Abstract
Sarah Craze's examination of the late surge in Atlantic piracy in the 1820s is a major contribution to the field, following a PhD supervised by Richard Pennell at Melbourne University and related projects. This is necessarily a transnational study, with British, American, Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian and Argentine elements. The central event is the short, violent cruise of the Spanish pirate Benito de Soto, who ransacked several ships in the mid Atlantic in 1828, killing some or all of their crews and destroying several captured vessels. Although De Soto's exploits achieved a degree of contemporary notoriety, they continue to be misrepresented by those who rely on older anglophone secondary sources. Craze rectifies these errors by exploiting Spanish, British and American resources, court records and local history to develop a far richer analysis of the attack on a British merchant vessel, the Morning Star, and the treatment of the passengers and crew, which included murder, sexual violence and disobedience by part of the pirate gang. Evidence matters: these pirates were caught because the boarding party failed to carry out De Soto's order to kill everyone on board and sink the vessel. They disabled the Morning Star's rigging, drilled holes in the hull, and left the survivors locked up. This infuriated De Soto, who made sure that his men murdered everyone on his next prize, a ship whose fate was only known through the confessions of his followers. By contrast, the surviving passengers and crew of the Morning Star lived to tell their tale. In a key chapter, Craze reflects on why British texts glossed over the rape of female passengers, while Spanish court records were both thorough and understanding. The publication of the survivors’ stories alerted Spanish and British authorities just as the pirate ship ran aground near Cadiz, where most of the pirates were arrested, tried and executed. De Soto was arrested and executed in Gibraltar. His brief career had been hampered by illiteracy, the limited ability of nineteenth-century pirates to dispose of cargoes, and the lack of a market for captured ships – a result of the extensive marine insurance market, and close links between Lloyds of London and the Admiralty, which were a feature of the British response to the attack. Without a pirate-friendly port to dispose of his plunder, De Soto reconnected with family smuggling networks in his Galician home town of Pontevedra, exposing the illicit activity of the smugglers in the process.
The link between smuggling, slaving and piracy is clear: De Soto had seized his ship on the coast of Africa, where it had sailed on a Brazilian slaving voyage. He had been part of the polyglot crew and recruited enough followers to act. When compared with slaving or smuggling, the economic returns of piracy were low and the risk of capture high, making the enterprise unattractive. It is no coincidence that De Soto was not the only psychopath to turn pirate in this period. He lived to control and manipulate, murdering his own crew to maintain discipline and ordering random violence against captured crew and passengers to incriminate the other pirates in his deeds and instil fear in those he suspected might attempt to challenge his command. Many of these pirates were already outlaws, often for crimes of violence, who drifted into stateless ships on uncontrolled oceans. Their activities increased the demand for maritime security and the importance of the Royal Navy in providing it.
The Morning Star was the victim of a brief surge in Atlantic piracy that can be linked to the Latin and South American wars of independence, and the reluctance of some major powers to allow the Royal Navy to search ships flying their flag, legitimately or otherwise, when suspected of slave trading and/or piracy. The new republics of the Americas had been quick to issue privateer licences, but lacked the capacity to police their licensees. 9 This ungoverned space attracted former privateers from the War of 1812 and their fast brigs, which also played a key role in developing the Atlantic slave trade in the era of British anti-slavery patrols. With Spain also issuing privateer licences from Cuba and Puerto Rico, there was ample opportunity for licensed predation, which often drifted into piracy when lawful seizures dried up and became a clear choice for some when the Latin and South American wars of the era ended. The lack of obvious alternative employment encouraged this tendency. The synergy of this period with the surge in Atlantic piracy after 1713, is significant. Ungoverned or weakly governed spaces attracted illegal actors, smugglers and pirates. The obvious solutions included naval forces cruising in pirate hot spots and attacking pirate bases. The threat was serious, prompting the first post-1812 cooperation between the Royal Navy and United States Navy, which quickly reduced piracy in the Caribbean. A war between Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Brazil in the late 1820s offered fresh opportunities for privateering, drawing several pirates into legitimate activity. The end of the Latin American wars and the advance of legal authority on land and at sea, together with improved global communications and steam-powered shipping, effectively ended Atlantic piracy, although slave traders were prosecuted under the same legal regime.
Craze's discussion of anti-piracy measures contrasts the cautious approach of the continentally minded Americans with the arrogant assumption of dominion over the oceans that sustained British activity. Having preserved their aggressive version of maritime law at the treaties of Ghent and Vienna in 1814–1815, the British were ready to impose order at sea. It is significant, as Craze observes, that the definition of piracy in the Second United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea was based on British practice, not American the two legal systems having diverged to reflect different national relationships with the sea.
There are a few minor errors: General Sir George Murray was a British cabinet minister, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, not the Secretary of the British Empire, while other British soldiers have been awarded a naval command.
This is a major contribution to the history of piracy.