Of Captain Mission and His Crew

Of Captain Mission

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Of Captain Mission, by Daniel Defoe
#12 in our series by Daniel Defoe
Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the
copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing
this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook.
This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project
Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the
header without written permission.
Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the
eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is
important information about your specific rights and restrictions in how
the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a
donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved.
**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since
1971**
*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of
Volunteers!*****
Title: Of Captain Mission
Author: Daniel Defoe
Release Date: March, 2005 [EBook #7779] [Yes, we are more than one
year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on May 16, 2003]

Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-Latin-1
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OF
CAPTAIN MISSION ***

Produced by David Starner, Deirdre Menchaca, Ted Garvin and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

DANIEL DEFOE
OF CAPTAIN MISSON

GENERAL EDITORS
Richard C. Boys, University of Michigan Ralph Cohen, _University of
California, Los Angeles_ Vinton A. Dearing, _University of California,
Los Angeles_ Lawrence Clark Powell, Clark Memorial Library
ASSISTANT EDITOR
W. Earl Britton, University of Michigan
ADVISORY EDITORS
Emmett L. Avery, State College of Washington Benjamin Boyce, Duke
University Louis Bredvold, University of Michigan John Butt,
University of Edinburgh James L. Clifford, Columbia University Arthur
Friedman, University of Chicago Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota Ernest C. Mossner,
University of Texas James Sutherland, _University College, London_
H.T. Swedenberg, Jr., _University of California, Los Angeles_
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Edna C. Davis, Clark Memorial Library

INTRODUCTION
Defoe has been recognized as the author of A General History of the
Robberies and Murders of the Most Notorious Pyrates since 1932 when

John Robert Moore suggested that the supposed author, Captain
Charles Johnson, like Andrew Moreton, Kara Selym or Captain
Roberts, was merely another mask for the creator of Robinson Crusoe.
Although most of the first volume is of minor literary importance, the
second section which appeared in 1728 as The History of the Pyrates
commenced with a life "Of Captain Misson and His Crew," one of
Defoe's most remarkable and neglected works of fiction. In much the
same manner and at the same time that John Gay was satirizing
Walpole's government in _The Beggar's Opera_, Defoe began to use
his pirates as a commentary on the injustice and hypocrisy of
contemporary English society. Among Defoe's gallery of pirates are
Captain White, who refused to rob from women and children; Captain
Bellamy, the proletarian revolutionist; and captain North, whose sense
of justice and honesty was a rebuke to the corruption of government
under Walpole. But the fictional Captain Misson, the founder of a
communist utopia, is by far the most original of these creations.
If we were to accept the view of nineteenth-century critics, that Defoe
was one of the earliest exponents of laissez faire, his creation of a
communist utopia would seem remarkable indeed. But paradoxes
fascinated Defoe, and his ideas can seldom be reduced to unambiguous
platitudes. He was especially fascinated by the comparison between
businessmen and thieves. In 1707 he urged the government to pardon
the Madagascar pirates if they agreed to stop their crimes, pay a large
sum of money and "become honest Freeholders, as others of our
_West-India_ Pyrates, Merchants I should have said, have done before
them." And he noted that "it would make a sad Chasm on the Exchange
of London, if all the Pyrates should be taken away from the Merchants
there."[1] Twelve years later just before the start of the South Sea
Bubble, Defoe attacked stock-jobbing as "a Branch of Highway
Robbing."[2]
Although these attacks were directed mainly at "trade thieves" and
corruptions in business practices, they reflect Defoe's growing concern
with problems of poverty and wealth in England. In his preface to the
first volume of the General History of the Pyrates, Defoe argued that
the unemployed seaman had no choice but to "steal or starve." When
the pirate, Captain Bellamy, boards a merchant ship from Boston, he
attacks the inequality of capitalist society, the ship owners, and most of

all, the Captain:
_damn ye, you are a sneaking Puppy, and so are all those who will
submit to be governed by Laws which rich Men have made for their
own Security, for