This is the received story of Calico Jack and the women pirates, and no fiction-writer in his senses would accept it as a credible plot for a moment. But the one difficulty about dismissing it as far-fetched nonsense is that, so far as can be judged from the evidence, it appears to be true. Records of the trial are said to exist, and no one has ever cast convincing doubts on the detailed account given in Defoe.
Of the other principals in THE PYRATES, Firebeard is loosely based on the famous Blackbeard Teach of Bristol, that extravagant monster who, if the extract from his journal quoted by Defoe is authentic, must have been one of the most brilliant prose stylists of the Augustan Age. It demands quotation again:
“Such a Day, Rum all out – Our Company somewhat sober – A damn'd Confusion amongst us! – Rogues aplotting – great Talk of Separation. So I look'd sharp for a Prize – such a Day took one, with a great deal of Liquor on board, so kept the Company hot, damn'd hot, then all Things went well again.”
Fifty-four words to paint as vivid a picture as any in the English language.
Happy Dan Pew was vaguely inspired by two French buccaneers, the mad Montbars who was known as the Exterminator, and the abominable Nau L'Ollonois; Bilbo is Basil Rathbone playing a raffish Captain Hook; and Sheba is a Dahomey Amazon with echoes of Lola Montez, Queen Ranavalona, and a pantomime principal boy.
But they are pirates for fun; the real Brotherhood of the Coast, that astonishing fraternity which grew in a generation from a few woodsmen and hunters (‘boucaniers’) into the strongest mercentary fleet ever seen, is a serious subject, and this is not really the place to write about it. The story of how, under leaders like Morgan, whose genius might have won him a place among the great captains, the buccaneers shook the power of Spain and helped to plant their countries' flags in the Western seas, can be found in the histories listed in my bibliography; sufficient to say here that, bloody ruffians though they were, they gave to piracy a kind of stature, and played an often underrated part in the making of the New World.
Which brings us finally to Colonel Thomas Blood who, if he was never a pirate, was pretty well everything else – soldier, rascal, secret agent, Justice of the Peace, perpetual fugitive, Fifth Monarchy Man, hired assassin, Covenanter, conspirator, confidant of royalty, occasional medical practitioner, and jewel thief extraordinary. He is rather better documented than the other real-life ruffians whose names I have appropriated, and even more eccentric. He seems to have spent much of his life on the run, following plots and crimes which invariably went wrong, for while he was an adventurer of great ingenuity and tremendous style, the execution of his schemes was often marred by an overelaboration bordering on lunacy. Not many adventurers, planning to seize Dublin Castle, would have tried to divert the guards by hurling loaves of bread at them, in the hope that while they scrambled for the food, Blood and his associates could sally in and seize the fortress. And only a perverted artist, bent on the fairly straightforward task of assassinating the Duke of Ormonde, would have tried to do it by carrying his victim on horseback to Tyburn with the intention of hanging him from the public gallows.
Blood's most celebrated exploit, the theft of the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London, he undertook disguised as a clergyman, and very nearly got away with it; apprehended, he demanded audience of Charles II, and emerged with a pardon and a reward, which caused some comment at the time and remains unexplained to this day.
That Blood was deep in political intrigues is certain, but what his exact relations were with the King (and the Duke of Buckingham) it is impossible to say. It seems unlikely that he won Charles's favour by confessing that he had once been hired to murder the King while the latter was bathing at Battersea, but had held his fire out of sheer loyal awe; possibly the Merry Monarch had a fellow-feeling for such an intrepid and charming rogue; but the most probable explanation for Blood's immunity is simply that he knew too much, and bought his freedom with the promise of silence. In the end, after a lifetime of adventures, escapes, pursuits, disguises, and hand-to-hand encounters, he died of natural causes in 1680, aged about 62 – and after his funeral at Tothill Fields they dug the body up again just to make sure that the nimble Colonel was dead at last.
INFLUENTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
Pirates and blue water took hold of me in childhood, and show no sign of letting go fifty years later. It started with tuppenny bloods and boys' annuals, and continued through those splendid Hollywood epics of the 30s and 40s and the works of the great historical novelists (Sabatini was my hero then, and still is) to the original sources, among them the memoirs of buccaneers themselves. One result of all this mingled reading and watching and dreaming is the foregoing fantasy, written for the fun of it, and since it grew from so many influences (some of which had nothing to do with pirates at all) and since I am a compulsive foot-noter anyway, it seems right to set them down.
They are a mixed bag: what, you may ask, has Lord Macaulay got to do with an anonymous writer for the Wizard (or was it the Skipper?) and with Michael Curtiz, film director? Simply, one of them gave me an unforgettable picture of Restoration England, another introduced me to the dreaded maguay plant (by the powers!), and the third put Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone rapier to rapier on a rocky seashore. And so on, with all the rest. They are not to be held responsible for my mad fancies, but I owe them my admiration, gratitude, and abiding affection.
