[He] had been a terrible pirate
in the flower
of his
youth, consorting with the King of Morocco, and carrying
into his ports
all
prizes captured by him from English, French, Spaniards,
and Flemings,
indiscriminately. By such corsair-like pursuits he
contrived to amass
immense
riches in gold and silver, and owned a large fleet of
galleys, which
was for a
long time the terror of all traders navigating the
Straits. (Life, II:
277)
How did
an Englishman,
educated at Brasenose
College in Oxford, become a pirate? Who was Henry
Mainwaring before he became a pirate? What did he do as a
pirate? How
did he
retire from that life and what happened to him once he did?
Twenty-nine years into her
reign, Queen Elizabeth
I knew that King Philip
II
of Spain planned to send an armada
against England. She sent Spain’s most feared enemy, Sir
Francis Drake (El
Draco) on a secret mission to thwart
Philip. Drake sailed with a fleet of forty-two ships to
“singe the
beard of the
King of Spain” on 12 April 1587. Seventeen days later, he attacked
Cadiz
harbor
and, according to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, looted,
burned, and sank
twenty-four
vessels with an estimated value of 172,000 ducats. Drake
also destroyed
cargoes
of staves at Cape St. Vincent. The loss of these meant the
Spanish
couldn’t
assemble barrels to hold the water and food that would be
needed for
the
planned invasion fleet. In June he captured the San
Felipe
in the Azores.
 |
The carrack was
stuffed with pepper,
cinnamon, cloves,
calicoes, silks, ivories, gold, silver, and
caskets of jewels. The
total value
was £114,000 ($32.01 million or £17.3 million
[in 2007])
and three times the
value of all the ships’ cargoes he had sunk,
seized, or burned in Cadiz
Bay.
(Ronald, 305)
|
The financial loss, combined
with the earlier destruction, ensured the Spanish armada
wouldn’t sail
for
quite awhile.
That
same year,
1587, a son was
born to Sir George Mainwaring and his wife in Ightfield,
Shropshire.
Henry was
their second son, and eventually he would have three
brothers and two
sisters.
His mother’s father was Sir William More, Vice-Admiral of
Sussex, who
often
played host to Queen Elizabeth (right) when she visited Loseley,
his
home in Surrey.
Anti-Spanish sentiment ran so high throughout England that
when she
ascended to
the throne, one speech announcing this news included "Queen Elizabeth, a princess, as you
will, of
no mingled
blood of Spaniard or stranger, but born mere English here
among us and
therefore more natural unto us."
(Ronald, 13) That hatred of Spain would
influence Henry during his formative years, just as it had
Drake.
He entered college at the age
of twelve and was “assiduous in his studies, and books were
more to him
than
objects to be placed in ‘openest view’ and seldom read.” (Life,
I: 5) On 15 July 1602, he graduated and, as was the custom,
he studied law at the Inner Temple
under
the tutelage of John
Davies, “the most
famous writing-master of his day, whose pupils were drawn
from the
noblest
families in the land, and whose skill in penmanship was said
to have
been
unequalled.” (Life, I: 5-6) In his Scourge
of Folly (1611), he wrote the
following poem “To my most dear pupil, Mr. Henry
Mainwaring.”
Your soul (dear Sir, for I can
judge of
sprights
Though not judge
souls) is
like (besides her sire)
Those
ever-beaming eye
delighting lights
Which do heav’ns
body
inwardly attire;
For her superior
part
(your spotless mind)
Hath nought
therein that’s
not angelical;
As high, as
lowly, in a
diverse kind,
And kind in
either; so
belov’d of all.
Then
(noble Henry) love me as thine own,
That
lives
but (with thy worths) to make thee known. (Life, I:
6)
Although it’s unknown what
Mainwaring did after he left the Inner Temple, he may have
gone to the
Low
Countries to fight in the Tactigjarige
Oorlog (Dutch for 80 Years War, also known as
the Dutch
Revolt) against Spain.
He possibly served under Sir
Edward
Cecil during the siege of Juliers in
1610.
Mainwaring reappears in the
historical record in 1611 with orders to hunt pirates in the
Bristol
Channel.
Rumors surfaced in 1610 that the “Notorious Pirate” Peter
Easton
sailed off the
mouth of the river Avon. Fearing that he planned to capture
as many
vessels as
he could, Bristol merchants appealed to Charles
Howard, Lord High Admiral and Earl
of Nottingham, for help. He sent Mainwaring, but no record
provides
evidence as
to whether he captured any pirates. By the time he received
this
commission,
Easton was back in Newfoundland,
his pirate
base. From this point forward,
Mainwaring and high seas adventure were inextricably linked.
