The Spectre of “Bloody Morgan” Ian Fleming’s Use of the Pirate Motif

This article explores Ian Fleming's use of the pirate motif within several of his James Bond novels and short stories and argues that the figure of the pirate serves as a prototype for some of Fleming's most important characters - both Bond's allies and adversaries. Moreover, I contend that the pirate motif is integral to epistemological decodings of the moral and ethical politics of the Bond character himself, and that the relationship between Bond and piracy draws implicit attention to the ways in which Bond's legal transgressions are often overlooked or ignored.

and to help with maritime archaeology, during which he often salvaged pewter tableware and pub signs (116). He was also an observer of the unsuccessful search for the treasure of the pirate Olivier Levasseur in the Seychelles (247). As Fleming wrote his James Bond novels in Jamaica, it can be argued that his writings were heavily influenced by the cultural lore of pirate history in Kingston at the time. Parker notes that "Fleming's Jamaica, or at least the first impressions of it, with the pirates, redcoats and admirals, machetes and ghost-stories, awoke in him the adventure stories of his childhood" (119). It was the likes of these stories which "provided fuel for the 'four penny horrors' that Fleming said he was raised on" (117). Taken together, Fleming's imagination, spawned by much of his own childhood readings and memories, as well as the piratical past of his surroundings in Jamaica, suggests that pirates and pirate lore hold a far greater place of importance in the James Bond novels than might appear at a cursory glance. Alongside Fleming's deep interest in pirate history, James Bond grew out of another of Fleming's maritime activities: his own war-time experiences as a naval officer. Accordingly, both Fleming and Bond were sailors and were well acquainted with naval life. According to Lisa Funnell and Klaus Dodds, Bond is "'master' of [the] sea," a hero who has overcome the fluid element (2017,4). While Fleming's closeness to shipboard life and to the sea may account for his (and Bond's) enduring fascination with piratical culture, Matthew Parker argues that pirates also "appealed to the Tory part of Fleming's imagination: they were deviltake-the-hindmost, self-reliant and vigorous" (117), characteristics which Bond also shares. In other words, Bond is not only master of the sea, but he has a piratical air, himself.
Although the piratical influences of Fleming's writing have frequently been pointed out (Frenk and Krug 2009, 200-201;Halloran 2005, 159-160; Parker 2014), a detailed analysis of Fleming's engagement with the trope of the pirate has remained conspicuously absent from Bond scholarship. The focus of this article, then, is on the relationship between James Bond and piracy, and on the ways in which elements of the pirate narrative functions within the conventions of Fleming's spy novels. In what follows, I analyse the extent to which the literary texts of James Bond utilise the pirate trope, examining the multiple ways in which the underlying roots of the Bond phenomenon are steeped not so much in the origins of spy fiction as they are in pirate fiction and pirate history.
The references to pirates and to pirating in Fleming's novels are numerous, and they showcase Fleming's in-depth knowledge and wide-ranging research in this area. Several of his novels refer, in particular, to two famous semihistorical piratical accounts: the General History (1724) by Captain Charles John-son 2 (2012e, 26; 2012c, 239; 2012j, 77; 135-136) and the History of American Buccaneers (1684) by Alexandre Exquemelin 3 (2012e, 216-217). For instance, at the beginning of Live and Let Die (1954), the pirate Francois L'Ollonais is mentioned (2012e, 17), a name which appears in Exquemelin's history on buccaneers, and which suggests that Fleming was familiar with this and other works of pirate history. Similarly, references to pirate fiction can also be found in Fleming's Bond novels: "Treasure Island" is the name given over to a small town in Jamaica, also in the novel Live and Let Die. Moreover, the villain's schemes in two of Fleming's novels follow a piratical plot-line: namely, the treasure hunts in both Live and Let Die and Goldfinger. Of these two, the former is centred around an attempt by the villain, Mister Big, to salvage Henry Morgan's lost treasure -which, incidentally, ends up in MI6's funds at the end of the novel. Thus, Live and Let Die depicts a quest for treasure in the classical sense. Conversely, in Goldfinger, Fleming parallels grand-scale bank robbery with piracy, noting that "[i]t was modern piracy with all the old-time trimmings. Goldfinger was sacking Fort Knox as Bloody Morgan had sacked Panama" (2012d, 312). Vivian Halloran has claimed that Fleming's Bond novels can be seen as contemporary pirate fiction: she argues that Fleming employs two piractical features, in particular, which link Fleming's novels to pirate fiction. The first is the motif of the treasure chest which is symbolised by what she calls its "modern equivalent" (2005, 16) -such as the anonymous banking system in Nassau presented in Goldfinger, which the hoodlum convention in the novel intend to use to conceal their money after their grand heist of Fort Knox. The second feature belongs to a much broader genre of seafaring novels: namely, the association of Bond's foes with sea monsters (16)such as the mechanical "dragon" on Crab Key in the filmic Dr. No (1962), as well as the underwater sea-kraken which Dr. No keeps in the novel of the same name; the ravenous piranha fish that strip Mr. Big and Helga Brandt to the bone in Live and Let Die and the filmic You Only Live Twice (1967), respectively; the shark that chews off Felix Leiter's arm and leg in the novel of Live and Let Die and his leg in the film Licence to Kill (1989); and, on a much smaller scale, the Japanese fighting ship ( Johnson 1998, 58-59 " 1960). This is an important distinction, and one which I will explore in more detail momentarily.
