CAPTAIN JOHN WARD
Captain John Ward, our "most notorious pirate," was born at Feversham, in Kent, about the year 1555. We first hear of him as a fisherman of that town, the child of mean parents, of "estate lowe," and of "hope," or expectations, still less. It has been stated that, at one time, presumably in his youth, he made one of a buccaneering party in the West Indies. It is highly probable that he learned the crafts of seamanship and navigation as a mariner in one of the many raids against the Spaniards, between the years 1570 and 1596. The Spanish Main, no less than the English Channel at that time, was a very pleasant place for a pirate; and Ward, in later years, talked mournfully of the good days he had had in his youth, "robbing at will, and counting the world but a garden where he walked for sport." After the death of Drake, in 1596, he seems to have been a seaman aboard one of the Queen's ships on a voyage to Portugal. Pepwell, writing in 1608, tells us that he "rose through all ranks of the (naval) service in our wars with Spain."
His buccaneering and naval service, if he ever indulged in any, failed to make his fortune; for he was a fisherman at Feversham, owning a single small fishing-boat, in the year 1602. In that year his pride grew to such a height that he could brook the fishery no longer. "Nothing would serve him but the wide Ocean to walke in." He went aboard his ketch one morning, and crept along the coast to Plymouth, where he seems to have sold his vessel for a fair sum. His wife he left behind him at Feversham.
For the next few months he lived in the Plymouth taverns, drinking the wondrous Plymouth ale, which was "stronger than sack," and cheap, and so full of alcohol that "an halfe bowle" would make a sailor's wits like a merry-go-round. Plymouth at that time was full of wastrels and rogues. The chief clients of the ale-houses were runaway sailors, who, after entering for a voyage, and drawing an advance, or bounty, lay perdu till the ship had sailed. The society of the long-shore was highly undesirable. What with pirates and deserters and smugglers, at every street corner, honest John Ward had little incentive to be virtuous. By 1603 he had become a ragged, moody ruffian who got drunk every night "with drinking of the King" among a company of "scatter-goods and swaggerers." He went by the name of Jack Ward, and had a reputation as a stout drinker and swearer. He used to sit on the tavern benches "cursing the time" with a vehemence which won him the regard of all who heard. His biographer suggests that he paid no rent. The little money he possessed seems to have been spent in drink:
Ale was his eating and his drinking solely
so that "all the day you should hardly faile but finde him in an ale-house: but bee sure to have him drunke at home at night."
After a few months in Plymouth, his money (his savings, or the proceeds of the ketch) was exhausted. Plymouth ale became no longer feasible, nor would the hosts give him credit, and at this time he seems to have obtained some employment in one of the King's ships. It was not then a difficult business to enter a King's ship, and no doubt Ward had a wide acquaintance among the warrant officers of the ships in harbour. A word from one of them would have been sufficient to obtain a post for him. We do not know the exact nature of his employment, but it was probably that of ship-keeper, or petty-officer. As such, he went aboard the Lion's Whelp, a small man-of-war, then lying in the harbour. The work, whatever it was, was probably not very arduous, nor does it appear that the ship had her full complement "of 63 hands" aboard her. Ward helped to fit her for the sea, and made one of the crew (probably a scratch crew) which worked her round, shortly afterwards, to Portsmouth, where she anchored.
The Navy, at that time, was by no means a popular service. Sir Walter Raleigh, writing in this very year, tells us that "They go with as great grudging to serve in his Majesty's ships as if it were to be slaves in the galleys." Five years after this date, when matters had grown rather worse, under a Stuart administration, the Navy was "for the greatest part manned with aged, impotent, vagrant, lewd and disorderly companions"; it had "become a ragged regiment of common rogues." Aboard the Lion's Whelp they were mostly old rovers who had sailed in the piratical raids of the last reign. The work they had to do while they lay in Portsmouth was not enough to keep them employed; and "when sailors are idle you have mutiny." Besides too much spare time, they had too many causes for complaint. The ship's beer was sour; the ship had an unwholesome smell; the beef and fish were putrid; the pay was both irregular and insufficient. In the evenings, when work was at an end, the ship-keepers would get together; and Ward would hold forth to them upon the evils of their lot. He told them of the happy days they had enjoyed together in the past, in the West Indies or elsewhere, when the world had been an oyster to them, which, with their jack-knives, they had opened. The sailors listened to him, and held his words to be sound doctrine; but, as they saw no remedy, they contented themselves with listening.
