Chronicle Books Blog

We are excited to have Pat Croce, a pirate born 300 years too late and author of The Pirate Handbook, guest posting on the blog today. Read on for devastating weapons and notorious pirates and check out Pat’s blog on the St. Augustine Pirate and Treasure Museum site for even more from this pirate.

Leave a comment letting us know who your favorite swashbuckling pirate is. We’ll randomly select a commenter on Tuesday, September 13th to receive a copy of The Pirate Handbook. Good luck!

Pirates are only as strong and effective as their weaponry.

The most devastating weapon in the pirate arsenal wasn’t the powerful blunderbuss or the razor sharp cutlass or the sharp-shooting musket or even the deck-raking swivel gun. It wasn’t any of the weapons we typically associate with pirates boarding their prey. No, this weapon required advance planning and the absolute risk of losing one’s vessel entirely.

The bomb of all pirate weapons was the “fireship”.

A fireship was a ship filled with combustibles, deliberately set on fire and steered or floated into an enemy vessel. Ships during the Age of Sail were made of wood and their seams caulked with tar, ropes greased with fat, and barrels of gunpowder stored in the hold, so a fireship was very much an early weapon of mass destruction.

Some of most notorious pirates (privateers and buccaneers) used the fireship in the most dramatic circumstances with devastating results. Here are examples from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries:

In 1588, the dreaded Spanish Armada was knocking on England’s door. At midnight on August 7, her ships were anchored off Calais in preparation for the final invasion. Suddenly, they saw fireships rushing at them out of the darkness. Terror struck! The wily Sir Francis Drake was using the same fireship strategy against his arch nemesis that they used against him 20 years before!

During Drake’s first expedition as a captain under his cousin John Hawkins at San Juan d’Ulua on Mexico’s eastern shore, the Spanish double-crossed the English. They attached the English ships anchored in their port and sent a fireship into Hawkins’s flagship. Hawkins and Drake barely escaped with their lives and lost many men in the battle. The memory burned vengeance into Drake’s soul that never dampened to the day he died.

When Drake finally had his fiery chance for revenge, the Armada reacted by cutting their cables and scattering to the wind, making it easier for the fury and marksmanship of Drake’s nimble English warships. The tide of war had now turned and the Spanish were forced into the hazardous currents of the North Sea to limp the long way home.

In The Pirate Handbook chapter, Prepare to Board, I mention Henry Morgan’s use of the fireship as the cornerstone of his brilliant strategy to escape what seemed to be certain death.

In 1669, after Henry Morgan sacked Maracaibo, his ships were trapped inside the bottle-shaped Lake Maracaibo by three heavily armed Spanish ships—the 40-gun Magdalena, the 30-gun San Luis, and the 30-gun Soledad—all waiting at the narrow mouth of the lake for Morgan to exit.

Morgan directed his buccaneers to convert one of his captured ships into a fireship. First, they filled the vessel with black powder, pitch, tar, and sulfur. Then they positioned black drums in the gun ports to give the appearance of cannons and set up vertical timbers disguised as armed crewmembers. Finally, they cut the ship’s planks to affect a devastating, shattering force when the gunpowder exploded.

Morgan sailed his pirate flotilla into the mouth of the lake with the fireship leading the way, aimed at the Magdalena. The fireship crashed into the monstrous 40-gunner and exploded, obliterating the vessel. Morgan’s force then captured the Soledad. In an interesting twist, the Spanish elected to sink the San Luis themselves to prevent it from becoming yet another Morgan prize.

Unlike Drake’s offensive strategy or Morgan’s reversal of fortune maneuver, Charles Vane’s use of the fireship was for a completely different purpose.

In 1718, King George I sent Governor Woodes Rogers to the pirate stronghold of New Providence (present day Nassau), accompanied by four Royal Navy warships, to clean up the island. He was also armed with a royal pardon for all pirates who turned themselves in; otherwise, they would dance the hempen jig at the gallows.

Many pirates decided to retire from their marauding ways, including two of the island’s pirate chieftains Henry Jennings and Blackbeard’s mentor, Benjamin Hornigold. But not Charles Vane!

Vane had recently plundered a French prize and wasn’t about to turn over his rich spoils to some white-wigged nobleman. Instead, he defiantly loaded the plundered ship with explosives and drifted it directly toward the newly arrived English flotilla. The powder magazines ignited, cannons exploded, and the entire fireship blew up like a spectacular fireworks display. In their hasty attempt to avoid the floating fireball, Rogers’ warships lost sight of Vane’s booty-filled sloop as it disappeared into the night.

I love a happy ending.

Subscribe to our Pop Culture Newsletter.

Popularity: 1% [?]