Pirates of the Solent

The craggy Rolling Stone may well have inspired Johnny Depp's Jack Sparrow character in the latest Pirates Of The Caribbean film saga, but it is not an image Foxton would have been keen to cultivate.

Foxton did not have a peg-leg either or a noisy parrot squawking "pieces of eight" from, one imagines, a rather soiled shoulder.

Similarly, it is fair to assume he was not a hook-handed buffoon who ran scared from children like J M Barrie's Peter Pan creation.

Or that he posed Errol Flynn-style stripped manfully to the waist, a flashing smile defying a beating sun.

No, Foxton was just a seafarer from Southampton who preferred the murky gloom of the Solent to the crystal blue waters of some far-flung tropical idyll.

But at least he was the real deal.

Moreover, the essential nuggets of Foxton's story a sketchy yet intoxicating mix of violence, drama and farce lead to a timely and inescapable conclusion: with due respect to the quixotic Depp, the tantalising glimpses of Foxton's life hint at a reality infinitely more remarkable than celluloid fantasy.

The tale starts in the winter of 1382 with Portuguese merchant John Gonzales and his ship, Seint Marie de Grace.

He had loaded the vessel in Portugal with 3,000 boxes of figs and raisins and 40 tons of wine. Together with a shipment of corn and other cereals, the laden ship was worth a small fortune.

Gonzales then set sail for medieval Southampton, a port town dependent upon Gascony wine imports and English wool exports.

Forty-four years earlier, the town had been sacked by French and Genoese raiders, almost ending two centuries of economic prosperity.

But by the time Gonzales approached that December day in 1382, Southampton's northern defences had been fortified with substantial towers named Arundel and Polymond in honour of the Keeper of the Town and mayor respectively.

Then the trouble started.

Once the Seint Marie passed the Isle of Wight, a pirate ship containing 80 men moved in for the kill.

Owned by William Foxton, the vessel was under the command of his son John who gave chase while his ruffians bellowed abuse from the decks.

A ferocious attack was launched but Gonzales managed to limp in to Southampton where he dropped anchor.

A stand-off followed during which Gonzales could be heard proclaiming that he was a gentleman and ally of the English Crown. Foxton, meanwhile, realised he might need back-up. The records suggest a council of war was then held and a formidable force mustered as a result, commanded by Foxton and the masters of the allied vessels.

Three days passed before the Seint Marie was again attacked and this time boarded before the Portuguese officers were dragged off.

English sailors then replaced the Gonzales crew before the Seint Marie sailed out into the Solent.

Details of what exactly happened next are sadly lacking, but it is clear a mishap of Captain Pugwash proportions beset the Seint Marie.

Indeed, the vessel proceeded to sink, all her cargo was lost and Gonzales was left to face "great ruin."

The following year fuming Gonzales demanded that Foxton be called upon to answer for his actions.

But the row dragged on until King Richard II ordered the sheriff of Hampshire to appont a jury of 24, half of whom were to be foreigners, to consider the case.

The aggrieved parties duly assembled at Westminster - but no jurors came.

It was left to the sheriff to round up the errant jurors who met some months later to pronounce Gonzales was entitled to nothing because Foxton was not guilty.

This was almost standard practice: local jurors were characteristically reluctant to convict local men on the word of a foreigner.

The Foxton affair was hardly an isolated incident. Piracy, like murder, is one of the oldest human activities and the smell of fear had hung over the Solent since trading began.

Piracy stalked the Southampton Gascony trade for most of the 14th Century. In 1329, for example, the ship La Katerine owned by Hugh Samson was stolen together with its 180 tons of wine. Next La Jonette, a ship owned by Thomas Byndon, vanished with its Bordeaux wine as it made its way to Southampton.

Then, for good measure, pirates from Winchelsea terrorised the south coast. On one occasion thirty of their ships appeared at Southampton where they attacked and burnt fifteen vessels blocking the way to the harbour.

The alarmed burgess offered the raiders two good ships as an inducement to leave but the offer was rejected and the pirates sailed off after destroying two more vessels.

Meanwhile, it became increasingly difficult to say where piracy ended and legitimate war began.

Indeed, when Henry V became king in 1413 and revived war between England and France, Genoese trade vessels sailing with the French fleet were regarded as fair game by English plunderers.

In ine incident, three huge Genoese "carrack" ships were even captured and brought into Southampton Water where they became part of the King's fleet with new, English crews.

