1341305102729

pirates would send a party of men ashore to
fetch them after dark. These would fire off a
musket or two as though they were making a
land raid. The local people, amply forwarned,
would keep wen out of the way. The business
was very welcome, said Mainwaring, because
cattle sold by this means usually fetched double
their market value.
The new English plantation at Baltimore
seems to have flourished. King James, embarrassed
by the complaints offoreign merchants.
insisted on steps being taken to suppress the
pirates of south-west Ireland. Once in a while
a royal man-o-war sailed along the coast. But
the royal ships were ususally old and badly
maintained. The pirates, whose necks depended
on their agility, used small Dutch-built warships
which, when regularly defouled. were
the swiftest sailors afloat. They seldom allowed
themselves to be caught by the royal ships, and
ifcaught, they ohen seem to have managed to
corne to an understanding with their captors.
.Many pirates were operating but very few
were hanged. The Dutch obtained King
James's permission to search the creeks and
harbours of south-west Ireland for pirates. but
when they appeared off Baltimore and asked
for a pilot to bring them into the harbour,
Thomas Crooke told them to be off. This
would seem to be a very high line to take with
the commander of a Dutch squadron operating
with royal permission; but Thomas Crooke
must have known what he was doing because
he continued to prosper. It is only possible to
114
guess the extent of his financial prosperity, but
we know that he became a baronet in 1624
shortly before he died.
The new English community at Baltimore
was almost entirely the product of the enterprise,
energy and lack of scruple of Sir
Thomas Crooke, Bart. It is therefore strangely
appropriate that things should have started to
go wrong almost from the time ofhis death.
It seems possible, and in fact is assumed by some writers
Pirate Harbour,,), that a&er Crooke's death the people of
decided to go straight. Their pilchard fisheries
proving remarkably profitable, and the authorities were
increasing their control over the "lawless" regions. We
hypothesize that in 1624 the leaders of Baltimore made
known on the pirate grapevine that the days of hospitality
over. and the port closed to all illegality save a bit of
lU'rIIless smuggling.
Meanwhile the feckless Sir Fmeen had sunk himself even
in the mire ofdebt. A creditor appeared on the scene.
Sir Walter Coppinger. Bart., was a magistrate
at Cork City whose acquisitiveness bore a
marked resemblance to the swashbuckling
behaviour of his Viking forefathers. He recognised
just as clearly as Richard Boyle or
Thomas Crooke that West Cork was underpopulated
and ripe for development. He was,
however, a staunch Roman Catholic and no
lover of the new English Protestants that were
beginning to settle the land. He had no wish to
plant Englishmen in West Cork. His interest
was in building up his personal estate in this
ll5