The following is a condensed segment from The Pirate Menace that WILLIAM SEARS ZUILL attempted belatedly to feature in our Black History Month coverage in February. As a parting thank you to our former editor, we note that it is never too late.

The story of Captain Lewis and his successful compact with the Devil is linked with a story of lost black Bermuda sailors. Do their descendants live on Madagascar today? No records exist, but the story of Lewis as told by the pirate journalist-author, Captain Charles Johson, leads to an understanding of their likely fate.

Lewis was one of the two lads who were members of pirate Banister’s company after Banister was brought back to Jamaica hanging from the yardarm. The two were pardoned by Governor Hender Molesworth — an error as far as Lewis was concerned, as he soon proved. The young sailor had an unusual aptitude for languages, and could speak French, Spanish and English, as well as the tongue of the Mosquito Indians. Captain Charles Johnson did not know his country of origin and thought that he could have been French or English equally well.

After being saved by Governor Molesworth, Lewis became a sailor and at one point was taken into Havana by the Spanish. After a time he escaped with six others, captured a periagua, obtained two more volunteers and with other captures increased the size of his crew until he had 40 volunteers and forced men. He made his way to the Bay of Campeachy, making other captures, and then heard that Captain Tucker had a fine Bermuda-built brigantine there. Bermuda-built was important, for Bermuda was the only place where the Juniperis Bermudiensis, the Bermuda cedar, was found. Cedar timbers resisted seaworms so the vessels, which had a reputation for speed, also lasted longer.

Lewis wanted it, so he sent a letter offering to buy the vessel for ten thousand pieces-of-eight, warning that if Tucker did not sell he would capture the ship and have it anyway. Tucker was not prepared to lose his brigantine, so he talked to the other Bermuda skippers in the bay and suggested that they send men aboard his ship so he could fight and defeat Lewis. They refused and said they would rely on their sailing to get away, and everyone had to look out for himself.

The Bermudians put out into the bay. The wind dropped and a calm came over the water, and there, approaching steadily, was Lewis’s vessel under oars. Some of the Bermuda sloops had four guns, some two, and some none. Joseph Dill had two cannon which he brought to one side of his vessel and fired. Unfortunately one of his guns split, and killed three men.

Tucker called to the other Bermudians again to urge them to send him men, but they refused once more. A breeze came up. Tucker trimmed his sails, loosed a broadside into Lewis’s vessel, and sailed away. Another vessel tried to slip away, but Lewis fired a shot into her and she surrendered. Lewis summoned her captain to come aboard, and asked why he had surrendered when he could have escaped. He had betrayed his owners, Lewis said, and started chasing the man about the deck with a rope’s end and then with a cane. Terrified, the captain said he had been trading in the sloop for some months and had a lot of his owners’ money hidden aboard.

Lewis said he was a rascal and villain for betraying his owners, and laid about him the harder ... but also sent for the money. There were other depredations from the Bermudians. Lewis took over the largest of the vessels, which was a sloop of about 90 tonnes.

He also took 40 able black seamen and a white carpenter.

This attack on Bermudian ships in the Bay of Campeachy is likely to be the occurrence which John Trimingham reported to the Earl of Bellomont, Governor of New York, and which Edward Randolph, special agent of the British Government later wrote about. Lewis now had 80 men and cruised in the Gulf of Florida, capturing ships bound from the West Indies to Europe, which he plundered and released. He sailed north to Carolina and careened the sloop in an obscure creek, buying rum and sugar unknown to the proprietary Government in Charleston. Several forced men ran away. Putting the sloop to rights, Lewis continued his depredations on the Carolina and Virginia coasts and pressed more men to join him.

He now had a great many Frenchmen aboard. Hearing that the English members of his crew were planning to maroon him, he surprised the suspects and forced them and all the other English members of the crew to get into a boat. They were 30 miles off the coast, and for supplies were given ten pieces of beef. Johnson says they were never heard of again.

Now Lewis had only black and French sailors on the vessel, and he decided to leave that area altogether, and try his luck on the Grand Banks. So the sloop sailed north and the pirates ransacked several fishing vessels, but these early successes nearly ended in disaster in Trinity Harbour in Conception Bay.

There were several merchantmen in the harbour, and Lewis seized a 24-gun galley called the Herman. The master, Captain Beal, said that if Lewis sent his quartermaster ashore he would be given more goods. Lewis did so, but on shore the masters of the other vessels got together, seized the quartermaster and took him to Captain Rogers — the redoubtable Woodes Rogers who in later years would lead a successful privateering expedition around the world and after that eject pirates from the Bahamas.

