Legalized piracy -- the tale of the Snap Dragon

Decal created by Sharon O'Connor for 
her sailboat named for a legendary privateer

The two previous pirates I wrote about are joined by many others who made life miserable on the eastern coast of Canada during the Golden Age of piracy -- from the late 17th century to about the middle of the 18th century. I picked the particular duo because of the horrible death and after-death of the one and the horrible life led by the other.

But I've had a request to tell the tale of one of the most successful privateers of the 19th nineteenth century -- Otway Burns, a North Carolinian who raided shipping from South America to Newfoundland until his ship, the Snap Dragon, was captured off the shores of Newfoundland in 1814. 

Burns was born just before the Revolutionary War, though the exact date seems to be uncertain, and lived to the middle of the 19th century and was a native of North Carolina. During his 70+ years, he worked as the captain of a merchant ship, harassed British shipping during the War of 1812, built a successful business empire, and served as a state legislator. He married three times, each of his wives preceding him in death, and had two children by his first wife, a son, Owen, and a daughter, Harriet. [1]

His career as a merchantman captain came to an abrupt halt with the commencement of the already mentioned war. With a partner, he purchased a small ship, outfitted as most merchant ships were, with minimal armaments. They renamed the boat Snap Dragon, sometimes referred to as Snap-Dragon, and applied to the U.S. government for letters of marque. Upon receipt of the documents, they sold shares in the ship to investors.

For the uninitiated, letters of marque are issued by governments authorizing captains of ships to harass and capture foreign shipping, usually during times of war. Captured ships would be taken to a nation's ports, the circumstances of capture reviewed, and if the capture passed muster, sold along with whatever cargo they carried at auction. The government often took a share of the money, with most of the proceeds going to the captain and crew. 

Now, you also need to know that letters of marque are enshrined in Article 1 of the American Constitution. The practice was outlawed by international treaty in 1856. though technically the U.S. still has the authority to do it.

Captains so authorized, and their ships, are called privateers, and they served the purpose, especially for America, of expanding and supplementing the nation's naval presence. Not everyone was on board with the concept, though.

When Burns sailed into port in New Bern, NC, he began recruiting crewmen. Local political leaders who believed privateering to be glorified piracy would find out who the recruits were and lend them money. Once indebted, the crewmen would be arrested for being in debt. If you don't have enough crew, you can't sail, and you can't terrorize British shipping. These local pols may have been leftover British sympathizers.

Warrants were issued for the arrest of crewmen who had returned to the ship,and a group of constables were dispatched in a boat to arrest the debtors. Burns ordered his men to overturn the boat, and the constables were forced to swim ashore. A lawyer then began stirring up trouble and called the ship, its master and crew licensed robbers. When Burns heard of this, he rowed ashore, thrashed the lawyer and threw him into a nearby river. 

The Snap Dragon and its crew made three long voyages, sometimes cooperating with other privateers, sometimes going it alone, even if not always intentionally. Burns and his crew accounted for upwards of a hundred captures, though the exact number is unknown because some of his logs has been lost.

 Some of the captured ships would be retaken, but the prize amounts for the ships sometimes reached into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and in a couple of instances, more than a million. I can't say whether the numbers cited by his chroniclers are adjusted for inflation, but I don't think so. After all, the book's contents are less than 100 years removed from the events.

Burns' range extended from near the equator in South America, through the Caribbean, along the eastern seaboard of the U.S. to the maritimes and Newfoundland in Canada. 

He fearlessly attacked ships that were larger and much better armed than his. Sometimes his gambit paid off, sometimes he was forced to retreat. In one incident noted in his logs, he attacked a much larger British naval ship that had tried to pass itself off as a merchantman. The battle raged for hours and only ended after the British  ship managed to carry off Snap Dragon's bowsprit, which led to its foremast collapsing. Burns commented that had the ship not lost its bowsprit, he was certain he'd have won.

His primary strategy, as I understand it, was to pick a target, sail for it until he caught up to it, and ram it. His crew, which was much larger than needed to actually sail the ship, would board the enemy ship and overpower its crew. Burn's crews could be as large as a 100 or more men, and most of the merchant ships would have from 20-60 men. 

During the ship's last tour, Burns' health diminished to the point he relinquished command to one of his officers. (I have more than one name for the officer, so I can't say who it was with certainty.) The British had disguised one of their ships as a merchantman in another effort to trick the Snap Dragon's crew and took up a position off Halifax. 