In 1612 he made the
acquaintance of Sir
Robert
Shirley, an Englishman who spent time in Persia and
now served as the Shah’s envoy to King James. Although
lavishly
entertained at
Hampton Court, Shirley failed to gain assistance in the
Shah’s struggle
against
the Ottoman Empire. He returned to Persia, and Mainwaring
went with
him. One
year later, Mainwaring was a pirate, which he claimed
happened by
accident: “.
. . I fell not purposely but by mischance into those
courses.” (Life, II: 9) Once a Barbary
corsair,
though, he always “strove to do all the service I could to
this State
[England], and the merchants [English].” (Life,
II: 9) The Venetian ambassador wrote that he had no equal
when it came
to “. .
. [n]autical skill, for fighting his ship, for his mode of
boarding and
for
resisting the enemy. (Earle, Pirate,
31)
Mainwaring, like
many other English
pirates, operated out of Mamora, the Portuguese name for
Al-Ma’mora, a
town at
the mouth of the Sebu River in Morocco. Unlike many of his
countrymen
who
followed this path, he refused to convert to Islam. These
men brought
with them
their ships
– vessels powered by sails, rather than oars, that could
travel far
beyond the Strait of Gibraltar and required smaller crews –
and they
could be
found throughout the Barbary States. “Between 1604 and 1615
it is
estimated
that there were several hundred Englishmen operating on
corsair ships
from
Tunis.” (Earle, Corsairs, 50)
There
were so many of them that “nulli melius
piraticam exercent
quam Angli”
(None make better pirates than the English) became a
well-known maxim. (Life, I: 10)
Mainwaring’s ship was the Resistance,
which he purchased from Phineas
Pett in 1612 for approximately £700. She was 160 tons,
fast,
and amply
armed. His principal targets were Spanish vessels, and he
often lay in
wait off Cape
Spartel, the entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar.
[H]e soon proved himself a
scourge and a
terror, for
hardly a ship passed his lair without either suffering
damage or
capture. By
this means he soon found himself at the head of a
powerful fleet . . . . (Life, I:
12)
Those successes also
guaranteed that he never wanted for crews to man his ships.
For the
Spanish, it
was as if El Draco had returned to
haunt them.
His influence and power
became such that he basically controlled the coming and
going of all
pirate
ships. “[T]here were some 30 sail of Pirates in Mamora,” and
before any
of them
embarked on a voyage of plunder, “I suffered none to go in
or out, but
with
condition not to disturb any of your Majesty’s subjects.” (Life,
II: 10) Nor would he
knowingly plunder such vessels, and when he did, he made
restitution
according
to a report in the Calendar of State
Papers for Ireland.
He . . . stopped two
merchantmen . . . with
cargoes
for a Spanish port. After taking what he required of
their lading, he
dismissed
the ships, and left the crews to continue their voyage.
As soon as the
vessels
. . . reported their loss . . . a complaint was
afterwards lodged by a
Galway
merchant, Valentine Blake, that the goods taken out of
these foreign
vessels
were his, and that they were consigned to his factor in
Spain, Anthony
Lynch,
for sale. This was brought to Mainwaring’s knowledge,
and he forthwith
anchored
off the port, and sent for the factor to come aboard his
ship, in order
to test
the truth of Blake’s statement. Having received
satisfactory evidence
that such
was the case, Mainwaring immediately restored the whole
of his plunder,
which
amounted to about [£]3000 . . . (Life, I: 13)
His
attacks on Spanish ships
continued unabated and became such a problem that King Philip
III (right) sent an
emissary to Mainwaring. The Duke of Medina told him:
If you will deliver up Mamora
to the King of
Spain,
his Majesty in return for this gracious favour will be
pleased to
bestow on you
a free pardon and a considerable sum of money. (Life, I:
14)
If he agreed, he would be
permitted to keep his ships and plunder. Medina also offered
him “a
high
command in the Spanish royal fleet.” (Life,
I: 14) Mainwaring refused. Nor was Philip the only ruler to
offer
pardons.
The Duke of Savoy sent me my
pardon. The Duke
of
Florence sent me my pardon . . . . . The Dey of Tunis .
. . swore . . .
that if
I would stay with him he would divide his estate equally
with me, and
never
urge me to turn Turk, but give me leave to depart
whensoever it should
please
your Majesty [James I of England] to be so gracious as
to pardon me.