It happened that Ward somehow came to hear of a recusant, a Roman Catholic gentleman, who was preparing to leave England for France, in order to enjoy "liberty of conscience." He had sold his estate near Petersfield, and had chartered a bark of twenty-five tons, to convey him to Havre. The bark lay at Portsmouth, not far from the Lion's Whelp, and aboard her (so Ward was informed) was the recusant's money. The religious issue probably did not weigh with Ward; but the thought of £2,000, in ready chinkes," besides plate and jewels, was too much for him. His informant (no doubt one of the crew of the bark) may have exaggerated matters; but even with a considerable discount the bark must have seemed a most noble "purchase." Ward hastened to tell his brother warrants of the "comfortable little dew of Heaven" lying so close beside them. They agreed with him that such an opportunity ought not to be allowed to pass. They had had enough of the King's service to last them through their lives, and there, in the little bark, was "present pay" enough to keep them in affluence. They planned to go ashore together till the evening, when they would lay the bark aboard, make a prize of her, and carry her away to sea, there to rove as pirates "to seek their desperate fortunes."
The work they had to do aboard the Lion's Whelp was, as we have said, not enough to keep them busy. They had no difficulty in obtaining leave to go ashore, on the rather curious pretext that the steward did not give them a full allowance, and that they were hungry, and wished to buy themselves a square meal, at one of the inns by the Point. They went ashore together in one of the boats, and soon found a tavern to their taste. Here they sat down to disport themselves "after the manner of sailors," with the "humming ale" and "virtuous sacke" of their heart's desires. Very presently, although it was early in the day, they became drunk. They began to "swagger," or bluster, and in their songs and oaths, and drunken talk, they seem to have let fall a few dark hints of their intentions towards the recusant. The recusant happened to be ashore in Portsmouth waiting for the tide, or buying necessaries. He saw "a ragged regiment of common rogues" rolling from inn to inn. He heard their oaths and menaces (or heard of them from some one he could trust), and became suspicious. Portsmouth was but a little town, and the presence of a drunken gang, at such a time, was disquieting. The recusant resolved to run no risks. He went aboard the little bark and conveyed ashore his "ready chinkes," with all his plate and jewels.
When the light began to fail, Ward's company took their boat and rowed to the bark. They laid her aboard very quietly, and carried her without opposition, for there were only "two poor sneaks" in charge of her. They thrust this couple below, while some of them hove up the anchor, and got sail upon her. In a few minutes they were under way. They ran out to sea with a shout to the battery, and shaped a course to the westward.
It did not take the pirates many minutes to discover that they had been duped, and that the gold they had risked their necks for was not aboard. It took them sadly aback, and caused them "to be ranck mad," for there was no returning to Portsmouth. It was one of those awkward situations in which the great man gets an opportunity to explain himself. It was Ward's opportunity; and he rose to it at once. The recusant had provisioned the ship for the voyage with a profusion which did him honour. Although he had taken his money-bags, his "nest of goldfinches," he had not removed his "turkey-pies," his "venison pasties," and his "sundry sorts of sacke"; so that there was no question of the pirates running short of food for some little time. Ward set a watch, and placed a good man at the helm, and called a council round his supper-table. They made a very excellent supper, and washed it down with what some one has called "the learned poet's good." As they ate and drank, they debated that if they ventured again into Portsmouth they would very speedily be hanged, at low water mark, as a warning to sailors. It was not very probable that they would be pursued; so that there was no immediate danger, and Ward proposed that they should cruise for a day or two off the Land's End; and then, if they met with any luck, put into Plymouth, to take off some of the men who had been his boon-companions there, before he joined the Navy. After that, he thought, they could "commence pirates" on a more ambitious scale. They could enter the Mediterranean, and join issue with the pirates of Algiers.
This project won the hearts of all present; so westward they sailed. In a day or two they had reached their cruising ground, near the Scilly Islands, and there they sighted a fine French merchantman, bound for Ireland. Ward sent his men below, so that the merchants should not suspect him. He ran up to the Frenchman and hailed him, in all friendship. The Frenchman suspected nothing; and for some time the two ships kept company. Presently, when Ward thought that the Frenchmen would be quite off their guards, he edged his bark alongside, and called his gang to board her. The surprise was complete. The Frenchmen were beaten down below, or flung overboard, and Ward found himself in possession of a ship of seventy tons, well-equipped, and armed. After this, he sailed for Plymouth, where he anchored in Cawsand Bay. Some of his company contrived to enter the town, where they persuaded a number of ruffians to leave the taverns and to come for a cruise. With these recruits, Ward thought himself strong enough to put to sea as a rover. He left Cawsand Bay and sailed away down Channel to the Spanish coasts.
