6 DESPICABLE PIRATES FROM HISTORY

DIXIE BULL

“ACCORDING TO ONE ACCOUNT, A CANNONBALL RIPPED INTO TEW’S MIDSECTION, DISEMBOWELLING HIM”

In the summer of 1632, fur trader Dixie Bull was travelling along the coast of Maine when disaster struck: a small group of Frenchmen had stolen his shallop [a light sailing boat]. Enraged, Bull hastily commandeered another vessel and gathered a force of 15 armed men to exact revenge on the French. Having no luck in that pursuit, and short on supplies, Bull resorted to piracy. He and his men ransacked two English vessels and attacked a settlement called Pemaquid on the coast of Maine, gaining fame under the name ‘the dread pirate’.

Over the next couple of months there were periodic sightings of Bull and his men, who had apparently renounced piracy in fear of the fatal punishment that awaited them if they were caught. To make it clear that they wanted no more trouble, the pirates sent a letter to the governors of all the English colonies and plantations, “signifying their intent not to do harm to any more of their countrymen, but to go to the southward, and to advise them not to send against them;