CAPTAIN HENRY MAINWARING – ENGLISH PIRATE

Way back in February of 2018, I uploaded a post on Captain Henry Mainwaring, the (in)famous English pirate.

Mainwaring is a fascinating character.

Born in 1586 into a wealthy and influential English family (his maternal grandfather had been Vice-Admiral of Sussex and a favorite of Queen Elizabeth I), he led a varied and exciting life. As a young man, he was educated at Oxford, became a lawyer, and then started a nautical career, serving as a pirate hunter in the service of King James I. He soon turned pirate himself, however, and though his career as a pirate captain was short—1612-1615—it was quite spectacular, especially considering that he was only 26 when he began it.

After three years of vigorous and highly successful piracy, he negotiated a royal pardon, eventually ending up a knight and a Gentleman of the Royal Bedchamber. In later years, he served in a number of official posts, including Lieutenant of Dover Castle and Deputy Warden of the Cinque Ports. He also served as Surveyor of the Navy and sat in the House of Commons for a year (1621-1622). He was a royalist during the English Civil War. As a result, he ended up in exile in France, where, for the first time in his life, he apparently ran out of options and died in poverty.

Mainwaring wasn’t, technically speaking, a Barbary corsair. He never converted to Islam, and he never relied on or received legal authorization from any North African city to support his piratical activities (legally speaking, Barbary corsairs were not pirates; they were privateers acting under the lawful authorization of the authorities in their home ports, just as English privateers like Sir Francis Drake or Walter Raleigh did). Mainwaring operated out of North African ports, though, and was on friendly terms with both the Sultan of Morocco and the Day of Tunis. So though he may technically have been more pirate than corsair, but he was definitely a part of the larger Barbary corsair enterprise.

Mainwaring made two decisions that proved crucial to his career. First, he focused on French and Spanish shipping and avoided attacking English ships. Second, he didn’t convert to Islam.

Once a European pirate captain converted and became what was known as a renegado, or renegade, he crossed a line, and his chances of ever receiving a pardon by a European monarch were vanishingly slim.

This mattered, because the issuing of royal pardons was a fairly common way of clearing the seas of particularly troublesome pirates. If a pirate captain was too wily to be defeated outright, a royal pardon could entice him to give up piracy and come home. Such a pardon typically allowed the pirate to keep the riches he had accrued and settle down in peace, without fear of any retribution for his previous crimes.  In other words, royal pardons offered pirate captains a chance to give up their dangerous life at sea and retire in safe, affluent comfort.

Since Mainwaring had never bothered English ships and hadn’t converted, and since he was an irritating thorn in the sides of the French and the Spanish monarchies, both of whom complained bitterly to the English King James I about him, King James saw fit to offer Mainwaring a royal pardon in 1615.

Mainwaring was just about to turn 30 at the time.

There is no doubt that Mainwaring gained his pardon and the various offices and ranks he later held in large part because of his family connections—that is, after all, the way the world works. He was also, however, an obviously intelligent, capable man. And he could write. He is perhaps best known now for his discourse on English piracy—Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates.

Completed around 1617, it was never actually published in book form in Mainwaring’s day. Instead, Mainwaring presented a handwritten copy to King James I.

Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates is relatively short—only 40 printed pages—but it covers considerable ground: the origins of post-Elizabethan English piracy, the reasons men became pirates, the methods such pirates used at sea, details about the ports and harbors around the world used by pirates, and how to suppress and prevent piracy. Mainwaring—recipient of a royal pardon as he was—is renowned for the ironic fact that his advice for how to stop piracy was to not grant pardons to pirates. He did indeed argue this, but it was part of a larger, more nuanced proposal: first provide a decent livelihood for men who would otherwise be drawn to a life of piracy, and then only after that punish severely those who still chose to take up piracy.

The February 2018 post on Captain Mainwaring here in this blog contains an excerpt from Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates that presents his suggestions for eliminating piracy. Here, we’re going to look at a different section of that work.

Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates is a fascinating little piece in a number of ways, not the least of which is the degree of detailed seafaring knowledge Mainwaring displays. To be successful, a pirate captain—whether he was an outright swashbuckling pirate, an English or Dutch or Spanish privateer, or a Barbary corsair— needed certain fundamental skills. He had to be able to manage his crewmen effectively, be expert in the art of sailing, and be able to navigate well. Beyond all that, he also needed an extensive and detailed knowledge of the various ports and harbors where a pirate ship could safely anchor to revictual, make repairs, and sell booty.

Mainwaring had an encyclopedic knowledge of such ports, as all successful pirate captains must have had. The details he provides give us a sense of just how specific that knowledge had to be in order to be useful.

This week, there is only space enough to offer just a taste of Mainwaring’s description of ports open to pirates. Next week’s post will contain a longer excerpt.

As with the extract included in the February 2018 post, I have modernized some of the archaic spellings, words, and expressions to make the sense clearer. I have also added footnotes explaining some of the more obscure terms and locations mentioned.

So here is the beginning of the section of  Captain Henry Mainwaring’s Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates  that details the various ports that were open to pirates in the early seventeenth century:

---

Within the Straits of Gibraltar, [1] there is no place for pirates to resort to except Algiers and Tunis, where they may be fitted with all manner of provisions and ride safe from Christian forces. [2] In Algiers, however, they risk being betrayed and having their ships taken from them and manned out by the Turks, after the proportion of 150 Turks to 20 English, though the English in their persons are well used and duly paid their shares. At Tunis, they are better people and hold their words more justly, especially since Yusuf Dey, who is now there, became ruler, for he is a very just man of his word….

---

For those who may be interested…

The above excerpt from Of the Beginnings, Practices, and Suppression of Pirates is taken from the Life and Works of Sir Henry Mainwaring, volume 2 (printed for the Navy Records Society, 1922), (pp. 25-26).

---

[1]  “Within the Straits of Gibraltar…” That is, in the Mediterranean.

[2]  The term “Christian forces” here refers to the European powers the pirates preyed upon. Naval ships of these “Christian forces” would, given the opportunity, attack pirate ships.

---