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  The Pistoleer

  Pirates

  (Book Three of the Series)

  By Skye Smith

  Copyright (C) 2013-2014 Skye Smith

  All rights reserved including all rights of authorship.

  Cover Illustration is a part of "Rechaza a dos galeotas argelinas (1738)"

  By Ángel Cortellini y Sánchez (1858-1912)

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Revision 0 . . . . . ISBN: 978-1-927699-14-0

  Cover Flap

  No one will ever know what Colonel Lunsford was thinking. Perhaps he was angered that his well trained war horse had stopped still and was nudging playfully at the lass. He drew his sabre from its sheath in a long practiced swoop of his arm, a swoop which would end when the blade slashed flesh and the blood gushed.

  Daniel could not believe his eyes when he saw the glint of the sabre, the very sabre that Daniel had handed back to this officer on the battlefield once he had surrendered it. The Wyred sisters who wove irony into the fates of men were always perverse. Would sparing this man's life in Newbourne now cost him a daughter here in London. He flipped his winter cloak open so he could reach for his pistol.

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  The Pistoleer - Pirates by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  About The Author

  Skye Smith is my pen name. The Pistoleer is a series of historical adventure novels set in Britain in the 1640's. I was encouraged to write them by fans of my Hoodsman series.

  This is the third of the series, and you should read the first novel 'HellBurner' before you read 'Pirates' because it sets the characters and scene for the entire series. The sequence of the books follows the timeline of the Republic of Great Britain. The chapter headings identify the dates and places.

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  The Pistoleer - Pirates by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Prologue

  This adventure is as historically accurate as I could make it, however I have not included my endless references because the main character, Daniel, is fictional. I have kept the descriptions and actions of the non-fictional characters as close to historical accounts as possible.

  As a rule of thumb, if the character is a parliamentarian, or has a title, or has a military rank of captain or above, then they and their families are non-fictional. If the character is a member of the Wellenhay clan or goes unnamed, then they are fictional.

  All dates have been converted to our modern calendar to save the reader the confusion of January being the tenth month of the old year rather than the first month of the new year.

  Note that at the end of this book there is an Appendix which is organized like an FAQ. There you will find answers to dozens of questions such as:

  - Where can I find out more about the historical characters and events?

  - What was a Pistoleer?

  - What was a Bermudan?

  - What were the Trained Bands?

  However, the next few paragraphs will set the scene of this era for you.

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  This novel begins in May 1641 which is after the Dutch fleet defeated the Spanish-Portuguese Armada at the Battle of the Downs (see book one) and after the Second Bishop's War (see book two). The outcome of the Second Bishop's war had been even more humiliating for King Charles than the outcome of the First Bishop's war. In both wars the gutter born Scottish general, Alexander Leslie, put the run on the King's aristocratic army.

  The King did not keep to the terms of the treaty that ended the first war. Instead the King's Deputy of Ireland, Lord Strafford, plotted with royalist Scots (Stuarts) to secretly arrest or murder as many Covenanter parliamentarians as possible and then use his Irish army to bring the rest of parliament to heel. Thus in the second war General Leslie marched his Scots all the way to Newcastle-upon-Tyne, defeated the English army, and took the town and its fortress. This was not done as an invasion, (he paid cash for local supplies), but as an economic sanction against the King and his financial supporters ... the Lords of Coal. Anyone who controlled Newcastle, controlled the coal industry, and in those days coal was so valuable that it was called black diamonds.

  By 1641 coal was a replacement for firewood. The forests of Southern England had been depleted from supplying fuel to London's ever more numerous chimneys, and to the glassworks that supplied the oh-so-fashionable glass windows to the rich. Coal was the solution to the fast disappearing forests, and laws were enacted that forced the glassworks to use coal. London was critically dependant on coal, and the king had granted the Hostmen Company of Newcastle a monopoly on coal (for a share in the extreme profits). The Hostmen were the blue-eyed-sheiks of their day and Charles was their man, bought and paid for.

  By stopping the coal from being shipped to London, General Leslie not only halted an important source of the king's income, but it made the king even more unpopular with Londoners. With the king financially hamstrung and his army humbled, he was forced to call Westminster Parliament into session (a session later known as the Long Parliament) to ask them for new sources of income. Instead the English parliament (led by the Reform Party) took the side of the Scottish parliament and arrested the King's Deputy, Strafford, on charges of treason. Once they had succeeded in arresting Strafford, they then arrested Archbishop Laud, the King's religious henchman.

  The execution of Strafford was the turning point in the reign of Charles I, for when he signed the death warrant of his friend and strongest supporter, he effectively signed away his claim of being an absolute monarch. Both the Scottish and English parliaments now began to actively denounce him. Up until the death of Strafford, all of this had been a power struggle between the king and the lords who opposed him (especially the Earl of Warwick and the Earl of Argyll).

