Jon Hagadorn

you were leaving the protection of the law, the reach of kings, and the very concept of mercy.

But for a few desperate souls, that abyss represented something better than the starving streets of London or the lash of the Royal Navy.

It represented freedom—violent, fleeting, but intoxicating freedom.

Today we offer Chapter 2, Captain Martell, and the first half of Chapter 3—

Edward Teach, alias Blackbeard.

And now chapter two, Captain Martell and crew.

I come now to the pirates that have rose since the peace of Utrecht.

In wartime there is no room for any, because all those of a roving, adventurous disposition find employment in privateers, so there is no opportunity for pirates, like our mobs in London, when they come to any height.

Our superiors order out the train-bands,

and when once they are raised, the others are suppressed, of course.

I take the reason of it to be that the mob got into the tame army, and immediately from notorious breakers of the peace, become, by being put into order, solemn preservers of it.

And should our legislators put some of the pirates into authority, it would not only lessen their number, but, I imagine, set them upon the rest, and they would be the likeliest people to find them out.

According to the proverb, set a thief to catch a thief.

To bring this about, there needs no other encouragement but to give all the effects taken aboard a pirate vessel to the captors.

for in case of plunder and gain they like it as well from friends as enemies, but are not fond, as things are carried, of running poor fellows, say the Creolians, with no advantage to themselves.

The multitude of men and vessels employed this way in time of war in the West Indies is another reason for the number of pirates in a time of peace.

This cannot be supposed to be a reflection on any of our American governments, much less on the King himself, by whose authority such commissions are granted, because of the reasonableness and absolute necessity there is for the doing of it.

Yet the observation is just, for so many idle people employing themselves in privateers, for the sake of plunder and riches, which they always spread as fast as they get.

that when the war is over, and they can have no farther business in the way of life they have been used to, they too readily engage in acts of piracy, which being but the same practice without a commission, they make very little distinction betwixt the lawfulness of one and the unlawfulness of the other.

I have not inquired so far back as to know the original of this rover, but I believe he and his gang were some privateer's men belonging to the island of Jamaica in the preceding war.