He seems to have cruised for several months off the coast of Spain, with considerable success. He took a ship of one hundred tons, and a smaller vessel, a coaster, of the kind known as a sattee. In both these vessels he found recruits, besides gold and merchandise; so that, by the spring of 1604, he felt himself strong enough to proceed to Algiers, to league himself, as many English pirates had done before him, to the Algerine pirates, the scourges of the Mediterranean. But it chanced that, only a few weeks before he came to Algiers, one Richard Gifford, a pirate of renown, in the service of the Duke of Tuscany, had burnt some Algerine galleys, and killed many of the pirates on board them. The Algerines were retaliating by barbarous reprisals upon English merchantmen, and when Ward arrived off their city he found them particularly bitter. They refused his proffered alliance, and drove him from their ports. He therefore proceeded to Tunis, where he became a Turk (in order to satisfy the religious scruples of the natives), and made some satisfactory arrangement with the Bey, or Governor, a man named Osmund, or "Crossyman." In consideration of some large percentage of his profits this Bey, or "Crossyman," agreed to allow him to shelter and recruit at Tunis, and to use that port as a base from which he might sally out to rob at pleasure. The name Crossyman seems to be a corruption of Cara Osman, or Osman the Dark. Osman, it seems, had started life as a tailor.
It is difficult for one accustomed to the law and order of the present day to understand the dangers which threatened the Jacobean traveller. The seas swarmed with pirates; so that few merchantmen dared put to sea without arms; while very few came home without some tale of an encounter. There were pirates in the Atlantic, to intercept the ships coming home from the Newfoundland fisheries. There were pirates in the West Indies, roving for Spanish treasure-ships. There were pirates in the Orkneys, preying upon the Iceland trades. There were pirates all over Ireland, especially in the south and the west, ranging over the Channel, and round these coasts. But there were, perhaps, more pirates in the Mediterranean than in all the other waters put together. In the Mediterranean they had the most part of the trade of Europe for their quarry; while the coasts of Africa, and the islands of the Archipelago, provided obscure harbours (with compliant Governors) for the recruiting of the companies after a cruise. The pirates, like the buccaneers a century later, preferred to cruise in small ships, in order that they might be less conspicuous and less likely to arouse the suspicion of the merchantmen. It was their custom to cruise in the swiftest ships they could find; and it must be remembered that their vessels, being small, could be propelled by sweeps when the wind failed them. When they sighted a ship which seemed to them to be a profitable quarry they contrived to follow her, without arousing her suspicions, until the evening, when they used to lay her aboard. If the quarry were slower than the cruiser, as generally happened, the pirates did not shorten sail, lest the merchants should suspect them. They carried their canvas as before, but they took care to slacken their progress by dragging a sea-anchor, a cask or two of water, "or other such like," in the sea astern of them. They kept the sea in the very worst of weather "by reason of the handiness of their ships and their skill as mariners." It was their custom to take from their prizes not only the valuables such as gold and jewels, but the sea-stores, such as ropes, spars, sweeps, sails, and ship's provisions. With these "recruits," or "plenishings," they were able to keep out of harbour for many months at a time; and constant service made them excellent sailors. Their profits were enormous, and the risks they ran were really not very serious. The English Government, with its decayed Navy, could do very little against them. Spain was at war with Holland, and could not in any case spare ships from her West Indian convoys. Venice alone could trouble them; but the Venetian galleys, the only ships they dreaded, were expensive to the Venetian state, and by no means perfect as protectors of commerce. On the whole, the lot of the pirate was particularly happy and free from care. To such a lot did John Ward devote himself, in the spring of 1604, after his relations with the Bey of Tunis had been established on what is known as "a sound financial basis." In a very few years he had made himself famous beyond expectation.
It seems that Ward prospered as a pirate from the time of his first establishment at Tunis. He took a rich Venetian "argosy" in his first cruise off the south of Spain, and a day or two later he took a smaller ship, which he retained as his flagship. He fitted her with four and twenty cannon, and named her "the Little John" after the comrade of Robin Hood. Other pirates, among them a man named Simon Dansekar, offered to form an alliance with him; and with their forces, added to his own, he was strong enough for "bold attempts."
