No Dollar Too Dark - Piracy and Privateering in the 19th c. NE Caribbean

Joseph Almeida was one of the most (in)famous privateer and pirate in the Caribbean between 1816 to 1832. The son of Portuguese immigrants to the U.S., he fought for the U.S. navy as a privateer during the War of 1812, and later as a privateer for Buenos Aires from 1817 to 1818, and Venezuela from 1818-1819.
Some of his extended family relocated to the eastern Caribbean as well to partake in his ventures, such as his brother Anthony Benjamin Almeida and Joseph's daughter Louisa. Joseph Almeida later became a merchant and member of the Island Council on the island of St. Barthelemy in the 1820's, while also maintaining citizenship on nearby St. Eustatius with several properties there. His daughter Louisa owned a house in Upper Town on St. Eustatius which was actually a massive storehouse for arms and ammunition, including six brass cannons, explosive cannonballs, spears, swords, gunpowder, and spare rigging. All the while, he occasionally cruised under the Colombian flag, and from 1827-1828 he cruised under the Buenos Airean flag, capturing many prize ships through piracy that were brought into St. Eustatius to be sold. On his last cruise in 1830, his crew rebelled against him off the coast of Puerto Rico, and he was turned into Spanish colonial authorities there. He was executed by firing squad in 1832, which was announced in the Gustavia Free Press.

St. Maarten was actively involved in affairs concerning piracy and privateering between 1816-1830, but accounts outlining specifics are rare, especially in archives originating from St. Maarten itself, as opposed to other islands like St. Thomas, St. Barts, and Saba. Here is an extract from the governor's journal of St. Barts, dated 10 December 1818, which goes into quite some detail. (Translated from French)

**
While the Venezuelan vessels that I last humbly reported are cruising in our waters, they permit themselves to visit other vessels. When they were in range of the canons I fired at them several times, and I almost sank them. There arrived at the same time many Spanish and Portuguese prizes, whose commander, a certain Jolly took possession and which he next took to Fourchue Island. He had entered others, as we have learned, two Guineamen and one ship with a rich cargo from Rio de Janeiro; all of a sudden a quantity of open boats met at the same place, this happened on the 23rd and 24th, but I soon dispatched a corporal to Fourchue Island to order all vessels to leave Swedish possessions and in case of refusal, I would write to the English Admiral. They left Fourchue Island and went to the island of Saba, but a few days later we saw the whole flotilla anchored in the Dutch part of St. Martin. The government of that place appears entirely conniving in these affairs even to the point that they returned to Mr. Jolly one of his prizes that he had chased which took refuge in the port of Phillipsburg, the residence of the government. Close to there we see the flags of Venezuela and Jolly flying, and they have a public auction of negroes, etc...

St. Barts thrived as a one-stop hub for piracy and privateering from 1816-1830. A particularly specialized service offered on the island were forged documents, which could range from a set of ship's papers from any European nation, letters of marque from any country issuing them at the time, and ship manifests. A specialist in forged documents even relocated from New York to St. Barts to take part in this lucrative industry. The situation was colorfully described on a few occasions by resident US consul Robert Harrison:

"Here Sir are men who will counterfeit and write your name better than yourself! Every document, even to hang your own brother, can be had, forged in the neatest manner by paying for it! I have been shown my own signature so well done, that I should have believed it had been written by myself, if I had not known the piece to which it was attached had never emanated from me! Clearances can be had from $2 to $30. These things are well known to the government, but as these villains are their own tools and are useful to them they of course are protected.
Recently a Jew by the name of Abrams arrived here from New York, and from what I hear, he has been guilty of innumerable forgeries, not only in America, but almost every other part of the world! He practiced to be a goldsmith, but has not done any thing but manufacturing false papers since he came here."
(US National Archives M72, R59, Reel 2, Sept 7 1829).

Thanks for all your work getting this together on Saba Lynn Costenaro! Glad you enjoyed the day out!

Here's a running list of terms with their definitions that you'll come across in posts and original documents uploaded to this page. If you're curious about others, let me know and I'll add them as needed.

Brig: A square sailed, two-masted ship with an extra gaff sail on the main mast.

Crab Island: Present-day Vieques Island just east of Puerto Rico.

Creole: A person born in the new world within a European colony, usually with (some) European decent.

Given the drum to beat: Saban 19th c. slang for sexual relations.

Guineaman: A ship built or re-outfitted in order to carry captives from the West or West Central African coast across the Atlantic Ocean to the New World.

League: A unit of measurement for distance that varies between European nations. Used originally to designate the distance a person could walk in one hour. At sea, an English league was 3 nautical miles. One nautical mile = 1.15 miles.

Letter of marque: A legal document that authorizes a ship, captain, and its crew as naval mercenaries under a nation state for a specified period of time. This allows the privateer to capture enemy warships and merchant vessels as prizes of war for their own profit, and carry them back to their home port to be tried in a prize court.

Mulatto: A term given to free or enslaved people in the New World that are assumed to have roughly 50% African and European ancestry.

Mustee: A term given to free or enslaved people in the New World that are assumed to have roughly 25% or less African ancestry and 75% or more European ancestry. Often given to people subject to the "one drop rule", meaning that having just one long distant African ancestor and an otherwise European ancestry makes the person "non-white", and therefore Mustee.

Muster Roll: A document kept on board of a ship, with a copy at their home port, which lists the names and positions of its officers and crew.