(Life, II:
11)
To stay true to his pledge
not to harm Englishmen and shipping, Mainwaring negotiated
the release
of all
Christians enslaved by the corsairs
of
Salé (present-day Rabat), Morocco.
Piracy also flourished off
Newfoundland, where many European fishermen harvested cod.
It had
earlier drawn
Peter Easton to seek his fortune, and now Mainwaring decided
to venture
there
in 1614.
Captain Mainwaring with divers
other captains
arrived
. . . on the 4th of June, having 8 sail of war-like
ships, one whereof
they
took at the bank, another upon the main of Newfoundland,
from all the
harbours .
. . of every six mariners
they take one,
and . . . one fifth part of their victuals; from the
Portuguese ships
they took
all their wine and other provisions, save their bread;
from a French
ship . . .
they took 10,000 fish . . . after they had continued
three months and a
half in
the country, taking their pleasure of the fishing fleet,
the 14th of
September
1614, they departed, having with them from the fishing
fleet about 400
mariners
and fishermen; many volunteers, many compelled. (Gosse, History,
118-19)
While
Mainwaring prowled these
waters, King Philip III had had enough of the pirates of
Mamora. He
sent a
fleet of 99 ships there in the summer of 1614. With most of
the
corsairs
absent, few men were left to defend the city, but they sank
two ships
at the
mouth of the harbor to prevent the Spanish invaders from
swooping in.
Once
Spanish guns decimated the spars and yards that blocked the
entrance,
the
corsairs realized the hopelessness of their situation and
torched their
ships
before fleeing. Once they were gone, Spain seized control of
the pirate
haven.
Unable to return to Mamora,
Mainwaring moved his base of operation to Villafranca and
resumed his
crusade
against Spanish shipping. In six weeks, his six ships
plundered 500,000
crowns
from the Spaniards. Fed up with such piracy, Philip III
issued letters
of
marque to any of his subjects who wanted them, and ordered a
fleet of
five
royal ships to hunt down Mainwaring. In July 1615, they
battled his
three
vessels, which decimated the Spanish fleet; it only managed
to escape
complete
destruction by slipping away during the night.
[The Spaniards] were so beaten
by them, that
with loss
of many of their men and great hurt done in their ships
were fain to
use all
diligence for the recovery of the port of Lisbon. (Earle, Pirate, 31)
According to Mainwaring,
Philip again offered to pardon him and give him an annual
allowance of
20,000
ducats if he served as “General of that squadron.” (Life,
II: 12)
With Mainwaring’s continued
successes, the ambassadors of Spain and France lodged
frequent
complaints
against him in London. James could no longer afford to
ignore their
entreaties,
but neither did he wish to wage war with these countries. He
sent an
emissary
to Mainwaring with two choices. Either he accept “a free
pardon . . .
and
abandon piracy” or the king would “send a fleet of
sufficient strength
that would
compel him to surrender, even in the harbours of his ally
the Emperor
of
Morocco.” (Life, I: 29) The last
thing Mainwaring wished to do was anger his sovereign, so he
sailed to
Ireland
in November 1615, and sent friends to England to negotiate
his
surrender.
While he waited, he received
many offers from Irish seamen who volunteered to serve with
him, but he
declined them all. On 9 June 1616, at the behest of
influential nobles,
James
granted the pardon because Mainwaring “had committed no
great wrong”. (Life, I: 30)
But Mainwaring’s connection
to piracy didn’t end with this pardon. Like Benjamin
Hornigold
would do a
century later, Mainwaring became a pirate hunter.
In 1616 seven ships departed
Newfoundland for England. Thirty pirate ships descended upon
them,
sinking two vessels.1 The brigands plundered the
other five,
including the Mary Anne, which belonged to
the port
of London. These losses impelled the Levant
Company to seek the king’s support
in suppressing the pirates. Appointed to this task, Henry
Mainwaring
zealously
hunted for any pirates prowling English waters. He
discovered three
such
vessels anchored in the River Thames. Upon boarding one near
Leigh-on-Sea,
located on the north bank just thirty-four miles east of
London, he
found
Christian captives, whom he freed.
