Gotham_ A History of New York City to 1898 - Edwin G. Burrows [91]
THE PIRATES OF NEW YORK
While attempting to erect an Anglo-Dutch religious establishment in New York, Fletcher also secured the fealty of the colony’s anti-Leislerian oligarchs by serving them gluttonous helpings of real estate. The most fortunate received manors over which they exercised quasi-feudal authority. Stephanus Van Cortlandt became lord of eighty-six-thousand-acre Cortlandt Manor in Westchester County and of Sagtikos Manor on Long Island’s south shore. Chief Justice William “Tangier” Smith was made lord of St. George Manor, which ran for fifty miles along the north shore of Long Island. Lewis Morris (nephew and heir of Colonel Lewis Morris of Barbados) became lord of Morrisania Manor, now encompassing some three thousand acres near the mouth of the Harlem River. Frederick Philipse became lord of ninety-two-thousand-acre Philipsburgh Manor in Westchester, while the municipal government awarded him the exclusive right to operate a toll bridge across Spuyten Duyvill Creek at the northern tip of Manhattan. (King’s Bridge, as Philipse called it, opened for business in 1693.) A host of other anti-Leislerians—Peter Schuyler, Henry Beekman, Dominie Dellius, and a rising young merchant named Caleb Heathcote—accepted hundreds of thousands of acres without the trappings of lordship.
In addition to rewarding his friends with the crown’s territory, Fletcher gave them free rein in the piracy business. As King William’s War dragged on—it didn’t end until 1697—both Britain and France bolstered their regular navies by relying on privateers, privately owned warships empowered by “letters of marque” to despoil enemy shipping. The law required that captured ships and cargoes—known as “prizes”—be legally condemned in a proper court of law before they were disposed of. Privateering proved so lucrative that many captains and owners dispensed with the formalities and turned to out-and-out piracy, attacking the vessels of any country, including their own. There were only two details to worry about. One was being caught and hanged. The other was disposing of loot.
Fletcher rolled out the red carpet for pirates, allowing them and their crews to enter New York without fear of arrest, dispose of their treasure, and refit for another voyage—all for a mere one hundred Spanish dollars each. Over the next four or five years he hosted a remarkable collection of villains and cutthroats. When pirate captain Thomas Tew put into port in 1694, the governor invited him to dinner, escorted him around town, and presented him with a gold watch as an inducement to return. Taken aback, the Lords of Trade in London asked for an explanation. Tew was “what they call a very pleasant man,” Fletcher answered serenely. “When the labours of my day were over it was some divertisement as well as information to me, to heare him talke. I wish’d in my mind to make him a sober man, and in particular to reclaime him from a vile habit of swearing.”
With Fletcher’s blessings, some of New York’s best-known captains hoisted the black flag and sailed off” to ply the waters between Africa and India, trailing mayhem and murder in their wake. Richard Glover, captain of the Resolution, seized two East India Company ships off the coast of Aden, burned their crews alive, and then blockaded the port of Calicut for ransom. Edward Coates came home with stolen goods valued at sixteen thousand pounds (including twenty-eight hundred pieces of eight) and gave Fletcher his ship, the Jacob, as a present. William Mason, captain of the Charming Mary, returned with booty worth thirty thousand pounds. Mason’s quartermaster, Samuel Burgess, subsequently went into the business on his own account and became one of the most feared pirates along the east coast of Africa.
Frederick Philipse, Nicholas Bayard, William Nicoll, Stephanus Van Cortlandt, Peter Schuyler, Thomas Willett, Tangier Smith, and other anti-Leislerian merchants financed these pirate cruises, provisioned pirate ships, and smuggled pirate contraband back into the city. They invested heavily