Richard Tookerman

Richard Tookerman (1691–1723, last name also Tuckerman) was born on 16 May 1691 in Devon, Cornwall, England. He was the son of Josias Tookerman, a clergyman, and younger brother of Josias Tookerman II, a clergyman sent by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) to Jamaica. He married Katherine Grant, widow of John Grant of Charleston, South Carolina by 1717. As a pirate, smuggler, and trader active in the Caribbean and the Carolinas, he became best known for involvement with pirates Stede Bonnet and Bartholomew Roberts.

History

Tookerman was born in England and grew up in Jamaica before moving to Charleston. He made his fortune making trading runs between the Carolinas and the Bahamas, supplying goods to the pirate-friendly colonies there. When Charleston merchants wanted to outfit two sloops in 1718 to hunt down pirates plaguing their waterways, one of the ones they commandeered was Tookerman's 50-ton, 8-gun Sea Nymph. They left it under the command of Tookerman’s acquaintance Fayrer Hall.

Bonnet was captured and imprisoned, but escaped in October 1718 with his ship’s master David Herriot. Tookerman provided them with arms, canoes, and slave guides and they rowed out of the harbor, where strong winds forced them ashore at Sullivan’s Island. Rhett took a party to retrieve him; Herriot and the slaves were killed and Bonnet was returned to custody, after which he was tried and hung. Governor Johnson imprisoned Tookerman but had to release him for lack of evidence. Tookerman was notoriously litigious, filing lawsuits and counter-suits against Rhett and many others. Roberts, amused by their request, gave them supplies and his blessing. Roberts also traded sailors with them, trading eighteen black slaves to them for four of their crew. He and his crew remarked that Tookerman and Porter were not typical pirates but were “private pirates” – those who made money trading with pirates without doing any real piracy of their own.

Governor Woodes Rogers noted rumors in 1721 that Tookerman had turned to piracy with Porter. Tookerman was arrested again in June of that year in Port Royal for firing a salute on King James II’s birthday, betraying his Jacobite sympathies. By this time he was serving as ship’s master aboard the Adventure under Captain Henry Wills. Tookerman was sent to London for trial but was granted a writ of Habeas Corpus allowing him to be tried in Charleston. Tookerman died en route home from the Caribbean in 1723.