Main Vessel Second Vessel
July 1719 Royal Rover —
(formerly Marquis del Campo, inherited from Davis; 32 guns)
Nov. 1719 Good Fortune (1)
(formerly Princess, taken at Cayenne, French Guiana; 6-12 guns)
Dec. 1719 Royal Rover deserts
June 1720 Un-named vessel
(Bristol galley, taken at Trepassey, Newfoundland; 18 guns)
July 1720 Royal Fortune (1)
(French fishing vessel, taken on Newfoundland Banks; 26-28 guns)
Oct. 1720 Royal Fortune (2)
(French ship, taken in West Indies; 34-42 guns)
Jan. 1721 Good Fortune (2)
(brigantine from Rhode Island, taken at St Lucia, West Indies; 18 guns)
April 1721 Good Fortune deserts
May 1721 Ranger (1)
(formerly French cruiser, Count de Toulouse, taken off River Senegal; 24-36 guns)
Aug. 1721 Royal Fortune (3)
(formerly Onslow, taken off River Sestos, West Africa; 40 guns)
Jan. 1722 Ranger (2)
(formerly French slaver, St Agnes, taken at Whydah, West Africa; 32 guns)
PRIZES
The following are documented captures by Roberts and his men. Excluding the 150 to 250 fishing shallops taken at Newfoundland, and the six vessels taken during the brief period Thomas Anstis was captain, they come to between 136 and 141. Of these 78-82 were either from Britain or British colonies, 36-37 were from France or French colonies, 9 were Portuguese, 7 were Dutch, 1 was an indigenous fishing vessel, and 5 were of unknown nationality. Captain Johnson’s figure of 400 for the total number of prizes taken by Roberts presumably includes the shallops taken at Newfoundland.
CREW
A total of 147 men stood trial at Cape Coast Castle. We have the ages of 56. They ranged from 17 to 45 and the average was 28. Of the 73 men for whom we have a clearly identifiable place of origin, 30 came from the West Country, 12 from London, 8 from elsewhere in England, 9 from Scotland, 5 from Wales, 4 from Holland, 1 from Greece, 1 from Antigua, 1 from Jersey, 1 from the Isle of Man, and - despite the ban imposed in the wake of Kennedy’s desertion - 1 from Ireland.
APPENDIX 2 THOMAS ANSTIS’S ARTICLES
Thomas Anstis deserted Roberts in the brigantine Good Fortune in April 1721. His crew immediately agreed a new set of articles.
ARTICLE I - That the Captain shall have one full share as the rest of the Company the Master Gunner, Carpenter and Boatswain the same.
ARTICLE II - If any man should disobey any lawful command of the commanding officers, shall suffer punishment the company and captain shall think fit.
ARTICLE III - If any person or persons should go on board of any prize and should break open any chest without the knowledge of the quartermaster, shall suffer what punishment the company and captain shall think fit.
ARTICLE IV - If any person or persons shall be found guilty of thievery from one another to the value of one piece of eight, shall be marooned on an island with one bottle of powder, one bottle of water and shott equivalent.
ARTICLE V - If any person or person should be found negligent in keeping their arms clean and fitting for an engagement, shall lose his share or shares.
ARTICLE VI - If any person or persons should be found to snap their arms [pull the trigger of their musket or pistol] on cleaning in the hold, shall suffer Moses Law, that is forty [lashes] lacking one.
ARTICLE VII - If any person or persons should be found backward in the time of an engagement, should be marooned.
ARTICLE VIII - If any person or persons shall be found to game on board this privateer of the value of one Rial plate [a small silver coin, worth around sixpence] shall suffer Moses law.
ARTICLE IX - If any person or persons shall go on board of a prize and meet with any Gentlewoman or Lady of Honour and should force them against their will to lye with them, shall suffer death.
ARTICLE X - If any person or persons should loose a leg or a limb or a joint, shall for a limb have eight hundred pieces of eight and for one joint 200 ditto.
ARTICLE XI - If any time we shall come in company with any other marooner [pirate] [he that] shall offer to sign their articles without the consent of the company shall be marooned. [Any] runaway shall receive the same.
ARTICLE XII - But if at any time we shall hear from England and have an account of an act of grace [pardon] they that are minded to receive it shall go with their money and goods and the rest have the privateer [i.e. keep the ship].
