November 22, 1718 - Caribbean Sea
John Rackham brushed the water from his eyes. At sea, there were times when a torrential rain like this was welcomed. It refilled the freshwater barrels and washed away the thin film of salt that clung to every surface on the ship. Right now, though, it was more than a bit inconvenient. If the gathering darkness of twilight hadn’t already made visibility poor enough, the thick sheets of rain certainly would have. The pervasive water ruined gunpowder and fuses and made the deck slick, slowing the top-deck gun crews as they struggled to do their jobs while keeping their equipment dry. This much rain would also soak the lines and sails, making them heavier and more difficult to work with. The winds were calm enough there wasn’t any need to put into safe harbor, but it was still a terrible night to take a prize.
John’s elected commander, Charles Vane, had argued that their men were better prepared to deal with the elements than their quarry. The pirate captain claimed that every hindrance their two crews struggled to overcome, the merchant ship’s crew would find twice as challenging. Their guns would be unusable, their sailing clumsy, and their spirits dampened. Vane had claimed the storm would do half their work for them.
Not that it was a great challenge anyway. It was two against one and Vane’s brigantine, The Ranger, and Rackham’s sloop, The Goblin, were packed with men and over-armed with small cannons, while the merchant ship would be travelling light on both accounts. The rampant piracy in these waters compelled many traders to stick close to naval convoys or well patrolled trade routes, but for ships crossing the Atlantic, that could be difficult. Sometimes, captains kitted their ships out to hold their own against any piratical aggression, but more guns on a ship left less room for cargo, and more sailors left less room for paying passengers. Unless the materials or people crossing the ocean were especially valuable, many shipping companies would gamble on an uneventful trip, and regard the captain and his crew as expendable.
John adjusted The Goblin’s heading to cut across the bow of the slower merchant ship, forcing the larger vessel to change its course slightly to avoid a collision. His job wasn’t to take the ship, but to slow it down and keep its attention. While he was tacking back and forth in front of it like a madman, The Ranger was approaching from the merchant vessel’s aft. With its lamps doused, it would be nearly invisible to the merchant’s crew until the moment it opened fire. It was a dirty trick Vane had learned as a child in London – he’d throw himself in front of some mark with a fat wallet, begging for a tuppence, and then his father would clobber the unfortunate soul from behind with a sap.
John gave the order to adjust their heading again, and to prepare some grapeshot in their small cannons, but the crack of thunder from a dozen cannons stopped his tongue; The Ranger had caught up to the merchant vessel. The seasoned sailors on The Ranger, mostly disaffected veterans of the English navy, aimed their guns high, lobbing iron balls over the deck – the goal was to terrorize the merchant crew and mangle the rigging, not to punch holes in the hull and destroy the loot inside.
The merchant vessel tried to return fire, but it was a volley of no more than three or four shots; half the ship’s gun crews were probably too panicked or poorly trained to perform well in a crisis. They’d be even less prepared to take fire from both sides.
John ordered the grapeshot loaded, and cut across the merchant’s bow again. He turned The Goblin sharply port, against the wind, to open fire on the merchant’s port hull as she passed. The smaller sloop would have a poor angle on the ship, and most of the small lead balls would bounce off the hull. The shot would be ineffectual, but sound terrifying to anyone below decks. John brought The Goblin back around to catch the wind again and ran up alongside the merchant ship, coming in close enough that crewmen were able to lob grenadoes onto her deck. Screams sounded on the merchant ship as small bits of shrapnel maimed the sailors. Finally, a loud, fiery explosion erupted near aft deck – one of the small bombs had set off a gunpowder barrel. The helmsman would almost certainly be out of action, and possibly the helm itself. The merchant vessel was effectively rudderless. The Ranger perforated the ship’s sails and bloodied its deck with its own round of grapeshot, and then cast grappling lines to entangle her rigging and drag her in. John ordered his men to do the same, and before long the two ships had slowed the merchant vessel to a stop.
Rackham left the helm, grabbed a loose line tied to one of the yardarms, and swung across the churning water to the merchant vessel’s hull. The rain made it difficult, but he caught hold of one of the boarding ladders and began clambering up. Two dozen of his men followed him up and onto the deck. The rain had largely doused the fire from the explosion, but it still produced enough light for John to see dozens of bodies – many of them still writhing in pain – littered across the deck. Vane’s round of grapeshot had likely been unnecessary, and Rackham wished he’d ordered his men to keep their hand-tossed explosives for another day.