This time the ruse worked. Snap Dragon took an initial broadside, and though she was much better armed than usual, she was no match for the British ship. Her substitute captain was killed and many of the crew wounded. The remaining crew struck the ship's flag and surrendered. Ship and crew were taken to England, where the crew was imprisoned. No one really knows what happened to the ship.

Much later Burns built another boat and named her Snap Dragon, She was a much smaller boat that featured an innovation called a center board. For non-sailors a centerboard is, well, a board that extends through the, um, center of the ship's hull. This substitutes for a keel and makes the ship better suited for sailing in shallower waters. 

And more than 100 years later, my wife had a small sailing craft with a center board that she named Snap Dragon. 

[1] For this post, most of the information is summarized from the contents of the book Captain Otway Burns, Patriot, Privateer and Legislator published in New York in 1905. This is a collection of materials compiled by one of Burns' descendants and is available through the Library of Congress, Google Books and Internet Archive, among other outlets. 

How bad do you have to be?

 

Replica of Ned Low's pirate flag

I mentioned two particular pirates in the previous post, one a sort of accidental pirate and the other a particularly nasty pirate who, for part of his career, terrorized the waters of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. 

Edward Lowe, aka Ned Low, became so reviled by his enemies and chroniclers that you might say he was considered loathsome, a description that became part of his nickname. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle mentions Low in his book The Green Flag, grouping him with other brigands and describing them as capable of  "amazing and grotesque brutality."

The English Wikipedia entry for Low quotes The New York Times as saying "Low and his crew became the terror of the Atlantic, and his depredations were committed on every part of the ocean, from the coast of Brazil to the Grand Banks of Newfoundland."

A children's book on pirates written by Howard Pyle said "No one stood higher in the trade than [Low], and no one mounted to more lofter altitudes of bloodthirsty and unscrupulous wickedness." Pyle went on to wonder why Low had not received the attention of pirates such as Blackbeard (William Teach), Black Bart Roberts and other contemporaries of the age. Like that was a bad thing.

He sounds pretty bad, but just how bad do you have to be to earn such scathing disapprobation? Pretty bad, it turns out.

Low began his life as a scoundrel at a young age, according to some of the early sources on his life.Thievery, gambling and grifting were his trade in stock. He and at least one of his brothers practiced their felonious craft in the Westminster part of London. Bucking him would be an occasion for a thrashing. 

Eventually, though, he signed onto a merchant ship and made his way to the colonies where, after a time, he settled in Boston, MA, obtained a job as a ship rigger, married and had children. He and his wife actually attended Second Church in Boston, where they had their children baptized. 

After the death of his wife from complications of childbirth, he entrusted the newborn girl, their third child, to his in-laws and left to do other things. He first obtained a position on a sloop that was slated to pick up a cargo of logwood, a particular species of tree apparently.

While loading the wood, he and some crew members decided to return to the ship, arriving around chow time. The captain wanted them to return, but Low suggested they be allowed to eat before returning, an offer that was countered with the proposal that they have some of their ration of rum and get back to work so the ship could leave before attracting unwanted attention.

Low's responded angrily, grabbed gun and tried to shoot the captain. He missed but hit another crewman. Ned and his cohorts ran off with one of the sloop's boats. The next day they commandeered a larger vessel and began their life of piracy. 

They ran down to the Leeward Islands and the Caribbean, capturing ships to add to their fleet, burning others to the water, and threatening the ships' crews -- join us or die. His reputation grew until all he had to do was show up, set his pirate flag, and their prey would surrender without a fight -- for the most part.

Several tales are told of his encountering recalcitrant captains whose resistance would meet with loss of various body parts, mostly facial, before being executed. One particularly gruesome incident involved a captured ship's cook, whom the crew decided was a greasy fellow. Think about cooks and grease, and you may figure out what happened to him.

Low seemed to be solicitous toward English ships and would avoid plundering them if they were clearly British, and also, probably because of tenderness for his wife and daughter, would free women and children before pillaging a ship, seemingly his only redeeming character traits. 

At some point, Low turned his sights to American shipping, attacking and burning boats from Massachusetts -- just because their crews were New England men -- doing the same to a Connecticut ship, letting go a ship from Virginia after its crew relinquished the cargo, and co-opting a Jamaican ship. 

More American ships fell to Low's predations all the way up to Maine. From there he headed to Newfoundland (at last we get to Canada!) As he and his crews approached St. Johns, they thought they spotted a large ship suitable for taking in the foggy harbor. But on hailing a passing ship, they learned the ship was a British naval vessel. This prompted a retreat from the harbor and a continuation north, where they plundered a village and harassed shipping. 

