Costly stuffs, turned useless to those who had pillaged them, were torn asunder and tied to the horns of goats to distinguish the flocks belonging to the pirate settlements. Walter Kennedy beheld this spectacle upon an island in the Bahamas. He had already heard the tales of Morgan and Avery; the sight of these brocades reduced to cattle-marks finally sealed his ambition to make a figure among the rovers of the sea. That spectacle of squandered wealth and improvisatory dominion held him fast, without yet revealing the terrors and privations that must attend such an existence.
Kennedy was born at Pelican Stairs, in the parish of Wapping. His father, an anchor-smith of honest repute, gave the boy the best schooling his condition could afford. Walter was dutiful enough in his early years, though already given, as the chronicler observes, to looking above his station. When he came to an age fit for a trade, he was bound apprentice to his father. The elder Kennedy died before the term was served. His small estate fell to his widow and other sons; and Kennedy, left free to follow his own inclinations, betook himself to sea.
He served for a considerable space aboard a man-of-war during the late French war in the reign of Queen Anne. The tales of pirates in the East and West Indies constantly drew his ear. He sought out every chance to hear more of them from common mariners, learning the chief adventures fathered upon those men, from Morgan’s daring strokes down to the exploits of Avery. The chronicler ascribes a decisive power to these histories: Kennedy fancied that a lucky turn would allow him to accomplish the like. Thus did a foremast hand’s admiration turn to settled design.
The longed-for occasion seemed to offer itself when he sailed under Captain Woodes Rogers, who was sent out as Governor of the Bahamas to recover the island of Providence, then possessed by the pirates. These men had entrenched themselves in sundry places, having prepared both their defence and their maintenance. Rogers made proclamation of His Majesty’s pardon. The greater part surrendered; others, resolved to hold to their old course, slipped away as privately as they could.
Having assumed his government, Rogers fitted out two sloops for trade. He manned them with hands from his own crew, joined by several reformed pirates. Kennedy took service aboard one of these vessels. He was not long there before he joined in a conspiracy to mutiny: the confederates meant to seize the sloop, put to death all who would not join them, and go on the account anew. The scheme succeeded. From the other sloop they took whatever they judged useful and turned her adrift as too dull a sailer for their turn. A few days later they made prize of two vessels of sufficient force to strengthen their enterprise.
Kennedy’s dream now took the shape of an ordered commonwealth. According to his own account, the pirates chose a captain whose authority remained limited, save in action, where he commanded without dispute. Having suffered under the harsh usage of king’s officers, they were resolved that no single man should lord it over them in all circumstances. They drew up articles against broils, appointed officers to see them kept, and regulated the shares of all captured goods. They even imposed an oath to abide by these compacts. The chronicler marks the contradiction in this discipline: men who had cast off all laws divine and human devised others to hold their own association together.
This semblance of order brought no safety to their lives. At every sail raised, they ran the hazard of an engagement and went in fear of defeat. Their prizes ended for the most part in drunken carousals aboard; opportunities to go ashore were few, for the coasts of Jamaica, Barbados, and Bermuda were become fatal to them. After some time, they chose one Davis for their captain and resolved to steer for the coast of Brazil, hoping to surprise some homeward-bound Portuguese ship, enrich themselves at a stroke, and quit so hazardous a trade.
Falling in with a fleet of twenty sail of Portuguese vessels, they came near being taken. Davis took advantage of a straggling ship and boarded her by night without firing a gun. The pirates forced her master to point out which vessel in the fleet carried the richest cargo. They fell upon her, but were presently hemmed in by the rest of the Portuguese. They escaped that chase, though not without the hazard of their liberty. The prize they coveted was lost to them, and they thought themselves fortunate merely to have got clear.
Their fresh water soon failed them. Davis went ashore with about fifty armed men to fill the casks. The Portuguese governor of the road perceived they were pirates, yet judged himself too weak to attack them openly. Instead, he sent Davis a polite invitation to dine next day at the castle, with as many of his people as he pleased. The captain, who had hitherto shown good conduct, accepted the offer. He set out with ten hands, all dressed in their best sea-finery.
They had not gone half the distance when an ambuscade fell upon them with poisoned arrows. The arrows brought the sailors to the earth, the chronicle relates, save only Kennedy and one other man. These two reached the top of a mountain and flung themselves into the sea. A boat sent from their ship took them up with difficulty. The feast prepared at the castle had proved a snare. Two men only of that landing party ever regained the deck.
The survivors soon sickened of the coast of Brazil. On their passage back to the West Indies they took several considerable prizes, and then resolved to return to Europe to enjoy their fortunes. The master, an Irishman whose name is not recorded in the memoir, undertook to carry the vessel to his own country. A violent storm arose off the north coast of Ireland and drove the ship onto the coast of Scotland, where she was wrecked. Kennedy then had by him a great store of gold; this he spent, or was robbed of, in the Highlands. He crossed over to Ireland, reduced to absolute beggary, and thence took passage for England and made his way to London.
There he was recognised in the street by persons whose vessel had been taken by the company to which he belonged. They had him secured. After a long imprisonment, he was brought to trial for piracy before an Admiralty session at the Old Bailey and cast for death alongside John Bradshaw. The chronicler notes that these maritime causes were heard under a special commission, uniting the Judge of the High Court of Admiralty with the judges of the common law, the silver oar, the badge of that jurisdiction, being laid upon the table. Kennedy was executed in July 1721 at Execution Dock.
Bradshaw obtained a reprieve, being ordered for transportation to the American plantations. Kennedy rejoiced in this favour more than he would have done had it fallen to his own share. He judged that a sentence of banishment overseas would only have tempted him to resume his former courses, rather than work his reformation. After so many perils, ruins, and imprisonments, death seemed to him far less terrible than a return to the life he had chosen.
Drawn to his execution in a cart, he beheld the silver oar carried before him. He observed to the person who sat beside him that pirates might amass great heaps of gold and silver, yet keep not so much as would serve their last necessities: he himself, he said, had not enough left to pay for his coffin. Walter Kennedy died at Execution Dock, being about twenty-six years of age. The sea, the captured vessels, the plunder, and the gold had never yielded him the lasting fortune he had pursued; after shipwreck and the loss of all his store, the chance glance of an injured merchant in the street was enough to bring him to the tree.