The Resurrected Pirate: The Life, Death, and Subsequent Career of the Notorious George Lowther

256 pages

David Childs

I dedicated my own book on pirates to my grandsons, “hoping pirates provide you with pleasure.” I write that because the story of George Lowther shows just how unpleasurable that life could be, certainly mostly nasty, brutish and short with the end, so often being dropped from a rope between the high and low water mark. That was the fate of many of Lowther’s shipmates but he, as the title suggests avoided that by being pardoned and commissioned as a Lieutenant in the Royal Navy, poacher turned gamekeeper.

Lowther began his life of crime in 1721 having mutinied because of the intolerable conditions he and the crew of the Royal African Company’s Gambia Castle were subjected to moored in the Gambia River in support of the slave trade which was the Company’s purpose. Death, disease and a dearth of rations made the choice between staying and dying or deserting and living a very real choice, most of the crew and many of the soldiers, chose the latter and thus immediately committed a capital offence. Their priority, therefore, was to avoid capture and, in so doing, if they had enough victuals to avoid hunger and enough rum to stay drunk, they were content to stay with Lowther as he seized poorly defended minor vessels, laden with fruit and ‘veg rather than gold moidores, and ran from larger ones, especially those of the Royal Navy, who were on the look out for him and his ilk.

In fact, it was the existence of such buccaneers rather than their achievements that troubled those going about their lawful occasion which, of course, in this period included slave-ships, a more heinous occupation than that of pirate. Lowther and his partners in crime achieved little and that little often incompetently. He lost two ships, one to native Americans who attacked his ship while it was being careened and another to a feisty merchant captain who, in 1723, drove his ship ashore on a small uninhabited island in the Caribbean and left him marooned to die.  How he got off is a mystery, as is what he did next, but in in 1739, he convinced C-in-C Jamaica, Admiral Vernon, with whom he had once served, to employ him as a pilot (shades of the Pirates of Penzance here!) to advise on the planned raid on Port Bello. Vernon not only interceded to have Lowther pardoned, he actually commissioned him as the fifth lieutenant on his flagship.  The abject failure of the raid on Porto Bello as well as subsequent operations was due, in part, because Lowther’s advice and cunning plans were not followed.

Lowther’s pardon and promotion enabled him to return to England with his family and to live comfortably for his remaining years – he died in 1746. He had spent just three years of his life as a pirate and survived the experience – most of his shipmates did not. The glamour associated with the skull-and-cross bones profession, as the author of this well-researched and readable book, clearly indicates, is misplaced, but the story of their, often failed, endeavours is still fascinating. Recommended – especially for grandsons.