Shiver mi timbers! It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day!
A couple of years ago I wrote about the special relationships pirates had which could have been made between either gay or straight same-sex couples. The relationship was called a matiloge.
One couple I mentioned was Robert Culliford and John Swann. I thought Culliford in particular deserved further note. So, here is the first part of the Xtraordinary Life of Pirate Captain Robert Culliford.
But first, what’s the difference between a pirate and a privateer? Well, nothing really, except that a privateer has license (called a letter of marque) from a government to attack ships and ports of nations who were their enemies at the time, and hand over to that government most of the plundered booty. Pirates generally attacked any ship which they thought would have a lot of treasure, and share it out amongst their crew. They had no government backing and were, therefore, breaking maritime law. Putting it like that makes it sounds like there was a lot of difference, but if you happened to be on the receiving end of an attack by either pirate or privateer, you wouldn’t know the difference.
Robert Culliford was born in or around the year 1666 in southwest England, a region renowned for its seafaring heritage. Some of the greatest English sailors of the 16th century came from here – Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Francis Drake. It was also where the Mayflower Pilgrims set sail for New England in 1620, and there’s still a large Royal Navy presence there.
Culliford may have been born in Devon (NOT Devonshire – that’s the title of a duke, not an English county) where there was prominent family of that name. His early life was so uneventful that there’s no record of it until he was about 23 years old. That was when we first have record of him going to sea.
Somehow he had made his way to Haiti in the Caribbean and joined the crew of a French privateer ship called the Sante Rose, a former Spanish frigate captured by the French. Joining Culliford on the Sante Rose was a Scotsman, William Kidd, someone who would become one of the most famous pirates in history. Also aboard were four or five other Englishmen in an otherwise all French crew.
Relations between England and France were tense at that time. In fact, it was all-out war, with the Nine Years War beginning the previous year. This pitted France against pretty much the rest of western Europe.
Culliford’s first pirate adventure seems to have been attacking a Dutch ship. The Dutch were allies of the English in the war and an enemy of France, so this might not have been comfortable for Culliford. Then a chain of events began which eventually put him in charge of his own ship.
First, there was a mutiny against the captain while the ship was in New York for a refit. Then another war broke out – King William’s War, which was between France and the English American colonists. King William was a Protestant Dutch prince invited by England to become its monarch in 1688, and take over from the Catholic king (William’s wife was next in line of succession and ruled with him, so he was an obvious choice). It was after this that Culliford and William Kidd led a mutiny against their new captain, with Kidd taking his place. They renamed the ship Blessed William. Kidd didn’t remain in charge for long, because Culliford led another mutiny and Kidd was replaced.
Back in New York, the colonial governor issued Blessed William with a letter of marque which authorised it to attack ships or ports of the nation’s enemy. In other words, France. The nearest enemy territory to New York was French Acadia (Canada), so Blessed William sailed north and plundered a couple of French settlements.
During this attack they captured a French frigate, and the captain of Blessed William gave it to Robert Culliford as his first command. He renamed his ship Horne Frigate.
Two ketches (small sailing boats common along the North American coast at the time) were given the task of transporting most of the loot from the attack back down to New York. Unfortunately, the ketches were captured by French pirates. The Horne Frigate sailed back to New York with virtually nothing. It looked like his life as a pirate captain was a failure.
Undaunted Robert Culliford decided he may have better luck on the other side of Africa. He managed to get a position as quartermaster to his old captain on a captured French ship called the Jacob and sailed all the way down the North American coast, past the Caribbean, down the Brazilian coastline, across the Atlantic to Africa, down and round the Cape of Good Hope and up again on the other side into the Indian Ocean.
The year was now 1692. The Indian Ocean had long been a denizen of pirates. Its shores were home to some of the most important trading routes and ports in the world and easy picking. Europe had used these routes for several centuries, and by the 1600s was looking to expand its control and protection of these routes, and the nations which supplied the goods it transported. Piracy was rife, whether it was by Arab, African, Indian or east Asian pirates. The Indian Ocean was an area that was probably more dangerous to shipping than the Caribbean and, consequently, more heavily policed by the European colonial powers.
This was the environment into which Robert Culliford and the Jacob was sailing. Would they have better luck in the Indian Ocean? Would Culliford ever become a captain again? If that was his hope, he was to have mixed results, including imprisonment in an Indian jail, a not-so-pleasant reunion with Captain Kidd, and a much more pleasant encounter with the man who became his life partner.
But that’s for next time. Hopefully, I can return to recount some more extraordinary events in the life of pirate captain Robert Culliford in November.
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