Background
William Henry Hayes was probably born in 1827 or 1829 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. He was one of three sons of Henry Hayes, a grog-shanty keeper.
William Henry Hayes was probably born in 1827 or 1829 in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. He was one of three sons of Henry Hayes, a grog-shanty keeper.
Hayes became a sailor on the Great Lakes after running away from home. He is believed to have left New York as a passenger of the Canton on 4 March 1853, although when the ship reached Singapore on 11 July 1853 it was captained by Hayes, and sold by him there shortly after arrival.
Disposing of the Canton, he made voyages to San Francisco and Shanghai, then bought back his old ship, renamed it the C. W. Bradley--in honor of Charles William Bradley--mortgaged it for $3, 000, secured goods and supplies on credit, and scurried out of Singapore November 20, 1856, without obtaining clearance papers.
With modifications to suit circumstances he continued to use this technique for twenty years. Most of his transactions were as legitimate probably as those of the ordinary trader; many of the stories that grew with tropical luxuriance around his name are merely fabulous, some having been started by himself; but his malodorous, far-reaching reputation is grounded on a substantial, however indeterminable, stratum of swindling and miscellaneous rascality.
He was arrested at various times but usually managed to escape or to obtain his discharge. Into certain of his exploits, too, he injected a breezy waggery that won him in some quarters toleration and even admiration. His operations extended from San Francisco to the Hawaiian Islands, the Fijis, the Samoas, New Zealand, Australia, and many remote islands of the South Seas.
In 1867 he made himself useful and agreeable to James Chalmers, the English missionary.
Later he engaged in blackbirding--that is, in kidnapping Polynesians and selling them as slaves in the Fiji Islands. For this he was arrested by the British authorities but as usual came off scot free.
In 1870 he raided and demolished the German consulate at Apia (Samoan Islands). In 1875 he was arrested by Spanish officials while attempting to rescue prisoners from Guam, and was imprisoned for some months at Manila.
While the cause of his death is not very clear, some sources provide the information about the ship's cook Peter Radeck, "Dutch Pete", who, presumably, responded to threats from Hayes and killed him. It is understood that Hayes was shot with a revolver, struck on the skull with an iron implement and thrown overboard.
William Henry Hayes was a notorious American-born ship's captain and blackbirder of the 19th century. He operated across the breadth of the Pacific in the 1850s, and was described as a South Sea pirate and "the last of the buccaneers. " His success was due in large part to his fine appearance and ingratiating address, to his skill in evading the English, American, and Spanish authorities, and to the difficulty of running him down and getting tangible evidence against him.
Hayes was a large man who used intimidation against his crew, although he could be very charming if he chose to be. He was also notorious for his brutal treatment of native women on various islands.
Edward Reeves, who met him in New Zealand about 1864, describes him as a "stout, bald, pleasant-looking man, of good manners; chivalrous, with a certain, or rather uncertain, code of honour of his own; loyal to anyone who did him a good turn; gentle to animals, fond of all kinds of pets, especially of birds. Of these he had a number, and he treated them with tender care. " However, James A. Michener and A. Grove Day, in their account of his life, warn that it is almost impossible to separate fact from legend in his life; they described Hayes as "a cheap swindler, a bully, a minor confidence man, a thief, a ready bigamist" and commented that there is no evidence that Hayes ever took a ship by force in the tradition of a pirate or privateer.
On August 25, 1857, in Penwortham, Western Australia, Hayes married Mrs. Amelia Littleton, who with two sons and a daughter survived him.
