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On Piracy as a Profession for Young Gentlemen^*

You, courteous and learned Reader, doubtless remember the melancholy episode in the life of that great man Tom Sawyer, when in the flower of early youth, disappointed in love, not understood (to quote the immortal Bracken), with all the most precious offerings of a noble soul lying in ruins about his feet, the boy took his agony to the everlasting sympathies of nature, and in the calm of the noon-day woods began to meditate. And he saw himself, as many a great-hearted gentleman had done before him, casting off the petty trammels of our ordinary morality, our anaemic civilisation, and forgetting the bruised heart, the shuddering soul, in the free and noble life of a Pirate. "How his name would fill the world, and make people shudder!" thought the boy. "How gloriously he would go ploughing the dancing seas, in his long, low, black-hulled racer, the 'Spirit of the Storm,' with his grisly flag flying at the fore! And at the zenith of his fame, how he would suddenly appear at the old village and stalk into church, brown and weather-beaten, in his black velvet doublet and trunks, his great jackboots, his crimson sash, his belt bristling with horse-pistols, his crime-rusted cutless at his side, his slouch hat with waving plumes, his black flag unfurled, with the skull and cross-bones on it, and hear with swelling' ecstasy the whisperings: 'It's Tom Sawyer, the Pirate!—the Black Avenger of the Spanish Main!' "

This has always struck me as ambition enough for any man. Mr. Winston Churchill, so I have read, once gave great attention to the life of the Emperor Napoleon; how much better would his time have been spent in the study of the celebrated Captain Bartholomew Roberts, or Captain Thomas Tew, or many another gallant English gentleman. I do not mention the late Sir Henry Morgan, as he was a notorious liar, besides deserting his men on more than one occasion (not to mention the signal barbarity with which, as Governor of Jamaica, he hanged his former companions in arms) and not even a politician could find any real satisfaction in the contemplation of such a figure. But the long roll-call of the English pirates gives illimitable food for thought to any man with the blood of adventure astir in his veins; and

no youth who meditates on the great deeds and immortal passages of arms which those names enshrine but can feel overcome with a rush of admiration and emulation. There has lately been a noticeable increase in the literature of piracy, and the most reputable and conservative publishing firms have not hesitated to bless with their imprimatur many a text-book on the science and art of robbery at sea. This is all to the good. There has been Lovat Fraser's edition of the classic work of Captain Johnson, a new edition of that monument of erudition, Esquemeling, a recent work of careful scholarship by Mr. Archibald Hurd, and page 14 even a Pirates' Who's Who, a work henceforth as indispensable to the business man as his telephone directory and his subscription to the Employers' Association. Our Masefield, of course, we have always with us. It is a notable sign of the freedom, the buoyancy, the lack of cant and foolish sentimentality of our British spirit, that a European war and a temporary fall in the price of wool, with all the grave import of their consequent international complications, cannot keep our minds for long from the contemplation of the ancient traditions and noble deeds of our race. The renewed interest in the history and theory of Piracy is, I am convinced, a very significant index of the trend of the national mind; and where thought flies so insistently, action must inevitably follow. Britons will yet live to say, with tears of emotion streaming down their pride-flushed cheeks: "Thank God! the practice of Piracy is not dead!" I pray that I may see the day when among the crowded shipping clustered at our busy wharves, the Black Flag will spread proudly to the winds of heaven, and the wireless will be busy with the tidings of big prize-money out in Cook Strait. That day will dawn gladly when our mothers, in answer to inquiries after the future of the boy, will answer, with maternal pride kindling in the eye, that little Richard is going to be articled to a Pirate.

And herein lies the purpose of this article. In so far as in me lies, I regard it as my humble duty to lay the facts before the youth of the country; and especially the cream of the intellect of New Zealand, our university students. It is obvious that the other learned professions are grievously over-crowded: Featherston Street is (if the expression be pardoned) lousy with lawyers; Lambton Quay is nearly as bad, and the overflow is now forced into Courtenay Place. Parsons (I am assured) in spite of the palpable absurdity of their existence at all in the modern world, are multiplying even at Victoria with the melancholy monotony and fatalistic persistency of the Otago rabbit; the Training College is annually glutted, so much so that it is able to comb out those students who exhibit modicum enough of originality of mind and behaviour to make them hopelessly inefficient as instructors of the young; and the government service is such that only a suicide pact among all officials over forty years of age will make room for the next relay of hungry sycophants. These things, I say, are obvious; but to anyone who contemplates with unbiassed mind the history and Imperial destiny of our race the remedy is equally obvious. Let us emulate the exploits of our glorious ancestors! What feats of careful organisation, what spirit, what courage, what combination of all the most sterling qualities of body and brain, were not possible to them who dared so greatly, in whom the swift service of the mind was so closely married to the deed! And shall we sit down in our pettifogging shame and turn our faces from that bright record; shall the scroll of fame wave in vain above our blasted heads; shall the golden letters of history shine in ineffectual waste, far from the dull orbit of our bat-like eyes, bleared with the contemplation of our own complacencies? Shall the white mountain peaks of endeavour glitter for ever unscaled by feet of ours? And shall we see our little children weep and wilt, perishing beneath the inadequate gaze of their parents, because in answer to the trumpet-call of More Production, the worker will not Produce? And the page 15 remedy is close to our hand, as a finely-tempered sword, loose in scabbard, that needs but a hand to extract it and carve a way to the vitals of the rich!

