Elements of Mythmaking in Witness Accounts of Colonial Piracy
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2008 Elements of mythmaking in witness accounts of colonial piracy Plamen Ivanov Arnaudov Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Arnaudov, Plamen Ivanov, "Elements of mythmaking in witness accounts of colonial piracy" (2008). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 2713. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/2713 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. ELEMENTS OF MYTHMAKING IN WITNESS ACCOUNTS OF COLONIAL PIRACY A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Plamen Ivanov Arnaudov B.A., American University in Bulgaria, 2000 M.F.A., Louisiana State University, 2003 May 2008 ACKNOWLEGEMENTS This work was made possible by a peculiar sequence of incidents, influences, and humors. It all began with a strange affection for Exquemelin’s buccaneers that I felt during a seminar in 18th Century Literature taught expertly by Dr. Keith Sandiford. He became my advisor and mentor, and I am now more in his debt than I can ever repay. To June English goes the credit for teaching me how to dream big (the way pirates did) and how to make my omelets fluffy in the meantime. I cannot thank my wife Devyani Kar enough for her gracious support and for maintaining me in the style I quickly became accustomed to. It was a pleasure to write half of this work in the sunroom of our new home. Special thanks also to Daniel Novak, who always had words of encouragement and comfort. To William Boelhower, whose feedback will likely shape this work’s future life. To Jacob Berman, for coming aboard with keen insight on the peculiar shapes of race in these texts. My research was inspired by Robert Dryden, a colleague and predecessor in whose footsteps I tried to follow, informed by Hans Turley, whose footsteps I often discovered ahead of me, and ignited by René Girard, whose genius lent depth and confidence to my own footsteps. Other parties that must be thanked include Highland Coffees, which hosted the other half of this creation, and coffee in general, which extended crucial moments of lucidity. I would also like to thank Kingston for making a water-proof flash drive and Asus Computers for making a notebook which refused to die. Without any of the above, this would have been a much lesser work, if not a chimera. The only credit I can claim for myself is if the reader finds any of the following pages enjoyable. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS . ............................................ ii ABSTRACT.......................................................... .. v CHAPTER 1: PIRACY IN THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD: TRUTHS CONVENIENT TO NONE .... ..................... ....................... 1 1. 1. Introduction . .............................................. .. 1 1. 2. From Buccaneers to Golden Age Pirates . .............. .......... .. 8 1. 3. Colonial Piracy on the Canvass of its Time . ..................... .. 20 1. 4. The Colonial Pirate: Something Old, Something New . ............. .. 27 1. 5. Structure of the Study . ...................................... .. 30 CHAPTER 2:METHODOLOGY .......................................... 39 2. 1. Myth: A Working Definition . ................................ ... 39 2. 2. Colonial Pirate Accounts as Early Modern Texts . ................ ... 44 2. 3. The Colonial Pirate as a ‘Self-Selected’ Scapegoat . ................ ... 52 2. 4. Atlantic Connections . ..................................... .... 59 CHAPTER 3: ‘TRUE AND PERFECT’ ACCOUNTS OF SEA BANDITS . ........ 63 3. 1. Introduction . ............................................ .... .63 3. 2. Captain Snelgrave 'Recalls' . ................................ .... .65 3. 3. Demons “onaVoyagetoHell”.... ............................. .... 67 3. 4. From Self-Damnation to Self-Sacrifice . ....................... .... 79 3. 5. Anti-Hero . .............................................. .... 82 3. 5. 1. Not Quite the Tempter . ................................. ..... 82 3. 5. 2. Not Quite a King . ...................................... .... .88 3. 5. 3. Not Quite a Folk Hero: “They pretended to be Robin Hoods Men” . .... 94 3. 5. 4. Not Quite the Trickster . .................. .............. .... 100 3. 6. Treasyre’s Temptations: Piracy and Colonial Business as Usual . .. .....104 CHAPTER 4:THE FANCIFUL JOURNEYS OF FIVE ENGLISH BUCCANEERS. ............................. .......................... 