  As the ruling class weakened each other, another power was rising ... the folk. In Ireland, the long absence of Strafford and his Irish based army resulted in rebellions. Londoners rioted against Laud, and then against Strafford, and then against Charles himself. Charles was not welcome in his original kingdom, Scotland. Charles became insecure of his thrones and of his life. When the ruling class is insecure they become violent... which is avenged with violence in an escalating spiral.

  Enough history ... enjoy the story.

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  The Pistoleer - Pirates by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Cover Flap

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - Virgin pirates in May 1641

  Chapter 2 - The Bahamas in May 1641

  Chapter 3 - The Floridas in June 1641

  Chapter 4 - The Carolinas in June 1641

  Chapter 5 - The Virginias in June 1641

  Chapter 6 - Sanctuary in Saint Mary's Cittie in July 1641

  Chapter 7 - Chesapeake and Rhode Island in July 1641

  Chapter 8 - Cape Cod in July 1641

  Chapter 9 - Bermuda in August 1641

  Chapter 10 - Lyme, Dorset in September 1641

  Chapter 11 - Trouble in Bere Alston in September 1641

  Chapter 12 - An all woman crew in the Wash in October 1641

  Chapter 13 - Buying up old ships in Boston in October 1641

 
; Chapter 14 - Footballers at Freiston in October 1641

  Chapter 15 - The Stowaway at Rochford in November 1641

  Chapter 16 - Dealing Guns at Rochford in November 1641

  Chapter 17 - A Stowaway in London in November 1641

  Chapter 18 - Spanish guns for Londoners in November 1641

  Chapter 19 - Gold for gunsmiths in Breda in November 1641

  Chapter 20 - The Fens freezes over in December 1641

  Chapter 21 - Escaping the King's clutches in January 1642

  Chapter 22 - Londoners storm the Palace in January 1642

  Chapter 23 - A King flees his subjects in February 1642

  Chapter 24 - Appendix FAQ

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  The Pistoleer - Pirates by Skye Smith Copyright 2013-14

  Chapter 1 - Virgin pirates in May 1641

  Daniel stood on one of the hills of Coop Island and stared out at the other paradise islands half hidden in the tropical mist. Coop had been so named by the crew after they found the ruins of a hut-come-chicken-coop on the sandy neck of land that stretched between the two main hills of the island. From the top of this hill he could see all around at the Maagdeneilanden Islands of this Caribbean Sea, the islands that some called the Virgins. He was feeling well pleased with himself. He had been sent by his clan to find a tropical island for them to claim and to settle on. This was it. That quest was now complete.

  Even if they did not settle permanently on this particular island, it would serve them well as a base while they explored the other islands nearby. If his clan chose a different island once they got here, so be it, for that was their decision to make, but meanwhile this island made it possible for them to pack up and move. They could now migrate from their cold, damp village of Wellenhay in the Fens of Lincolnshire, to this warm and idyllic coconut island.

  Warm said it all. Wellenhay used to be warmer and dryer, but for a decade now every year the winters had been longer and the growing season shorter. The clan Seer had pronounced that the weather would be getting worse and worse for generations to come, so they must leave Wellenhay for a warmer place.

  Tall, fair Daniel waved to a man walking along the beach and the man, the captain of the ship and his good friend Robert Blake, waved back. Robert was short and dark, and the tropical sun had turned his skin nut brown. Behind him, the 'Swift Daniel' was floating at anchor on the leeward side of the island, in a bay edged in coco palms, and he signaled to the watch aboard her that there were no other sails to be seen. The crew too had been bronzed by the tropical sun.

  The crew were mostly from Lyme in Dorset or Bridgwater near Bristol and to them Daniel was the second in command and the ship's owner. The ship actually belonged to Daniel's clan in the Fens. Robert had personally selected this crew. Robert, whose father had run trade ships into Bridgwater and Lyme for generations, knew all of them personally. Since the crew was Robert's, so was the command.

  The ship was a Spanish built, lateen rigged galliot, which had been captured as a prize by the Dutch Navy when they defeated the Spanish and Portuguese Armada off the south coast of England at the Battle of the Downs a year ago. Though Spanish made, she looked all the world like a Corsair ship from the Barbary Coast of Africa, where lateen galliots were the ships of choice of pirates. She was a half galley, a cross between a rowing galley and a sailing caravel. Each of her two short masts was crossed by long diagonal spars with their noses on the deck and their tails rising far higher than either mast. Each spar carried the distinctive triangular style sail of every Mussulman ship from Morocco to Egypt, and from Egypt to the Indias.

  Standing there on the hill, Daniel said a short prayer to the moon goddess Freyja to keep his ship safe. He was mighty pleased with the ship for it had just brought them effortlessly all the way from England. Twice they had been becalmed on tropical seas, but that was no problem for the Swift. They had simply waited for the cool of the night and then the crew and the passengers had run the oars out and rowed until they found wind.