Two years later, King James
knighted the thirty-one-year-old Mainwaring while the two
were at
Surrey. That
same year he also became “a
gentleman of the royal bedchamber”, and the king
often consulted with Mainwaring on maritime policy.2
His knowledge in this sphere was known worldwide. Pietro
Contarini, the
Venetian ambassador to England, wrote:
There is here an English
gentleman, a certain
Captain
Mainwaring, of yore a most famous pirate, who has
repeatedly cruised in
the
Levant and in the Indies, and taken a number of vessels,
having had as
many as
six or eight of his own; and for nautical skill, for
fighting his ship,
for his
mode of boarding, and for resisting the enemy, he is
said not to have
his
superior in all England. (38)
. . . I find that
for
nautical experiences and
sea-fights, and for a multitude of daring feats
performed afloat when
he was a
pirate, he is in high repute, being considered resolute
and courageous,
and
perfectly suited to that profession, understanding the
management of
large
ships better, perhaps, than anyone . . . on this very
day his Majesty
sent me a
very earnest message in recommendation of him. (40)
Having acquired such
experience, Mainwaring decided to share his knowledge with
others.
After
reading his forty-eight-page discourse , these influential
people
persuaded him
to share it with King James, which he did in 1618 as a thank
you for
his
pardon. Of the Beginnings, Practices, and
Suppression of Pirates was never officially published,
but “affords
to the
student of English history a vivid picture of piracy as it
flourished
during
the early part of the 17th century. The tactics adopted by
the pirates,
with an
account of their various haunts when in need of a refit or
victuals,
together
with advice on their suppression, are all discussed at
length in a
shrewd and
learned manner by a former follower of the ‘trade’.” (Life
I: 46)
Although Mainwaring never
elaborated on what led him to follow the path of piracy – a
course he
never
planned to take – Ambassador Contarini told his superior,
the Doge of
Venice:
[M]any years ago Mainwaring
undertook to go
with three
ships to the Indies, but owing to the intervention of
the Spanish
ambassador,
the projected voyage did not take place. Disgusted at
this treatment,
he went
off with a number of vessels; and by way of revenge on
the Spaniards,
proceeded
to capture any of their ships that chanced to cross his
path, finally
finding
himself at the head of thirty or forty sail, mostly
taken at the
expense of the
Spaniards. (Life,
I: 50)
When Mainwaring wrote his Suppression
of Pirates, he had five specific
goals that he hoped to achieve.
The purpose of this discourse
consists in
showing:
- Their
beginnings,
and how they relieve themselves
within your Majesty’s Dominions.
- The ground
of
opinion which encourages men in this
course of Piracy; and of those are called
Perforst-men.
- How they
use to work
at Sea.
- Where and
what times
they use to be where they must
water, ballast, wood, trim their ships, and sell
their goods.
- A means as
well to
prevent as suppress them. (Life, II:
13)3
Another reason for this
treatise
stemmed from the
upsurge in piracy since James became king. “[S]ince Your
Highness’s
reign there
have been more Pirates by ten to one than were in the whole
reign of
the last
Queen.” (Gosse, History, 123) A 1563
count of known pirates identified 400 of them. Elizabeth
I died forty
years
later, and James VI of Scotland became James I of England.
Between 1608
and
1614, as many as 1,000 men, aboard some 300 ships, had
turned to piracy.4
Between 1620 and 1623,
Mainwaring served as Lieutenant of Dover
Castle and Deputy Warden of the Cinque
Ports. Dover, Sandwich, Hastings, Romney, and Hythe
had banded
together around
1050 as the Confederation of Cinque Ports. Their primary
purposes were
to
defend against invasion from the English Channel and to
provide Edward
the
Confessor with men and ships. After the fourteenth
century, the
fortifications
and ports fell into decline. When Mainwaring assumed his
duties, they
had
decayed even further. The guns at Dover
Castle “were without gunpowder, and in
lieu of it ashes and sand were substituted!”, while none
“were able to
defend
the coast from attacks of ships of war, nor defend their own
merchantmen who
sought refuge there.” (Life I: 72-3)
During his tenure, he remained vigilant and pursued the
duties of his
office
with the same diligence with which he attacked everything he
did in
life. In
appreciation of his service, Dover elected him to Parliament
in 1622.
Dover Castle
In 1614 James proposed an
alliance between his country and Spain by suggesting a
marriage
between his son,
Charles, and Philip
III’s
daughter, Infanta Maria Anna. There were a variety of
roadblocks to surmount, however, not least of which was the
fact that
she was a
Catholic and Charles was a Protestant. Nine years later,
James sent
Mainwaring
to Calais to collect the Spanish ambassador in hopes that
the two
monarchs
might finally come to terms. Tired of the protracted
negotiations,
Charles
decided to take matters into his own hand. Accompanied by George
Villiers, Duke
of Buckingham, the Prince of Wales traveled incognito to
Spain so he
could woo
Maria Anna himself. These two men were just beginning their
journey
when
Mainwaring unwittingly crossed paths with them, while
escorting
Ambassador
Boischot to London.
