The people of the Jersey Shore have always identified with pirates. Boats fly pirate flags during the summer. The mascot of Toms River High School East “Raiders” is a violent looking pirate. Our favorite bars in Seaside are Captain Hooks and Riggers. The men and women you see in Seaside are tanned, scantily clad, and covered with tattoos and piercings. But did you know that the Barnegat bay area has a rich pirate history?
Pirates were active in this area during the late 1600s, the heyday of piracy in the New World, when many pirate crews preyed on Spanish Galleons weighed heavy with gold. One of these pirates was named William Kidd. “Captain Kidd” was a Scottish sailor who was given permission by England to attack French ships, as England and France were at war. When there were no more French ships to attack, his crew became restless and talked of mutiny. To satisfy his crew, he agreed to attack ships of other nations. Captain Kidd was known to personally slay unruly members of his crew on the decks of his ships, the Adventure Galley and Adventure Prize. Kidd amassed a fortune of fine goods from the Indies and several tons of gold.
Captain Kidd learned that the English had marked him a Pirate and were looking to apprehend him. When they heard that they would consider granting him clemency, he hid his treasure in several places to use as a bargaining tool. He sailed from Jamaica to New York City, reportedly stopping at several spots on the Jersey Shore. At that time, the Barnegat bay was considered a natural harbor for ocean vessels, with the Toms River easily accessible from the Cranberry Inlet – a now closed channel between the Atlantic Ocean and Barnegat bay, where the Seaside Bridge now stands. Local legend has it that Captain Kidd buried his treasure on the shoreline of the Barnegat bay, and then killed the men that helped dig the hole. Captain Kidd turned himself into the authorities in New York, who sent him to England to be hanged in 1701.
Captain Kidd buries his treasure at a secret location
The highest land on the Toms River is the town of Island Heights. On the banks of the river is a place called Money Island, where the cliffs lead down to a small beach that stays out of sight from the main part of the river. Could this be the place where Captain Kidd buried his treasure?
When Captain Kidd allegedly visited the Barnegat Bay, it was an area devoid of civilization, except for indians and adventurous woodsmen. Over the next 80 years, small villages and settlements formed along the bay, growing into the towns we know today. In 1776, the American Revolution began, and many communities throughout the Jersey Shore were divided between the Patriots and those loyal to the British.
In 1782, a New Jersey Patriot named Joshua Huddy was stationed at the blockhouse at the village of Toms River with 25 men to protect the local area and assist in privateer efforts to attack British and loyalist shipping. In August 1780, Huddy was issued a commission to operate a gunboat, The Black Snake, as a privateer. Huddy concentrated his efforts on attacking, and killing Loyalists who were trading with the British. Huddy was accused of war crimes in the hanging over a dozen men, including a Loyalist farmer.
On March 24, 1782, a British force of 80 men burned the blockhouse at Toms River and hanged Huddy.
Toms River blockhouse
The death of Huddy did not stop privateering on the Barnegat Bay. Several months later in October of 1782, a privateer ship named the Alligator, commanded by Captain Andrew Steelman, found a deserted British ship with a valuable load of tea stranded on the shoals near the Barnegat Inlet. The crew of the Alligator stopped to unload the cargo, and made camp on the beach during the night. Captain John Bacon, who operated a whaleboat in the area with a band of Loyalist refugees, learned of this and hid in the shoals of the Barnegat bay throughout the night. At dawn, Bacon and his crew slaughtered the sleeping men of the Alligator, in an incident that has come to be known as the Long Beach Island Massacre.
During the 1800s, the country grew, and the waters off the Jersey shore became a busy and important shipping route. However, the waters off of New Jersey were particularly dangerous, because there were no cities to illuminate the shoreline on stormy nights, and only a 40-foot lighthouse at Barnegat inlet that mariners considered to be inadequate. This volatile situation gave rise to a new breed of opportunistic pirates.
On October 5, 1890, The New York Times published a 10-page story titled “Pirates of the Barnegat Bay“.
The story was written off of the lengthy admissions of “Charlie of Forked River”, who recalled the heady days of the 1850s, when communities of people along the Barnegat bay lived off of the many shipwrecks that littered the Jersey Shore. When sailors drowned and were washed ashore, Charlie and his friends would point out the dead bodies to the local coroner for a $5 award. Then, they would dig up the dead bodies from the anonymous graves and put them back onto the beach, where they would collect another $5 award from the coroner.
