Abstract
As servant of the state, the Royal Navy had the age-old duty to suppress and punish sea-robbers and their abettors. Commanding officers possessed standing instructions to root out pirates and bring them to justice, which, after trial, might lead to summary account at the end of a rope suspended from the yardarm or from a framed gallows. In their suppression of piracy in American seas, the British were advantaged in their anti-piracy work by naval bases at Port Royal (Kingston), Halifax, Bermuda and locations in the Windward Islands. Smaller vessels than frigates became the preferred vessels to hunt pirates. The Foreign Office, at this same time, promoted trade and informal influence with the new republics. British policy was careful not to take sides in internal disputes and was only concerned with commercial prosperity and maintaining freedom of the seas. Thus anti-piracy duties as excercised by the Royal Navy formed an integral part of naval power projection. Peace for the purpose of profit also required the surveying coasts, passages and island shores, the preparing of charts, and the publication of sailing directions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Naval Tracts of Sir William Monson (London: Navy Records Society, 1907), xxx; see also Brian Tunstall, Anatomy of Neptune (London: Routledge, 1936), 70.
- 2.
Edward P. Brenton, Naval History of Great Britain, (5 vols. London, 1823), 287.
- 3.
“Execution of the Pirates,” in The History of the Lives and Bloody Exploits of the Most Noted Pirates, 272–76.
- 4.
Admiralty to Admiral Sir John Warren, 4 November 1813, Adm. 2/1378.
- 5.
See the cogent arguments of “Britannicus” n.d. [1817] and “Pactolis,” 16 June 1817, in Naval Chronicle 38 (1817), 30–34, and 134, respectively. Another, an aggrieved British ship owner, scolded Lord Melville, First Lord, for inadequate naval protection against “privateers, alias pirates,” doing greater damage against defenseless ships. Ibid., 44–45.
- 6.
Statistics from William Morgan, “Sea Power in the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean during the Mexican and Colombian Wars of Independence, 1815–1830,” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Southern California, 1969), 228.
- 7.
See Barry Gough, Pax Britannica: Ruling the Waves and Keeping the Peace Before Armageddon (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 79–103.
- 8.
A. St. John Baker to E. Griffith, 11 January 1817, encl. in D. Milne to J. Croker, 7 Mary 1817, O72, Adm. 1/510.
- 9.
R. Humphreys, ed., British Consular Reports on the Trade and Politics of Latin America (London: Camden Society, 1940).
- 10.
George S. Ritchie, The Admiralty Chart: British Naval Hydrography in the Nineteenth Century (new ed.; Edinburgh: Pentland, 1995), 208.
- 11.
Thomas Hurd, memo of 7 May 1814, printed in Archibald Day, The Admiralty Hydrographic Service, 1795–1919 (London: HMSO, 1967). See also, Gough, Pax Britannica, ch. 4.
- 12.
Colonial Journal, vol. 2, part 4 (1816), 351–54.
- 13.
Ibid., 356–57.
- 14.
Here Governor Woodes Rogers, famed navigator, acting on his own volition, hanged eight pirates, and was never bothered by pirates again. He then successfully defended New Providence against Spanish attackers.
- 15.
The Kangaroo, a speedy, shallow-draft Baltimore schooner, was purchased in the West Indies in 1819. Re-rigged as a ship in 1823, and was De Mayne’s command, until her loss. On this vessel, and Thunder, see David Lyon and Rif Winfield, The Sail and Steam Navy List, 131, 140–41. For further details on these handy vessels, see Howard Chapelle, Baltimore Clipper: Its Origin and Development (Salem, MA: Marine Research Society, 1930).
- 16.
West India Directory; Volume 1. Containing Directions for Navigating the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico, with a Description of the Coast of Colombia, Yucatan, Mexico, and Florida, and the Adjacent Islands and Shoals (London: Hydrographical Office, Admiralty, 1829). There is a copy of Owen’s Sailing Directions (1829) in HD.
- 17.
Beaufort to Edward Barnett, 9 December 1837, in Day, Admiralty Hydrographic Service, 62. See also, Alfred Friendly, Beaufort of the Admiralty: The Life of Sir Francis Beaufort, 1774–1857 (London: Hutchinson, 1977), 250.
- 18.
Friendly, Beaufort of the Admiralty, 252. It should be noted here that the Spanish began mapping the lands and seas of the New World as soon as they made first contact in 1492. La Casa de Contratación, put under the authority of the Consejo Real Supremo de Indias in 1524, for a long time directed the discovery, colonization, and commerce of the New World. In La Casa de Contratación they made the first complete maps of the land, and it can be considered the first nautical university, and the first organ of government to be the coordinator and producer of official and organized nautical cartography. La Casa de Contratación officially disappeared in 1790 but a royal order of 17 December 1797 created la Dirección Hidrografía, which developed into a great labour in a little more than a century. The Spanish War of Independence and the occupation of Spain by France reduced the Spanish scientific dynamism that characterized the last third of the eighteenth century. At the same time, the British and French began strenuous activity to reduce the absence of cartography throughout huge swaths of Spanish territory. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Dirección Hidrográfica would form the Comisiones Hidrográficas de la Península, Antillas y Filipinas that resulted in one of the most extensive collections of nautical maps of the epoch that La Comisión Hidrográfico de las Antillas operated from 1860 to 1898. (Reseña Histórica, Instituto Hidrográfico de la Marina, www.armada.mde.es and José María Moreno Martín, “Cartografía Náutica Española: Historia y Localización,” en Virginia Cuñat/Miguel Cisneros, eds., Patrimonio Marítimo (Santander: Editorial de la Universidad de Cantabria, 2014), 116.
- 19.