On the other hand, despite the pirates' use of excessive force several of the merchant crewmen attempted to go toe-to-toe with the boarding party with wooden belaying pins pulled from the ship’s rails. Rackham’s crew cut through them with steel cutlasses and marlinspikes. John singled out the man who seemed to be shouting the most – he had a cutlass in hand, but was gripping it like a child, waving it about at full arm’s length. John knocked the blade aside with his own, and then belted the man across the jaw, knocking him onto his knees. Rackham kicked the man’s sword away, and lowered his blade to the man’s throat. He didn’t have to say anything – the man threw his hands in the air and began pleading for his life in Spanish. John never heard him give the order, but the crewmen clearly realized the ship was lost and dropped their weapons.
Rackham prepared to give his dramatic, ‘your ship is ours’, speech, but was interrupted by a gravelly voice – Vane clambered up the other side of the waylaid vessel with his boarding party.
“Good work, Jack,” Charles Vane praised John reluctantly, “But then, that’s why I gave you the sloop, isn’t it?”
Rackham rolled his eyes. He’d been Vane’s quartermaster aboard The Ranger in the months since they'd broken out of the English blockade around Nassau. To discourage mutinies aboard a pirate ship, the quartermaster’s share was traditionally equal to the captain's, but despite that measure captains were still wary of losing their positions to more popular, charismatic leaders. John hadn’t had Vane’s ruthless aggression, but he’d treated their men better, and before long Vane had begun to worry that his second-in-command would usurp him. When they finally took a ship to replace the one Vane had sacrificed breaking through the blockade, Vane had dealt with his problem by ‘promoting’ Rackham to captain of the little sloop. While that sounded nice, a promotion from quartermaster to captain was barely more than a lateral move, and leaving The Ranger to sail on a gunboat that some men might have derisively called a dinghy wasn’t even that.
Ordinarily, when boarding a ship it was custom for a captain to lay out a big speech – in Rackham’s mind, it was half the fun of being a pirate. It gave the captain an opportunity to perform in front of his crew and to head off any potentially bloody misunderstandings before looting the captured prize. Vane had never been especially charismatic, though, and had become even less so since marrying in September. In fact, everything Rackham disliked about Vane had become worse since then. It was such a sharp turn in the man’s personality, John had decided he should swear off matrimony.
Vane grabbed the man Rackham had subdued and hissed in his face, “How many below decks?”
“¿Qué?”
Vane growled in annoyance and shoved him at Rackham, “Ask him how many passengers and crewmen are left below decks.”
“You really should learn Spanish, mate.”
“So I can talk to the whores in Cuba?” Vane said, “What’s the point?”
Vane was a fool. The Spanish still controlled much of the Caribbean, their tongue spoken throughout the islands – not knowing Spanish was like being half-deaf and half-literate. And talking to the working women in Cuba was definitely worthwhile – for one thing, they told all sorts of embarrassing stories about their English clients.
But fine, whatever, Rackham thought; so long as Vane could handle the tactical matters, Rackham could be smart enough for the both of them. John sheathed his sword and grabbed the man in a headlock, mocking a friendly embrace.
“Here’s the situation, amigo,” John spoke in Spanish, “We’re here to take anything of value, with a mind to sail back to Havana and sell it off. To a limited extent, that includes you, your men, and your passengers, who we would like to ransom off to the government there. Now, we can’t do that if we have to kill you all, and that’s exactly what’s going to happen if any part of this little transaction takes a jot to the left, you get my meaning?”
“Y-yes,” the man answered in Spanish.
“My shit-for-brains ugly-ass captain is about to send his most trusted, dimwitted, and cruel men to search below decks,” Rackham continued in the man's language, “If they encounter anything – anyone – they don’t expect, they’ll react violently and butcher everyone down there. So, that being the case, I need a very, very specific list of people they should be prepared to find down there.” The man understood and immediately began rattling off a list. Rackham listened and translated for Vane.
“Four couples, three with children, civilian passengers bound for Havana, and the galley cook," Rackham said in English, "The ship’s physician was on deck treating the wounded when the gunpowder went off and tossed half of him into the sea. Shouldn’t be any more crewmen below decks unless they were hiding from the fight.”
“Not a problem,” Vane said, “If they weren’t ready to fight alongside their brothers on deck, they won’t likely raise arms against us now.”
“There’s one other…” John asked the man to repeat what he’d said and translated as best he could, “He says there’s a witch aboard the ship.”
“A witch?” Vane asked skeptically.
“A stow away. Apparently a crewman stumbled upon her a couple of days ago.”
“What makes her a witch?”
“He claims they always inspect the ship very thoroughly just before leaving port, and that it would be impossible for someone to avoid detection. He says there was a strange albatross hanging around the ship since they left the Mediterranean, and it disappeared when they caught the woman. He thinks the albatross was the woman. The cook found her in the food larder and knocked her out. They clapped her in irons and the cold metal burned her wrists as if it were red hot.”
