[Continued from yesterday’s Part 3 and the preceding Part 1 and Part 2.]
By: David A. Smith
We’re multicultural because we want to sell tickets worldwide
Piracy, as we’ve now established in the first three parts of this exploration of informal enterprise that started with a Boston Globe (August 24, 2014) interview of historian Marcus Rediker by Rebecca Onion, relied on an equity-based capitalization structure with an informal but no less binding incorporation via a set of articles, promulgated by the pirate captains and disclosed before anyone signed on as a crew.
Sources used in this post
Rebecca Onion, Boston Globe (August 24, 2014)
Burying Treasure (January 15, 2010; gray font with blue inset quotes)
Daniel Defoe (attributed), A General History of the Pyrates, 1724; blue italics
In this incorporation Dr. Rediker sees one thing, I see quite another.
That’s an alternative order
Rediker: These sailors built an alternative order to the way that ships ran in the merchant shipping and the Royal Navy.
I disagree; in all three cases, order was maintained from the top down, and with the threat of force.
VI. No Boy or Woman to be allowed amongst them. If any Man were sound seducing anny of the latter Sex, and carried her to Sea, disguised, he was to suffer Death;
– Pirate Roberts’ list of incorporation rules, quoted in Daniel Defoe (attributed), A General History of the Pyrates, 1724
To which rule Defoe adds helpful gloss and editorial analysis:
So that when any fell into their Hands, as it chanced in the Onslow, they put a Centinel immediately over her to prevent ill Consequences from so dangerous an Instrument of Division and Quarrel;
Now compare Defoe’s 1724 explanation (above) with Rediker’s 2014 political reinterpretation):
They had a real sense of power … you chose the captain [In some cases – Ed.], rather than have the captain chosen for you…. Pirates would also limit the captain’s power. They could depose the captain if they didn’t like him. They would limit his ability to whip them. They would elect a quartermaster to keep the captain in line [No, to escrow and distribute booty. – Ed.]. So there are all these fascinating proto-democratic things they’re doing.
Does this sound proto-democratic to you?
But then here lies the Roguery; they contend who shall be Centinel, which happens generally to one of the greatest Bullies, who, to secure the Lady’s Virtue, will let none lye with her but himself.
Further, contrast that proto-democratic fantasy with this second set of articles of incorporation, also drawn from Defoe:
Pirate Captain George Lowther
(The ship is being careened, its hull scraped of kelp and seaweed)
The Articles of Captain George Lowther, and his Company.
1. The Captain is to have two full Shares; the Master is to have one Share and a half; the Doctor, Mate, Gunner, and Boatswain, one Share and a quarter.
Many Captain Lowther’s rules are substantively identical to Captain Roberts’, almost as if piracy were a quasi-franchise, or a guild with agreed workforce principles and rules.
How about piracy too?
Actually, that makes good sense if one sees piracy as informal merchant banking (with an extra-legal mode of acquisition), for it was in the interests of captains to have standard terms so that their crew weren’t ship-shopping or ship-jumping in a kind of maritime free agency. There’s the same rule about pooling the plunder:
5. He that is found Guilty of Gaming –
The pirates didn’t like casinos either.
If you want to gamble, do it on shore
– or Defrauding another to the Value of a Shilling, shall suffer what Punishment the Captain and Majority of the Company shall think fit.
Captain Lowther’s rules contain an executive-and-legislative approach: the CEO and the assembly must agree on major decisions. That is certainly proto-democratic, which is not surprising as these rules were promulgated after the Glorious Restoration of 1688, when William and Mary were invited to rule, under a “king-in-parliament” structure.
The executive-legislative approach is then applied across further disciplinary issues, including anti-siphoning, assault, and cowardice:
4. If any Gold, Jewels, Silver, &c. be found on Board of any Prize or Prizes, to the Value of a Piece of Eight, and the Finder do not deliver it to the Quarter-Master, in the Space of 24 Hours, shall suffer what Punishment the Captain and Majority shall think fit.
2. He that shall be found Guilty of taking up any unlawful Weapon on Board the Privateer, or any Prize, by us taken, so as to strike or abuse one another, in any regard, shall suffer what Punishment the Captain and Majority of the Company shall think fit.
3. He that shall be found Guilty of Cowardize, in the Time of Engagement, shall suffer what Punishment the Captain and Majority shall think fit.
Even more progressively, the pirate corporation provides health insurance and unemployment insurance in one neat codicil:
Long John Silver, in the N. C. Wyeth illustrations for Treasure Island
6. He that shall have the Misfortune to lose a Limb, in Time of Engagement, shall:
have the Sum of one hundred and fifty Pounds Sterling, and
remain with the Company as long as he shall think fit.
And the company is further incentivized with a small finder’s fee, a suitably personal memento as a useful souvenir of enterprise.
8. He that sees a Sail first, shall have the best Pistol, or Small-Arm, on Board her.
Piracy as a subscription activity follows naturally from the merchant-banking business model. Pirates, like whalers or India men, signed up for a voyage or series of voyages with a results-based goal – profit or a hold full or whale oil – and by their subscription they bound themselves to a set of rules. These including binding shareholder agreements, such as these from Roberts:
VII. To Desert the Ship, or their Quarters in Battle, was punished with Death, or Marooning.
VIII. No striking one another on Board, but every Man’s Quarrels to be ended on Shore, at Sword and Pistol,
The preceding two are designed to maintain a healthy workplace environment: everyone can count on everyone else, and any personal disputes have to be ‘taken outside’ and not allowed to interrupt the smooth functioning of the ship.
Further, the venture has a clearly defined investment term with no liquidity or early-withdrawal option:
IX. No Man to talk of breaking up their Way of Living, till each had shared £1000.
No stopping the piracy until everybody’s made a thousand pounds
If in order to this, any Man should lose a Limb, or become a Cripple in their Service, he was to have 800 Dollars, out of the publick Stock, and for lesser Hurts, proportionably.
Thus piracy, at least within the pirate ship itself, advanced the principles of capitalism, contract, mutually beneficial bargains, and mutually enforceable pledges and covenants, ideas later echoed in an (admittedly fictional) sailing-vessel setting, the original Alien (1979):
Brett (left) and Parker (right) raise the contractual question
Parker: I hate to bring this up but, uh, this a commercial ship, not a rescue ship…
Brett: Right.
Parker: …and it’s not in my contract to do this kind of duty. Now what about the money? If you wanna give me some money to do it, I’ll be happy to, uh, t-to, you know, oblige.
Brett: The man’s right.
Dallas: Parker…
Parker: Can we just talk about the bonus situation?
Ash: There is a clause in the contract which specifically states any systematized transmission indicating a possible intelligent origin must be investigated.
Parker: I don’t wanna hear it…
Brett: We don’t know if it’s intelligent.
Parker: I wanna go home and party.
Dallas: Parker, will you just listen to the man?
“Parker, will you just listen to the man?”
Ash: On penalty of total forfeiture of shares.
Ash: No money.
“No money.”
Dallas: You got that?
Parker: [chuckling] Well, yeah.
Dallas: All right, we’re going in.
Parker: [to Brett] Yeah, we’re going in, aren’t we?
And this:
Parker: If they find what they’re lookin’ for out there, that mean we get full shares?
Ripley: Don’t worry, Parker, yeah. You’ll get whatever’s coming to you.
Brett: Look, I’m not gonna do any more work until we get this straightened out.
Ripley: Brett, you’re guaranteed by law to get a share.
Parker: What?
Ripley: Why don’t you just fuck off?
“You’re guaranteed by law to get a share”
[Continued tomorrow in Part 5.]