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Pirates of Canada - part 2

© Cindy Vallar

Queen Elizabeth sent Peter Easton, a naval officer, to Newfoundland in 1602. The following year, though, James I became King of England. Preferring peace to war, he signed a treaty with Spain and downsized the Royal Navy, leaving Easton and his men without pay or the means to return home. As a result, they turned pirate, plundering ships and pillaging coastal communities. By 1610, the English referred to Easton as 'Notorious Pirate.' His plundered wealth and fleet of forty ships crewed by upward of 5000 pirates made him a powerful adversary. Bristol merchants complained to the Lord Admiral, who attempted to rid the Western Hemisphere of this scourge. Instead, Easton captured the earl's ships, pocketed $100,000, and enlisted 500 more men to his cause.

After Easton fortified Harbour Grace in 1610, he captured Sir Richard Whitbourne, the King's representative, and imprisoned him aboard ship for eleven weeks, hoping to persuade him to join his piracy ventures. Whitebourne refused, but offered to petition King James for a pardon for the pirate. The English government sent the requested pardon, but Easton never received it, even though he waited two years for it. In 1614 he captured three Spanish treasure ships and fought for the King of Algiers against Spain. Eventually he retired to France where he married a woman of nobility and became the Marquis of Savoy.

Perhaps the most legendary of Easton's captives was the 'Carbonear Princess.' Her name was Sheila Na Geira and she was an Irish princess, descended from a Celtic king of western Ireland. Or perhaps she was the daughter of Sir Hugh O'Connor of Connaught, whom the Irish deemed a traitor for siding with the English. She sailed from Ireland either to visit her aunt, the abbess of a French convent, or to escape a threat of death or kidnapping from Irishmen bent on reeking vengeance on her father. Dutch pirates captured her ship, and shortly thereafter, Easton captured the Dutch. Sheila fell in love with one of Easton's navigators, Gilbert Pike, and married him ten days later. Legend also says that their child was the first European born in Newfoundland. Whatever the truth behind the legend, one thing should be noted. At the time Easton captured the Dutch pirates and Sheila wed Pike in 1602, Easton was not a pirate. When he turned to piracy a year later, Pike resigned from Easton's crew.

Another pirate who followed in Easton's wake was John Nutt. He first appeared in Newfoundland around 1620. Three years later, he was granted a pardon on condition of paying a ransom of £500. He returned to England where the Vice Admiral of Devon, John Eliot, imprisoned Nutt and tried him for piracy. Convicted of the charges, Nutt was sentenced to hang, but the Secretary of State, George Calvert, intervened. He freed Nutt and gave him £100 in compensation, then arrested Eliot.

Black Bart

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