Rogers chained the quartermaster to a sheet anchor which was on shore and set up guns at the entrance to the harbour to prevent Lewis getting out. Night fell and Lewis, abandoning the Herman, managed to row the sloop out under fire from Rogers’s impromptu battery, suffering some damage. Lewis was determined to save the quartermaster, so he seized two fishing vessels and sent word ashore that their captains would be executed if the quartermaster were not sent off at once. One of the fishermen was Captain Beal’s brother. The quartermaster was sent back at once and said that he had been treated “very civilly” ashore.

“It’s as well,” Lewis is reported as saying, “for had you been ill-treated, I would have put all these rascals to the sword.”

The quartermaster whispered to the hostages that if Lewis had known the truth, the hostages and all their men would have been cut to pieces. Later, when the fishing boats had gone, the quartermaster told Lewis what actually occurred, saying that he had lied earlier because he did not think the innocent should suffer for the guilty.

On shore word was quickly sent to St John’s where HMS Sheerness, Captain Tudor Trevor, lay. Sheerness put to sea but missed the pirate by four hours. As Lewis moved down the coast, making prizes, he heard of a 24-gun French vessel which had been built as a privateer for the War of the League of Augsburg — King William’s War. Lewis wanted her, so he sailed the sloop into the harbour and said he was from Jamaica, and carried a cargo of rum and sugar. The Frenchman was suspicious, having heard there was a pirate on the coast, and manned his guns. Lewis sailed out to sea, while the French master landed guns to make a battery to protect the harbour. Lewis stayed out of sight for a fortnight, then captured two fishing boats which belonged to the French ship. Thus disguised, the pirates slipped into harbour early in the morning, and while one boat landed sailors to attack the shore battery, the other came alongside the ship herself, which was soon captured.

Lewis loaded the French vessel with arms, ammunition and provisions from his sloop, then unloaded most of the fish and gave the sloop to the Frenchman, who told him how to trim the new pirate ship so she sailed best. Lewis named his capture the Morning Star, because the morning star had just appeared when he took her.

It was time for a new cruising ground, and Lewis steered south-east for the Guinea coast, where he seized a number of vessels, English, French and Portuguese.

Compact with the Devil

It was while he was chasing one of them, a South Carolinian commanded by a Captain Smith, that he made a compact with the Devil. Captain Smith fired at the Morning Star and a lucky shot carried away her fore and main topmasts. Lewis ran up the shrouds to the maintop, and tore off a handful of his hair. He threw it to the wind, shouting: “Good devil, take this until I come.”

With that the Morning Star tore through the water and caught up with her quarry.

So Captain Johnson says.

Surprisingly, Lewis behaved well to Smith, giving him presents until the Carolina man had received more than was stolen from him. Lewis said that when he had made enough money he would retire to Carolina, and expected Smith would help him.

It was not to be.

The French and English aboard the Morning Star started quarrelling and resolved to part company from each other. The French, who were more numerous, transferred to a newly captured sloop with their share of the booty. They chose a captain whose name was Le Barre, loaded the sloop and shoved off. The wind got up and as the sloop’s decks were encumbered, they stood in to the coast and anchored.

Lewis persuaded his men that the Frenchmen should be forced to give back what they had taken, and ran the Morning Star alongside with guns loaded, telling Le Barre to cut away his mast.

Le Barre did so and then the Frenchmen were ordered to go ashore, and were only allowed to take their small arms with them. The sloop was plundered and sunk, and the French pirates begged to be taken on the Morning Star again. Lewis allowed only Le Barre and one or two others to do so, then spent the night drinking with them.

Bermuda sailors try to save Lewis

The black sailors — probably the Bermudians captured at the Bay of Campeachy — told Lewis the French planned to kill him. Lewis said it was his destiny, for the Devil had come to him in the Great Cabin and told him he would be slain that night. And so it was. When darkness fell, the French slipped back out to the ship in canoes, got aboard and murdered Lewis. They then fought the rest of the crew, but after an hour and a half were defeated and forced back in their boats.

The quartermaster, John Cornelius, an Irishman, became the new captain ... presumably he was the same person Lewis had saved in Newfoundland.

Cornelius

John Cornelius made several prizes as he cruised the coast, normally plundering English vessels and releasing them, but burning Portuguese captures. He had a battle with one ship, an English slaver. The Morning Star came up and pretended she was a Royal Navy ship, but the captain of the slaver was suspicious, and prepared to defend his vessel. He had on board a man named Joseph Williams, who could speak the tribal language of the slaves. Williams told the slaves that the pirates were cannibals and wanted to kill and eat them all. He picked out 50 slaves and armed them with lances and small arms.

