The Spectre of “Bloody Morgan” Ian Fleming’s Use of the Pirate Motif KATHARINA HAGEN Ian Fleming had a great number of hobbies and personal interests which often found their way into his novels. These included his knowledge of poisonous plants (in You Only Live Twice, 19 !"# the particulars of the guano trade (in Dr. No, 19$%"# and the fluctuating value of &ritain's gold supply (in Goldfinger, 19$9". (et one of his interests in particular appears throughout his &ond novels and short stories with noticeable regularity) that is, his love of pirates. *atthew +arker points out that ,almost all of -Fleming’s. stories -are. riddled with references to pirates,/ and that his fascination with the 0olden Age of pirates was heavily influ2 enced by his chosen home in 3amaica (451!, 116".1 Fleming was drawn to the sunken pirate city +ort 7oyal, situated in the harbour basin of 8ingston, and was gripped by the thought of a piratical past being preserved like ,buried treasure under the water nearby/ (+arker, 11 ". As a trained scuba-diver, Fleming some2 times undertook dives to investigate the remains of the underwater pirate city 1 The Golden 1ge of +iracy refers to piratical activity in the 9aribbean from 1 $521641. +irate researchers do not agree upon the exact dates. I have chosen as a starting point the arrival of the buccaneers in the 9aribbean basin and, as an endpoint, the 1ct of +iracy in 1641, which extended the sentence of capital punishment simply from those who had carried out piratical acts to include any and all persons who had interactions with known pirates ; a rule of law which led to the eventual decline of the traditional pirate figure. Katharina Hagen completed her Master of Arts in Com- parative and General Literature at Ruhr-University Bochum. She is currently a PhD candidate in the North American Literary and Cultural Studies programme at Saarland University. Her doctoral thesis focuses on a Fou- cauldian discourse analysis of contemporary pirate fic- Vol. 1, Issue 2 · Spring 2018 tion. ISSN 2514-2178 DOI: 10.24877/jbs.30 Distributed under CC BY 4.0 UK and to help with maritime archaeology, during which he often salvaged pewter tableware and pub signs (11 ". <e was also an observer of the unsuccessful search for the treasure of the pirate =livier Levasseur in the ?eychelles (4!6". As Flem2 ing wrote his 3ames &ond novels in 3amaica, it can be argued that his writings were heavily influenced by the cultural lore of pirate history in 8ingston at the time. +arker notes that ,Fleming’s 3amaica, or at least the first impressions of it, with the pirates, redcoats and admirals, machetes and ghost-stories, awoke in him the adventure stories of his childhood/ (119". It was the likes of these stories which ,provided fuel for the @four penny horrors' that Fleming said he was raised on/ (116". Taken together, Fleming’s imagination, spawned by much of his own childhood readings and memories, as well as the piratical past of his surround2 ings in 3amaica, suggests that pirates and pirate lore hold a far greater place of importance in the 3ames &ond novels than might appear at a cursory glance. 1longside Fleming’s deep interest in pirate history, 3ames &ond grew out of another of Fleming’s maritime activities: his own war2time experiences as a naval officer. 1ccordingly, both Fleming and &ond were sailors and were well ac2 Auainted with naval life. 1ccording to >isa Funnell and 8laus Bodds, &ond is ,@master' of -the. sea,/ a hero who has overcome the fluid element (4516, !". Chile Fleming’s closeness to shipboard life and to the sea may account for his (and &ond's" enduring fascination with piratical culture, Matthew +arker argues that pirates also ,appealed to the Tory part of FlemingDs imagination) they were devil2 take-the-hindmost, self-reliant and vigorous/ (116", characteristics which &ond also shares. In other words, &ond is not only master of the sea, but he has a pirat2 ical air, himself. 1lthough the piratical influences of Fleming’s writing have frequently been pointed out (Frenk and 8rug 4559, 4552451# <alloran 455$, 1$921 5# +arker 451!", a detailed analysis of Fleming’s engagement with the trope of the pirate has remained conspicuously absent from &ond scholarship. The focus of this article, then, is on the relationship between 3ames &ond and piracy, and on the ways in which elements of the pirate narrative functions within the conven2 tions of Fleming’s spy novels. In what follows, I analyse the extent to which the literary texts of 3ames &ond utilise the pirate trope, examining the multiple ways in which the underlying roots of the &ond phenomenon are steeped not so much in the origins of spy fiction as they are in pirate fiction and pirate history. The