As we were sailing the high seas, we noticed the wind was picking up. Now, if you know anything at all, you know haw fast those hurricanes come upon ye. And yet we had no fear of it, 'cause I had the best crewmen that ever lived. Then, with a mighty clash of thunder and lightening, it was there. And was it ever the strongest and hardest storm I've ever been in. The wind was so incredible, the men were flying through the air trying to grab hold of something. Luckily, my men were so brave, they went into the grey waves after their shipmates. Why, they even came back, I tell you! As the storm began to clear up, we noticed three strange sails on the horizon. The lookout immedeatly spotted them and sent up a wail to warn the crewmen. As they came nearer, we could make out the cross of the Union Jack. We hoisted up our great skull and cross-bones and prepared for battle. But then, all of a sudden, we noticed another thing. As we knew, the station off of Barbados contained many powerful ships. There had even been a rumor about a ship of the line.(74 gunner). They came closer and closer until a single puff of smoke apeared off of the ship of the line's larboard side. A splash of water followed it not 10 feet away from my ship.

But we didn't have a weak ship, I tell ye. We had captured a 50 gunner along with 2 other smaller 35 gunners. We were well prepared. The British are known all among the seas as the Royal Navy. These are well trained crewman not ordinary, slacky crewman. They knew how to fight. Then, I gave the signal. I dropped my hand in signal for us to fire. The force from the cannons shook our ship to the very core. The 36 pounders belched forth their lethal lodes as did the 24 pounders. As the smoke cleared, we could hear our other ships firing at closer range. Then we saw the ship of the line. Crewman were scattered thoughout her decks and a spar had crashed down from her mizzen. But she was far from finished. Even though we had taken out about a dozen of her smaller cannon. she could still throw out enough lead to sink us. As she fired, we noticed the other two ships of theirs sneaking up behind us. Our ships were somewhere out in the smoke looking for their enemy.

The two ships wore about ready to fire when out of the smoke came the two missing ships. The two Royal Navy ships had set themselves up and were defensless for the moment. My men knew when to fire and they did. Both salvos had hit their mark. But we were in bad condition ourselves. The big Royal Navy ship had knocked out 9 of our smaller cannons and two of our heavy ones. We returned the fire back to them, and they returned it to us. We had about 3 holes below the water line and another 8 above. We returned fire and as we saw the swirling smoke clear a bit, we saw that this would be our only chance of taking them.

We raced toward our quarry and fired our bow chasers at point blank range that took out another spar and holed their mainsail. Meanwhile, not 50 feet away, were the other two royal Navy ships battling ours. We could see that a fire had broken out aboard one of our ships, but my brave crewman didn't lose heart. They fought them with everything that they had. The other Royal Navy ship, however had been under siege by one of ours. The two ships were locked in combat side by side. I turned my attention back to our battle. We came together in a sigle crunch. We were stunned for a minute, as if everone aboard were zombies. The quietness was broken by my single scream: "Board!!! Board now, lads!!"

That loosed all of our rage and we struck hard. Soon all of the screaming ended. All throughout the ship, crewman layed down their weapons and surrendered to us. As we shouted in triumph, I remenbred our other two ship still locked in furious comabat. I did not dally to congradulate. We returned to our ship quickly, simply tossing the Royal Navy officers into some of their longboats and sent them off. As we slowly wore about, we noticed that the battle between us and them had worsened.. Although one of them was captured by us, the other continued to fight.

Both ships were shooting ragged, undisciplined shots. It was clear we were seriously wounded. We engaged them and fired one single broadside that nailed them directly. The Royal Navy officers began jumping off of their ship attempting to flee. The others stood proudly, awaiting their death aboard their ship. They hoisted a white flag in signal of surrender, but my men had gone beyond their limit of human strength and had no energy to shout in triumph. We returned to the ship of the line the next day to see what the conditions were and to take everything of value. As I boarded, some of my men brought me down to the captains cabin. We noticed among some odd instruments a letter of marque, signifying that they must have been hunting when they came upon us. Although privateering was legal, us pirates fully disagreed and fought against it. Instead of calling them privateers, we liked to call them pirateers because they do the same things that we do, only they do it under protection of the law. When we finished sacking the ships, we sank the ship of the line, for it was too badly damaged to ever even sail again. We replaced our cannon with those aboard the ship of the line before sinking her. As we sailed away from the site of the battle, I knew that I would remember that day and tell of it sometime.

Return to Pirates