One of
Blackbeard’s most threatening moves was his blockade
of Charles Town in 1718. It seemed an unlikely time
for drink to be involved; nevertheless, it was and
it almost resulted in the destruction of the South
Carolinian port.
. . .
about 14 days ago 4 sail of [pirates] appeared
in sight of the Town tooke our pilot boat and
after wards 8 or 9 sail wth. severall of the
best inhabitants of this place on board and then
sent me word if I did not imediately send them a
chest of medicins they would put every prisoner
to death which for there sakes being complied
with after plundering them of all they had were
sent ashore almost naked. (America, June
18. 556.)
What Johnson omitted
from this account was that the messenger who
delivered the ransom demand had been escorted ashore
by two pirates, who promptly disappeared. The
governor and his advisors set about assembling the
medicine chest, but when they were ready to deliver
it, the pirate escorts couldn’t be found. “A general
alarm was given, and a search was made for the
missing pirates. They were finally discovered,
smiling and gloriously drunk.” (Lee, 47) Upon their
arrival in town, they strode about the streets as if
they had nothing to fear. (In truth, no one was
going to accost them while Blackbeard held the
citizenry at bay.) That’s when they met some
drinking buddies of yore, and they immediately
retired to a tavern to hoist a few and bring each
other up to date.
Such overindulgence was to be expected, but the
delay could have resulted in one domino knocking
over another and another and another. And
Blackbeard’s ire would have had devastating effect
on the pirate victims, Charles Town, and the pirate
escorts had the medicine chest failed to arrive.
Cooler heads prevailed this time, but other pirate
captains wrote safeguards into their articles so
that intemperance didn’t result in dire
consequences.
For example, the 23 August 1723 edition of The
Boston News-Letter printed the Articles of
Agreement under which Edward Low and his men sailed.
(This code had been seized after HMS Greyhound captured
Charles
Harris and other pirates who had been sailing
in consort with Low at the time of the attack.
Twenty-six, including Harris, would hang in Newport,
Rhode Island.) One article concerned being soused.
VI. He
that shall be Guilty of Drunkenness in the Time
of an Engagement, shall suffer what Punishment
the Captain and the majority of the Company
shall think fit. (Tryals of Thirty-six, 3:
191)
Francis
Spriggs, another of Low’s cohorts, captured a
man named Richard Hawkins, who wrote of his
captivity for The British Journal in August
1724. One interesting tidbit pertained to the
company’s handling of those who imbibed overmuch.
In the
Morning they enquire who was drunk the last
Night, and whosoever is voted so, must either be
at the Mast-Head four Hours or receive a
Ten-handed Gopty, (or ten Blows in the Britch)
from the whole Watch. I observ’d it generally
fell on one or two particular Men; for were all
to go aloft that were fuddled over Night, there
would be but few left to look out below. They
seldom let the Man at the Mast-Head cool upon
it, but order him to let down a Rope to hawl up
some hot Punch, which is a Liquor every Man
drinks early in the Morning. They live very
merrily all Day; at Meals the Quarter-Master
overlooks the Cook, to see the Provisions
equally distributed to each Mess; whether they
were drunk or sober, I never heard them drink
any other Health than King George’s. (Pirates,
301)
Although Bartholomew
Roberts preferred tea to alcohol, he
understood the chances of swaying his men to his
preferences weren’t high. The first article in his
code of conduct was “Every Man . . . has equal title
to the fresh Provisions, or strong Liquors, at any
Time seized, and use them at Pleasure . . . .”
(Johnson, 169) The fourth article added one
stipulation to those who would drink after eight in
the evening; they could only do so on the weather
deck.
Ashore, in havens friendly to roguish clientele, the
pirates frequented taverns. Nearly every colonial
village, town, and city had at least one where
locals and visitors gathered to eat, drink, and
talk. Captain Thomas Walduck wrote the following to
John Searle, his nephew, in 1708.
Upon all
the new settlements the Spaniards make, the
first thing they do is build a church, the first
thing the Dutch do upon a new colony is build
them a fort, but the first thing ye English do,
be it in the most remote part of ye world, or
amongst the most barbarous Indians, is to set up
a tavern or drinking house. (Codfield)
Pietro
Aretino, an Italian satirist who lived from
1492 to 1556, wrote this about drinking
establishments.
He who
has not been at a tavern knows not what a
paradise it is. O holy tavern! O miraculous
tavern! – holy, because no carking cares are
there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous,
because of the spits, which turn themselves
round and round!
Little wonder that
pirates and locals sought respite there.
