Free Pirate Hunters: Treasure, Obsession, and the Search for a Legendary Pirate Ship by Robert Kurson

getting the ship to sea again…yet now he has obtained credit from some persons underhand, and has his ship well fitted in every respect. It was done so artfully that no one suspected it, or I should have found some pretext for securing him.”
    Impressed though he might be, Molesworth wasted little time in going after Bannister, sending Captain Edward Stanley in the four-gun sloop
Boneta
to hunt down the
Golden Fleece.
A light ship with a crew of perhaps ten, the ship was likely the smallest in the Jamaica fleet, but Bannister had surrendered to the navy with little struggle months earlier, and Molesworth surely expected more of the same.
    For all she lacked in size, the
Boneta
was fast, and it didn’t take her long to catch up to the
Golden Fleece
. When she did, however, Captain Stanley thought better of engaging the more powerful ship and her thirty guns. Instead, he sent a note to Bannister warning that he would face new charges for piracy unless he returned to Port Royal with the
Golden Fleece
. Bannister denied being a pirate, telling Stanley he was simply headed to the bay of Honduras for logwood. Helpless to do more, Stanley sailed back to Port Royal empty-handed.
    Bannister wasted little time adding to his pirate crew, recruiting tough guys looking for adventure and a fast path to riches—brave men who understood, with Bannister’s new reputation, that the Royal Navy was coming, and that they would be pursued by merciless hunters charged with bringing them down.
    By now, Molesworth must have realized that Bannister did not intend to go gently. He sent warships to chase every report of Bannister’s plunders, but when the frigates arrived they were always too late. Thiscontinued for months as Bannister took prizes across the Caribbean and Atlantic.
    In April, however, Molesworth caught a break. The
Ruby
had tracked Bannister to the Île-à-Vache, a small island off the southwestern tip of Hispaniola (now Haiti), a notorious pirate hangout, and a place once used by Henry Morgan as an operating base. But as Captain Mitchell closed in, he found not one pirate ship but five, each nearly the size of his own. The
Golden Fleece
was among them, and Bannister was in the company of four French privateers, including the infamous Michel de Grammont.
    Against any one of these pirates the
Ruby
held an advantage. Against them all, she couldn’t hope to survive. So Mitchell demanded of Grammont, likely by pulling up alongside his ship and shouting, that Bannister be arrested and turned over for serving under a foreign commission. It shouldn’t have surprised him that Grammont and the other French pirates refused to give over Bannister to the
Ruby.
That kind of flouting of English authority must have rankled an accomplished navy captain like Mitchell, but he deemed it prudent “not to insist further.”
    Three months later, in July 1685, Grammont helped lead a historic pirate raid on the Mexican port city of Campeche, in which a landing force of seven hundred pirates sacked the town, took prisoners, and burned the city before leaving with their plunder. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that Bannister and his crew were among those invading pirates, as he was in Grammont’s company in the months leading up to the raid. But no one knows for sure.
    Later that year, the
Golden Fleece
was spotted sailing alone off the western coast of Jamaica. This time, Molesworth sent two ships after Bannister, but neither could find him. Every month, Bannister took more prizes and, with quick footwork and deft escapes, continued to blacken the eyes of Molesworth, the Royal Navy, and England. By January 1686, Molesworth seemed to be losing hope. “Captain Mitchell will receive orders…for the arrest of Bannister,” he wrote to anofficial in London, “whom he is as likely to encounter on this voyage as on any other.” Meaning he was not likely to find him at all.
    Still, Molesworth continued to plan for the day, however unlikely, that he