The Naval History of the United States | Page 6

more Indians rushed from the cabin of the pinnace, and
leaped overboard but shared the fate of their predecessors, being far
from land. Gallop then came about, and for the third time bore down
upon his adversary. As he drew near, an Indian appeared on the deck of
the pinnace, and with humble gestures offered to submit. Gallop ran
alongside, and taking the man on board, bound him hand and foot, and
placed him in the hold. A second redskin then begged for quarter; but
Gallop, fearing to allow the two wily savages to be together, cast the
second into the sea, where he was drowned. Gallop then boarded the
pinnace. Two Indians were left, who retreated into a small
compartment of the hold, and were left unmolested. In the cabin was
found the mangled body of Mr. Oldham. A tomahawk had been sunk
deep into his skull, and his body was covered with wounds. The floor
of the cabin was littered with portions of the cargo, which the
murderous savages had plundered. Taking all that remained of value
upon his own craft, Gallop cut loose the pinnace; and she drifted away,
to go to pieces on a reef in Narragansett Bay.
This combat is the earliest action upon American waters of which we
have any trustworthy records. The only naval event antedating this was
the expedition from Virginia, under Capt. Samuel Argal, against the
little French settlement of San Sauveur. Indeed, had it not been for the
pirates and the neighboring French settlements, there would be little in
the early history of the American Colonies to attract the lover of naval
history. But about 1645 the buccaneers began to commit depredations
on the high seas, and it became necessary for the Colonies to take steps

for the protection of their commerce. In this year an eighteen-gun ship
from Cambridge, Mass., fell in with a Barbary pirate of twenty guns,
and was hard put to it to escape. And, as the seventeenth century drew
near its close, these pests of the sea so increased, that evil was sure to
befall the peaceful merchantman that put to sea without due preparation
for a fight or two with the sea robbers.
It was in the low-lying islands of the Gulf of Mexico, that these
predatory gentry--buccaneers, marooners, or pirates--made their
headquarters, and lay in wait for the richly freighted merchantmen in
the West India trade. Men of all nationalities sailed under the "Jolly
Roger,"--as the dread black flag with skull and cross-bones was
called,--but chiefly were they French and Spaniards. The continual
wars that in that turbulent time racked Europe gave to the marauders of
the sea a specious excuse for their occupation. Thus, many a Spanish
schooner, manned by a swarthy crew bent on plunder, commenced her
career on the Spanish Main, with the intention of taking only ships
belonging to France and England; but let a richly laden Spanish galleon
appear, after a long season of ill-fortune, and all scruples were thrown
aside, the "Jolly Roger" sent merrily to the fore, and another pirate was
added to the list of those that made the highways of the sea as
dangerous to travel as the footpad infested common of Hounslow Heath.
English ships went out to hunt down the treacherous Spaniards, and
stayed to rob and pillage indiscriminately; and not a few of the names
now honored as those of eminent English discoverers, were once
dreaded as being borne by merciless pirates.
But the most powerful of the buccaneers on the Spanish Main were
French, and between them and the Spaniards an unceasing warfare was
waged. There were desperate men on either side, and mighty stories are
told of their deeds of valor. There were Pierre François, who, with six
and twenty desperadoes, dashed into the heart of a Spanish fleet, and
captured the admiral's flag-ship; Bartholomew Portuguese, who, with
thirty men, made repeated attacks upon a great Indiaman with a crew of
seventy, and though beaten back time and again, persisted until the
crew surrendered to the twenty buccaneers left alive; François
l'Olonoise, who sacked the cities of Maracaibo and Gibraltar, and who,

on hearing that a man-o'-war had been sent to drive him away, went
boldly to meet her, captured her, and slaughtered all of the crew save
one, whom he sent to bear the bloody tidings to the governor of
Havana.
Such were the buccaneers,--desperate, merciless, and insatiate in their
lust for plunder. So numerous did they finally become, that no
merchant dared to send a ship to the West Indies; and the pirates,
finding that they had fairly exterminated their game, were fain to turn
landwards for further booty. It was an Englishman that showed the sea
rovers this new plan of pillage; one Louis Scott, who descended upon