Coming
towards London . . . we meet three disguised with hoods
and false
beards, and
presently after followed one from Gravesend to tell Sir
Lewis Lewkener
and
myself that they came out of Essex, and would not leave
at the ordinary
bridge,
and had false beards and pistols, which suspicious
fashion make me send
a
packet after them to stay them. (Life I:
93)
Charles
I (left)
by Arthur VanDyck and Maria Anna of
Spain (right) by Diego Velasquez
The problem with Charles’
decision was that his presence in Spain opened the
possibility that
Philip
could hold him hostage. Rather than allow that to happen,
arrangements
were
made to bring him home. Mainwaring was named captain of the
Prince
Royal, flagship of a fleet of naval
vessels under the command of Admiral, Earl
of
Rutland. The flotilla succeeded
in extracting Charles and returned home in October. News of
the
prince’s
homecoming was greeting with so much joy that “[a] cartload
of
offenders on
their way to Tyburn
were set at liberty, and bonfires were lighted all along
the Prince’s route” to London. (Life I:
116)
Villiers had been appointed
Lord High Admiral in 1619, and he surrounded himself with
able and
experienced
seamen who could advise and assist him in improving the
navy.
Mainwaring was
one of these men, and he presented Buckingham, “my most
honoured Lord
and
Patron,” with a treatise on seamanship that he had written
between 1620
and
1623 while at Dover Castle. Other navigational publications
had
appeared prior
to this, but his work combined “the practice of mechanical
working of
ships,
with the proper terms belonging to them.” (Life
I: 134)
He also became involved in a
variety of other naval matters. He proposed that Portsmouth
should become a
permanent naval base. Buckingham endorsed and eventually
adopted this
recommendation. Mainwaring became Surveyor of the Navy and
played a
major role
in deciding what ships should be refitted, repaired, or
decommissioned
as the
nation prepared for war with France, which broke out in
1627. A 1622
survey identified
thirty ships in the Royal Navy, but when James I died three
years
later,
two-thirds of those vessels were unseaworthy. This stemmed
partly from
the lack
of funds in the royal treasury and from rampant corruption
and
embezzlement,
abuses which Mainwaring and others investigated between 1626
and 1627.
In 1630 Mainwaring fell in
love with and married Fortune Gardiner, the youngest
daughter of Sir
Thomas
Gardiner of Basing’s Manor in Peckham. Her father apparently
didn’t
approve of
the match, so the couple eloped. Gardiner mentioned the
affair in a
letter to
the king.
But my youngest daughter . . .
without my
consent or
knowledge, mounted up to top of Paul’s, the nearer to
heaven, for to
shew God
there, how wise she was in her actions, and there she
was married unto
Sir
Henry Mainwaring; and yet she was not there taken up in
heaven, but
came down
again upon earth, here further to trouble me before I
die, although the
great
care and charge I had in breeding her up did not deserve
such
disobedience.
(Life I:
214)5
But their time together was
brief. Lady Mainwaring died in three years later and was
buried at St.
Giles
Church in Camberwell.
During
the reign
of Henry
VIII, a group of seafarers had banded together and called
themselves
the Guild
of
the Holy Trinity. Initially, their purpose was to
regulate the
piloting of
ships in local waters. Over the years the guild expanded to
become the Corporation
of
Trinity House (left). Mainwaring joined this
brotherhood in
1627; three years
later, he was elected its Master. He was later re-elected to
the post
in 1642,
the same year that year civil
war erupted in August. Ever a faithful adherent
to the Royal House of Stuart, Mainwaring sided with the Royalists.
Those who
defended the constitution and the rights of all Englishmen
were Parliamentarians.
Since Trinity House held a royal charter and favored the
king, Parliament considered the Corporation a suspicious
organization
and
called for the removal of any officials who supported His
Majesty. On 9
November, the House of Commons passed the following
resolution:
That Sir Henry Mainwaring be
forthwith sent
for as a
Delinquent, by the Sergeant at Arms attending this
House. That this
House holds
it not fit, that Sir Henry Mainwaring should any longer
continue Master
of the
Corporation of the Trinity House. (Life I: 301-2)
They also banned him from its
membership and later, in 1647, dissolved the Corporation’s
charter.
The end of November found him
in Oxford with the Royalist
army, and while scant documentation exists as to
what he did during this time, the university bestowed a
degree of
Doctor of
Physic upon him on 31 January 1643.