Cornelius opened fire, but the slaver was bravely defended, the slaves fighting as hard as anyone, and the battle went on for ten hours. At about 8pm, there was an explosion near the stern of the slaver, and she sank rapidly. Her crew only managed to launch her yawl. Williams’s clothes were caught by the mizzen truss as the ship sank, and he was carried down, until he managed to slash the waistband of his trousers with his knife.

Up he came to the surface, and after begging hard was allowed into the yawl, already overloaded with 16 men — others who tried to get aboard had their heads banged or their fingers cut. The Morning Star took them aboard after they had agreed to serve under Cornelius.

The Morning Star had more successes. More vessels were captured and more men pressed to do the hard work of the ship. Eventually, the pirates decided to go around the Cape of Good Hope. There they spied Commodore Littleton, Warren’s successor, with three ships (presumably he was on his way back to England after his 1700 visit to Madagascar). An attack was discussed, but the crew argued that the vessels were men-of-war, and 70 of their own crew were forced men. Cornelius agreed not to attack and the Morning Star sailed on to Madagascar and put into the Methelage River on the northwest coast, anchoring off the town of Pombotoque.

The king of the country, Andian (King) Chimenatto, had defeated his brother Andian Timanangarivo and conquered the kingdom with the help of men from two of Frederick Phillipse’s ships, who received a reward of 6,000 slaves. When the ships sailed, several sailors stayed behind to help Andian Chimenatto with his wars, on the promise of more slaves. Among other tribes who were defeated were the Tyloutes, a seagoing people who were descended from Arabs, and the Vaujimbos, who were said to be the meanest tribe on the island.

Chimenatto was now a great king, and it was obvious that he felt his good luck was dependent on good relations with white men. So he gave Cornelius and his crew provisions and gunpowder, saying that if they made money he would accept a gift, but otherwise all was free. It was too much for some pirates, says Johnson. They ate to excess after being on short rations, drank too much honey take and were, Johnson says, “too free with the women”. Thus they “fell into violent fevers”, which killed 70 of them.

They heard about the capture of another vessel, Johnson says, and Cornelius decided to try and catch up with her and followed her north. But the ship went to the Red Sea while the Morning Star sailed to the Persian Gulf, and they never met. The pirates decided to careen the Morning Star at Antelope Island, and put a good part of their goods and water casks ashore — when suddenly they saw two ships coming towards them. Working like demons, the pirates got some of their goods and provisions back on board, and when the two ships came up made sail, exchanging a broadside as they did so.

They were Portuguese ships, one of 26 guns and one of an overwhelming 70 guns. The Morning Star hoisted all sail to flee, and fortune favoured her, as the larger ship twice failed to come about in tacking and had to wear, and the smaller vessel briefly ran aground. Eventually, the smaller warship began to catch up, and Cornelius hove to and waited for her ... but the Portuguese captain hove to in his turn to wait for his larger consort.

Night fell and Cornelius turned back, slipped by the Portuguese vessels and ran up the other side of the Gulf, finally coming to anchor next day at his old station. He found the Portuguese had staved in all his barrels. Nevertheless, the pirates did careen the Morning Star, and started making captures — most of them of little value. So they sailed south headed for the island of Johanna.

Bermudians in charge

There was a plot to maroon the black pirates who, Johnson says, “were all bred among the English” and were probably the Bermudians.

Williams let the black sailors, who were in the majority, know about the plot and persuaded them to join with the English members of the crew (about one-third of the whites) to deal with the problem — which they did by securing all the arms in the ship. Then the black sailors, deposing Cornelius, gave Williams the command, and the Morning Star sailed back to the Methelage River. By this time the ship was in a bad state as her bottom was eaten by worms, so the pirates gave her to the new king, Andian Chimave, son of Andian Chimenatto, who had died. Five months later, Cornelius died and, says Johnson, “was buried with the usual ceremony”.

Johnson does not tell what happened to the crew. Did they settle down to serve Andian Chimave, or did they find another ship and go to sea again?

***

•The condensation is speculation about the fate of the slave sailors, but I believe it is what actually occurred. Bermuda vessels met pirates on the high seas — there are official records about some of them who became victims, but it is reasonable to presume that they became pirates themselves, or exchanged pirate loot for such useful commodities for pirates as rum and tobacco.