In those days, taking the shipping crates and barrels that washed ashore was called “wrackin'” and “piratin'”. “Everybody ’round here was into it up to their chins… All you had to do was go over to the beach and help yourself.”
“How’d we do it? Well, ye see we’d keep our eyes and ears open when there was a storm, knowing somethin’ must go wrong, for that was about the deadest sure spot for gettin’ astray… It was a big scramble as soon as the news would get along the main that there was a ship goin’ to pieces, and the ones that got out there first as likely as not got the choiciest pickin’s… There wasn’t any love lost, any way, between the Barnegat men and them as was from Tom’s River… They’d take the last penny out of a deadman’s pockets and then kick him back into the surf because it wasn’t dollars.”
“It was perfectly legitimate, of course, to wrack on salvage, protectin’ the goods for the underwriters and gettin’ a fair per cent of the proceeds, but on a whole we wasn’t wrackin’ on them terms. We’d get the goods over the hills and out of sight, and bury them deep in the sand.”
Some of the goods Charlie recalls getting are: “boxes of silks, satins, velvets, ribbons, linen goods, India shawls, kid gloves, boots, shoes, rubber goods and liquors.”
In 1861, the current 172-foot tall Barnegat lighthouse was constructed, which greatly reduced the amount of shipwrecks off of the Jersey Shore.
This also spelled the end to the easy times for Charlie and his pirate friends. “[U]s thrifty beach searchers were left out in the cold. We’ve had to give our attention to oysters, clams, fish, and game ever since, and it don’t pay near as well as the old-time wrackin’ used to.”
You may think Charlie and the “wreckers” are more opportunists and common thieves rather than pirates. However, Charlie recalled rumors of “lamps in the old lighthouse going out some foggy nights, and lights being planted right out on the north point o’ beach, and of vessels in distress being deceived in other ways, resultin’ in their going to pieces on the sand bars out there. I never seen any of this, but I’ve been over there just after such yarns was told and got hold of a pretty good boatload of swag.”
Good History lesson here. Didnt know some of these facts.
THE BARNEGAT ‘WRECKERS’ ARE MENTIONED IN THE BOOK ‘CLEAR FOR ACTION’ BY STEPHEN MEADER, ABOUT THE WAR OF 1812. MEADER’S BOOKS ARE NOW BACK IN PRINT, AND THOUGH FICTION, HAVE MUCH REAL HISTORY IN THEM. ANOTHER GOOD EXAMPLE IS ‘GUNS FOR THE SARATOGA’ BY THE SAME AUTHOR…THE MULLICA RIVER, TOMS RIVER, AND BATSTO FORGE, WHERE CANNON WERE MADE IN THE 1700’S ARE ALSO DESCRIBED. THE SARATOGA WAS A SLOOP OF WAR OF THE CONTINENTAL NAVY, THAT AFTER SEVERAL VICTORIES, VANISHED WITHOUT A TRACE. VERY INTERESTING READING, ESPECIALLY THE ENDING, WHEN THE ONLY SURVIVORS,WHO HAD SAILED A PRIZE SHIP HOME, CAME TOGETHER TO TOAST THE SHIP AND HER COMMANDER, CAPTAIN JOHN YOUNG. THE BOOK ENDS WITH THE TOAST: ‘TO A BRAVE CAPTAIN, A GALLANT SHIP, AND GOOD FRIENDS’ ANSWER: ‘THE SARATOGA, MAY SHE REST IN PEACE’. BOOKS LIKE THIS ONCE MADE READERS PROUD OF OUR HISTORY. NOW AVAILABLE IN REPRINT FROM SOUTHERN SKIES PUBLISHING
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The Barnegat pirates were so notorious. In the 1700’s a book was published about their activities as to make the public aware and so the Government could try to put a stop to the problem. Barnegat High School mascot was the Pirate. The school later merged with Tuckerton High School which became Southern Regional High School in Manahawkin. When my father died in 1955, Peachy Perrine, it was said he was the last of the Barnegat Pirates.