references to pirates and to pirating in Fleming’s novels are numer2 ous, and they showcase Fleming’s in-depth knowledge and wide-ranging re2 search in this area. Several of his novels refer, in particular, to two famous semi2 historical piratical accounts: the General History (164!" by 9aptain 9harles 3ohn2 2 International Journal of James Bond Studies · Vol. 1, Issue 2 · Spring 2018 son4 (4514e, 4 # 4514c, 4E9# 4514F, 66# 1E$21E " and the History of American Bucca- neers (1 %!" by Alexandre G:AuemelinE (4514e, 41 2416". For instance, at the be2 ginning of Live and Let Die (19$!", the pirate Francois >'=llonais is mentioned (4514e, 16", a name which appears in G:Auemelin's history on buccaneers, and which suggests that Fleming was familiar with this and other works of pirate his2 tory. Similarly, references to pirate fiction can also be found in Fleming’s &ond novels: ,Treasure Island/ is the name given over to a small town in 3amaica, also in the novel Live and Let Die. *oreover, the villain's schemes in two of Fleming’s novels follow a piratical plot-line: namely, the treasure hunts in both Live and Let Die and Goldfinger. =f these two, the former is centred around an attempt by the villain, Mister &ig, to salvage <enry *organ's lost treasure ; which, incidentally, ends up in MI 's funds at the end of the novel. Thus, Live and Let Die depicts a Auest for treasure in the classical sense. 9onversely, in Goldfinger, Fleming paral2 lels grand2scale bank robbery with piracy, noting that ,-i.t was modern piracy with all the old2time trimmings. 0oldfinger was sacking Fort 8no: as &loody *organ had sacked +anama/ (4514d, E14". Hivian <alloran has claimed that Fleming’s &ond novels can be seen as contemporary pirate fiction) she argues that Fleming employs two piractical features, in particular, which link Fleming’s novels to pirate fiction. The first is the motif of the treasure chest which is sym2 bolised by what she calls its ,modern equivalent/ (455$, 1 " ; such as the anony2 mous banking system in Iassau presented in Goldfinger, which the hoodlum convention in the novel intend to use to conceal their money after their grand heist of Fort 8nox. The second feature belongs to a much broader genre of sea- faring novels: namely, the association of &ond's foes with sea monsters (1 " ; such as the mechanical ,dragon/ on 9rab 8ey in the filmic Dr. No (19 4", as well as the underwater sea-kraken which Br. Io keeps in the novel of the same name; the ravenous piranha fish that strip Mr. &ig and <elga &randt to the bone in Live and Let Die and the filmic You Only Live Twice (19 6", respectively# the shark that chews off Feli: Leiter's arm and leg in the novel of Live and Let Die and his leg in the film Licence to ill (19%9"# and, on a much smaller scale, the 3apanese fighting 4 The abbreviation refers to A General History of t!e "o##eries $ %urders of t!e %ost Noto- rious &yrates. Its authorship is open to debate, as the book was published under the pseudonym of 9aptain 9harles 3ohnson. E T!e Buccaneers of America' (ontaining Detailed Accounts of T!ose Bold and Daring Free#oot- ers* +,isted along t!e -.anis! %ain* in t!e /est 0ndies in t!e Great -out! -ea; -ucceeded #y t!e (ivil /ars in +ngland is partly an eye2witness account written by 1lexandre G:Auemelin, who lived in close contact with <enry *organ, former >ieutenant Gov2 ernor of 3amaica. K. Hagen · The Spectre of “Bloody Morgan”: Ian Fleming’s Use of the Pirate Motif 3 fish which serve as metonyms for &lofeld in the filmic version of )rom "ussia wit! Love (19 E". *oreover, many of Fleming’s villainous characters are them2 selves comparable to pirates. Emilio Largo, for instance, the antagonist in T!un- der#all (19 1", is described by Fleming as a modern-day pirate: Largo was an adventurer, a predator on the herd. Two hundred years be2 fore, he would have been a pirate ; not one of the Folly ones of the story books, but a man like &lackbeard, a bloodstained cut-throat who scythed his way through people towards gold. &ut &lackbeard had been too much of a bully and a roughneck and wherever he went in the world he left behind tell-tale shambles. Largo was different. There was a cool brain and an e:2 Auisite finesse -.... that had always saved him from the herd's revenge -J.. (4514F, 1E$-1E " Largo is placed alongside the feared pirate &lackbeard, but Fleming makes it clear that Largo's incarnation is a vastly more evolved version of the historic pi2 rate; Largo's enhanced intelligence allow him to continuously evade capture and imprisonment, while the opportunistic &lackbeard is caught precisely because of his lack of finesse, his head eventually mounted on the bowsprit of his captors' ship ( 3ohnson 199%, $%2$9".