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Dixie Bull | |
|---|---|
| Born | Huntingdon, England |
| Piratical career | |
| Nickname | The Dread Pirate |
| Type | Pirate |
| Allegiance | England |
| Years active | 1631–1632 |
| Rank | Captain |
| Base of operations | Boston, Colony of Massachusetts Bay |
Dixie Bull (or Dixey Bull) was an English sea captain, and the first pirate known to prey on shipping off the New England coast, especially Maine.
Born in Huntingdon about 1611, [1] he was apprenticed Skinner to his elder brother, Seth, in 1627 for a period of nine years, but did not complete his indentures until 1648, when he was granted freedom of the city of London in the Worshipful Company of Skinners. [2] He emigrated to Boston, Colony of Massachusetts Bay, in 1632, having been granted a patent of land, [3] and started sailing the Maine coast with a small vessel, trading with the Indians, largely for furs, especially beaver. The Skinners were the livery company whose business was the trade in skins and furs, so he may have been acting as agent for his brother in London. In 1632, traveling in the Penobscot Bay area, he was attacked by a roving band of French in a small pinnace; or possibly he was present in Castine Harbor when a French force attacked the trading post there. [4] Whatever the details, his ship was captured and all his trade goods and provisions confiscated.
Fired with revenge, he traveled back to Boston, assembled a crew of around 25 men, and entered upon a career of piracy to recoup his losses. Ironically, he did not target French shipping, probably because the English traders were wealthier. [5]
His fame as "the dread pirate" derived from his attack in 1632 on the settlement of Pemaquid, which was then center of the lucrative fur trade in Maine. Few pirates had the temerity to attack a defended town. Sailing into the harbour, with what is said to be three ships, he opened fire on the stockade there, and sacked the town. The booty seized is variously said to have been £55 or $2,500.
Some stories say he joined the French, others that he returned to England, and others that he was hanged in Tyburn. Legend says that he buried treasure on Damariscove Island and Cushing Island in Casco Bay, Maine. The fact of his being admitted as a Skinner in 1648 shows that he did survive his piratical career and return to England. Administration of his estate was granted to his sister Susan Kendricks née Bull in Huntingdon in 1656. [6]
The legend of Dixie Bull was soon enshrined in ballads, the most famous of them being "The Story of Dixie Bull" and "The Slaying of Dixie Bull". [7] This ballad describes a duel between Dixie Bull and a fisherman from Pemaquid, Daniel Curtis, on an island near that town, in which Dixie Bull was killed, saving the town.
Bristol, known from 1632 to 1765 as Pemaquid, is a town in Lincoln County, Maine, United States. The population was 2,834 at the 2020 census. A fishing and resort area, Bristol includes the villages of New Harbor, Pemaquid, Round Pond, Bristol Mills and Chamberlain. It includes the Pemaquid Archeological Site, a U.S. National Historic Landmark. During the 17th and early 18th century, New France defined the Kennebec River as the southern boundary of Acadia, which put Bristol within Acadia.
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King William's War was the North American theater of the Nine Years' War (1688–1697), also known as the War of the Grand Alliance or the War of the League of Augsburg. It was the first of six colonial wars fought between New France and New England along with their respective Native allies before France ceded its remaining mainland territories in North America east of the Mississippi River in 1763.
This timeline of the history of piracy in the 1680s is a chronological list of key events involving pirates between 1680 and 1689.
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New Holland was a colony established by Dutch naval captain Jurriaen Aernoutsz upon seizing the capital of Acadia, Fort Pentagouet in Penobscot Bay, and several other Acadian villages during the Franco-Dutch War. The Dutch imprisoned the Governor of Acadia Jacques de Chambly. The French and native allies under the command of St. Castin regained control of the area the following year in 1675, however, a year later the Dutch West India Company appointed Cornelis Steenwijck, a Dutch merchant in New York, governor of the "coasts and countries of Nova Scotia and Acadie." The formal Dutch claim to Acadia (1676) was finally abandoned at the end of the war with the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678.
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Fort William Henry is located in the village of New Harbor in the town of Bristol, Maine. The fort was, in its time, the largest in New England. The fort was originally built in 1692 but destroyed four years later by New France in the Siege of Pemaquid (1696). A reconstruction was built in 1908. The fort was added to the National Register of Historic Places on December 1, 1969. Fort William Henry is now operated as a museum about the fort's history.
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Atahualpa was a United States merchant ship that sailed on four maritime fur trading ventures in the early 1800s. In 1813, in the Hawaiian Islands, Atahualpa was sold to the Russian-American Company (RAC) and renamed Bering or Behring. In January 1815 Bering, under the command of the American James Bennett, returned to Hawaii where it wrecked at Waimea Bay, Kauai.
