Review of Jamie Goodall's Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay

Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay: From the Colonial Era to the Oyster Wars by Jamie L. H. Goodall

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Sometimes people turn to piracy strictly because they want easy money. Other times they are driven to piracy. The latter is what happened to the first documented pirate of the Chesapeake Bay, a man named William Claiborne. His felonious activities occurred during the 1630s and are discussed in the introduction to Pirates of the Chesapeake Bay. Contrary to what this title suggests, Goodall describes her book as “a collection of stories that follow some of the Chesapeake’s most notorious pirates and valiant privateers and the local residents, merchants and government officials who aided, abetted and sometimes captured them.” (23) Her goals in bringing these individuals together in a single volume are to (a) identify who took part in these piratical acts and what role did they play; (b) locate where the nefarious exploits occurred; (c) explain why the Chesapeake Bay was both a haven and a target of piracy; and (d) identify what caused the depredations in this 200-mile region that extends from Havre de Grace, Maryland to Virginia Beach, Virginia to be suppressed. Of course, this supposes that all the depredations described within are acts of piracy. In actuality, they are not.

To achieve these objectives, she divides the book into five time periods: colonial (1630-1750), the Revolutionary War (1754-1783), the War of 1812 (1805-1815), the Civil War (1860-1865), and the Oyster Wars (1865-1959). (The latter is really about poaching, rather than piracy, although contemporary newspapers referred to those involved as “pirates.”) The majority of people mentioned will be unknown to most readers: Richard Ingle, Joseph Wheland Jr., George Little, John Yates Beall, and William Frank Whitehouse, among many others. A few – Lionel Delawafer (better known as Lionel Wafer, the pirate surgeon), William Kidd, Sam Bellamy, and Thomas Boyle, for example – are often discussed in books about pirates and privateers. Readers will also find a timeline of major conflicts, maps, pictures, glossary, notes, bibliography, and index.

This is an interesting summary of piratical and privateering activity in a vital, but often overlooked, region that introduces readers to individuals rarely discussed in other maritime history books. That said, some missteps call into question this historian’s research. For example, on page 36, the vivid description of a body gibbeted in May 1699 in the Thames River is identified as being that of Captain Kidd. Four pages later, the text reads, “On May 23, 1701, Kidd ultimately met his fate at the end of the hangman’s noose.” (In 1699, Kidd was in American colonial waters trying to clear his name after sailing the Quedah Merchant to the West Indies.) On page 45, Sam Bellamy’s first victim is identified as the Whidah. He had already captured at least two vessels the previous year after going on the account. In fact, when he captured the Whidah, he was aboard the Sultana, which he had taken in December 1716. Nor did the pirates run Whidah aground, as stated on page 47. A severe nor’easter drove her ashore. The final paragraph states: “Sam Bellamy and his few surviving crewmembers were imprisoned, condemned and executed for piracy. They met their makers at the end of the hangman’s noose.” While several members of Bellamy’s crew were hanged, Bellamy was not one of them and they weren’t aboard Whidah at the time that she sank. He died in the shipwreck. Only two men survived Whidah’s sinking; Thomas Davis was acquitted while John Julian was sold into slavery.




View all my reviews