Taverns,
originally known as ordinaries, were places where
drinks and meals were served. (If you wanted a room,
that required an inn.) Punch-houses served a
particular mixed drink, usually to lower-class
clientele. (Its secondary meaning, brothel, came
later.) Such places allowed locals to catch up on
news and gossip, or entertain themselves with
gambling or playing cards. The proprietors might be
men or women. On the odd chance that a pirate might
expect a letter, these ordinaries sometimes served
as post offices. They were also places where pirate
captains, merchant captains, and military recruiters
sought new blood.
Marcus
Hook in William Penn’s colony of Pennsylvania
welcomed pirates, including Blackbeard. “Marcus Hook
was the first port of call for Philadelphia from its
earliest days, and later would become the farthest
upriver that large ships could safely navigate”
without a pilot familiar with the tides, navigable
waterways, and unseen dangers of the Delaware River.
(Plank)
If tradition be accepted as authority, at the
conclusion of the seventeenth and the first and
second decades of the eighteenth century the pirates
which then infested the Atlantic coast from New
England to Georgia would frequently stop at Marcus
Hook, where they would revel, and when deep in their
cups would indulge in noisy disputation and broils,
until one of the streets in that ancient borough
from that fact was known as Discord Lane, which name
the same thoroughfare has retained for nearly two
centuries. (Ashmead, 457)
Most taverns
in colonial times were simple in design.
The
earliest taverns were mostly independent
structures, yet they could also be located
within or attached to residential houses. The
interiors . . . were designed with different
rooms, the largest room being the taproom with
furnishings such as chairs, desks, the bar, and
a fireplace. (Streczinki, 30)
Outside the tavern, a sign
denoted the establishment’s name in both words and
pictures. Extant deeds prior to 1692, identified
nineteen taverns that buccaneers might have visited
in Port Royal,
Jamaica.
Tavern Name
Date
Location
The Three Tunns
1665
east side of private alley
across from Wherry Bridge
The Sugar Loaf
1667
location unknown
The Sign of Bacchus
1673
Yorke Street
The Three Crownes
1673
corner of High Street and Lime
The Green Dragon
1674
Smith’s Alley and Queen Street
The Shipp
1674
Queen Street
The Catt and Fiddle
1676
Thames Street
The Jamaica Arms
1677
Yorke Street
The Three Mariners
1677
west side of Honey Lane
The Blue Anchor
1679
location unknown
The Salutaçon
1680
middle plot between Honey Lane
and the King’s house
The Feathers
1681
off Thames street on west side
of private alley
The Black Dogg
1682
location unknown
The Sign of the George
1682
facing old market place
The Cheshire Cheese
1684
New Street
The Windmill
1684
Cannon Street
The Sign of the Mermaid
1685
across from Wherry Bridge at
end of private alley
Two taverns bore the name
“The King’s Arms.” The first opened in 1677, and
faced the parade ground. The second opened five
years later.
The Feathers was “newly-built with brick” on the
site of a tavern which had the same name. The
proprietors, Thomas and Ann Mills, ran “a large shop
with a large entry with a large balcony room over
them and another room or bed-chamber and a cellar.”
The yard held “an arbour and house of office, a
cookroom of brick next to it, a large lower room
with a partition, and a billiard-room over that,
with a larger pair of stairs going up to it.”
(Pawson, 114)
When Thomas Freeman purchased The Three Tunns from
Charles Whitfield in December 1695, the tavern had
already been serving patrons for some time. It was
located close to The Feathers.
Captain Charles Penhallow of the Port Royal militia
and a warden in his church, owned The Three
Mariners, which he probably bought from Peter
Bartaboa and John Grandmaison, both of whom were
French. The former’s main occupation was carpentry,
and he built Port Royal’s gallows for £3 in 1666.
Nearby was The Salutaçon, which Randolph Bolton ran
for a long time. Jacob Haynes owned the plot of land
on which William Hanson, the city’s blacksmith,
operated The Green Dragon as a tavern and inn.
John Hay, a victualler and merchant, built The Catt
and Fiddle and ran the tavern with his wife
Susannah. Twenty years later, Hay sold the it to
carpenter Moses Watkins for a sum of £800.
It was common for taverns to have different rooms,
and each of these was known by its own name. One
example came from an unnamed tavern owned by Thomas
Taylor. Upon his death in 1674, an inventory was
made of his property.
In a roome
calledthe Vinroome
A great
wooden chest, a signe, a stripe carpet and an
old saddle
In the Queen’s Head
An old
planeen [sic] bed, a cedar bedstead and three
old leather trunks, a green rugg, a pillow and
bolster Two diaper
table-clothes and seaven napkins
In the bar room
Two
punch bowles, two earthen potts and a silver
dram cup
In the Nag’s Head
A
tobacco knife, a copper pott, two spitts, a
table and two formes, a wooden pestle and
morer, two old gunns.