“Seriously?”
“Says she’s still chained up down there. They were still arguing about what to do with her when we attacked them. The story’s got to be worth a look, right?”
“I’m married, I don’t need any more witches in my life.”
Their prisoner babbled something else and John related it, “He’s saying again that there’re children below decks and begging you to spare them from any harm.”
“Heh,” Vane said, “You can tell him his bargaining position is questionable and I’ll do as I please. Vane rounded up his men and led them below decks through the hatch near the forecastle, while Rackham’s men secured the surviving crewmen with rope.
The rain slacked off, and Rackham heard screaming coming from below deck. He rushed down with two of his men in time to catch Vane coming back up with his. Vane and his men had blood on their hands and faces, and were dragging along four hysterical women and a number of children. The women were wailing and screaming in Spanish, shouting something about demons. If their prisoner above deck was telling the truth, there should have been five men too.
“What happened?” Rackham asked.
“The men decided to be heroic. Had to kill ‘em,” Vane sneered as he pushed past Rackham, “We’re taking the women and children aboard The Ranger. See to the rest of the cargo.” Vane talked to John as if he were a coolie.
“What about the ‘witch’?” Rackham asked.
“Who’s going to pay ransom on a stowaway?” Vane asked, “Leave her.”
Vane and his thugs headed back to The Ranger while John and his men looked over their prize. Seizing ships coming from Europe was always better than seizing ships going to Europe. Trying to unload a prize of sugar or cotton in the Caribbean wasn’t easy, but whatever European merchants might be hoping to sell in the colonies, pirates could sell just as well. Gold was every pirate’s dream, but Spanish galleons loaded with stolen treasure and inept guards were just that – a dream. Weapons were the next best thing to gold in terms of value, but they were a difficult cargo to move. Rackham’s preferred loot was hardware. Farm tools or building tools were always in demand, easy to sell off a bit at a time, and if they didn’t sell, saws, axes, drills, and the like could all be useful to a ship's carpenters. Likewise, lumber, nails, and the like were always a good consolation prize.
Rackham felt his boot sticking to something and pulled a lantern off of a support to better illuminate the deck. John had been colorblind since birth – a chronic inconvenience – but he didn’t have any trouble recognizing blood when he saw it. A small pool of it was congealing on the wooden floor. He followed it around the corner and found the source.
One of John’s sailors, an illegally freed slave John knew as "D.C." asked in his thick accent,“One of the missing men?”
“Aye mate,” Rackham said, “The cook from the looks of it.”
The other sailor, a native man, pointed to a bloody knife in the cook’s hand, “Vane didn’t lie; he took up arms against them.”
“Looks like it, T.” Rackham had long ago given up on pronouncing either of the men’s names, but reviled the practice of slapping ‘good God-fearing’ Christian names on people that didn’t ask for them. As a result, he knew and addressed a third of his crew by their initials or by handles like Lefty or Crank. Not everyone was happy with his approach, but no one preferred Vane’s approach of simply pointing at someone and saying, ‘Hey you,’ followed by whatever racial epithet he thought was appropriate for a person of their skin color.
D.C. stepped around and studied the man intensely.
“Thoughts?” John asked.
“When I was a very, very young child, a man in our village was killed by wild dogs. It looked much like this.”
“I don’t see any dogs,” T. said.
“Nor do I,” D.C. shook his head, “but look, his limbs have been twisted, dislocated, some of his bones snapped, as if he were caught between an alligator and a caiman in a tug of war.” D.C. pointed to the ragged wound below the man’s lower jaw, where the man’s tongue dangled backwards into an open trachea, “His throat has been ripped out, not cut by a blade.” Rackham had seen some grisly things while serving in the Royal Navy, but this made his top-twenty list for nightmare-inducing images.
“Don’t Mexicans use stone blades for sacrifices?” T. asked, “Those would leave rough wounds.”
“You’re thinking of the Aztecs, T.,” Rackham said, “And there haven’t been too many of ‘em going around making sacrifices since the Spanish wiped ‘em out 200 years ago.”
T. nodded, “True. There are certainly none on The Ranger. Perhaps he was sacrificed as part of a Christian ritual?”
“What?” Rackham looked at the man like he was crazy, “Christians don’t perform human sacrifices! Where would you get that idea?!”
“A Quaker fellow taught me to read some of his Bible when I was young, and it’s full of human sacrifice. Abraham and Isaac…”
“Abraham didn’t go through with it!” Rackham said, “God stopped him.”
“That day, yes, but how many days does he not stop his followers from sacrificing people?”
