PAST CRIMESEngland to beg for their release. She met the queen at Greenwich Palace and it
seems the two women got along well together. Elizabeth agreed to free the
prisoners as long as Gráinne promised to stop her piracy and rebellions. The
queen also agreed to remove the English governor, but Gráinne’s demands for
the return of cattle and land allegedly stolen by the governor were not met
and, before long, the governor himself was reinstated. Gráinne returned to
piracy and rebellion. She died, probably, in 1603, the same year as Elizabeth.
Her descendants today include the Marquess of Sligo, whose seat at Westport
House contains parts of a castle and a collection of mementos of the pirate
queen’s life and acts.
Piracy reached new heights with the development of trade and the
plundering of the new lands around the world that opened up to European
interests in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. French, Dutch and English
pirates raided the Spanish treasure galleons and bases in the Caribbean, and
pirates from many nations haunted the routes around West Africa and towards
India, China and the Spice Islands. There was a fine line between a pirate and
a privateer–a privateer operated under a letter of marque issued by the
government that allowed him to prey upon shipping of enemy countries. If
caught by the enemy, he was regarded as a pirate and executed as such. The
Ottoman Empire licensed the Barbary corsairs in the Mediterranean, who took
466 English merchantmen between 1609 and 1616. Sir Francis Drake was a
privateer, licensed by Elizabeth I to harry the Spaniards.
However, some privateers also attacked ships of friendly nations. One such
was Thomas Tew, active in the last years of the seventeenth century. He had a
letter of marque from the governor of Bermuda, and Bermuda backers
provided him with a ship, theAmity,to raid French settlements in West Africa.
The story goes that he had hardly set sail before he and his crew decided to
turn pirate and headed for the Red Sea to prey upon the India convoys. Their
first haul amounted, reportedly, to £100,000 in gold and silver, as well as
ivory, silk, spices and jewels. A second cruise in a new ship in 1694 ended
badly when a Mughal ship fired upon Tew’s shipFancyand Tew was killed.
Captain William Kidd had received a commission to hunt Tew down, not
knowing that he was already dead. Kidd had been part of a pirate crew in his
youth that mutinied against their captain; he had later turned more or less
respectable, aiding the governor of the island of Nevis against the French. The
stories about Captain Kidd are ambivalent–it is not clear to what extent he
was a willing pirate or a victim of events and the actions of his crews. He had
a reputation for cruelty and certainly knew many notorious pirates, such as
Richard Culliford with whom he met up with again in Madagascar in 1698.