Low's time in the area gave rise to a rumor that he and his crew had landed on an island in the Bay of Fundy, which abuts Nova Scotia, and buried some of their loot there. Many people have searched over the years for the treasure -- which also sometimes is attributed in lore as actually being Captain Kidd's treasure.

One treasure seeker who visited the island in 1929 claimed to have found jewels and coins, though this was never verified. And another adventurer visited the island in 1952 and claimed to have found a skeleton along with silver and gold coins. He published photos in Life magazine, but the discovery has never been authenticated. Others have surely searched since so I'd not be booking a trip to Nova Scotia.

Karma may have caught up to Low a couple of times. He received a sword wound in battle once and had the ship's surgeon sew him up. But he was unhappy with the result and began berating the surgeon, who then struck Low's wound, causing the stitches to pull loose. The surgeon then left him to stitch himself back up.

You can find multiple accounts of the end of Low's career, so we don't know for sure what happened to him, but the likelihood is that he was captured, tried and executed. One of the capture tales provides a second possible karmic consequence. Low had been involved in a set-to with one of his crewmen and later attacked the man while he was sleeping. This prompted the crew to decide they'd had enough of Low's temper and violence, and they set him adrift. 

Those who live by the sword ...

Argh, matey. There be pirates here, eh

Depiction of Edward
Jordan's fate as
a convicted pirate

When most of us think of pirates wreaking havoc on the high seas,  I suspect that we imagine the brigands of Stevenson, or the swashbucklers played by Flynn, or in more modern times, the quirky characters from Pirates of the Caribbean. 

In truth the pirates featured in the miniseries Black Sails -- which I think can still be found streaming somewhere -- come closer to what history tells us pirates were like.

But when you think of pirates your thoughts probably don't turn your imagination to such exotic places as Nova Scotia or Newfoundland. But Canada had its share of scoundrels plying it's coastal waters. 

I ran across two of them while reminiscing about ort recent, brief sojourn in Halifax. One's career was short lived but left a gruesome mark on history. The other was a cruel marauder who terrorized his victims.

Edward Jordan seems an unlikely pirate when you know the details of his life and crime. The Irishman had participated in In the Irish rebellions at the end of the 18th century. He managed to obtain a pardon for his activities and immigrated to Nova Scotia, Canada, where he tried to make a living fishing in a village called Gaspe. He did well enough in the beginning and had his own boat built, The Three Sisters, or as one source has it, The Three Daughters, named for his children

But Jordan ran up a massive debt with local merchants and wound up mortgaging his boat with one of the companies he traded with, J&J Tremaine Merchants. One day he went to Halifax to purchase supplies, and the merchant had him arrested for nonpayment of his debt. He managed to get bailed out, and when did Tremaine demanded he either pay his debts or hand over the boat. He refused, and the company hired men to seize the boat. At that point, Jordan negotiated a deal allowing him and his family to ride as passengers on the boat on a journey to Halifax, where he said he intended to relocate.

Jordan befriended one of the crew and enlisted him in a plan to retake the vessel. Three days in, Jordan and his accomplice struck. Jordan, his accomplice and his wife stole pistols from the captain's cabin while the captain and crew were on deck. 

Jordan fired the first shot, intending to hit the captain, but his aim was a bit off, and the shot passed through the captain cheek and struck a crewman in the chest, killing him. Jordan subdued the remaining crewman while his wife began attacking the captain, who saved himself by jumping into the ocean. Jordan his accomplice set a course for Newfoundland.

A passing boat found the captain and learned of the plot, which was duly reported to naval authorities. On his way to Newfoundland, Jordan managed to pick up some crewmen by stopping in villages along the coast. He decided he had enough crew to manage a crossing and planned to return to Ireland.

He had taken refuge in the harbor at St. John's before starting the journey, but as the left the harbor, they encountered a British ship that chased them down. Jordan was arrested for piracy and murder and returned to Halifax. 

After being tried and convicted, Jordan was sentenced to hang in accordance with British law. After his death on the gallows, his body was taken down, tarred,placed in an iron cage, known as a gibbet, and hung in a prominent beach in the area known as Point Pleasant. 

Coincidentally a group of mutineers had been hung and their bodies displayed on an island across the water from Point Pleasant, a gruesome reminder and warning to ships sailing into the harbor of the consequences of committing naval crimes in British waters.

For reasons I haven't uncovered, Jordan's body was left to hand in the gibbet for about three decades. You can imagine for yourself what that must have been like, but the various descriptions aren't pleasant. 

Jordan is sort of an accidental pirate -- the laws demanded the description because the boat was not his, so he couldn't take it back by force. In the next post, we'll look at the second pirate I mentioned in the beginning.