Black Sheep Swashbuckler: the story of Bully Hayes
Bully Hayes is famous as a charismatic "pirate" of the South Pacific. But most stories gloss over his more heinous crimes: Slavery, sexual assault and the brutal abuse of his crew.
Bully Hayes is a man who made his mark on the Pacific. His image today is as a swashbuckling rogue who swindled his way from China to California, from Apia to Akaroa.
Bully could leap from the floor of a ballroom and kick the ceiling, he captured the notorious corsair Eli Boggs, he was the ringmaster of a circus on the Australian goldfields.
It's a life story that's inspired several books and even one Hollywood movie starring Tommy Lee Jones. But those stories usually skip over the nastier side of Bully Hayes: His brutal treatment of his crew, his career as a slaver, the multiple accusations of rape and paedophilia.
"He had this reputation of being a scoundrel from birth," says maritime historian Joan Druett, author of The Notorious Captain Hayes. "But in those days you could print anything you like, and if it was sensational enough and popular enough - all the other papers would copy it!"
Bully Hayes (real name: William Henry Hayes) was an international criminal celebrity. Through the 1860s and 70s his name appeared in newspapers as far afield as Hawaii and Singapore. Virtually every paper referred to him as "The Notorious Captain Hayes".
Some of the stories printed in the papers were true. For example his astounding capture of the American pirate Eli Boggs - beating him into submission as the pair grappled in the ocean, surrounded by the burning wreckage of Eli's ship. This despite Eli being armed to the teeth - literally! (he'd jumped overboard with a cutlass clamped in his jaws).
Other stories are more dubious and some seem to have been made up by Bully himself. "He liked having this spectacular reputation, and he added to it," Joan Druett explains.
According to one origin story (almost certainly invented by Bully) he was a US Navy Captain on the China station who was Court Martialed after hanging 25 Chinese pirates without a trial.
"But according to what records there are he 18 or 19 years old at the time. Which makes it a bit unlikely he was in charge of a US gunboat," says Joan.
A more credible story is that Bully learned to sale as a merchant on the Great Lakes near his hometown of Cleveland, Ohio.
He is then said to have got a job with the Chinese Navy, but it didn't take long for this position to turn into a criminal enterprise with the aid of another American captain, Ben Pease.
Bully and Pease sailed all around China extorting merchants for "protection" from pirates. "They had a protection racket. They were mobsters," Joan explains…