Davies · 1719
Howell Davis on Príncipe
On the morning of the nineteenth of June 1719, on the volcanic island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea off the West African coast, the Welsh pirate captain Howell Davis, twenty-nine years old, the master of a pirate squadron (the thirty-two-gun *Royal Rover*, the twenty-six-gun *Royal James*, and a six-gun captured-Portuguese sloop), was killed in an ambush by the Portuguese garrison of the island while attempting to perpetrate a confidence-trick on the Portuguese governor. Davis had brought the squadron into the Príncipe anchorage on the fourteenth of June flying the Royal Navy ensign and claiming to be the Royal Navy commander of a anti-piracy squadron; the confidence-trick was to invite the Portuguese governor aboard for a courtesy-dinner, take him hostage, and ransom him for the trade-goods of the island's warehouses. The confidence-trick had been working for the five days. On the nineteenth, by the account in Captain Charles Johnson's *A General History of the Pyrates* (1724, the foundational source for the Golden Age piracy), the Portuguese garrison commander had become suspicious, set an ambush on the walking-path from the anchorage to the governor's house, and shot Davis dead at point-blank range along with five of his six-man escort. The surviving pirate Bartholomew Roberts (the ship's-master of the *Royal Rover*, a Welsh-Pembrokeshire former slave-ship mate Davis had pressed into piracy ten weeks before at Anomabu on the Gold Coast) was elected captain of the squadron by the pirate-council the same evening. *Black Bart* Roberts ran the most successful pirate career of the Golden Age of Piracy for the next three years until his own death in 1722.
It is twenty past nine on the morning of the nineteenth of June 1719, on the walking-path from the anchorage at Bahia das Agulhas on the south coast of the volcanic island of Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea, in heavy equatorial-Atlantic morning light through the rainforest canopy. He is twenty-nine years old. He is Howell Davis, born at Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire in about 1690 (the exact birth-year is uncertain; he was, by his 1718 capture at Anomabu, in his late twenties), schooled at the Welsh maritime trade as a merchant-marine boy from twelve, mate of the slave-ship Cadogan on the 1718 voyage from London to the Gold Coast (the voyage on which Davis had been captured by the pirate captain Edward England and had, after a six-week period of captivity, signed the pirate articles), in his eleventh month of pirate command since his October 1718 election as captain of the Royal Rover by the pirate-council of the Anomabu rendezvous.
He has, in the past five days, been running the confidence-trick on the Portuguese-Príncipe governor: the squadron flying the Royal Navy ensign, Davis presenting himself as the Royal Navy commander of a anti-piracy squadron, the governor entertained ashore in the port-town for the five-day courtesy-visit. The trick is to take the governor hostage at the end-of-week courtesy-dinner on the evening of the nineteenth and ransom him for the Portuguese warehouse-trade-goods of the island.
He thinks: the governor's suspicions have been rising over the past forty-eight hours. The Portuguese cooper who came aboard the Royal Rover yesterday with the water-casks asked me about the Royal Navy uniform regulations and I did not, in the conversation, answer correctly. The cooper has, by my evening-intelligence, reported the conversation to the governor.
He thinks: the walking-party I have brought ashore this morning is six men and me. The pre-dinner reception at the governor's house is the occasion for the hostage-taking. The walking-path from the anchorage runs through the rainforest for about half a mile. The rainforest is the ambush-country.
The Portuguese garrison-commander's ambush is sprung at the half-mile mark by a twenty-musket volley from the rainforest on both sides of the walking-path. Davis is hit by five musket-balls at point-blank range and is dead within seconds. Five of his six-man escort are killed in the volley; the sixth man, the Welsh-Pembrokeshire former-slave-ship's-bo'sun John Walden, fights free, makes it back to the anchorage on the run, and reaches the Royal Rover at the eleven o'clock.
The pirate-council of the squadron is convened the same evening on the Royal Rover. The vote for the succession to the captaincy is, by the pirate-republican electoral practice, between the quartermaster Thomas Anstis and the master Bartholomew Roberts (the Welsh-Pembrokeshire former slave-ship mate Davis had pressed at Anomabu in April). Roberts is elected by acclamation on the strength of his conduct during the past three months of the cruise. He takes the pirate-oath in the cabin of the Royal Rover at the eleven o'clock at night. By morning the squadron is at sea heading north.
The Roberts captaincy ran for the next three years (June 1719 to February 1722) and produced the most successful piracy of the Golden Age (about four hundred and seventy prize-ships taken; the largest single haul of about £400,000 of Portuguese gold-and-silver from the Sagrada Família at Bahia in September 1720). Roberts himself was killed in action against HMS Swallow under Captain Chaloner Ogle off Cape Lopez in West Africa on the tenth of February 1722, at the age of forty. The Roberts story is the Black Bart legend told in the Roberts page of this catalogue. The Howell Davis story is the prologue: the Welsh pirate captain who pressed Roberts into the trade and was killed on a walking-path in the West African rainforest by a Portuguese ambush, after which the Welsh-Pembrokeshire former slave-ship's-mate took the captain's chair and ran the most consequential pirate-career of the eighteenth century.