Once he found that a number of his mates were former pirates, he instigated a mutiny, set those who did not care to join him aboard a companion sloop and made for Martinique. Undaunted, Davis signed aboard Rogers’ own Buck as an able seamen. By the time he arrived new Governor Woodes Rogers had rounded up any wayward pirates who would not accept the King’s pardon. He was a day late and a dollar short, however. Davis was jailed but was later “… discharged without trial.”ĭavis made for New Providence, which he had heard was a hotbed of piracy. Arriving in Barbados with the ship’s cargo in tact, the crew ratted out Davis to the authorities saying he tried to exhort them to piracy. Though Davis would later claim to have been forced into piracy, it was the crew of his new command that rebelled against the idea. The raiders killed Cadogan’s captain and installed Davis in his place. He had his first brush with freebooting aboard the merchant sloop Cadogan when she was captured by pirates. Let’s look at the chronology of this short but merry life as Ellms lays it out, and then backtrack a little.Īccording to Ellms, Davis came out of Monmouthshire and was “… from a boy, trained to the sea”. Unfortunately though, he tried this trick once too often and got burned. Davis was, by all accounts, an intelligent opportunist who liked to masquerade as a legitimate privateer or pirate hunter to get into the good graces of local authorities. This Golden Age of Piracy freebooter is probably most famous for mentoring one of the most successful pirates of all time: Bartholomew Roberts. Those flaws come across most clearly in chapters about pirates whose careers we are most familiar with. Given all that, it is at least a little bit of a let down to find out that Ellms’ information is, for the most part, flawed. Even the fact that the book is over 150 years old does not cloud his certitude. The tales in his The Pirates Own Book are one hundred percent true if you base that statement solely on the sincerity of the writing. As a writer, he is solid, even emphatic, about every story he tells. One of the most endearing things about Charles Ellms is his certainty in his facts.
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