He had at least four "well-appointed" ships under his command, with "above two hundred Englishmen, good soldiers, and expert mariners," besides Turks, to man them. With this squadron he took a huge Venetian carrack, after a fierce fight. The carrack was the Soderina; a wealthy merchantman, worth, it was said, some half a million crowns. The credit of the capture was due to Ward. The ship was gallantly defended, and would not have been taken had not Ward driven his hands aboard her at the point of his dagger. The wealth was safely landed at Tunis, where it purchased Ward an abundant popularity.
While dividing the spoils of this carrack, Ward quarrelled with his partner, Simon Dansekar. Dansekar, or "Dansekar the Dutchman," was a Fleming of Flushing, who commenced pirate by running away with a ship from Marseilles. He seems to have been a more humane man than Ward; for he objected to Ward's habit of selling Christian prisoners to the Turks. He was merciful to merchants of his own nationality, while Ward, as Professor Laughton tells us, robbed all nations "with exemplary impartiality." When he quarrelled with Ward, he abandoned Tunis, and removed his ships and pirates to Algiers. This breaking-up of the partnership so weakened Ward's position with the Bey, that he seems to have been anxious for his safety, and eager to make new alliances. An English merchant, who saw him at Tunis at this crisis, writes of him as being "in a desperate plight," eager to give up some 40,000 crowns' worth of booty, if, for such a bribe, King James would pardon him, and allow him to land in England, with some three hundred of his gang. However, the desperate plight was not so desperate as the merchant thought. According to Sir Henry Wotton, Ward was "beyond a doubt the greatest scoundrel that ever sailed from England." At the time of his application to King James he was preparing the Soderina for a piratical cruise "with forty bronze pieces on the lower, and twenty on the upper deck." He was also planning to obtain a "letter of marque" from any Italian prince who would receive him, in the event of his failure to appease King James. It would appear that the application to King James was made through some courtier for a consideration. It was refused, because the Venetian ambassador, Zorzi Giustinian, demanded that no such pardon should be granted until the State of Venice, and all Venetian subjects, had been amply indemnified for their losses.
Zorzi Giustinian was able to trouble Ward in another way. At Tunis, the pirates' harbour, there was little market for merchandise. Ward had taken a great spoil of silk and indigo in the Soderina, but he could not dispose of it to his satisfaction among the Turks and Moors. He induced an English ship, which had put into Tunis for water, to take a lading of these goods, to dispose of them in Flanders. The Venetian Senate was admirably served by its spies. Giustinian received particulars of this ship, and induced the Lord High Admiral of England to watch for her. At the end of 1605, she was taken in the Channel, and carried into an English port. Her name was the Husband, and she was owned by London merchants. In her hold was some £10,000 worth of the Soderina's cargo. Before this booty had been fully discharged, another ship, the Seraphim, arrived from Tunis with a similar freight. She, too, was arrested, and her cargo, or as much of it as could be proved to be Venetian, was handed back to Giustinian. Ward made one or two more attempts to open up a market in Europe, but the ships were taken, one after another, at Bristol and elsewhere, so that at last he abandoned the scheme. He waited at Tunis for several months for King James's answer to his request for pardon. When the royal refusal reached him, he put to sea again, partly to make more money to offer in bribes and partly to make the merchants more eager for him to be pardoned. At about this time, March 1606, a Royal Proclamation was issued for his suppression.
The cruise of 1608 was an eventful cruise for Ward. He had fitted out the Soderina for a flagship, and had mounted her with sixty or seventy brass guns. He had, besides, two smaller ships of war, both "heavily manned and armed." Altogether he seems to have commanded about four hundred men, three-fourths of whom were Turks or Moors, the others being Flemings, French, and Englishmen. One of the three ships foundered off Carthage early in the cruise. The other two roved up and down, and took two valuable Marseilles carracks.
While at sea, in his flag-ship, Ward lived in great state, with a double cabin guard of twelve Turks armed with scimitars. He had his "music" (an English trumpeter), to play to him; and no doubt his cabin was sweet with many perfumes, and nobly furnished. In different parts of his ship were refreshment bars or canteens for the sale of wines and spirits. All his sailors received a daily allowance of strong drink; but if they wanted more they had to purchase it at one of these canteens. Sailors generally want more; and we read with small surprise that the discipline of the Soderina was not particularly good. The only law which has come down to us from her code is one forbidding, or at least discouraging, murder.