"Old Nick": A term for Satan.

Pirate: A person or ship operating without a letter of marque to designate them legally as a privateer. Pirates that were captured by nation states were often executed.

[number from 1 to 35+] pounder: Refers to the weight of an iron cannonball that a particular cannon was designed to fire. For example, a "12 pounder" was a medium-sized cannon found on a ship. Larger cannons like 35-pounders tended to be used on land in forts.

Privateer: A ship operating under a letter of marque to designate them legally as a privateer. Privateer crews captured by the enemy were considered prisoners of war and imprisoned, which is an important difference kept in mind at the time by those joining up with privateer or pirate crews.

Prize court: A prize court was held to conduct a trial for captured prize ships brought into a privateer's home port. Often these courts were a rubber-stamp formality for condemning prize ships and their goods to be distributed among the privateer crew, its sponsors, and the prize court judge.

Republican: Refers anyone who was a resident or mercenary for the Independence movements of the Spanish American provinces in the New World during the Spanish American Wars of Independence. This most often included what is now Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Buenos Aires (La Plata), Chile, and Peru.

Royalist: Refers to residents or mercenaries of the Spanish American provinces that supported Spain in the Spanish American Wars of Independence.

Schooner: A ship with two or more masts. The foremast (the mast closest to the front of the ship) is smaller than the mainmast (the tallest mast, usually towards the rear), and the lower masts may be gaff-rigged (able to support a square sail).

Ship's papers: Refers to both the document that lists the country the ship is registered to with its registered name, the inventory of the ship's cargo, and sometimes the "muster roll" which lists the names of all officers and crew members on board.

St. Christopher(s): An older term for the island of St. Kitts.

Statia: Regional term to refer to St. Eustatius.

White: An individual assumed to have full European ancestry.

For some detailed context and background info on this project, I've written a paper a few years ago on how St. Thomas functioned as a hub for piracy, privateering, and illegal slave trading while using nearby Saba and St. Eustatius as its smuggling and laundering hubs as a means to reap the profits of these activities and dodge the consequences. It's a free download that you can find here:

https://brill.com/view/journals/nwig/93/1-2/article-p41_3.xml?language=en

The book that sparked this research over the past 15 years was an accidental find on Google Books while doing my Masters research in 2007. It's an original from 1828 best read over a glass of wine, or dark rum. (The best rums are from Martinique!). "An Account of Pirates Executed at St. Christophers in 1828".
https://www.google.ca/books/edition/An_account_of_the_pirates_executed_at_St/YEuCzYvrGTgC?hl=en&gbpv=0

For the record, I'll be having t-shirts made with crossed cutlasses and "Never Draw Me But With Reason / Never Sheathe Me But With Honor". Lynn Costenaro

An account of the pirates executed at St. Christopher's, in the West Indies, in 1828 This book is the story of the capture, trial, and ex*****on of a group of West Indies pirates in the early nineteenth century.

From April 22 to April 29, I'll be joining Vince Capone and Dr. Art Trembanis (University of Delaware) to conduct multibeam side scan sonar surveys of the waters offshore of Saba to around 200m deep. Vince has worked on surveys of the Titanic, and led maritime surveys to successfully locate the Apollo 11 rockets. We will be searching for clusters of wrecks that were intentionally sunk by demolition crews from St. Eustatius and Saba to hide evidence of piracy.
Multibeam side scan sonar provides a 3D image of the seafloor's topography, with low to very high resolution depending on how much of the seafloor you want to scan at once. You can see an example of a multibeam image below.
The northwest of Saba (shown from an aerial photo below, looking north), at Wells Bay, is particularly important to this project as it served as excellent cover for intentionally sinking prize ships, as this location conceals you from view of all nearby islands, and also as the location where captured ships intended for laundering and resale in regional markets were brought to Saba and left abandoned at anchor to be "discovered" by the Lt. Governor of Saba (Gezaghebber in Dutch). The ship was repaired by carpenters and shipwrights at Wells Bay, given a new coat of paint (especially at the stern where the original name was), and the Lt. Governor waited for a merchant from St. Eustatius to claim the ship as his own, which was "captured by pirates and miraculously appeared at Saba with no papers". The Lt. Governor would furnish the merchant with a new set of ships papers, along with a new name for the vessel, and the ship was eventually sold at public auction in either St. Thomas or St. Bartholomew.

Welcome to the Facebook portal for No Dollar Too Dark: Piracy, Privateering, and Illegal Slave Trading in the Early 19th c. NE Caribbean! This project is hosted by the University of Cambridge, and funded though the European Union Horizon 2020 scheme.

NDTD integrates maritime archaeology, history, geophysical survey and anthropology to investigate illicit trade between the Caribbean islands St. Eustatius, Saba, St. Thomas, St. Bartholomew and St. Maarten from 1816 to around 1840 with the aim of understanding why and how these islands were drawn into an illicit trade network, what archaeological evidence remains of these activities, and why this is relevant to current ‘theories of piracy’ and modern illicit trade in the region.

The project is lead by Dr. Ryan Espersen, a historical archaeologist, consultant, and public educator with over 15 years of experience living and working in the Dutch Caribbean. He has published as single author and co-author in several major archaeological journals in his field such as Antiquity, Archaeometry, Historical Archaeology, the New West Indian Guide, and the International Journal of Historical Archaeology. Two heritage projects that he led on Saba have been officially opened by the Dutch Royal Family.