Turn Joe

Turn Joe (fl. 1718) was an Irish pirate and privateer who left English service and sailed for Spain instead as a guarda costa privateer in the Caribbean.

History

Turn Joe, “a bold enterprising Fellow,” Off Long Island in the Bahamas in late 1718 his ships were attacked by three pirates led by John Auger and Phineas Bunce, who mistook the Spanish vessels for salt-trading sloops. The pirate vessel commanded by Bunce approached and demanded the Spanish ships surrender but was met with a hail of small arms fire, killing or wounding many of the pirates. The survivors leapt overboard and swam ashore. The second pirate ship mistook the gunfire as Bunce's and approached the anchored ships, only to be met with gunfire. Again many of them were wounded and the remainder swam ashore. The third pirate ship repeated the mistakes of the first two and was captured immediately afterward. Turn Joe's Spanish ships suffered no casualties. Turn Joe himself was eventually hunted down and killed by privateer John Bonnevie.

Note that while trial records for Bunce and others confirm that "the said Pirates proceeded to Stocking Island where meeting the Spaniards, the Pirates were themselves taken and put ashore," they do not mention Turn Joe by name. The only information on him comes from Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, which is of marginal reliability.