Patricia Green | Why is Jamaica celebrating pirates?

What is there to celebrate about pirates that Kingston would be allowed to designate an entire week for this? Historians describe a pirate as the lowest grade of seafaring robbers, the scourge of the high seas, and a menace that governments had to deal with. Their activities included coastal raiding, intercepting ships on the high seas, robbery, kidnapping and murder.

Pirates issued disproportionate odds of premeditated cruelty and terror that was excessive, with a morbid taste for inflicting pain. This outlaw band of men also had a system of ‘matelotage,’ or a form of partnership and marriage among themselves.

Ahmed Reid, wrote in WiredJa to correct an education system that continues to produce leaders who are unaware of the rich heritage that places them at the centre of their history, adding, “…the celebration of piracy as a cultural spectacle is not merely misguided; it is historical erasure masquerading as cultural tourism…”.

Let us now remove here any ignorance about the historic terms pirates/privateers/buccaneers. Are these the same, or different? Were these people in Jamaica? What did they do here, good or evil?

Recall that Spain initiated European settlements, starting in the Caribbean. Pirates, mainly English, also Dutch and French, surfaced in these waters to plunder Spanish settlements and ships transporting gold and trade, including enslaved Africans - ‘black gold’. Privateers are ‘legal’ pirates who hired themselves to the Crown but kept some of their plunder. Buccaneers were interchangeably called privateers, also under hire to the monarchy, but extended their reach beyond the Caribbean Sea and Atlantic Ocean into the South Sea and Pacific Ocean. Privateers and Buccaneers fell in and out of favour with their monarchy, resulting in them reverting to the lowest status of pirates during those seasons.

Working with Queen Elizabeth I was buccaneer Sir Francis Drake, who sailed beyond the Atlantic and was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world 1577-1580. Another, Sir Anthony Shirley, educated at Oxford and the Inns of Court, was knighted by Elizabeth I, then fell out of grace with her and was banned. He then reverted to privateering, carrying out raids in Africa and the Caribbean. In 1597, Shirley led an English pirate raid on Spanish Jamaica, plundering Spanish Town.

RELOCATED TO PORT ROYAL

The buccaneers stayed mainly off the coast of Hispaniola from 1630, but when England seized Jamaica from Spain in 1655, they relocated to Port Royal. Famous among them was the pirate Henry Morgan, dubbed ‘king of the privateers’, appointed by King Charles II as Commander-in-Chief of all Jamaican forces in 1669. By 1670, Morgan had 36 ships and 1800 men under his command.

Charles II then formed the Royal African Company in 1672 to trade Africa people across the Atlantic into slavery. Morgan was transported to London under arrest, charged with piracy, but King Charles II needed him to lead the band of pirates into privateering services. Charles II knighted Morgan and returned him to Jamaica in 1674 as the Lieutenant Governor, to protect the Royal slave trade using the pirates.

The story of Henry Morgan makes me dub privateers and buccaneers as the monarchy’s notorious sea-police, operating as a law unto themselves, looting, maiming, killing and plundering for personal riches, sharing these with the Crown under agreements.

When the June 7, 1692, earthquake struck Jamaica, sinking two-thirds of Port Royal into the sea, Church of England Minister Emmanuel Heath survived and formed a prayer circle on the land that remained of the town. He described bodies swallowed up, leaving only their heads above ground, then persons gouging the gold from their teeth even during the recurring tremors. Heath recorded, “…as soon as night came on, a company of lewd rogues whom they call Privateers, fell to breaking open Warehouses, and Houses deserted, to Rob and Rifle their neighbours whilst the Earth trembled under them, and some of the Houses fell on them in the Act…”.

During the 1720s, the ‘golden age’ of piracy ended through Navy intervention. The notorious women pirates, Ann Bonny and Mary Read, were convicted in Jamaica on November 28, 1720, in a Court of Vice Admiralty at Spanish Town, and hanged in Hanover.

SPIRIT OF PIRACY

Dennis Minott wrote in Our Today of an elite few who have inherited the spirit of piracy, “…just as the tides once turned against the privateers and buccaneers, so too must they turn against the billionaires who see the Caribbean not as home, but as prey…”. Minott said that pirates of old have become today’s economic overlords who converted their swords and ships into cornering essential industries, influencing government policy, and shaping economies to serve their interests while leaving the majority in Jamaica and the Caribbean struggling.

In like manner, it seems that the development sector has been manifesting the same spirits of pirates/ privateers/ buccaneers. Jamaica is experiencing a construction boom fraught with extortion, violence, cruelty, and unresolved murders. Citizens are engaging the courts against what may be termed development piracy. One set of design drawings is used for agency approvals, and afterwards modifications appear during construction site inspections. To facilitate purchase financing, survey drawings may result in being different from those approved.

Government sectoral policies ratify such practices for economic growth, even as Elizabeth I and Charles II did in the golden years of piracy. Jamaican citizens are crying out under the weight of invasions and afflictions upon their neighbourhoods and homes. What is Jamaica to expect from the development and construction sectors under the newly designated government ministers now sworn in, following the elections on September 3? Continued historic piracy?

Now, why is Jamaica promoting a week to celebrate pirates? Port Royal was inscribed July 12 on the prestigious UNESCO World Heritage List. What is good about pirates at Port Royal that necessitates any national celebration of them? Should Jamaica endorse and allow a global promotion of the brand ‘pirate’ representing murder and mayhem, stealing and smuggling, debauchery and deviations, to become attractions and examples for our children and the country?

Patricia Green, PhD, a registered architect and conservationist, is an independent scholar and advocate for the built and natural environment. Send feedback to patgreen2008@gmail.com and columns@gleanerjm.com