Captain Charles Johnson: Pirate Chronicles

Author:
Rupert Taylor
Updated:
May 30, 2024

"Captain Charles Johnson" was likely a pseudonym for an unidentified author who wrote about pirate adventures.
Public domain, Prompart on Pixiexid

Crime Sells

In the early part of the 18th century, one Captain Charles Johnson burst onto Britain's publishing scene with a book detailing the violent and villainous lives of pirates.

A decade later, he followed his first successful volume with a title typical of the kind favoured in the day:

A General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. To Which Is Added, a Genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the Most Notorious Pyrates.

There it was, all in one place—everything the public wanted to know, and more, about the nation's rogues and rascals.

Captain Johnson's masterwork
British Library

Who Was Captain Charles Johnson?

The name of the author of the sensational crime stories was almost certainly a pseudonym. Whoever he was, he never came forward to identify himself, so there has been speculation.

The name of Daniel Defoe (author of Robinson Crusoe and many other works) has been offered up as the man behind Charles Johnson, but this suggestion has been challenged.

Another name that has been mentioned is Nathaniel Mist, a former sailor turned journalist and friend of publisher Charles Rivington. But we'll likely never know who wrote A General History.

At the BBC, historian Dr. Sam Willis is very taken by the work. He describes the writer as “a masterful storyteller and historian. He weaves fact with fiction and glorifies in his own trickery, celebrating his role as a historical fraudster. At the same time, he often tells the truth—or at least the truth as he wishes it to be remembered.”

Was Daniel Defoe Charles Johnson? After all, he wrote "Robinson Crusoe," a novel that has its fair share of pirates.
Public domain

Johnson's Pirates

In A General History, the author gives us the pirate as swashbuckling man of action rather than the murderous cutthroats many of them were. In many ways, he turned his buccaneers into celebrities.

The historian David Cordingly has written that Johnson created the template that has influenced all storytellers dealing with pirates:

“It has been said, and there seems no reason to question this, that Captain Johnson created the modern conception of pirates.”

Some of Johnson's pirates have wooden legs and eye patches, although he stopped short of putting a parrot on the shoulders of his blackguards.

J.M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan, and Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island) have acknowledged the influence of Johnson in creating their characters Captain Hook and Long John Silver.

Let's meet some of the scurrilous pirates described by Johnson.

Captain Henry Avery

Johnson tells us that “None of the bold Adventurers on the Seas were ever fo much talk'd of, for a While, as Auery.” He added the man “had rais'd himfelf to the Dignity of a King.”

The true story is that Avery led a mutiny on the ship in which he served and turned to piracy in 1694. In 1695, Avery captured the flagship of the Grand Mughal of India's treasure fleet. This was a massive haul.

The story was put about by Johnson and others that the Mughal's beautiful daughter fell in love with Avery and the two of them went off to live on a tropical island. The truth is that Avery's men tortured sailors and raped women aboard the flagship before deceiving other pirates and disappearing with the loot.

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Johnson tells us that many years later, Avery turned up in England still rolling in money from the Mughal's treasure, but he was swindled out of his ill-gotten gains and died a pauper.

Bold adventurer? Hardly. Dignity of a king? Perhaps.

Captain Henry Avery enjoying the privilege of being a wealthy man
Public domain

Richard Worley

He preyed on shipping along the east coast of the American colonies, but he seems to have been somewhat hapless in a career that lasted about a year. His first prize was of a vessel carrying household goods in the Delaware River.

He had a little more success in the following months, but became enough of a pest that South Carolina's Governor Robert Johnson sent a couple of heavily armed ships to put him out of business.

He and his crew partially honoured their pledge to fight to the death rather than be captured. Worley, although wounded, was captured. The following day, February 17, 1719, he was publicly hanged in Charleston.

Captain Jack Rackham

Johnson describes Rackham's act of derring-do in a Cuban port. He was refitting his ship in the harbour when a Spanish warship arrived along with an English sloop it had captured.

The tide was low, so the Spanish decided to wait until morning to close in on Rackham's vessel. Overnight, the pirate and his crew rowed out to the English sloop, overpowered its Spanish guards and sailed away. At dawn, the galleon opened fire and blasted Rackham's now-empty pirate ship to pieces.

But Rackham's luck ran out in October 1720 when he and his crew were captured without putting up much of a fight.

Awaiting his fate in prison, he was visited by a former partner in crime, Anne Bonny. She is recorded as saying, “I'm sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you need not have hanged like a dog.”

Captain Johnson's Highwaymen

Having done well with his biographies of pirates, Johnson turned his attention to highwaymen. In his second book, published in 1734, he makes it clear that his sympathies are with the highwaymen, while acknowledging that many were not nice people.

He reserves his scorn for the inequalities of society that forced men to take up robbing people on the nation's highways. He rails against the hypocrisy of elites and the crookedness of those in power: “It is not unprecedented for a very great knight to be a very great robber.”

Johnson does not try to hide his admiration for some of the highwaymen he profiles—one such being Claude Duvall, who has been described as a “gallant and courteous rogue,” an assessment with which Johnson concurs.

He describes a 17th century incident in which Duvall held up a coach containing a knight and his lady. As he demanded money, the lady began playing a flute and Duvall responded by joining her with his own flute.

They began dancing, with Duvall demonstrating a skill “scarce a dancing master in London, but would have been proud to have shewn such agility in a pair of pumps, as Duvall shewed in a great pair of French riding boots.”

Having tripped the light fantastic, he handed his dancing partner back into the carriage and reminded her knight that payment was required. After all, this was a robbery, so he handed over a bag containing considerable coin.

Claude Duvall at your service, ma'am.
Smabs Sputzer (1956-2017) on Flickr

There are elements of this story that may not stand up to the careful interviewing of an eyewitness, but it does reflect some of the image that these robbers had.

The poor had nothing to fear from highwaymen because they had nothing to steal and they enjoyed the spectacle of the high and mighty being relieved of some of their wealth. So Claude Duvall was given something of a hero's send-off when he was hanged at Tyburn in January 1670 at the age of 27.

This was the lot of most highwaymen—a short life but a merry one, and that's how Captain Charles Johnson portrayed many of the villains in his seminal work. However, he reserved a special place in hell for men who were violent towards women.

Bonus Factoids

The world's most successful pirate was a woman called Zheng Yi Sao. She operated in the South China Sea in the 19th century. You can read more about her here.
The so-called Golden Age of Piracy lasted from 1650 to 1730, when as many as 5,000 pirates were at sea at any given time. Eventually, European nations grew tired of losing valuables, so navies were bolstered to put the pirates out of business.
Before attacking a merchant ship, a pirate captain would hoist a black flag onto his top mast to announce his intention to board and rob the vessel of its goods. Some captains had their own insignia on the flags such as skeletons, or hearts dripping with blood. Other captains would use the generic flag of a skull and crossed bones, known as the Jolly Roger.