The Monarchs of the Main; Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers. Volume 1 (of 3)Thornbury, Walter
History
The Monarchs of the Main; Or, Adventures of the Buccaneers. Volume 1 (of 3)
Thornbury, Walter
Buccaneers; Pirates; Spanish Main
This passage shows a very curious jealousy between the hunters and the
corsairs, and a singular distinction as to religious feeling. Père
Labat, however, speaks of the Flibustiers as attending confession
immediately after a sea-fight with most exemplary devotion. A more
important distinction than that made by Charlevoix was that between the
Protestant and Roman Catholic adventurers, the latter being as
superstitious as the former were irreverent. Ravenau de Lussan always
speaks with horror of the blasphemy and irreligion of his English
comerades, one of whom was an old trooper of Cromwell's; and Grognet's
fleet eventually separated from the English ships, on account of the
latter crews lopping crucifixes with their sabres, and firing at images
with their pistols. A Flibustier captain, named Daniel, shot one of his
men in a Spanish church for behaving irreverently at mass; and Ringrose
gives an instance of an English commander who threw the dice overboard,
if he found his men gambling on a Sunday.
We find Ravenau de Lussan's troop singing a _Te Deum_ after victories,
and Oexmelin tells us that prayers were said daily on board Flibustier
ships.
It is difficult to say from what class of life either the Buccaneers or
the Flibustiers sprang. The planters often became hunters, and the
hunters sailors, and the reverse. Morgan was a Welsh farmer's son, who
ran away to sea; Montauban, the son of a Gascon gentleman; D'Ogeron had
been a captain in the French marines; Von Horn, a common sailor in an
Ostende smack; Dampierre was a Somersetshire yeoman, and Esquemeling a
Dutch planter's apprentice. Charlevoix says, "few could bear for many
years a life so hard and laborious, and the greater part only continued
in it till they could gain enough to become planters. Many, continually
wasting their money, never earned sufficient to buy a plantation; others
grew so accustomed to the life, and so fond even of its hardships and
painful risks, that, though often heirs to good fortunes, they would not
leave it to return to France."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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