PIRATE LEGENDS

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 257, 26 July 1930, Page 31

PIRATE LEGENDS

Mythical Tales of Treasure

The world is in danger of losing one of its most picturesque tales —the fable of pirates’ treasure. Recent researches are claimed by a number of historians to show that most of the notorious pirates of history were penniless men. Recently discovered records accepted by historians as authentic reveal that the buccaneers roaming along lanes of traffic on the Atlantic coast between the years 1690 and 1720 were frequently hard put financially in settling taproom accounts at a tavern rendezvous ashore and hard pressed at sea in silencing mutinous mutterings of their crews when rum casks were emptied and the horizon showed no merchantman prey for months at a time.

’True, these same ancient parchrecord the fact that many a sea rogue had concealed plunder to escape sharing it in according with grim articles signed by those who went to sea under the black flag emblazoned with skull and crossbones. But it is also added that the same buccaneers were ever willing to divulge the hidingplace of doubloons or pieces of eight in exchange for enough rum to make them drunk at the gallows when their bloody trails ended on Execution Dock.

These records, which recently came into possession of. the former Senator Lewis Stevens, president of the Cape May County Historical Society of New Jersey, are now being incorporated in a survey designed to show that there was no more profit from piracy in its heydey than there is for gunmen bandits who steal the billions that swell to-day’s l crime losses only to give up their loot in the dives of the underworld.

Many of these age-yellowed documents, with writings so faded as to require microscopic examination, were unearthed by Mr. Stevens in London, and are believed to have formed the memorandum from which Captain Charles Johnson compiled a famous “lost” book, entitled, “A General History of the Robberies and Most Notorious Pirates,” which was published in England in 1724. Others were found by the historian in sea chests and desks which for a century or more had gathered dust in attics of ancient farmhouses edging Delaware Bay. where pirates came often, not to bury than there is to-day about the dope crazed youth who leaps to the running board of a pay-roll truck with his twitching finger on the trigger of a revolver.

“As for treasure, there were few in a pirate crew ever lucky enough to have two gold pieces to jingle in their ragged canvas breeches. According to our records concerning those captured, there were, Indeed, quite a few not fortunate enough to possess even the breeches.

"Contrary to general opinion, the captain of a pirate ship was not an autocrat, but was elected and held his post at the pleasure of his crew. Nevertheless, it was the captain who made the division of the spoils, and the generosity he would be likely to display would be in dealing out grog until his men were too stupefied to realise how they were being cheated of the ill-gotten gains. “Thus it was that many a pirate captain might have possessed plunder which he would seek to conceal from those entitled to share in it. But records of the executions reveal that these buccaneers were ever ready to turn over this loot or provide a map to show where it had been hidden in exchange for enough rum to serve as an anaesthetic on the day of their hanging. The majority of captured pirates went to the gallows jesting horribly, playing the clown and prancing to the solemn tap of the drums, chests of plunder, but to steal a. fat pig or two from the pens, or to purloin a heifer from placid dairy herds. “Tale's of piracy,” said former Senator Stevens, “have been handed down from generation ’to generation, and kept evergreen in the minds of Nor-

dies who live close to the sea. Few youths have failed to find thrills in the stories of swift, rakish pirate craft, and the crew of swarthy buccaneers swarming over the bulwarks of a galleon prey. “Always the pirate legend is associated with chests spilling over with gold and jewels, but such rich plunder has been shown to be just as mythical as any air of romance ever surrounding the sea rogues in soiled silks and gaudy sashes, bristling with knives and pistols. There was nothing more heroic about these pirates timing a grotesque death march to the waterfront gibbet, and this was convincing proof that they bad each parted with even the gold rings in their ears to obtain from Jack Ketch, the public executioner, enough potent rum to send them swaggering and staggering to the waiting noose. “Records gathered by Johnson for his volume written in 1724 show that even the notorious ‘Blackbeard’ was once compelled to take flight from a tavern edging a cove on the Carolina coast, closely pursued by a brawny scullery maid, who belaboured this dread scourage of the seas With a skillet when he was unable to settle his reckoning for a vast number of leather jacks, similar to immense dice cups, in which rum was served. “In ‘Blackbeard’s’ own journal taken from his own ship after the pirate had come to grief in hand-to-hand fighting with the crew of a British sloop, there were numerous entries revealing his difficulty in "keeping his crew supplied with liquor, much less having treasure to bury. “ ‘Such a day, rum all out and our company sober.’ wrote ‘Blackbeard. ‘A d——d confusion among us, with rogues a-plotting and a great talk of all separating. I now look sharp for a prize.’ “An excellent illustration of the manner iu which pirate crews were cheated of their shares of plunder and the difficulty during that colourful century of determining who were honest folk ashore or afloat is provided in annals dealing with Henry Morgan, a Welshman, who in 1670 pillaged Puerto Bello and Maracaibo, and then equipped a fleet of 37 ships and enlisted 2,000 buccaneers from rendezvous in the West Indies. With this force, in February 1671, Morgan took the City of Panama, burning and sacking until nothing was left standing. The pirate departed with 70 horses at Chagres celebrated this wholesale plundering by broaching cask after cask of the spoils. “When the 2,000 buccaneers had reached the proper state of drunkenness, Morgan divided the loot, or made a pretence of doing so. In the cold grey dawn of the following morning the'pirate crew realised that they had received only a little more than 100 dollars a man. They also made the discovery that Morgan had put to sea, accompanied by a few trusted captains, after scuttling the rest of the vessels of his fleet.

“Morgan had set sail for England, and for reasons best known to King Charles IL, or easily guessed at, the buccaneer was knighted and made Lieutenant-Governor of Jamaica, where he is said to have continued his career of piracy while flying a flag bearing the double cross of St. George as impudently as he had shown the black one with its bones and death’s head. . ,

“The vast majority of tales concerning buried treasure deal with the plunder Captain Kidd is believed to have hidden away if there were a grain of foundation for even one out of every hundred of these stories, Kidd’s wealth would be beyond computation. “As a matter of fact, very, serious doubts have been created by our new data as to whether William Kidd ever actually engaged in piracy and it appears an absolute certainty that he never buried gold, and that he was without funds with which to provide a defence ‘when condemned to the gallows.’ ”