  Since the Dutch Navy did not commission galliots, even captured Spanish ones, Daniel had claimed it in trade for his shares in the Dutch East Indiche Company plus a few favours done for a Dutch Admiral. At less than eighty feet at the waterline, she was a mid sized ship, but lightly built of creosote pine. She was not designed to withstand cannon balls, which was why the Dutch Navy had no use for her, but the combination of oars and triangle sails meant that she could run away from heavily armoured ships. It was not just her speed and that allowed her to run away, but also her ability to sail very close to the wind, and her banks of oars when running into the wind.

  Running away was the tactic they had used more than once on their voyage from England to Morocco, and then from Morocco to the Caribbean. Not that the Swift Daniel was defenseless. For a trade ship, with a small trade-sized crew, she was quite well armed with an eight pound cannon facing fore, and another aft, and two six pounders facing to each side. There was even a swivel gun mounted on her gunnels to repel boarders.

  The sun was now just high enough to shimmer across the sea and dazzle his eyes. The soft sunrise colors had already been replaced by a glare, so it must be after six. It was so strange to have a hot 'summer-style' sun that came up at six and went down at six, for he was used to English summers where the sun barely set at night.

  After a stretch, and another look all around, he started down the steep slope back to the beach. This could be their last day on Coop Island, their last day of living in paradise, their last day of snoozing under coco leaves in the heat of the day, and taking refreshing plunges into the crystal clear bay. They had left their passengers on the Island of Saint Kitts while they explored these Maagdeneilanden Islands, and now it was time to go and fetch them and continue with their passage to Massachusetts.

  While some of the crew stayed on Coop Island to flatten the temporary shade roofs they had created, just so they wouldn't draw attention to the island, Robert and Daniel and the rest of the crew sailed the Swift west to the next small island in the chain. The crew had called it Salt Island because when they had climbed its hill to have a look see, they had spotted the unmistakable white glint of a salt mine.

  The mine was on the Western shore of Salt Island, and it was not so much a mine as a shallow sea pond that collected a crust of salt due to the cycle of filling at moon tides, and drying under the hot sun. That was the good news. The bad news was that today, on closer inspection, they realized that the salt mine must be know to others, because half of this season's salt had recently been mined.

  Captain Robert immediately sent two men up the closest hill to keep watch. The rest of the crew were in a subdued mood as they filled their barrels with the salt. If this salt mine brought strange ships to this small string of virgin islands, then how safe would Coop Island be, just a few miles to the east of this salt. They had loaded the first barrels aboard the Swift and were still aboard discussing whether to use more of their barrels for salt when the watchers on the hill sounded a whistle to get their attention.

  The hand signs that followed the whistle were unmistakable. There were three boats approaching from the west. Robert was immediately yelling orders. "Everyone grab your weapons and then run your oars out. We have to be moving and in deeper water before the strangers get here. Once we are moving under oar, I want the riggers standing by their lines in case we must set sails."

  "But the watchers won't have time to come down from the hill,” Daniel pointed out.

  "Signal them to stay hidden and to wait for us on the east side of the island. We'll pick them up there once we know the intent of the strangers."

  The crew began pulling on the oars to ease the task of pulling up the anchor. Once the anchor was free, they all heaved on the oars to give the Swift speed enough to make the rudder work. With half the crew still on Coop Island, they were short handed for either rowing or fighting, so as soon as the Swift was into deeper water some of them shipped their oars and rushed to set one of the
sails. None of the crew needed orders from Robert to do the obvious.

  Daniel was fully busy now that the rudder was working because there were reef heads on all sides of them. The lad on bow watch was picking the way through the reefs and signaling changes of heading back to Daniel on the wheel, while Robert was staring out through his Dutch 'kijker', the 'looker' made from spectacle lenses and scroll pipes.

  "There are three boats,” Robert called out for all to here, "like large ship's boats and rigged for sail. Five, six. Six oars aside. Extra men in each boat. We can easily out distance them if we can get beyond these reef heads before they are on to us."

  "They are fools to waste their time and effort,” Daniel replied. "They are coming downwind at us to make use of their sails, but they would have been smarter to come upwind and outpace us with their oars."

  The word 'fools' had Robert putting the looker to his eye again. He always worried when men seemed to act foolishly. It usually meant that he was missing something important. "There are three of them, and each with extra men, and they are making all speed towards us. I have no doubt that this is a planned attack."

  "Defending their salt perhaps?"

  "More likely coastal pirates wanting to take this ship. With this ship they would no longer be just local cut throats. They would become privateers." The word 'fools' was still bothering him. These men would not be fools. Desperate perhaps, vicious for sure, but not fools. "From the length of the boats they should have eight oars aside, not six. They have extra men in the boats. Why not use them?"

  The three boats were now close enough for Robert to take a good look at them without using the looker. "They're bows are heavy Danny, which is why they don't have men working their forward oars. They are bow heavy and they are carrying too much sail, which means that with the wind at their backs, the sail is pushing hard on the mast and the mast is levering the bow down."