118 4. 1. Introduction . ........................................... .....118 4. 2. Notes about the Sources . ................. ............... .... 120 4. 3. “Beyond Mortal Men”: The Audition for National Scions . ....... .... .124 4. 4. “In Service of the Emperour of Darien”: Myrmidons of Ferocious Capitalism . ....................... ...................... ... 134 4. 5. Buccaneers as Liberators of the Oppressed . ................... .... 148 4. 6. “Yet a More Pleasing Guest to Her”: Buccaneers as Romantic Daredevils .. .151 4. 7. A ‘Panegyrick’ for ‘the worst of men’: Buccaneers as Anti-Heroes . .... 154 CHAPTER 5: Raveneau de Lussan: Buccaneer Apologist and Mythical Hero . .. 163 5. 1. Notes about the Source . ................................... .... 163 5. 2. The Voyage as a Dream . .................................. .... 170 iii 5. 3. The Call to Adventure . .......... .......................... ... .172 5. 4. Crossing the First Threshold . ............................. .. ... .173 5. 5. The Belly of the Whale . ................................... ....174 5. 6. The Road of Trials . ...................................... .... 177 5. 7. Meeting the Goddess / Woman as the Temptress . ... ............... ....188 5. 8. From Heroic Monomyth to Concrete Agenda . ................. .... 189 CHAPTER 6: CONTINUITIES: THE ANTI-HEROIC PIRATE FIGURE FROM EXQUEMELIN TO JOHNSON ............ ................ .............. .195 6. 1. Introduction . ........................................... .....195 6. 2. Notes about the Sources ................................. ..... .... 198 6. 2. 1. Who Were A. O. Exquemelin? . .......................... .... 198 6. 2. 2. Captain Charles Johnson: A ‘Faithful Historian’ . ... ............ ..... 204 6. 2. 3. Eminently Readable . ................................... .... 211 6. 3. A New Species of Bird, Pirate, and Man . .................... .... 215 6. 4. "At liberty, though… naked, and destitute”: A Radical and An Alternative Statesman .................................................. .. 223 6. 5. Self-Sacrificial Desperado . ................................ .... 226 CHAPTER 7: CONCLUSION . ........................... ............... 231 7. 1. A Final Case Study: Exquemelin’s Morgan vs. Johnson’s Roberts . ..... .. 231 7. 2. Selection . ............................................. ..... 232 7. 3. Certainty of Death . .................................... ..... 237 7. 4. Second Transference of the Sacred . ....................... ..... 240 7. 5. In Summary ... ................ ............................ .... 242 REFERENCES . .................................................. 246 VITA . ......................................................... .. .255 iv ABSTRACT Focusing on historical accounts (1684-1734) by English, French, and Spanish witnesses, this dissertation establishes a continuity in fictionalized representations of anti-heroic pirates from the buccaneering period to the Golden Age of Piracy. Informed by history, literary, myth, and performance theory, the analysis identifies significant distortions in reports by observers and participants. The distortions that pertain to mythmaking patterns are classified and analyzed further. Conflicting and ambivalent representations of the pirate as an anti-hero are resolved through the positing of a literary scapegoat hypothesis drawing from René Girard and Joseph Roach. While demonstrating mythical archetypes at work in the construction of the colonial pirate figure, the analysis also takes into account the effects of confluent early modern processes such as the rise of colonial capitalism, print culture, and the middle class in Britain. v CHAPTER 1 PIRACY IN THE EARLY COLONIAL PERIOD: TRUTHS CONVENIENT TO NONE Arv. Have they not rang’d the Globe to serve my Cause, With me they made a Circle round this World, Disclaim’d Relation, Country, Friendship, Fame, They toil’d, they bled, they burnt, they froze, they starv’d, Each Element, and all Mankind their Foe —Charles Johnson, The Successful Pyrate1 1. 1. INTRODUCTION On February 28th, 1694, Henry Avery left a declaration at the island of Johanna in which he proclaimed that he and 150 other men had taken the privateer ship Charles, renamed it the Fancy, and were now “bound to Seek our Fortunes.” He described a signal that friendly English and Dutch ships may use to announce themselves but warned that “my Men are hungry, Stout, and resolute, and should they exceed my Desire I cannot help myself.”2 Later in the year, after having