Yet a century later, during Henry VIII's reign, there were murmurs of disquiet and in 1525 Margaret of Savoy complained to the King about Hampshire's sea robbers.

She specifically mentioned one Michael Daredare, a Navarese and an ally who was plundered by the captain of a galleon "now of Hanthune" after promises of a safe passage were disregarded by locals.

Thirteen years earlier the good lady had angrily cited the case of Jaquet Berenghier, a merchant of Lille, who was stopped at sea returning from a trade voyage. Unfortunately for Berenghier, the war with France was still waging and he was pressed into service as a gunner by "Master Christopher", the commander of a Hampshire warship.

When Berenghier complained, he was stretched on the rack before being delivered to the Lord High Admiral in Southampton. There he was jailed, had his ears slit and was threatened with hanging.

Nonetheless, concern failed to subside and in 1527 the Mayor of Southampton was nervously writing to Cardinal Wolsey in a bid to explain his failure to suppress blatant and seemingly unstoppable levels of piracy.

Yet even when Henry VIII tried to make an example of Henry Dale of Southampton, the accused secured a speedy acquittal by showing he had not been to sea on the day in question.

During Elizabeth I's reign in the late 1500's, pirates were offered new temptations.

Territories in the New World, stretching from northern California to the tip of South America, had now been seized by the Spanish and the treasures of the Aztec and Inca peoples was crammed aboard vessels with the silver from Peru and Equador.

When the plunderers began shipping their booty through the Caribbean and out across the Atlantic to Spain, pirates were naturally waiting.

Further, sea captains like Francis Drake attacked Spanish vessels with the permission of the government and when the Nombre de Dois was raided in 1572, he seized 15 tonnes of gold and thousands of silver dollars.

It was all the encouragement that was needed and the new "privateers" raiders operating with official support came to rely on ports like Southampton for the building of their ships.

Then, when a number of English ships were ransacked in Spanish harbours in 1585, the Admiralty issued "letters of reprisal" to those who could prove their loss. In effect, they were licences to set forth with armed vessels to capture Spanish goods.

The two nations were at unofficial war.

And it was a war waged by entrepreneurs like Southampton's Thomas Heaton. A boat owner and privateering magnate, his vessels like the 300-ton Bevis were specifically made to take part in the pirate war.

Southampton, Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight became England's premier "privateers" base after London and some 25 vessels from Southampton went to "war" in this way from 1589 to 1591, amassing around £22,000 in the process.

Piracy had now grown into a vast and complicated business with entrenched vested interests.

Crucially, the backers of piracy were too closely intertwined with the administration of the law and too close in blood to the ruling caste to be rooted out without civil disturbance.

And while three sea robbers were hanged in Southampton in 1614, the 1650-1720 period became a golden era for piracy and one only ended by the emergence of powerful European navies.

Today it's left for Depp and co. to keep alive the memory of John Foxton and his ilk.

And the booty is rather more plentiful than it was in the days of plunder.

The makers of Pirates of the Caribbean expect £540m in global merchandise sales for the sequel film that's five times the production budget and more than the first film took at the box office.

Poor John Foxton will be turning in his blood-stained grave.

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TEN TOP PIRATES real and fictional
1. Blackbeard (Edward Teach): The undisputed Daddy of them all. No one did more to create the murderous pirate image than Teach who is thought to have been an Englishman. With braided beard and laden with weapons, Teach emerged from a dense black smoke created by smouldering cannon fuses beneath his hat. Theatrics combined with viciousness though and crew members were routinely slaughtered to remind all who was boss. His ship, Queen Anne's Revenge, terrorised the Caribbean from 1717-18. Teach beat off a British Navy warship, captured four ships in Honduras and held the entire town of Charleston in South Carolina to ransom. But the Royal Navy got him in the end when Lieutenant Robert Maynard boarded his ship and killed him. Mind you, it took 20 cutlass slashes and five pistol shots to fell the giant.

2. Redbeard: This name actually applied to two brothers, Aruj and Khair-ed-Din, also popularly known as the Barbarossa brothers due to the colour of their hair. Infamous ruffians who extended Muslim power in the Mediterranean in the 1500s.

3. William Kidd: Scots-born Kidd was a successful New York-based businessman who initially tried his hand at pirate hunting. But he was not a skilled seaman and ended up killing a crew member and turning pirate himself in the Indian Ocean. After seizing the vessel Quedah Merchant, he returned to New York hoping for a pardon. No such luck. He was sent to London for trial and sentenced to death in 1701. Totally drunk on his day of execution, Kidd leapt about so much that the hangman's rope snapped. But he was strung up again and his dead body coated with tar and placed in an iron cage. It hung by the banks of the Thames for years as a warning to other pirates.

