64] Letters to
the governors at Havana and St. Jago de Cuba were of no avail. English
trade routes were interrupted and dangerous, the turtling, trading and
fishing sloops, which supplied a great part of the food of Jamaica, were
robbed and seized, and Lynch was compelled to construct a galley of
fifty oars for their protection.[465] Pirates, it is true, were
frequently brought into Port Royal by the small frigates employed by the
governor, and there were numerous executions;[466] yet the outlaws
seemed to increase daily. Some black vessel was generally found hovering
about the island ready to pick up any who wished to join it, and when
the runaways were prevented from returning by the statute against
piracy, they retired to the Carolinas or to New England to dispose of
their loot and refit their ships.[467] When such retreats were available
the laws against piracy did not reduce buccaneering so much as they
depopulated Jamaica of its white inhabitants.

After 1680, indeed, the North American colonies became more and more the
resort of the pirates who were being driven from West Indian waters by
the stern measures of the English governors. Michel Landresson, _alias_
Breha, who had accompanied Pain in his expedition against St. Augustine
in 1683, and who had been a constant source of worriment to the
Jamaicans because of his attacks on the fishing sloops, sailed to Boston
and disposed of his booty of gold, silver, jewels and cocoa to the godly
New England merchants, who were only too ready to take advantage of so
profitable a trade and gladly fitted him out for another cruise.[468]
Pain himself appeared in Rhode Island, displayed the old commission to
hunt for pirates given him by Sir Thomas Lynch, and was protected by the
governor against the deputy-collector of customs, who endeavoured to
seize him and his ship.[469] The chief resort of the pirates, however,
was the colony of Carolina. Indented by numerous harbours and inlets,
the shores of Carolina had always afforded a safe refuge for refitting
and repairing after a cruise, and from 1670 onwards, when the region
began to be settled by colonists from England, the pirates found in the
new communities a second Jamaica, where they could sell their cargoes
and often recruit their forces. In the latter part of 1683 Sir Thomas
Lynch complained to the Lords of the Committee for Trade and
Plantations;[470] and in February of the following year the king, at the
suggestion of t