"On the Account": The End of the Chase (Session 1.6 - Season Finale)

Philipsburg, Saint Marten, January 1651: Joe, Guillaume and Red Knife prepare to depart the city with their new arsenal. In exchange for a promise of indebtedness from Guillaume, Captain van Breda has loaned them the Teringlijer, a swift vessel from her own squadron, to serve as a temporary escort.

An unremarkable day's sailing brings the three pirates and their cannons to a long, shallow beach on the western side of Saint-Barthelemy. There, as the sun begins to set, they find the Folly and a French merchant ship called L'Apostre (out of Marseilles) at anchor, and the encamped crew of Swedish privateer called the Wandervalke (out of Bremerhaven) lounging under their tents within a heavily fortified beachfront compound. This is Le Carenage.

The compound itself is run by Hisene, a Barbary corsair, and about twenty Spanish and North African mercenaries. Once sailors in their own right, the corsair crew now grows rich charging passing ships for careening and resupply services on their way into or out of the Caribbean. However, a cruel side to the operation soon reveals itself: the actual work is all done by Carib slaves, who work under the lash and the gun and who are chained in the upside-down carcass of a beached ship at night.

Some cautious inquiries reveal that the corsairs at Le Carenage exist in a permanent state of war with the island's inhabitants, and that both sides take pains to kill any stragglers they find in contested territory, but that some degree of trade also takes place - tools and supplies for slaves and fresh food from the interior. While gambling with the Swedish officers, Eve also discovers that the mountainous interior of the island is rumored to hold lost riches, but that dozens of parties of treasure-seekers have died searching for it. Their names now adorn a giant map of the island which is pinned above the bar in Hisene's stronghold.

As if the piles of skulls surrounding the map were not eerie enough, the pirates are also caught up in concerns of their own. Hearing that Brimstone Jack has been indisposed, Guillaume is paddled out to his sickbed on board the Folly. There he finds a shrunken, unconscious invalid bearing no signs of the apparent recuperation that had apparently characterized the captain on their trip from Hispaniola.

Nzuzi, the herbalist who had been treating Brimstone Jack, is nowhere to be found; according to the crew, she fled into the interior of the island soon after their arrival, shouting about sorcery and curses. Examining the captain and questioning Lolo, the cabin boy, Guillaume soon finds a snakebite on Jack's neck; he also find strange scribbles on the back of a map and rough sculptures of a woman's face made in candlewax. The scribbles refer to Oman; the sculpture is of Carmen. Mysteries upon mysteries...

The fog of strangeness surrounding Brimstone Jack is dispelled in the morning along with Zanzdoz's return to Le Carenage. He and the bulk of the new recruits have been out practicing boarding actions, and everyone now shows a keen enthusiasm for the hunt for the Estrella. The coconut wine comes out, a section of beach is cleared so it can be used as a rough blackboard, and the planning commences. The pirates make the following decisions:

• The company's arsenal of fifteen light cannon and the two heavy demi-cannon need to be split between the Folly and the Aquila. Each ship can only handle, at most, ten light and one heavy cannon. Given that Jaap, the new master gunner, is the most skilled artillerist in the crew, he is placed on the Aquila with ten guns and a demi-cannon. The Folly will take the remaining five light and one heavy cannon.
• The sixty available crew are similarly split - 35 to the Aquila, 25 to the Folly.
• Eve and Carmen will captain the Aquila; Joe, Guillaume and Red Knife will stay on the Folly along with Zandoz.
• The Folly and Aquila will operate in a dispersed formation, to maximize their chances of spotting their prey at the possible cost of not being able to attack at the same time.

After weighing the possibility of a quick assassination of Hissene, to end the tyranny at Le Carenage, the pirates elect to save that for another day and set out into the rising sun to lay in wait for the Estrella.

1. The First Engagement

After three days of false alarms and high excitement, the Estrella is sighted - speeding West towards Saint-Martin under full sail. The two pirate crews are caught unprepared, badly positioned to swing around and give chase, and the Estrella punches through the gap between them. Red Knife conceives a desperate plan, spinning the Folly's demi-cannon on its axis to fire a powerful and unbalancing blast: this shove to the ships center of gravity proves to be just enough to allow the Folly to catch the wind and fill its sails. On board the Aquila, Eve and Carmen replicate Red Knife's trick, and as the sun begins to set ahead of them the two pirate vessels begin - albeit slowly and sloppily - their pursuit.

2. The Second Engagement

By sunrise on the next day, the Estrella's zigzag course has successfully thrown the Folly off its trail, but on board the Aquila, Carmen's sharp eyes have kept them close on the Estrella's stern. Then, when their quarry begins to tack around an island while throwing ballast overboard, it is Eve whose maritime experience leads her and Carmen to perceive a trap: concealed within the flotsam are five Maltese sailors clutching waterproof satchels containing firebombs. The Aquila successfully avoids the trap and signals to the Folly, and the two ships finally begin to bear down on the Estrella.

Hours pass, and the pirates use every trick they can think of to close the gap. On Joe's order, the Folly's gunports are flashed open to cause the Estrella to tack away from an anticipated broadside and thereby lose some speed; soon afterwards, Guillaume and Red Knife are able to use the Folly's navigational charts to find a channel with a faster current than the one their quarry is using. On the Aquila, Eve and Carmen order Jaap to keep up a steady long-range fire with the demi-cannon, boxing the Estrella in and limiting its maneuverability. Inch by inch, yard by yard, the gap closes - and then, with a mighty roar, the Folly rams the Estrella at her stern and Joe leads a roaring charge of pirates over the gunwales onto the Genoan's ship's deck.

Little, Benerson. The Sea Rover's Practice:
Pirate Tactics and Techniques, 1630-1730
(USA: Potomac Books, 2007)

The pirates' initial sally goes well. Red Knife's sharp eyes have allowed them to steer clear of the heavily-trapped bow of the ship, as well as to not be caught up by the Knights' wily ruse: they have dressed the lightly armed sailors in their own black cloaks, and are counting on the booby traps and this misdirection to lead the boarding party into a death trap of gunpowder and steel. Instead, it is the pirates who dominate the fight, pushing the sailors to surrender almost immediately and engaging the heavily armed and armored Knights on much more even terms.

But even at this moment of triumph, the hand of despair is never far away. From the Aquila, a terrible concussive explosion rings out: the demi-cannon, with which Eve and Carmen had intended to provide covering fire, has exploded - killing and injuring more than a dozen of the crew. And on the deck of the Estrella, a hulking Knight-Sergeant meets Joe in sword-to-axe combat and, with one terrible blow, severs the Irishman's right arm at the bicep. The Estrella strikes its colors, but it has been a bloody day for the jolly pirate company that left Le Carenage less than a week ago.

Taking stock of their winnings, the pirates find the stash of ceremonial Crusader silver they had been expecting, as well as multiple crates and chests full of assorted fineries: the new governor's personal effects. Up on deck, Carmen has managed to stop the last Knight standing from throwing a stash of strange old swords and blacksmithing tools overboard, and these are duly added to the haul of plunder. Lastly, and in the furthest corner of the captain's cabin, the looters find - carefully wrapped in wool and oilcloth - a fine oil painting in the Dutch style. This may be the most valuable item on board the Estrella, if only a buyer of means can be found for it:

On to Session 2.1!