Was it not the great Longfellow who said:—

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime"?

I turn me to those noble volumes wherein are enshrined, like flowers that lose their fragrance not with time, the deeds of those mighty generations who made us what we are. And turn first to the noble prose (whose very cadence thrills us like a trumpet-call) of our English translator of the immortal Esque-meling. "The present volume," he says, "both for its curiosity and ingenuity I dare recommend to the perusal of our English nation, whose glorious actions it contains . . . seeing it enlarges our acquaintance with Natural History, so much prized and enquired for by the learned of this present age . . . and besides, it informs us (with huge novelty) of as great and bold attempts in point of military conduct and valour as ever were performed by mankind: without excepting here either Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or the rest of the Nine Worthies of Fame. Of all which actions, as we cannot but confess ourselves to have been ignorant hitherto ... so can they not choose but be admired, out of this ingenious author, by whosoever is curious to learn the various revolutions of human affairs. But more especially by our English nation, as unto whom these things more narrowly appertain. We have more than half the book filled with the unparalleled if not inimitable adventures and heroic exploits of our own countrymen and relations, whose undaunted and exemplary courage, when called upon by our King and Country, we ought to emulate . . . From hence," as he says, with that modesty that has ever been the mark of true valour, "from hence per-adventure will other nations learn, that the English people are of their genius more inclinable to act than to write." I turn me to the memory of the great Teach (known to the commonalty as Blackbeard) who, when he had guests used to blow out the candle in his cabin and fire his pistols at random under the table, who had fourteen wives at various parts of the West Indies, and who in the terrific hand-to-hand struggle with Lieutenant Maynard on the fatal November 21, 1718, was wounded in twenty-five places before he fell dead. It turn to Major Stede Bonnet, who took to the profession to escape his wife (although a wealthy merchant at Barbados) pursued a most successful career, and was hanged in that same melancholy year at Charleston; I turn to Captain John Jennings, "a man of good position, education and property," who took to piracy for pure love of the life (an inspiring example) ; I turn to Captain Ben Johnson, who rose to be the Admiral of the Sultan of Ormuz, accumulated £800,000, was made a bashaw, and died a natural death at the end of a long and revered life of splendour; to Captain Richard Sawkins, who was loved by his crew and had great influence over them, in spite of the fact that he could not abide gambling—"a man," says the historian, "whom nothing on earth could terrifie"; to Captains Coxon and Bartholomew Sharp; to the magnificent, the splendid Roberts, who drank nothing but tea, kept the Sabbath, took over 400 vessels, and died fighting like a Christian gentleman; I turn page 16 finally to David Williams, who, although he was a "d—d bad pirate," morose, sour, unsociable, and ill-tempered, and "knew as little of the sea or of ships as he did of the Arts of Natural Philosophy," was yet a brave man, a soldier born, and an intimate friend of Dempaino, the King of Madagascar., These, these were our ancestors; the blood that coursed in the hot veins of these gallant men runs in ours. Departing, they left behind them footprints on the sands of time that no envious tide can wash out, no wind cover up with the shifting grains of respectability. They are part of our life; they move across our history as the immortal stars march on the plains of heaven; their glory is shouted on the blast of every wind and sung in the surge of every sea. Surely we, flesh of their flesh and bone of their bone, will not betray the heritage they have handed down?

There are two ways of earning a living in these modern days. One is by piracy and one is by capitalism; and no young man of brains and breeding would willingly become a capitalist. So peradventure in the not far-distant future it may be granted to us to rub shoulders with swarthy seamen on the Quay, with gold rings in their ears and blood on their cutlasses; it may be our portion to hear gaudy parrots swear in Spanish and catch the glint of pieces of eight and moidores as the sailors gamble on the street outside the Duke of Edinburgh or the Pier; some day dew of heaven may irrigate the barren soil of our commercialism; we may, some fine morning as we stand on the hills that fringe our noble harbour, see the Black Flag unfurl itself in the sun below and hear faintly the distant song of the sailors as they warp their ship out into the bay. And as we turn proudly down the path to our quiet home we will know that we have solved our unemployment problem and are a nation. We shall have found our soul.

Junius Brutus.