SELECTED SOURCES
PRIMARY SOURCES
BRITISH LIBRARY
The Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals, London, 1735
A New General Collection of Voyages, vols 1 and 3, Thomas Astley, London 1745-7
A Select and Impartial Account of the Lives, Behaviour and Dying Words of the Most Remarkable Convicts, vol. 1, Charles March, London, 1745
Anonymous (manuscript), Voyage to Guinea, Bay of Campeachy, Cuba, Barbados & co. 1714-23
Atkins, John, The Navy Surgeon, C. Ward and R. Chandler, London, 1734
——, A Voyage to Guinea, Brazil and the West Indies in His Majesty’s Ships, C. Ward and R. Chandler, London, 1735
Bosman, Willem. A New and Accurate Description of the Coast of Guinea, J. Knapton, London, 1704
Boyer, Abel, The Political State of Great Britain, vols 21 and 28, T. Cooper, London, 1733
Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies, 1716-1725
Charlevoix, Pierre Francois Xavier, Histoire de L’Isle Espagnole, Francois Barois, 1731
Churchill (ed.), Collection of Voyages and Travels, vols 5-6, Henry Lintot and John Osborn, London, 1744-6
Downing, Clement, A Compendious History of the Indian Wars, London, 1737
Executive Journals of the Council of Colonial Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, 1925
Exquemelin, Alexander, The Buccaneers of America, William Crooke, London, 1684
Falconbridge, Alexander, An Account of the Slave Trade on the Coast of Africa, James Phillips, London, 1788
Fenton, Richard, A Historical Tour Through Pembrokeshire, Longman, London, 1811
Frezier, Amadée Francois, A Voyage to the South Sea, and Along the Coasts of Chile and Peru in 1712, 1713 and 1714, London, 1717
Houston, James, Some New and Accurate Observations of the Coast of Guinea, London, 1725
Johnson, Charles, A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pirates, Rivington, London, 1724
Labat, Jean Baptiste, The Memoirs of Pere Labat, 1693-1705, Constable & Co., London, 1931
Owen, George. Description of Pembrokeshire, Cymmrodorion Society, London, 1892
Smith, William, A New Voyage to Guinea, J. Nourse, London, 1744
Snelgrave, William, A New Account of Some Parts of Guinea and the Slave Trade, Knapton, London, 1734
Spotswood, Alexander. The Official Letters of Alexander Spotswood, vol. 2, Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society, 1882 du Tertre, Jean Baptiste, Histoire Generale des Antilles Habites par Les Français, Paris, 1667
Voyage des Chevaliers des Marchais en Guinee etc., Saugrain, Paris, 1730
NEWSPAPERS
Applebee’s Original Weekly Journal, The Boston Gazette, The Boston Newsletter, The Post Boy, The Weekly Journal or British Gazetteer, The Weekly Journal or Saturday Post
THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES
Admiralty Series (ADM): 1/1472/11, 1/1597/1, 1/1694/9, 1/1880/3, 1/2242/5, 1/2242/6, 1/2282/2, 1/2378, 1/2452, 1/2649, 1/2650/10, 1/4102-4, 2/50, 8/14+15, 51/954/6+7, 51/4394/2, 52/296, 52/316
Chancellery Series (C): 113/165, 113/274+5
Colonial Office Series (CO): 5/1319, 28/17, 31/15, 31/16, 37/10, 137/14, 152/13+14, 194/6, 323/8, 324/34, 388/25
High Court of the Admiralty Series (HCA): 1/17+18, 1/32 1/54+55, 1/99
State Papers Series (SP): 42/17, 89/28 Treasury Series (T): 52/32, 70/ 4, 70/7, 70/27, 70/922, 70/1225
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES
SP/CPD/5, SD/1744/44
NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF SCOTLAND
AC 16/1
NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM
ADM/L/S/563+4, 341.362.1:094
SECONDARY SOURCES
Bolster, W. Jeffery, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, Harvard University Press, London, 1997
Burg, B.R., Sodomy and the Pirate Tradition, New York University Press, New York, 1984
Carr Laughton, L.G., ‘Shantying and Shanties’, in Mariner’s Mirror, vol. 9, 1923
Clifford, Barry, The Black Ship: The Quest to Recover an English Pirate Ship and Its Lost Treasure, Headline, London, 1999
Cordingly, David, Life Among the Pirates: The Romance and the Reality, Little Brown, London, 1995
Craton, Michael, A History of the Bahamas, 2nd edn, Collins, London, 1968
Dictionary of National Biography, vols 2 and 42, 1885
Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, University of North Carolina Press, London, 1972
Earle, Peter, Sailors; English Merchant Seamen 1650-1775, Methuen, London, 1998
——, The Pirate Wars, Methuen, London, 2003
Edwards, Rev. Richard, Hanes Llangloffan (The History of Llangloffan), W.H. John and Son, Solva, Pembrokeshire, 1932
Eltis, David, ‘Volume and Structure of the Slave Trade’, in William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 58, No. 1, January 2001
Eltis, D., S.D. Behrendt, D. Richardson, and H.S. Klein, The Transatlantic Slave Trade, database on CD-Rom
Engerman, Stanley L. and Eugene D. Genovese (eds), Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1974