The piratical squadron turned eastward at the end of February 1608 bound to plunder "the shipping of Syria." Early in March, it came on to blow and the squadron was scattered. The great Soderina with her frame much weakened by her numerous new gun-ports, and her upper works much strained by the weight of her new brass guns, began to labour and leak. "About one hundred miles off Cerigo," when the weather was at its worst, she started a plank, and went to the bottom. More than three hundred Turks sank with her. The sole survivors were "four men and a boy" who were found afloat on some wreckage by a passing ship, going for Marseilles. Ward escaped with his life, owing to his skill as a boatman; for while the storm was at its worst he left the Soderina in a boat, in which he managed to get aboard the Little John. The news of the disaster reached Tunis before him through the five survivors who had been taken to Marseilles. When Ward returned there, after his cruise, he "was nearly torn in pieces by the Janissaries," who were furious with him for his desertion of the flag-ship, and for the loss of so many true believers. It cost Ward a large portion of his treasure to regain the confidence of his allies.
Shortly after the loss of the Soderina, an Englishman of the name of Pepwell, in the service of the English Lord Admiral, went to Tunis to convert Ward to a better habit of life. He failed to move that stony heart, as he failed, directly afterwards, in a plot to poison him. While he reasoned with, or tried to poison, Ward, that worthy's seamen were not idle. "They so won his (Pepwell's) sailors that they became pirates," leaving Pepwell to come home as best he might. There were several pirates lying at Tunis, all of them subordinate to Ward, and Pepwell at last won one of them, a Captain Bishop, to give him a passage to Venice. At Venice he gave Sir Henry Wotton, the English Ambassador, a minute account of Ward. He describes him as being "about fifty-five years of age. Very short, with little hair, and that quite white; bald in front; swarthy face and beard. Speaks little, and almost always swearing. Drunk from morn till night. Most prodigal and plucky. Sleeps a great deal, and often on board when in port. The habits of a thorough 'salt.' A fool and an idiot out of his trade."
During the next few years, in spite of various losses, Ward seems to have prospered. It is said that he made a cruise to Ireland, with seven hundred men, and that he offered King James £40,000 for a pardon, which was refused. When he heard that his offer had been unavailing, he determined to settle down at Tunis. His old friend "Crossyman," gave him the remains of a castle, which he repaired with marble and alabaster, till it was "a very stately house far more fit for a prince than a pirate." He lived there, when not at sea, "in a most princely and magnificent state. His apparel both curious and costly, his diet sumptuous." He had two cooks to dress and prepare his diet for him, "and his taster before he eats." "I do not knowe any peere in England," says his biographer, "that bears up his post in more dignity."
It is not known how and when he died. Dansekar, his old ally, obtained a pardon from Henri IV of France, and entered the service of the Duke of Guise. Ward, as far as we can learn, was never pardoned. "He lived there, in Tunis," in his marble palace, where William Lithgow, the traveller, had supper with him, in the year 1615. Some say that Ward was drowned off Crete, and others that the Turks poisoned him. Both accounts are highly probable. It may be that, in his old age, he bought a pardon from a needy statesman, and settled down to die in Plymouth, where the ale was so good, and the company so congenial. He shares with Bartholomew Roberts the throne of English piracy. Those two alone, of the many who were called to the profession, practised it ever with a certain style, with some pretensions to the grand manner.
There is much literature concerning Ward. There are several ballads, of varying merit, describing an imaginary fight between his cruiser and a ship called the Rainbow, a King's ship sent to capture him. As Professor Laughton has pointed out, the real Rainbow never fought with Ward. Perhaps the name Rainbow is a corruption or popular version of Tramontana, the name of a small cruiser, which may once have chased him in the Irish Channel. In addition to the ballads, there is a play called "A Christian turn'd Turk," by a poet named Robert Daborne. The play treats of Ward and his associates. It is based upon two chapbooks concerning him; the one called "Newes from Sea" (dated 1609), the other (far superior) by Andrew Barker, called "A True and Certaine Report," first published in the same year. There are numerous contemporary references to him. The best known is that in Ben Jonson's "Alchemist," act v, scene 2. There are others in Howell's Letters; in a play by Dekker ("If it be not a good Play"), in Donne's 15th Elegy, and in the "Observations of Captain John Smith." More trustworthy authorities concerning him are in the Venetian Series of State Papers, 1603-1610; and in the Irish Series of State Papers, 1606-1608. It may be added that the Sieur de Brèves, a French Ambassador, gives Ward, or "Wer," the credit of having taught the Moorish pirates to cruise in sailing-ships. Until his coming they relied on their galleys, which were excellent, but severely limited in their application to the art of piracy.