John Hoar (died 1697, last name occasionally Hoare or Hore) was a pirate and privateer active in the late 1690s in the Red Sea area.

History

Hoar and his frigate Dublin had been granted a privateering commission from Governor Sir William Beeston of Jamaica, and near Canada had taken a 200-ton, 14-gun French prize called St. Paul.[1] In January 1694 he convinced the Rhode Island General Assembly to convene an Admiralty Court and award him the prize so he could swap vessels, renaming the ship John and Rebecca.[2] He then purchased a second privateering commission from Governor Benjamin Fletcher of New York. Fletcher later claimed no knowledge of Hoar's piracy, despite having previously granted a commission to Hoar's own brother-in-law Richard Glover, also a privateer-turned-pirate.[3]

The John and Rebecca sailed for the Cape of Good Hope and the Persian Gulf in December 1695. It was during this voyage that Abraham Samuel was elected ship's quartermaster.[4] After some navigation trouble they put in at Adam Baldridge’s pirate trading post at St. Augustine in Madagascar until April 1696.[5] Before leaving for the Red Sea they picked up some of the surviving crew from Thomas Wake’s Susanna; Wake and a number of his crew had taken sick and died of illness a short while earlier.[3]

Hoar sailed alongside Dutch pirate Dirk Chivers in the Red Sea, plundering several ships including the Bombay-bound Rouparelle and Calicut in August 1696.[6] Hoar then parted from Chivers to stalk the Persian Gulf, where in early 1697 he captured a 300-ton Indian ship near Surat.[6] He returned to Baldridge's settlement with the prize in February 1697, where he remained several months, trading with Baldridge and other pirates who called there.[3]

In July 1697 the natives rebelled, killing a number of pirates and their crews. Some sources point to Hoar's death during the rebellion;[3] others say he was already dead of illness by that time, and that only his ship and a partial crew remained when the settlement was destroyed.[5] Abraham Samuel escaped the attack and took a few shipmates with him in the decrepit John and Rebecca; they wrecked shortly afterward but were taken in as guests by a native princess, and Samuel went on to found a pirate trading camp near Fort Dauphin.[5] A few of Hoar's other crewmen made it back to New England where they were arrested in 1699 for harboring some of William Kidd's pirates, including James Kelly.[7]

See also

  • James Plaintain - Another ex-pirate who, like Baldridge and Samuel, established a pirate trading post at Madagascar
  • Otto and Aert Van Tuyl - Brothers who joined Hoar's John and Rebecca as doctor and carpenter, and who went on to have pirate careers of their own

References

  1. ↑ Chapin, Howard M. (1926). Privateer Ships and Sailors: The First Century of American Colonial Privateering, 1625-1725. Paris: Imprimerie G. Mouton. Retrieved 23 September 2019.
  2. ↑ "Pirates of Rhode Island | The Joseph Bucklin Society". bucklinsociety.net. Retrieved 24 May 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period by J. Franklin Jameson". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  4. ↑ Bolster, W. Jeffrey (1997). Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. p. 15. ISBN 9780674028470.
  5. 1 2 3 Groenendijk, R. L. Van Tuyl and J. N. A. (1996). A Van Tuyl Chronicle: 650 Years in the History of a Dutch-American Family. Decorah: Rory Van Tuyl. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  6. 1 2 Marley, David (2010). Pirates of the Americas. Denver: ABC-CLIO. p. 641. ISBN 9781598842012. Retrieved 24 May 2017.
  7. ↑ Headlam, Cecil (1908). America and West Indies: November 1699, 27-30 | British History Online (Vol.17 ed.). London: His Majesty's Stationery Office. pp. 542–564. Retrieved 27 June 2018.
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