Capt. G.E. Watts to Vice Admiral Sir A. Cochrane, 2 May 1814, Adm. 1/506, f.332; Howard I. Chapelle, The Search for Speed under Sail, 1700–1855 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1968), 221–22.
- 20.
Chapelle, Baltimore Clipper, 63.
- 21.
Charles C. Griffin, “Privateering from Baltimore during the Spanish American Wars of Independence,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 35, 1 (March 1940): 1–25.
- 22.
See Chapelle, Search for Speed, chs. 2 and 3.
- 23.
David Lyon and Rif Winfield, The Sail & Steam Navy List: All the Ships of the Royal Navy, 1815–1889 (London: Chatham, 2004), 134–35. Also, Howard I. Chapelle, The History of American Sailing Ships (New York: Bonanza Books, 1985), 156–64.
- 24.
Admiralty to Rear Admiral Sir B. Hallowell, 8 June 1818, Adm. 1/228.
- 25.
See William James, The Naval History of Great Britain (6 vols.; London: Richard Bentley, 1859), 6: 272.
- 26.
Ibid., 6: 273–74.
- 27.
G.R. Pechell to Rear Admiral Sir David Milne, 27 September 1818, enclosing Hall’s private letter dated 4 September 1818, encl. in Milne to J. W. Croker, 9 October 1818, Adm. 1/511, O90.
- 28.
E. Purcell to Rear-Admiral Fahie, 20 October 1821, Adm. 1/338. Also, A.R., 1822, 163.
- 29.
Brenton, Naval History, 5: 281.
- 30.
Brenton, Naval History, 5: 281–83.
- 31.
Additional details may be found in McCarthy, Privateering, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America 1810–1830, 145–47, and correspondence between J. Croker and J. Planta, FO 72/266, 267 and 269, TNA.
- 32.
W. Pryor and others, petition to Vice Admiral Griffith Colpoys, 18 October 1821, and undated Admiralty minute on same; copy in C. Fahie to J. W. Croker, 14 January 1823, O86, Adm. 1/513.
- 33.
Acknowledged in Fahie to Croker, 14 January 1823, O86, Adm. 1/513.
- 34.
The “trading part of the nation” in England exerted powerful influence in the Commons, obliging the Ministry to take diplomatic and military action as required. The 1738 resolution is quoted in Parry, Spanish Seaborne Empire, 298, where further elucidation of this theme is demonstrated.
- 35.
For further on the dispute and related matters, see McCarthy, Privateering, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America 1810–1830, 139–53, passim.
- 36.
Accounts and Papers, 4489, PP LXXVIII, and Accounts and Papers 4490, PP LXXIX, respectively; listed in General Index to the Journals of the House of Commons 1820–1837. Copy in Athenaeum Club Library, London.
- 37.
Captain S. Warren to Admiralty, 28 January 1823, Adm. 1/2722. For fuller discussion, see McCarthy, Privateering, Piracy and British Policy in Spanish America, 145–7.
- 38.
“Petition 1608. Complaining of capture of British ships by Pirates in the West Indies, from Liverpool, PP, LXXVII (1822).
- 39.
Ibid., Hansard (House of Commons), Debates, new ser., v. VII, 1822, pp. 1726–30.
- 40.
Hansard, 23 July 1823, p. 1730.
- 41.
Ibid., 1728–29.
- 42.
AR, 1822, 163.
- 43.
Gough, “Specie Conveyance from the West Coast of Mexico in British Warships, c.1820–1870: An Aspect of the Pax Britannica,” in The Mariner’s Mirror 69, 4 (1983): 419–33.
- 44.
See files in correspondence and Admiralty minutes, Adm. 1/513.
- 45.
This may be followed in PP, LXXX (1825), pp. 259, 276, 286, 321, 327.
- 46.
See House of Commons Journals, LXXX (1825), 327.
- 47.
“To Amend Certain Acts Relating to the Crime of Piracy,” House of Commons Journals, XCII (1837), 218, 245, 420. Lords’ amendment agreed to, 664.
- 48.
For further details, and sources, see Barry Gough, “Specie Conveyance,” 426.
- 49.
Captain W. Hendry to Rear-Admiral W. Fahie, 30 September 1922, encl. in Fahie to J. Croker, 11 October 1822, O86, Adm. 1/512.
- 50.
Aaron Smith, The Atrocities of the Pirates (London: G. and W.B. Whittaker, 1824). The National Maritime Museum copy, previously owned by P. Gosse, contains a lurid letter (inserted) damning Smith as “one of the most notorious characters of the day”—every bit a pirate in appearance, a blustering and coarse fellow, in league with pettifogging lawyers and always clamouring for “a pound of flesh.”
- 51.
Hansard, 2nd ser., VIII (1823), 418–23. Also, Morgan, “Sea Power,” 252–54.
- 52.
Morgan, “Sea Power,” 274–81.
- 53.
For sources and discussion, see Morgan, “Sea Power,” 256.
- 54.
History of the Lives and Bloody Exploits of the Most Noted Pirates, 276, 280.
- 55.
“Number of Pirate Vessels Destroyed on the Jamaica Station,” 1823, Parliamentary Papers, XIII, no. 517, p. 535. “Return of Persons Tried and Condemned at Jamaica for Acts of Piracy,” 1824, Parliamentary Papers, XVI, no. 421, p. 497.
- 56.
Becker, 12.
- 57.
Gosse, History of Piracy, 214.
- 58.
Becker, 13.
- 59.
Becker, 5.
- 60.
Lloyd, Navy and the Slave Trade, 39.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gough, B., Borras, C. (2018). Royal Navy at Work. In: The War Against the Pirates. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31414-7_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-31414-7_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-35481-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-31414-7
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)