In the sellar
About
20 gallons of Madera at 3s. per gallon About 18 gallons
of brandy at five shillings and sixpence per
gallon About a hogshead
of sower clarett A payr of
carriers and eight pounds of candles
In the Rose
An old
truncke with severall old clothes with a set
of green curtins; a table and two forms
In the King’s Head
Six
joynt stooles, elleavon red leather chaires A fuzends [sic]
and old chest, fower hamockers A man servant,
about elleavon months to serve A brasse kettle
and skillet, a small brasse pan, a frying-pan
and a paire of andirons, a lattin dripping-pan
and an ax Seventy-five
pounds of pewter, being five dishes, sixteen
plates, two salt-sellers, three basons, one
porringer, one sawcer Two old
chamber-potts, a pottle pott, two pint potts,
two gill potts, a quart pott and a half-pin
pott (Pawson, 147-148)
Although cash was always
welcome, in the colonies it wasn’t always available.
The primary form of currency on St. Christopher’s
(St. Kitts) when the buccaneers preyed in the
Caribbean was sugar. In September 1678, the island’s
assembly passed four acts, one of which concerned
taverns: “An Act touching tavern keepers and rum
punch house keepers not to trust any person upon
account for above 200 lbs. of sugar before taking a
note (sic) for the same.” (America.
March-Sept. 1678, #645.) This prevented drunken
pirates from running up high tabs, unless they
provided some form of written IOU.
Rowdiness was more the norm when it concerned
pirates with money in their pockets. Jonathan Swift,
the Irish satirist who wrote Gulliver’s Travels
(1726), once wrote that “A tavern is a place where
madness is sold by the bottle.” That might be where
the pirates procured their drink, but it wasn’t
always where they drank. Alexandre Exquemelin’s
master
often used to buy a butt of wine and set it in
the middle of the street with the barrel-head
knocked in, and stand barring the way. Every
passer-by had to drink with him, or he’d have
shot them dead with a gun he kept handy. Once he
bought a cask of butter and threw the stuff at
everyone who came by, bedaubing their clothes or
their head, wherever he could reach.
(Exquemelin, 82)
Roche
Brasiliano had a violent streak, which
drunkenness seemed to accentuate.
He had
no self-control at all, but behaved as if
possessed by a sullen fury. When he was drunk,
he would roam the town like a madman. The first
person he came across, he would chop off his arm
or leg, without anyone daring to intervene, for
he was like a maniac. (Exquemelin, 80)
Exquemelin also mentioned that “tavern-keepers let
them have a good deal of credit,” but he warned his
readers not to trust those in Jamaica. If you racked
up too much debt, the tavern keeper could sell you
to gain back his money. “Even the man . . . who gave
the whore so much money to see her naked, and at
that time had a good 3,000 pieces of eight – three
months later he was sold for his debts, by a man in
whose house he had spent most of his money.”
(Exquemelin, 82)
“America
and West Indies: March 1678,’ in Calendar
of State Papers Colonial, America and West
Indies: Volume 10,1677-1680 edited by W.
Noel Sainsbury and J. W. Fortescue. London, 1896,
220-231 (March-Sept. St. Christopher’s. 645.)
“America
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Indies: Volume 16,1697-1698 edited by J. W.
Fortescue. London, 1905, 399-406 (Aug. 25. 771.).
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While I worked on
this article, my father passed away.
He shared his affinity for the water
and boats with me in my youth, which
helped awaken a desire to write about
pirates. This article is for him. Now
that you are at peace and without
pain, Dad, may you eat, drink, and be
merry.
Pirates and Privateers
What Johnson omitted
from this account was that the messenger who
delivered the ransom demand had been escorted ashore
by two pirates, who promptly disappeared. The
governor and his advisors set about assembling the
medicine chest, but when they were ready to deliver
it, the pirate escorts couldn’t be found. “A general
alarm was given, and a search was made for the
missing pirates. They were finally discovered,
smiling and gloriously drunk.” (Lee, 47) Upon their
arrival in town, they strode about the streets as if
they had nothing to fear. (In truth, no one was
going to accost them while Blackbeard held the
citizenry at bay.) That’s when they met some
drinking buddies of yore, and they immediately
retired to a tavern to hoist a few and bring each
other up to date.
Although 
Marcus
Hook in William Penn’s colony of Pennsylvania
welcomed pirates, including Blackbeard. “Marcus Hook
was the first port of call for Philadelphia from its
earliest days, and later would become the farthest
upriver that large ships could safely navigate”
without a pilot familiar with the tides, navigable
waterways, and unseen dangers of the Delaware River.
(Plank)
