustice, they chose not to tolerate it, or perpetuate it. If they captured a ship captained by a tyrant, the pirates would encourage the crew to ‘tickle’ him, before dropping him into his ship’s boat, keeping his ship for his crew to share. To them, this was justice. The pirates also released slaves from the ships they captured, for they abhorred slavery as much as any Quaker.

The Caribbean pirates lived by strict rules, chosen by themselves, and clearly expressed in their Company Articles. Marcus Rediker, in “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea – A History of Anglo-American Seafaring…” examines six surviving sets of signed Articles which all insist on one man, one vote. Their officers were openly elected, and could be challenged by any of the crew. The quartermaster’s role was to defend the rights of the crew against the captain, who could only give orders when they were ‘chasing or being chased’. Every man had an equal share in the plunder, except the captains and quartermasters, who had a share and a half.

They expelled any man who stole from the Company, even to the value of a piece of eight; any who took an open flame below deck near the gunpowder; any who raped a “prudent” woman found aboard a prize; or who bought boy or bawd aboard for amusement.

I have found the court records of two women aboard pirate ships, Mary Read and Anne Bonny, and they are the exceptions that prove the rule. Mary Read masqueraded as a man for most of her life, including her time with captain Jack Rackam. Anne stole two sloops for Rackam’s crew, dressed in trousers when attacking, and though living openly as a woman pirate, and Rackam’s wife, was manifestly good for business. Even so, it is probable that the two women contributed to Rackam’s downfall.

[For more information on these fascinating women, see my coming article

“Mary Read and Anne Bonny - Pirate Women of the Caribbean”]

As they had sworn binding oaths not to spill each other’s blood, the pirates marooned any who broke their rules. A man could be made the ‘Prince of an island’ that was no more than a strip of sand in a blinding sea. With no water, food or shade, he would die in agony within three days. Or he might be left on a verdant isle with all he needed, and the likelihood of another ship dropping in for water.

Perhaps the lasting achievement of the Nassau pirates was the introduction of the bird-wing sail to Europe. John Haman built the pirates’ small fast ships at Harbour Island, basing his designs on the sloops of the Malacca pirates, ‘fast to attack, faster to run’. The pirates easily outran the square-sailed Navy ships, and their agile sloops could easily negotiate the dangerous reefs and shallows of the Caribbean on much lighter breezes. It was not until the Navy adopted these sloops, that they threatened the pirates at all.

[For more information on Nassau, see my next article

“Nassau – Pirate Haven in the Caribbean]

By 1715, pirate fleets of small, quick sloops dominated the trade between England, Africa and the Caribbean. They kept themselves well-armed, making their own powder and grenades, and stealing all the large and small armament they needed. Sailing up to a merchantman, King Death flying from the mainmast, drums and trumpets blaring, their sloops crowded with hundreds of armed men with blackened faces cursing like the Devil, and promising mercy only upon instant surrender, they must have seemed truly terrifying. The small, under-paid, starving crew would indeed surrender instantly, knowing the pirates’ reputation for fairness to the ordinary sailor, whose sea-chests they never touched.

When their holds were full, the pirates sold their stolen goods openly at auction on the docks of the corrupt colonial governors, who disliked buying expensive, highly-taxed goods from Europe.

At its height, the Brethren of the Sea was a close-knit organisation of thousands of well-trained sailors, in companies of hundreds of men, in large fleets of fast sloops. Openly devoted to the ethics of justice and democracy, they committed a great deal of theft, but little murder. That they have been slandered as psychopaths is an ongoing injustice.

[For more information on the British Government's slaughter of these pirates,

see my coming article “The End of the Pirates of the Caribbean”]

The ultimate pirate yarn is now available as an ebook or paperback from

www.womanpirate.com