Fuller, Basil and Alexander Ronald Leslie-Melville, Pirate Harbours and Their Secrets, Stanley Paul & Co., London, 1935
Gilkerson, William, Boarders Away, vols I & II, A. Mowbray Inc., Providence, RI, 1991
Hornsby, Stephen, British Atlantic, American Frontier, University of New Hampshire, Hanover, NH, 2004
Hughes, B.H.J., More Names in the History of Pembrokeshire, Hearth Tax, 1670, B.H.J. Hughes, Pennar, 1999
Innis, Harold A., The Cod Fisheries, Yale University Press, New Haven, 1940
Jameson, John Franklin, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrated Documents, Macmillan, New York, 1923
Kelly, James, ‘That Damn’d Thing Called Honour’: Duelling in Ireland, 1570-1860, Cork University Press, Cork, 1995
Lang, James, Portuguese Brazil: The King’s Plantation, Academic Press, London, 1979
Lucie-Smith, Edward, Outcasts of the Sea: Pirates and Piracy, Paddington Press, London, 1978
Mannix, Daniel Pratt, Black Cargoes: A History of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1518-1865, Longmans, London, 1963
May, Commander W.E., ‘The Mutiny of the Chesterfield’, in Mariner’s Mirror, vol. 47, 1961
Preston, Diana and Michael, A Pirate of Exquisite Mind: The Life of William Dampier: Explorer, Naturalist and Buccaneer, Corgi, London, 2004
Rediker, Marcus, Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987
——, Villains of All Nations, Verso, London, 2004
Roberts, Walter Adolphe, The French in the West Indies, Bobbs-Merrill Co, New York, 1942
Sheridan, Richard, Sugar and Slavery: An Economic History of the British West Indies, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, 1986
Thomas, Hugh, The Slave Trade, Picador, London, 1997
Williams, Eric, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean, 1492-1969, Andre Deutsch, London, 1970
INDEX
Accra
Act of Union (1535)
Admiralty
Admiralty Courts
Admiralty, Scottish High Court of
Africans
Davis and
dealing with Europeans
Roberts and
Anamaboe
Angola
Anguilla
Annobón
Anstis, Thomas
candidate for captaincy
captain
death
limitations
mock trial
plundering
Roberts’ relationship with
Antigua
Armstrong, David
articles
Ashplant, Valentine
Atkins, John
on Africans
as chaplain
dealing with disease
explosion on board Ranger
maintains meticulous notes of trial
memoirs
on need for discipline
observes sailor almost eaten by crocodile
thunder at sea
Atlantic
Aurangzeb, Mughal Emperor
Avery, Henry
Axim
Babidge, Captain
Bahamas
Bahia
Ball, Roger
Baptists
Barbados
authorities in
British power base
Captain Rogers
English acquire
Good Fortune arrives
Kennedy in
navigating to
Roberts’ early career in
Roberts’ flag
Royal Navy protection of
slavery
Barbuda
Barlow, Edward
Barnsely, Lieutenant
Barnstaple
Basques
Basseterre
Bay of Campechy
Bay of Samaná
Beggar’s Opera, The (John Gay)
Bellamy, Captain
Benin
Benjamin
Bennet, Governor Benjamin
Bennett, Thomas
Beothuk Indians
Bermuda
Bernard, Monsieur
Bideford
Bideford Merchant
Bight of Biafra
Bird
Blackbeard
Bonny, Anne
booty, division of
Bordeaux
Boston
Boston Gazette
Boston Newsletter
Boye, Francis
Bradish, Joseph
Brazil
Bridgetown
Bristol
Britain
British Leeward Islands
brothels
Buccaneers
bullion raiders
Cayenne
guns of
Hispaniola
history of
matelotage
Morgan
St Bartholomew
Buck
Bunce, Charles
Cabinda
Cadogan
Callis, John
Cane, Captain
Cape Apollonia
Cape Coast Castle
gold mine
King Solomon bound for
pirates approach
Royal Navy ships at
trial at
Cape Lahou
Cape Lopez
Hill at
Roberts’ death
Royal Navy patrols at
watering hole
winds and currents around
Cape Mesurado
Cape Three Points
Cape Verde
Cape Verde Islands
Davis in
Kennedy in
Newfoundland cod and
Roberts bound for
winds and currents
Capuchins
Cardiff
careening
Carew
Caribbean
news spreading in
periaguas
piracy in
Roberts and
Royal Navy and
slavery
Carriacou
Cary, Captai
n
Casnewydd Bach, see Little Newcastle
Cayenne
Channel, English
Charles II, King
Charon
Chesapeake Bay
Chesterfield
Child, William
coal
Cocklyn, Jeremiah
appearance of
Davis and
Roberts and
cod
Coleman, John
Columbus, Christopher
Congo
cooks
Cornwall
Cornwall
Côte d’Ivoire
Council of Trade and Plantations
Cox, Samuel
creoles
Cuba
cutlasses
Dartmouth
Dartmouth Inn
Davies, William
Davis, Howel
Africa
avoids coercion
background and character
crew of after Davis’s death
death
division of crew
drinking and debauchery
launches career as pirate
Roberts learns from
seeks pirate crew
slaves engaged by
source material
Davis, William
De Fouquières, Governor
Defoe, Daniel
Dennis, John
Depp, Johnny
Deptford
Devil’s Islands
culpability for desertion at
Norton and
Roberts at
slaves lost at
Diamond
diet
Diligence
Discovery of the Large, Rich and Beautiful Empire of Guiana, The (Sir Walter Raleigh)
disease
Divine, John
Dodson, Henry
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Drake, Francis
drinking
Du Tertre, Jean-Baptiste
Dunne, Richard
Durrel, Captain Thomas
Dutch
Eagle
Edinburgh
Elizabeth
England, Edward