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Pirates and Their Treasure
Ever since I saw Mary Martin in Peter Pan and Walt Disney's movie Peter Pan, I was fascinated by pirates.
He was a ruthless man first made popular in a book by John Esquemeling called, The Buccaneers of America: A True Account of the Most Remarkable Assaults Committed of Late Years Upon the Coasts of the West Indies by the Buccaneers of Jamaica and Tortuga Wherein Are Contained More Especially the Unparalleled Exploits of Sir Henry Morgan, our English Jamaican Hero, Who Sacked Porto Bello, Burnt Panama, etc. became popular reading. The first edition of Esquemeling's book was most likely printed in Amsterdam in 1678. It was printed in London in 1684 and 1685. It was a runaway best seller all over Europe and in America as well. If you want to understand just how a pirate like Morgan came to be called a hero, you have to understand European politics in the 17th century. There was a great divide between Protestant and Catholic Europe. Between 1618 and 1648, the Thirty Years War - the most bloody in the history of a blood-soaked Europe - was fought between Protestants and Catholics.
In Europe, religion and politics were joined at the hip. The religion of the king was the religion of the land, and one's religious affiliation was a matter of patriotism and politics. But regardless of one's own religious prejudices, marching unarmed women and men in front of your ranks is beyond the pale and hardly heroic at any level. Morgan's lust for treasure, and the favor of Charles II of England drove him on. The Spanish, being very religious, were in an ethical and moral fix. They were being forced to take the English pirates' fire and knew that they could not return fire without killing the nuns and monks who were being used by Morgan as a human shield. In the end, the Spanish had no choice, but to defend themselves. Most of the monks and nuns died in the crossfire, and the Spaniards lost to Morgan in the end anyway, because they had deliberated too long, while Morgan's men were picking them off. If you were an Englishman, and Protestant both loyal and true, you wouldn't mind seeing your Catholic Spanish enemy suffering the loss of her holy people. In the end, it was a nationalistic and political thing, and Morgan ended up with the treasure and plunder. That was his primary interest, and he was a bloody awful pirate. Among the coins that might make up his hoard would be cobs, like the one shown here. These rough coins were struck from planchets cut from a bar of silver, which is just what the word cob means - "cut from a bar." The large silver coin, show here, is an eight reals piece minted in 1588 in Spain of South American Silver. It was the first coin of its type, which would be minted on both sides of the Atlantic for centuries to come in that denomination. It was known as a piece-of-eight. In Robert Lewis Stevenson's classic tale Treasure Island, peg-legged Long John Silver's parrot, Captain Flint, calls out, "Pieces-of-eight, pieces-of-eight," much to the delight of young Jim Hawkins who was played by Bobby Driscoll in the great 1950 Disney film. During the whole of my childhood, I dreamed of owning some of these great coins. Unlike Morgan, I had no intention of killing anyone to get them. At least most of the time. Justice sometimes seems handed out by nature. Time was not kind to Sir Henry. Charles II did knight him for his services to the Crown and made him royal Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica with a special commission to go out and capture pirates, which was very ironic. It was rewarding bad behavior to be sure. Old English coins circulated in the Americas, as well as the gold and silver coins of all nations. Shown here is a shilling of England's Queen Elizabeth I, who ruled England from 1558 to 1603 and fought Phillip II of Spain tooth and nail. Her "Seadogs," like Sir Francis Drake, took on the King of Spain's ships on the Atlantic, and to a certain extent, on the Pacific as well. The Spanish regarded the Pacific as their private lake, but Drake's capture of several Spanish ships, including the very rich Manila Galleon during his circumnavigation of the world between 1577 and 1580, showed them that this was not so. The English had truly intruded, plundered, and became richer at Spain's expense. Henry Morgan's depredations against Spain, almost a century later, demonstrated that things didn't change very much over the years. But Morgan the pirate, a badly wore out old man by the time he had arrived in his 50s, began to fade away both in mass and reputation. At last, he died a wasted wreck of his former life. He had aged prematurely, died almost unmourned, and laid to rest far from his native land, and he wasn't at rest very long either. His grave site wasn't spared by the same forces of nature that rule the wide and deep oceans on which Morgan so ruthlessly had sailed as his home and scene of his pirate calling. A powerful earthquake ripped the old town of Port Royal asunder, ripped Morgan from his tomb, toppled his monument, then dropped town, tomb and monument into the sea. Morgan was a rotted hulk, then he died, rotted some more, and then was thrown into the sea along with the dirty and depraved town that had been his one-time base of operations. It all seemed to just and fitting end to a really filthy beast. The wealth of Port Royal that poured into the sea would have made one fantastic coin collection. Pirates might very well have been the greatest of numismatists, at that time, by stacking up great hoards of gold and silver coins. Almost half a century after Morgan, Blackbeard was the foremost coin collector in the Atlantic. I'll write more about him in time to come. Even the British government got into extreme coin collecting. In the mid 1740s, the British Navy sacked Lima, Peru and made off with the local branch of the Spanish royal treasury there. It was estimated that more than a million pieces of eight were taken in that British Naval road. This boat was brought back to England, melted down, and reminted into British coinage. The English were so proud of the origins of this silver that the coinage minted out of the Spanish bullion was marked with the word "Lima" under the bust of King George II. Lima crowns and half crowns were sources of British pride as they circulated. People throughout the kingdom and its colonies would point to the word "Lima" under the head of George II and smile knowing that the silver had been wrested from the Spanish at the point of a gun and with the slash of a sword blade in that good old Morganish way. Today of course, Spain would go to the United Nations and ask for sanctions cutting off all trade with England, but the 1700s were a vastly different time altogether. For those of you who seek pieces-of-eight, you don't have to steal a ship and get a crew of blood thirsty thugs together. You can just catch up with me at one of the following shows and buy my treasures, which are all steals anyway. If you want to catch up with me in late May and June, I'll be at the following shows. On May 27, I'll be at Ernie Botte's Westford Coin Show at the Westford Regency Inn located on Rt. 110 in Westford, Mass. The best way to get there is to take Exit 32 from Rt. 495, then get onto Rt. 110. Show hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. On Sunday June 10, I'll be at Ernie Botte's Auburn Coin Show at the Elk's Hall next to the Hampton Inn on Rt. 12 in Auburn, Mass. To get to Rt. 12, take exit 10 from the Massachusetts Turnpike. Show hours are 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. On Sunday June 24, I'll be back in Westford at the Westford Regency Inn. These are New England's best monthly shows with a lot a good dealers and a great amount of fantastic material. If you wish a private meeting to peruse my coin stock call 508-528-0942. I hope to see you at the shows. James C. Johnston Jr. was born in the historic Oliver Pond House in Franklin, MA where he has lived for 63 years. He holds B.A. and M.A. degrees in history and is the author of several books. He has also written more than 2,000 articles and monographs in The Numismatist, Linn’s Stamp News, The Milford Daily News, and many other publications. Johnston was a teacher in the Franklin system for 34 years and has been associated with Johnston Antiques since 1962. He is a well- known appraiser of antiques, books, fine arts, stamps, and coins. He is a founding member of the Massachusetts Suburban Antique Dealers Association, a member of the American Numismatic Association,The Collector’s Club of New York, and the American Philatelic Society. He has also been President of the Franklin Historical Society since 1985. Johnston is also a well known lecturer whose topics cover a wide range of social history, antiques, coins, stamps, and the fine arts as well as politics and political and military history. |
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