4. Henry Avery: A jolly sea captain by all accounts who served in the Royal Navy before entering into Spanish pay as a privateer in 1694. He captured the British vessel Charles II and set off to Madagascar as a pirate. He soon had six ships under his command. Returned to England with his riches and vanished.

5. Sir Francis Drake: Difficult one, this. Drake (1540-96), the first Englishman to sail around the world, attacked other ships with the unofficial' blessing of Elizabeth I. Hence regarded as a criminal by his enemies and a hero in England. Plundered Spanish ships at will even when the two nations were not at war just like any self-respecting pirate would.

6. Sir Henry Morgan: Born in 1635, he was kidnapped and taken to Barbados to work as a servant. Escaped and joined Jamaican-based buccaneers before helping save the island from Spanish invasion and securing 100,000 pieces of eight in the process. When he was sent back to England to stand trial for piracy, King Charles II forgave him and made him a knight. Morgan then returned to Jamaica as deputy-governor where he died in 1688. What you might describe as a pretty full life.

7. Mary Read and Anne Bonny: though few in number, there have always been women pirates. Read and Bonny were Caribbean pirates who joined forces for a short time before their ship was captured by the Royal Navy in 1720. Bonny's pirate partner, Calico Jack, was hanged but Mary and Anne were spared because they were pregnant. While Mary soon died of fever in prison, Anne vanished without trace.

8. Long John Silver: the one-legged, parrot carrying star of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island is probably the best known fictional pirate of the lot. Stevenson used the names of real pirates and drew on his own seafaring experience to make the voyage of the Hispaniola seem realistic.

9. Captain Hook: the hapless Hook, pursued to his death by the crocodile that ate his hand, can also claim the No. 1 spot as our favourite fictional pirate. Hook, of course, is the villain in J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, written in 1904, where he runs amok in a Never-Never Land peopled by lost children, fairies, Indians and pirates.

10. Captain Pugwash: A pirate colossus as far as under-5's are concerned. The fictitious, bungling master of the Black Pig continues to rely on his resourceful cabin boy Tom to get him out of high sea scrapes. Saucy innuendo has ensured the Captain's enduring TV appeal among adults. Catchy theme music too.

PIRATE FACTS: 1. Piracy has blighted seafaring for centuries. In 3,000 BC Egyptians used the first ships for long sea voyages and piracy began.

2. Even Roman leader Julius Caesar was once captured by pirates in 78BC. A ransom was paid and he returned with 500 men to kill his captors.

3. Thousands of pirates were active from 1650-1720, the "golden age" of piracy. After this, piracy declined thanks to powerful navies patrolling the world's oceans. However piracy remains rife today, encouraged by the decline of the British, Dutch and French navies in the second half of the 20th century. It was estimated 182 ships were attacked by pirates in 2000, and almost half of the reported incidents occurred in the South China Sea.

4. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, the pirates most feared by Europeans were the Muslim corsairs of North Africa who sailed massive galleys with up to 300 oarsmen. The corsairs were based along the Barbary Coast - the seaboard of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli.

5. The name for the pirate flag, the Jolly Roger, probably comes from the French words jolie rouge, meaning "lovely red." So early variations of the skull and crossbones design were probably red rather than black.

6. Sorry Mr Depp, but few pirates - if any - wore earrings. They would have got torn in the rigging. Parrots on shoulders were a no-no too.

7. During the Seventeenth Century, pirates escaping the hangman's noose were flogged or branded with the letter P on the forehead.

8. Daniel Defoe's fictitious story of Robinson Crusoe was based on the real-life adventure of Alexander Selkirk who sailed with pirate William Dampier in 1707. The pair argued and Selkirk asked to be set ashore on the uninhabited island of Juan Fernandez. As the pirate sailed off, Selkirk changed his mind. It was four years before marooned Selkirk was rescued.

9. The punishment of making a man walk the plank over a shark-infested sea is largely myth. But there are sadistic tales of pirate victims being set alight, fired from cannon, blinded and marooned.

10. Pieces of Eight, the famous Spanish coins, were worth one silver dollar. They were called pieces of eight because they were worth eight "reals" and a real was one eighth of a dollar.