wolfinthewood (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wolfinthewood) wrote2007-09-19 01:36 pm
wolfinthewood) wrote2007-09-19 01:36 pm
Entry tags:
Ward the pirate
Those that will now brave gallant men be deem’d,
And with the common people be esteem’d,
Let them turn hacksters as they walk the street,
Quarrel and fight with every one they meet;
* * *
Yet this is nothing: if they look for fame,
And mean to have an everlasting name
Amongst the vulgar, let them seek for gain
With Ward the pirate on the boisterous main...
George Wither
from Abuses Stript and Whipt (1613)
Ward ... lives there in Tunis, in a most princely and magnificent state. His apparel both curious and costly, his diet sumptuous, and his followers seriously observing and obeying his will. He hath two cooks that dress and prepare his diet for him, and his taster before he eats. I do not know any peer in England that bears up his port in more dignity, nor hath his attendants more obsequious unto him.
***
Ward having thus taken this great argosy, and (with her and others) so inestimable riches, his mind was so inflated with pride, and puffed up with vainglory, that he now thought, nay did not spare to speak, he was sole and only Commander of the Seas.
Andrew Barker
from A true and certaine report of the beginning, proceedings, overthrowes, and now present estate of Captaine Ward and Danseker, the two late famous pirates (1609)
Captain Ward and the Rainbow
Strike up, you lusty gallants, with music and sound of drum,
For we have descried a rover, upon the sea is come;
His name is Captain Ward, right well it doth appear,
There has not been such a rover found out this thousand year.
For he hath sent unto our king, the sixth of January,
Desiring that he might come in, with all his company:
‘And if your king will let me come till I my tale have told,
I will bestow for my ransom full thirty tun of gold.’
‘O nay! O nay!’ then said our king, ‘O nay! this may not be,
To yield to such a rover myself will not agree;
He hath deceiv’d the French-man, likewise the King of Spain,
And how can he be true to me that hath been false to twain?’
With that our king provided a ship of worthy fame,
Rainbow she is called, if you would know her name;
Now the gallant Rainbow she rows upon the sea,
Five hundred gallant seamen to bear her company.
The Dutch-man and the Spaniard she made them for to flye,
Also the bonny French-man, as she met him on the sea:
When as this gallant Rainbow did come where Ward did lie,
‘Where is the captain of this ship?’ this gallant Rainbow did cry.
‘O that am I,’ says Captain Ward, ‘There’s no man bids me lye,
And if thou art the king’s fair ship, thou art welcome unto me:’
‘I’le tell thee what,’ says Rainbow, ‘our king is in great grief
That thou shouldst lie upon the sea and play the arrant thief,
And will not let our merchants ships pass as they did before;
Such tidings to our king is come, which grieves his heart full sore.’
With that this gallant Rainbow she shot, out of her pride,
Full fifty gallant brass pieces, charged on every side.
And yet these gallant shooters prevailed not a pin,
Though they were brass on the outside, brave Ward was steel within;
‘Shoot on, shoot on,’ says Captain Ward, ‘your sport well pleaseth me,
And he that first gives over shall yield unto the sea.
I never wrong’d an English ship, but Turk and King of Spain,
For and the jovial Dutch-man as I met on the main.
***
Go tell the King of England, go tell him thus from me,
If he reign king of all the land, I will reign king at sea.’
from The Famous Sea-fight between Captain Ward and the Rainbow (c. 1609?)
tags: pirates | 17th century
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no subject
Arrrrrrr me hearties, etc.
John Ward, the pirate
Ward was never brought to book. He was one of the richest pirates of the age - maybe the richest. He lived in Tunis in 'a fair palace beautified with rich marble and alabaster stones' - not bad for a fisher's brat. He probably died in Tunis in 1623, of plague, at the age of about seventy.
no subject
May all we bilge-rats do as well.