Adventure, Hotspur, Rover, Skipper, Wizard (D.C. Thomson publications)
BALLANTYNE, R.M. – The Coral Island Martin Rattler
BARRIE, J.M. – Peter Pan
BURNEY, James – History of the Buccaneers of America Collins' French Primer, volumes 1 and 2
DAMPIER, William – Voyages and Discoveries
DEFOE, Daniel – Robinson Crusoe
Captain Singleton
The King of Pyrates
A General Historie of the … Most Notorious Pirates (as Charles Johnson)
DELL, Draycott M. – Ghosts of the Spanish Main
DIAZ, Bernal – The Conquest of New Spain Dictionary of National Biography
DOYLE, A. Conan – Tales of Pirates and Blue Water
ESQUEMELING, Alexander – The Buccaneers of America
EVELYN, John – Diary
FARNOL, Jeffrey – Adam Penfeather, Buccaneer
Black Bartlemy's Treasure
Martin Conisby's Vengeance
Winds of Fortune
HAKLUYT, Richard – Voyages
MACAULAY, T.B. – History of England
MARRYAT, Frederick – Masterman Ready
Mr Midshipman Easy
Peter Simple
The Newgate Calendar
Notable British Trials – The Bounty Mutineers Captain Kidd
PEPYS, Samuel – Diary
PRESCOTT, W.H. – History of the Conquest of Peru
ROGERS, Stanley – The Atlantic Buccaneers
ROGERS Woodes – A Cruising Voyage Round the World
SABATINI, Rafael – Captain Blood
The Chronicles of Captain Blood
The Fortunes of Captain Blood
The Black Swan
The Hounds of God
The Sea Hawk
The Sword of Islam
SMOLLET, Tobias – The Adventures of Roderick Random
STEVENSON, R.L. – The Master of Ballantrae Treasure Island
SWIFT, Jonathan – Gulliver's Travels
TRELAWNEY, E.J. – Adventures of a Younger Son
TAYLOR, W.F. – Shirwah the Corsair
VANBRUGH, John – The Provoked Wife The Relapse
WAFER, Lionel – A New Voyage and Description of the Isthmus of America
WALKEY, S. – Rogues of the Roaring Glory
YOUNG, Gordon Ray – Hurok the Avenger
Motion Pictures
Treasure Island (1934)
Captain Blood (1935)
Drake of England (1935)
The Sea Hawk (1940)
The Black Swan (1942)
Captain Kidd (1945)
The Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950)
To all of which must be added:
The music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Alfred Newman and Dr Arne
The poetry of John Masefield, Alfred Noyes, Henry Newbolt, Lord Byron, and Rudyard Kipling
The singing of Peter Dawson
The drawings of H.M. Brock and the songs and shanties that sailors used to sing.
G.M.F.
Praise for George MacDonald Fraser
‘It's all there, right down to a Dead Man's Chest, cleavages that are everything they should be and characters in sea-boots who say nothing but “Arr!” and “Me Hearty!” in a plot that is wonderfully absurd’ Financial Times
‘It's great fun and rings true: a Highland Fling of a book’ Eric Linklater, author of The Wind on the Moon
‘Twenty-five years have not dimmed Mr Fraser's recollections of those hectic days of soldiering. One takes leave of his characters with real and grateful regret’ Sir Bernard Fergusson, Sunday Times
‘A self-confident performance by an old hand. Mr Fraser clearly enjoys being master of such a wide and wild plot, and makes sure to leave room in it for his most famous creation, the eponymous hero of his Flashman adventure series’ New Yorker
‘Fabulous … you'll want to stay up all night reading this one’ Washington Post
‘MacDonald Fraser falls into what these days is an exclusive group: the storyteller who can write’ D J Taylor, Sunday Times
‘Mr Fraser is a great historical novelist and in Black Ajax he is at the very top of his form. Damme if he ain't’ Christopher Matthew, Daily Mail
‘This is not a flashy novel, wearing its learning noisily. It's rigorous, intelligent, meticulously horrifying. Wonderfully well done’ Nicci Gerrard, Observer
‘The sense of front-line danger is palpable and the smell of action is remarkable. His descriptions of the sudden violent actions are breathtaking. This is battle as it is done’ Melvyn Bragg, Evening Standard
‘This is a book as good as anything Fraser has written … A moving and penetrating contribution to the literature of the Burma campaign’ Max Hastings, Daily Telegraph
‘It's George MacDonald Fraser in top form on the Borders, juggling lairds and outlaws in bitter battling over disputed territory.’ Mail on Sunday, Books of the Year
‘The sense of front-line danger is palpable and the smell of action is remarkable. His descriptions of the sudden violent actions are breathtaking. This is battle as it is done’ Melvyn Bragg, Evening Standard
‘Twenty-five years have not dimmed Mr Fraser's recollections of those hectic days of soldiering. One takes leave of his characters with real and grateful regret’ Sir Bernard Fergusson, Sunday Times
Also by George MacDonald Fraser
THE FLASHMAN PAPERS
(in chronological order)
FLASHMAN
ROYAL FLASH
FLASHMAN'S LADY
FLASHMAN AND THE MOUNTAIN OF LIGHT
FLASH FOR FREEDOM!
FLASHMAN AND THE REDSKINS
FLASHMAN AT THE CHARGE
FLASHMAN IN THE GREAT GAME
FLASHMAN AND THE ANGEL OF THE LORD
FLASHMAN AND THE DRAGON
FLASHMAN AND THE TIGER
FLASHMAN ON THE MARCH
BLACK AJAX
MR AMERICAN
THE PYRATES
THE CANDLEMASS ROAD
THE COMPLETE MCAUSLAN, HISTORY
comprising: THE STEEL BONNETS:
THE GENERAL DANCED AT DAWN The Story of the
MCAUSLAN IN THE ROUGH Anglo-Scottish
THE SHEIKH AND THE DUSTBIN Border Reivers
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
QUARTERED SAFE OUT HERE
THE HOLLYWOOD HISTORY OF THE WORLD
Copyright
HarperCollinsPublishers
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8
Previously issued as a trade paperback edition by Collins Harvill 1994
First published in Great Britain by
William Collins Sons & Co Ltd 1983
Copyright © George MacDonald Fraser 1983
Title page by Stephen Johnston and Raymond Benson
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