But Emilio Largo is also a pirate in a further classical sense, 4 as he is bestknown as the owner of a "fine yacht" (2012j, 352), the Disco Volante, which, in the novel, is a much-admired vessel and one of the fastest and most modern ships of sunken in the waters off Nassau, in the Bahamas. So, in this instance, Largo, as a modern-day pirate, explicitly uses the myth of piracy and lost pirate treasure as a means to dissimulate his nefarious intentions: to hold the major world powers to ransom with the threat of nuclear devastation. The question of Largo's intent becomes paramount to Bond's investigation, as Bond notes: "we'll have to decide whether or not these people are hunting pieces of eight or 100,000,000" (180) -₤ the price at which SPECTRE, the organisation for whom Largo works, intends to ransom the bombs. 5 Thus, in his reference to the colloquial term for pirate gold ("pieces of eight"), Fleming deliberately underlines the piratical nature of Largo's and SPECTRE's plot to blackmail the major world powers. By the very nature of his actions (the widespread threat this plot poses to world safety), Largo is the hostis humani generis (the enemy of all; or, literally, the enemy of all humankind), which is another facet and early definition of the classical pirate -as someone who is opposed to the common rule of law and who therefore forfeits his own right to protection under it. 6 Another of Bond's foes who "scythed his way through people towards gold" is Auric Goldfinger. Goldfinger's plan to rob Fort Knox, the United States gold bullion depository, is described by Fleming as a piratical plot set within a contemporary context: "there was no difference [between Goldfinger's plot and the pirate's ploy] except that the weapons and techniques had been brought up to date" (2012d, 312). Goldfinger's raid on Fort Knox also involves the coldblooded killing of civilians who live in the surrounding towns in Kentucky, and is likened to the "raiding of Panama" by Henry Morgan in 1671 (309) -a comparison which evokes not only an historical act of piracy in itself, but which implicitly underlines the imperial nature of the pirate, in general, and Morgan in particular, who was a Welsh privateer and whose acts of insurgency were ratified by the English government when he was made Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica in 1674. Furthermore, once Goldfinger's operatives have removed the gold from the depository, Goldfinger intends to have the bullion supply shipped overseas via cargo ship. His use of this maritime escape route once again underlines the perception of his ploy as one of modern-day piracy. Indeed, Goldfinger's pathological obsession with gold (it is implied strongly that he even wishes to physi- Big (Buonaparte Ignacia Gallia) consciously indulgences in this comparison. In order to fulfill his goal of becoming "one of the first negro criminals," Big professedly adopts as his role model "Bloody Morgan," whom he calls "my kind patron" (2012e, 279-280), and from whom he wishes "fair wind" (289). Similarly, his strategy to instill fear through the mysterious yet sudden death of his opponents in the novel (26) is a direct imitation of Blackbeard, who lived by the principle "that if he did not now and then kill one of them, they would forget who he was" ( Johnson,59 primary operational transport is a ship, and the reader is informed that he was selected for his post in the Turkish secret service in the first place precisely because he was a ship owner (188). Kerim also discovers the tunnels beneath the Russian consulate in Istanbul using his rubber dinghy (201) and he spies on the Russians above using a specially-built periscope that is adapted from a submarine -a point which further emphasises his role as a roguish pirate, one who uses trickery to achieve his aims and to get one over on his opponents. Finally, Kerim's admission that he occasionally kills one of his opponents in order to gain the respect of his adversaries is directly reminiscent of the practices of Blackbeard, who did much the same in order to solidify his notoriety ( Johnson,59, as I mentioned above).
The question of Kerim's morality is one that has been picked up on by Bond scholars, most notable among them Umberto Eco, who regards Kerim as an "ambiguous" figure, one who possesses "many of the moral qualities of the The most piratical of all of Bond's allies, though, is Felix Leiter, whose physical appearance following his exploits in Live and Let Die most closely resembles the traditional pirate. In the novel, while Leiter is investigating one of Mr. Big's warehouses on the coast of Florida, he is dropped into a hidden trapdoor over a shark pool. Leiter survives the ordeal, but he loses an arm and a leg, and, upon recovery, is fitted with a hook and an artificial leg. In a sense, Bond's affinity with pirates and piracy was marked out from almost the very beginning of Fleming's oeuvre; Bond's closest ally throughout the novels (and, later, the films) is the physical embodiment of a traditional pirate -although it is worth noting that the filmic Leiter is never shown with either hook or artificial leg. The hook becomes Leiter's most distinguishing feature in the novels (an unfortunate addition for a supposed CIA spy), and the gleam of sunlight that is reflected from Bond's own moral and ethical ambiguities. Bond's affiliation with a certain kind of pirate, the "good" kind, is justified in order to ensure that the mandate he follows (Britain's policing of the wider world) is met, and his elimination of "bad" pirates -those who, like him, operate outside of the law, but do so for purely individual means -is a necessarily paradoxical undertaking: Bond must often step outside of the law, like the pirate, in order to reinforce it. In this way, it is impor - But if Bloody Morgan is the dark shadow underlying the character of James Bond, then Bond himself is both the celebrated icon of British nationalism as well as its dark stain; he is the piratical arm of the British government who is sanctioned to carry out (often classified) acts in the name of British power, and one whose forays outside of the law are regarded as necessary by those who make and officiate the law. The connection between Bloody Morgan and James Bond is not one that Fleming makes expressly; rather, it is left to the reader to draw inferences between the privateer Morgan and Bond's own brand of imperial piracy. Fleming's use of the pirate trope, particularly as it pertains to his central character, is not simply nostalgic in design, hearkening back anachronistically to a romantic cultural tradition; rather, it represents a key element in decoding the schematics of the Bond character. The subtle relationship that Fleming weaves between James Bond and the pirate calls implicit attention to the reader's epistemological approach to, or capacity to accurately interpret, the character of Bond himself, and the reader's recognition of Bond's bloodthirstiness, violence, and unlawfulness is directly linked to the extent to which the moral, ethical, and legal transgressions of the character are either deliberately ignored or overlooked altogether.