page_title: Emeric Essex Vidal
section_title: West Indies.  Putting down pirates.
hierarchical_section_title: Emeric Essex Vidal / Work / West Indies.  Putting down pirates.
caption_attribution_description: English: A view from Admiral's Pen, near Kingston, Jamaica. Print of watercolour by E.E. Vidal. Admiral's pen was the house of the naval officer commanding the West India station.
context_page_description: Emeric Essex Vidal was an English watercolourist and naval officer. His opportunities for travel, his curiosity about local customs and human types, and his eye for the picturesque, led him to make paintings which are now historical resources. A landscape painter and a costumbrista, he was the first visual artist to leave records of the ordinary inhabitants of the newly emergent Argentina and Uruguay, including the first depictions of gauchos. He also left records of Canada, Brazil, the West Indies and St Helena, where he sketched the newly deceased Napoleon.
  No full-length biography of Vidal yet exists; only brief accounts, written from the viewpoints of the lands he visited. Although a number of his watercolours have been published as hand-coloured aquatints, or by modern printing methods, or sold at auction, it is plausible that most have been lost or await rediscovery in private collections.
context_section_description: In 1823 Vidal transferred to the West India station, serving on board HMS Gloucester as secretary to his old commander Commodore Owen.  The squadron was based at Port Royal, Jamaica, formerly headquarters of the pirates of the Caribbean, but now of the Royal Navy, whose job it was to put them down.
  Pirates were troublesome, and were vigorously pursued.  An American squadron commanded by Commodore David Porter was engaged on similar duty.  Less than ten years before, the two countries had been at war, but now the local commanders acting on their own initiative evolved a cooperation.  Owen's letters to Porter — drafted by his secretary in ultra-courteous language — exemplify Vidal in his professional role of floating diplomacy secretariat.  An extract:
  I shall always have great pleasure in cultivating with yourself, and between the officers and others we respectively command, that confidence and amicable feeling, which it is no less my inclination than my duty to preserve, by all means in my power...
  I beg, also, further to acquaint you that, after a patient investigation in a court of vice admiralty in this island, the captain and nineteen of the crew of the pirate schooner Zaragozana, captured by the boats of his Majesty's ships Tyne and Thracian, after communicating with you in the Bahama channel in the month of March, have been condemned to death...
   The letter continued:
  This, together with the numerous vessels which have been destroyed of late, I hope will give a check to the nefarious practices of these remorseless depredators, and relieve the peaceful trader from all fear of future outrage. -
  And, in the hope of seeing this great end accomplished by the exertions of the several individuals we respectively command, in which we may preserve a commendable rivalry, I have the honor to subscribe myself, sir, your very obedient and humble servant, E.W.C.R. Owen.
caption: View from Admiral's Pen, with shipping in distance (print)
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