“None. He doesn’t have too. Christians don’t go around killing people as part of their religion.”
The native man gave him a hard look.
“Ritual sacrifice isn’t a thing in the Bible,” Rackham insisted.
“Then what’s with the little carvings of dead bodies Christians hang on their walls?” T. asked.
“That’s Jesus Christ,” Rackham said, “and hanging up crucifixes is a Catholic thing.”
“Well, I’m sure there are Catholics on The Ranger,” T. nodded.
“I thought Jesus Christ was your God.” D.C. said.
“No, he’s the son of God,” Rackham said.
“I thought that was Adam?” T. said.
“No he’s… that’s different,” Rackham said.
“Your God has a son?” D.C. asked.
“Well not anymore.”
“What happened to him?” D.C. asked.
“God sacri- you know, this isn’t the time for this discussion,” Rackham changed the subject, “Did either of you notice any of Vane’s men nursing an injury?” Rackham asked.
“No captain, none of ‘em were so much as sucking a thumb or bellyaching about a splinter,” T. said.
Rackham pried the knife out of the cook’s hand and gripped it as the cook had been, “typical amateur; tried to drive it down on one of ‘em like a pick,” John said, “rather than going for the gut.”
“So?” D.C. asked.
“So… if he stabbed one of them with the blade pointed down, how did blood get all the way up to the hilt?”
“He must have sunk it deep,” T. said.
“Aye, but that should have left a wound six inches deep. Maybe six inches long if the blade slid across a bone rather than going straight in.”
“An injury like that would kill a man,” D.C. said.
“Best case, he’d make it to the surgeon’s table before he croaked,” Rackham said, “but I didn’t see Vane sending any of his boys to see the surgeon.”
“Maybe he managed to stab himself?” T. suggested, “A clumsy man in a fight might be as much a danger to himself as to his enemy.”
“Maybe,” Rackham said, “But a man accidentally cutting his own throat before it’s torn out by invisible Catholic sea dogs seems a little unlikely.”
The three pirates continued exploring below decks and found the other men, likewise mutilated. None of them were armed with proper weapons. Most had obviously tried to defend their families with whatever loose objects they could pick up, but a couple looked like they’d tried to fight empty-handed. That sort of desperation was believable, but any man who’d worked more than a day as a pirate knew how to subdue an unarmed man without drawing a weapon. These fellows couldn’t have been a challenge for Vane’s men – even if they’d attempted to defend themselves, this was murder. That didn’t sit well with Rackham.
John knew his morality was somewhat skewed. It was hard for a man to sail ten years under the British flag and not become cynical. British seamen and marines seldom bled for their homeland – they suppressed rebellions for incompetent governors and secured trade routes for influential companies. He’d risked his life countless times so that the British Empire could wipe out or enslave weaker people, and he’d killed countless Spaniards to curtail their nation’s efforts to do the exact same thing. Rackham had learned that blood was cheap in the Atlantic, and seldom spilt for anything a civilized person would consider worthwhile.
Even so, Rackham still believed there was a limit a man had to abide by, even as a pirate. Killing a man to save your own life was fine, even if you started the fight, but killing a man who didn’t pose an immediate threat wasn’t. Executing prisoners was something the king did, and Rackham believed that if pirates lowered themselves to the moral standards of British royalty, they might as well return to his majesty’s navy.
Charles Vane was quite unlike him, though. The Ranger’s captain had been raised by the worst people in the worst part of London. He’d gone to sea on a merchant vessel to flee murder charges and eventually took the vessel in a brutal mutiny. He was aggressive and cunning, but he had no discipline, let alone compassion. Vane was a good pirate and an awful person.
And then Vane had spontaneously decided to marry a widow in Nassau. John had been surprised, partly because he couldn’t imagine Vane marrying anyone, but mostly because the woman he chose was extremely creepy. After his wedding night, Vane had changed. He left running his ship to his new quartermaster, Robert Deal, while he frittered away the day in his cabin or below decks with his favorite men, none of them ever setting foot above decks until it was dark. The lot of them had been getting rougher, meaner, colder than they were before, and then they’d done this.
“Why kill them?” T. said, “These men were well dressed, they could have been valuable ransom.”
“I don’t know,” Rackham shook his head.
“I’ve a locked door that’s been kicked open,” D.C. said.
Rackham went over and looked at the door – thick wood and iron fittings – it wasn’t poorly fashioned. Maybe two men had kicked together? With leverage…
A voice interrupted Rackham’s thoughts, “Have you come to check the carpentry? I can attest to the quality.” The statement was punctuated by the sound of chains straining and falling back on the wooden floor.
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