The following year,
Parliamentarians came across his unpublished treatise on
seamanship
entitled Nomenclator Navalis. Since
Parliament
controlled the Royal Navy (or Parliamentarian navy as it was
known
during this
time), it deemed Mainwaring’s manuscript worthy of
publication. John
Booker,
who held the license to publish it, considered the book “so
universally
necessary for all sorts of men, that I conceive it very fit
to be at
this time
imprinted for the good of the Republic.” (Life,
I: 303) Entitled The Sea-mans Dictionary:
or, an Exposition and Demonstration of all the Parts and
Things
belonging to a
Ship. Together with an Explanation of all the Terms and
Phrases used in
the
Practique of Navigation. Composed by that Able and
Experienced Sea-man
Sir
Henry Manwayring, Knight: and by him presented to the late
Duke of
Buckingham,
the then Lord High Admiral of England, the book could
be purchased
from
“John Bellamy at the sign of the three golden Lions in
Cornhill.” (Life, I: 303)
It was the practice of the
period to appoint gentlemen (courtiers) to command warships,
rather
than installing
trained seamen to captain them. These gentlemen were
landsmen who had
little,
if any, nautical expertise or knowledge of naval affairs.
Instead they
possessed influence, which enabled them to gain these
appointments,
“much to
the disgust of the seamen who had been bred to the
profession.” (Life
I:
305) This practice had spurred Mainwaring to write The
Sea-Mans Dictionary.
My purpose is not to instruct
those, whose
experience
and observation, have made them as sufficient (or more)
than myself . .
. but
my intent and the use of this book is to instruct one
whose quality,
attendance,
indisposition of body (or the like) cannot permit to
gain the knowledge
of terms,
names, words, the parts, qualities and manner of doing
things with
ships, by
long experience . . . . It being so, that very few
gentlemen (though
they be
called seamen) do fully and wholly understand what
belongs to their
profession;
having only some scambling
[slipshod
or bungling] terms and names belonging to
some parts of a ship. But he who will teach another must
understand
things
plainly and distinctly himself . . . . (Life
II:
83-4)6
It was in essence “the
text-book of seventeenth-century seamanship” and Mainwaring
believed
those who
studied it would “in six months . . . know more, be a better
seaman,
and speak
more properly to any business of the sea . . . .” (Life II:
85-6) Mainwaring, and others like him, were professional
seamen and constituted a new breed of officers who came to
be known as “tarpaulin
captains,” rather than “gentlemen
captains,” because of their expertise in sea
matters. During his tenure as a Navy Office clerk under Samuel
Pepys,
Richard
Gibson noted the difference between these two types of
captains.
. . . it was once my happ to
trace a
gentleman
captain’s sea-journal of a 4th rate ship, in which I
found he was at
times 460
days in port, and but 164 days at sea, during the
voyage. (Life II:
280)
Gibson
also
compiled a list
that showed nineteen tarpaulins, who went to sea as cabin
boys, rose to
the
rank of admiral. The men who served under gentlemen
captains had little
confidence in or respect for their officers, who “had ‘a
sentinel at
his cabin
door (to keep silence in the belfry)’.” (Life
II: 281) The opposite was true of a tarpaulin captain,
because he “made
himself
familiar with his men, talking to them on the watch, and in
foul
weather
cheering the most active of the crew with ‘a dram of the
bottle’.” (Life, II: 281) One example of a tarpaulin
captain was Sir
Christopher
Myngs (right), a former buccaneer who became a
Vice-Admiral
in Charles II’s navy. During the Second
Anglo-Dutch
War, Myngs
was fatally
wounded. His men held him
in such high esteem that “[a]fter his funeral, a
dozen lusty seamen . . . petitioned that they might be given
a
fireship, so
that if possible they could do ‘that that shall show our
memory of our
dead
commander and our revenge.’” (Life, II:
281) Seamen would rarely have volunteered to sacrifice their
lives for
a gentleman
captain.
When Parliament published The
Sea-mans Dictionary, Mainwaring was
still in England. In spite of having lost control of the
Royal Navy, King
Charles still had ships at his disposal. Most were
converted
merchantmen, one
of which the forty-gun St. George or Great
George. Mainwaring commanded this
ship and had instructions to transport Prince Charles to the
Scilly
Isles,
which lay
to the southwest of Falmouth,
should danger arise. In the interim, Mainwaring
and the prince, as well as the royal entourage, stayed at Pendennis
Castle in
Falmouth. On 12 February 1646, they learned “of a design to
seize the .
. .
