The Notorious Captain Hayes By Joan Druett Published by HarperCollins Paperback RRP $36.99 Reviewed by Paul Brooks
Subtitled The Remarkable True Story of William 'Bully' Hayes, Pirate of the Pacific, the book sets out to show the reader just how bad Bully Hayes was. We are, however, left with the impression that he was more annoyingthan criminal, more 'bully' than pirate, although many of his contemporaries would agree with Joan Druett. Not a pirate in the traditional sense of the word, Hayes nevertheless amassed enough brownie points to be considered the Pacific's next best thing. Pirates were a seafaring feature of the 18th century, mostly, a little too early for the South Pacific to claim any one cutlass-waving buccaneer as its own. There was no Kidd nor Teach that, although they may have ventured into that ocean dubbed "peaceful" by Balboa, could ever be considered native to the ocean nor its islands in the south. Then along came 'Bully' Hayes. A rogue, yes, a scoundrel and, according to numerous, conflicting reports, a criminal. Joan Druett has sifted through the evidence, newspaper stories, eye witness accounts, ships' logs and records and documents of all sorts, to separate fact from fabulous. She has left us with a portrait of an irritating, dishonest, giant of a man with poor morals and a habit of turning up in the wrong place at the wrong time. That he owed a lot of people a lot of money is not disputed, and that he had his wicked way with women over too broad an age range is on record, but a pirate? Perhaps we are conditioned to the Errol Flynn/Johnny Depp characterisation and Hayes does not quite fit that description. Regardless, Joan Druett has done an impressive job and presented us with the facts and the opinion of a lot of his contemporaries, many of whom were left much the poorer by his antics and activities. Whatever you think of him, William Hayes was a character and his story needed to be told.
