2 THE SEA. 



infested the ocean, and were the terror of the honest shipowner. That " hardy Norseman/' 

 of whom we sing- so pleasantly, was in very truth nothing- better; while some of the great 

 names among the mariners of the middle ages are, practically, those of pirates, whose occu- 

 pation bore the stamp of semi-legality from royal sanction, directly given or implied. 



But the society of pirates, of which the following chapters will furnish some account, 

 was, sui generis, the greatest on record, and was formidable even to the great Powers of 

 Europe. " It preserved itself distinct from all the more regular and civilised classes of 

 mankind, in defiance of the laws and constitutions by which ether nations and societies were 

 governed. In their history we find a perpetual mixture of justice and cruelty, fail- 

 retaliation and brutal revenge, of rebellion and subordination, of wise laws and desperate 

 passions, such as no other confederacy ever exhibited, and which kept them together as a 

 body, until the loss of their bravest and best leaders, who could not be replaced, obliged 

 them to return to the more peaceable arts of life, and again to mix with nations governed 

 by law and discipline." * The origin of the term bucaneer, or bucauier, is not to be 

 very easily traced ; it has an allusion to those who dried the flesh of wild cattle and fish 

 after the manner of the Indians, and was first applied to the French settlers of St. Domingo, 

 who had at first no other employment than that of hunting bulls or wild boars, in order 

 to sell their hides or flesh. Many of them subsequently became pirates, and the term was 

 permanently applied to them. 



The West Indies, for good reason, were long the especial home of the freebooters. They 

 abounded as indeed they still abound in little uninhabited islands and "keys," i.e., low 

 sandy islands, appearing a little distance above the surface of the water, with only a few bushes 

 or grass upon them. These islands have any quantity of harbours, convenient for cleansing 

 and provisioning vessels. Water and sea fowl, turtle and turtle eggs, shell and other fish, 

 were abundant. The pirates would, provided they had plenty of strong liquor, want for 

 nothing as regards indulgence; and in these secluded nooks they often held high revel, 

 whilst many of them became the hiding-places for their ill-gotten treasures. From them 

 they could dart out on the richly-laden ships of Spain, France, or England ; while men-of- 

 war found it difficult to pursue them among the archipelago of islands, sand-banks, and 

 shallows. 



The rise of these rovers, or at least the great increase of them in the West Indies, was 

 very much due to the impecunious Spanish governors hungry courtiers, who would stick at 

 no peculation or dishonesty that could enrich them. They granted commissions practically 

 letters of marque to great numbers of vessels of war, on pretence of preventing interlopers 

 from interfering witlj their trade, with orders to seize all ships and vessels whatsoever within 

 five leagues of their coasts. If the Spanish captains exceeded their privileges, the victims 

 had an opportunity of redress in the Spanish courts, but generally found, to their sorrow, 

 that delays and costs swallowed up anything they might recover. The frequent losses 

 sustained by English merchants during the latter half of the seventeenth century led to 

 serious reprisals in after years; a prominent example occurred in 1716. 



* "The History of the Bucaniers of America." This once celebrated work contains a number of the 

 most reliable histories of t-he pirates and freebooters of the seventeenth century. 