Prince, and that many persons of quality of the country were
privy to
it,”
including some of his servants. (Life I:
306) Then word came that Parliamentary
forces were advancing on the city, so the
king’s ships embarked for Scilly. Mainwaring was prevented
from
carrying out
the king’s order because the governor of Pendennis
Castle insisted he and his ship
help defend the garrison.
Pendennis Castle
Two fortifications, built
during the reign of Henry VIII, protected the entrance to
Falmouth
Harbor. Perched
on a promontory 200 feet above the sea, Pendennis Castle had
a
commanding view from
the west bank, while St.
Mawe’s
Castle protected the entrance from the opposite
direction. After the Parliamentarians
attacked on 19 March 1645, one officer
wrote about Mainwaring’s ship.
The man-of-war that hath 40
pieces of
ordnance in him
which lieth aground on the north side of the fort let us
pass very
quietly through
Pennycomequicke and to Arwenack, which lies within half
musket shot of
the
enemy’s outworks, but is blinded by the houses and the
trees, so that
they
cannot see those that are on the other side of the
house; but when we
came off
and were past Pennycomequicke, and advanced into an open
field on our
way back
to Penryn, the ship that lay on the north side of the
castle let fly at
us, but
their shot (by God’s mercy) did us no harm, though the
bullets flew
very near
us, and one grazed not far from me, which we found, as a
bullet of some
12 lb. weight.
(Life I: 309)
When the
Parliamentarians
failed to rout the Royalists,
they lay siege to Pendennis.7
In mid-April, the remaining Royalists, most likely
including Mainwaring, joined Prince Charles in Scilly.
From there, they sailed
for Jersey
in the Channel Islands. Mainwaring, who was
nearly sixty
years old,
found himself without much money. The fortune he had amassed
as a
pirate was
gone, and a nephew was his only attendant. During the
interlude on
Jersey, many
historians believe the sixteen-year-old Prince of Wales
gained his
knowledge of
ships and sailing from Mainwaring.
Eventually, Prince Charles
and his retinue sailed for France, but Mainwaring remained
on the
island to
help shore up its defenses. After twenty-two months on
Jersey, he
sailed for Helvoetsluys
in the Netherlands where his sovereign and the royalist
fleet had
sought refuge.
Mainwaring became captain of the Antelope,
which mounted thirty guns. The royalist
squadron sailed for the Thames under
the command of Vice-Admiral Lord Willoughby, taking prizes
along the
way. The
captured cargoes provided much-needed resources for Charles
to fund his
navy. One
vessel taken was a merchantman from London bound for
Rotterdam with a
cargo of
cloth valued at £40,000. A fully laden East Indiaman made
“an
excellent
man-of-war” for Charles’ navy.
After the squadron returned
to Helvoetsluys, the Antelope was
deemed unfit. Her ordnance was sold, the proceeds from which
victualled
the
other crews and fitted out the remaining ships. Prince
Rupert succeeded Lord
Willoughby as supreme commander. The men weren’t overly fond
of their
new
leader, but Rupert
had little trouble restoring order, not after he threw “two
or three seamen overboard by the strength of his own arms.”
(Life I: 332)
On 12 January 1649,
Parliament executed
“Charles
Stuart,
King of England.” (Life I: 332) The
news
of his father’s
death arrived in The Hague
four days later, and for the next six months Charles
II
remained there with his
staunchest cavaliers, including Sir Henry Mainwaring. They
believed the
new
king’s “only chance of regaining the throne depended on what
measure of
success
attended his efforts on the sea.” Prince Rupert’s lack of
success,
however,
convinced Mainwaring that Charles’ cause
was lost.8
Two years later, exhausted and feeling his age, Mainwaring
returned to
England in
dire straits. He owned only a horse and clothing valued at
£8.
For siding with
the king, he was fined £1 6s. 8d. and given six weeks to
pay.
Someone anted up
the sum on 18 December 1651.
Beheading of
Charles I
outside Banqueting House, Whitehall in London (German
print, 1646)
Mainwaring died eighteen
months later at the age of sixty-six and was buried on 15
May 1653, in
the same
cemetery as his beloved wife. His biographer, G. E.
Mainwaring, wrote:
A linguist and a scholar of no
mean ability,
he
wielded a pen with as much dexterity as he handled a
ship, and was
never
happier than when committing his views to paper on any
subject
connected with
the Navy and the naval art. Of a studious nature, his
indefatigable
industry
and quickness of perception placed him among the
foremost English of
the time.
A true patriot at heart, he is one of those forgotten
worthies whose
enterprise
and courage helped to make the British flag known and
respected in all
seas, and
of him it may truly be said, that in his life was
exemplified the motto
of his
family – ‘Devant
si je
puis.’ (Life, I: 339)9
Notes:
1. Some reports put the
number of ships in the pirate fleet at eighty.
