BLACK JACK THE PIRATE -

Anderson came to Australia from America to hunt whales and seals along the southern coast.

He initially operated in South Australian waters around Kangaroo Island and out into Bass Straight.

Jack and his crew then got passage to Middle Island (off Esperance in W.A.) aboard the ship Mountaineer. After dropping Anderson and his crew at Middle Island, the Mountaineer continued on to Albany. *

The ship then started back toward the east again but was wrecked at Thistle Cove. The survivors took to the sea in a small whaleboat and headed for Middle Island as they knew Anderson and his men were there.

The journey took three days and once there the survivors spent two weeks recovering before the captain of the Mountaineer and members of his crew took the whaleboat and headed for Albany.

What became of them remains a mystery as no record of their arrival exists.

Two passengers from the Mountaineer (brother and sister James and Dorothea Newell ) remained on Middle Island. After some time Dorothea moved in with Anderson and his two Aboriginal ‘wives’.

The two Aboriginal women who had been kidnapped in South Australia after Anderson had killed their husbands and babies.

Then Jack had a falling out with Dorothea’s brother and a member of his crew named James Manning. Manning accused Black Jack of stealing money from him and as a result, Black Jack took the two men to the mainland where he abandoned them with no supplies or water.

Somehow the men made it to Albany alive and sought out the local Justice of the Peace to lodge complaints about Anderson.

Probably on his next visit to Albany for supplies, Anderson was arrested and in September 1835 he appeared in court.

Thanks to evidence given by Dorothea, Black Jack was acquitted.

He and his men and women returned to Middle Island and while they engaged in whaling and sealing, they are said to have robbed passing ships and so Jack became Australia’s first (and perhaps only) pirate.

Black Jack found himself in court again some time later, charged with stealing provisions from a boat but again he was not dealt with harshly and returned to Middle Island again.

On Christmas Day 1837 Anderson was murdered in his sleep ** by other members of his crew. The crew then scattered for fear of being charged with murder.

Dorothea remained in Albany, as did her brother James. James married an Aboriginal woman named Pippin and Dorothea was married twice.

The house that their father had built in Albany is today known as Old Surrey and is thought to be the longest continually occupied building in Western Australia.

* There is another story that claims that Anderson arrived in Albany aboard the American whaling vessel Vigilant in 1826. During a drunken fight a man was killed and Anderson and his men then stole a boat and escaped to Middle Island.

** Anderson is said to have died as the result of having his throat cut but also by ‘having his brains blown out’.

As is usual with these sorts of stories, the ‘facts’ change with almost every retelling of them..

Black Jack Anderson the pirate

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