


Ward was lodging in Portsmouth when he heard a rumour that was to change his life. What is the origin and meaning of the pirate expression ‘shiver me timbers’?.“Where are the days that have been … when we might sing, swear, drink, drab and kill men as freely as your cake-makers do flies?” Ward yearned for the recent past, “when the whole sea was our empire, where we rob at will”. According to an acquaintance, Andrew Barker, he bemoaned his ill fortune. James VI and I – successor to Elizabeth I – banned all privateering expeditions and Ward found himself out of work. Ward’s seafaring life took a knock in the summer of 1604 when the Anglo-Spanish war came to an end. Yet it was certainly during this time that he learned his piratical tricks. It is not known whether Ward was successful as a privateer, for these formative years of his career have been lost to history. The rest was divided between the ship’s owner and the crew. The deal was simple: the Crown received five per cent of the loot and the Lord Admiral’s agents took 10 per cent. Ward was one of many mariners who turned to privateering – a semi-legalised form of piracy in which Elizabeth I issued licences to anyone intending to plunder ships that belonged to the hated Spanish. The first inkling of his future talents came with the defeat of the Spanish Armada. An out-and-out wastrel who spent much of his time getting drunk, he would “sit melancholy, speak doggedly … repine at other men’s good fortunes”. Born into an impoverished family c1553, his early life was spent fishing the tidal waters of his native Kent.