2.
Gentlemen of the
Bedchamber were the monarch’s most intimate servants. They
were often
friends,
peers of the realm, or other men of rank, who provided
companionship
for the
king. They influenced his decisions and policies, as well
as attending
to
specific duties related to helping him dress, waiting on
him during
meals, and
guarding access to him when in his privy chambers.
3. If the
authorities
captured them, perforst-men claimed they had been forced
into piracy.
In
actuality, when their ship was taken and the pirates asked
for
volunteers,
these men willingly followed the sweet trade. Part 3 of
this article
will
discuss Mainwaring’s discourse on piracy and its
suppression at greater
length.
4.
According to
David
Starkey, the influx of pirates had waned by 1615. A year
later they had
virtually disappeared.
5. Paul’s
refers to
St.
Paul’s Cathedral.
6. Although
Captain
John
Smith’s The
Seamans Grammar and
Dictionary was published in 1626, its content
pales in
comparison to that
of Mainwaring’s volume.
7. The
garrison
finally
capitulated on 17 August, the last royalist stronghold to
surrender.
8. After
Oliver
Cromwell’s
death in 1658, the Protectorate crumbled and his son
resigned the
following
year. Unrest followed, and the exiled Charles finally
returned to
England on 29
May 1660, and the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy
began.
9. This
translates
to
“Foremost if I can.”
For more information, I
recommend the following resources:
Appleby,
John C. “Women and
Piracy in Ireland” in Bandits at Sea: A
Pirates Reader edited by C. R. Pennell. New York
University, 2001,
283-98.
Davies,
J. D. “Sir Henry
Mainwaring (1587-1653)” in Naval Warfare:
An International Encyclopedia edited by Spencer C
Tucker. ABC Clio,
2002,
2:650-1.
Earle, Peter. Corsairs
of
Malta and Barbary. Sidgwick
& Jackson, 1970.
Earle, Peter. The
Pirate
Wars. Thomas Dunne, 2003.
Finnemore, John. Barbary Rovers. Adam & Charles
Black, 1912.
Friel, Ian. Maritime
History
of Britain and Ireland c.
400-2001. British Maritime Press, 2003.
Gosse, Philip. The
History of Piracy. Rio Grande Press,
1995.
Gosse, Philip. The
Pirates’ Who’s Who: Giving Particulars
of the Lives and Deaths of the Pirates and Buccaneers.
Rio Grande
Press,
1924.
Hicks, Robert D. Voyage
to
Jamestown: Practical Navigation in
the Age of Discovery. Naval Institute Press, 2011.
Hunt, E. “Sir
Henry
Mainwaring,” Dictionary of Canadian
Biography, vol. 1. University of Toronto, 1966.
Jamison, Alan G. Lords
of
the Sea: A History of the Barbary
Corsairs, Reakton Books, 2012.
Lavery, Brian. Royal
Tars:
The Lower Deck of the Royal
Navy, 875-1850. Naval Institute Press, 2010.
The Life and Works
of Sir
Henry Mainwaring
edited by G.
E. Mainwaring, volume
1
and volume
2.
The Navy
Records Society, MDCCCCXX.
Little, Benerson. Pirate
Hunting:
The Fight against Pirates,
Privateers, and Sea Raiders from Antiquity to the Present.
Potomac
Books,
2010.
Lloyd, Christopher. The
British Seaman 1200-1860: A Social
Survey. Fairleigh Dickinson, 1970.
Pym, Katherine. “Pirate
Extraordinaire
and Friend to the Crown,” English Historical Fiction
Authors,
7 August 2012.
Rogozinski, Jan. Pirates!:
Brigands,
Buccaneers and
Privateers in Fact, Fiction, and Legend. Facts on
File, 1995.
Ronald, Susan. The
Pirate
Queen: Queen Elizabeth, Her
Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire.
HarperCollins, 2007.
“Sir Henry Mainwaring,” The
Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea
edited by Peter Kemp. Oxford, 1976.
Starkey,
David J. “Pirates
and Markets” in Bandits at Sea: A Pirates
Reader edited by C. R. Pennell. New York University,
2001, 107-124.
“Trinity House,” The
Oxford
Companion to Ships and the Sea
edited by Peter Kemp. Oxford, 1976, 889.
Wilson, Peter Lamborn. Pirate
Utopias: Moorism Corsairs and
European Renegadoes. Autonomedia, 1995.
Pirates
and Privateers
