Prince of the Oyster Pirates
Based on true events.
1
The wind’s working with me tonight.
It cuts along the bay like a blade, sharp and steady, filling the sail and driving my little sloop past the edge of the mudflats. I stay low, eyes up, tiller under one hand, the other braced on the rail. No lantern. No talking. No mistakes. That’s the difference between a story and a sentence.
The boat’s mine—though not a soul in this city would call it legal. Thirty bucks and a handshake with a drunk who smelled like turpentine. She’s a patchwork of bad paint and soft wood, but she floats, and she doesn’t ask questions. That’s good enough. I’ve sailed worse. Hell, I’ve slept in worse.
The tide’s going out hard. I slide in close to the pilings, where the private beds sit fat and waiting just under the surface. Rich men’s oysters. Grown fat on salt and stolen land, guarded by hired guns who think a boy with mud on his boots is worth killing over mollusks. Doesn’t bother me. Never has. Theft only stings when it travels uphill.
I cut the line, let the sail spill, and drift the last few yards in silence. The only sounds are the slap of water, the whisper of canvas, and the soft churn of my own breath. I reach for the boathook, push off, and slide over the edge into the muck.
It sucks at my boots like it wants to keep me. The stink rises—sour, salty, alive. I keep my head down, crate under my arm, fingers moving fast in the cold. The trick’s in the feel: you learn to know the oysters by touch, the tightness of the shell, the way they anchor deep like they know who owns them. I pop them fast, twisting with the knife, dropping clusters into the crate.
Somewhere behind me, something shifts.
At first it’s just the sloop bumping gentle against a piling. But then—
“Hold up. You see that?”
A voice. Close. Two, maybe three.
“That’s a boat.”
“Where’s the lantern?”
I freeze. The crate’s half full. Good enough.
“Oi! You there!”
I don’t answer. I run.
The crate thuds against my ribs as I break for the boat, legs sliding through knee-deep muck. I drop the thing once—nearly lose it in the dark—but get it back up and launch myself into the sloop.
A shotgun goes off. Too far to hit me. Still loud enough to make the boards ring under my boots.
I fumble for the sheet, rip it hard, and let the wind take hold. The sail snaps full and yanks us forward, groaning under the weight of the wet crate and my own heartbeat knocking loose in my chest.
Another shot. Closer.
They’re chasing. I don’t look back. Looking back’s for cowards and fools.
I swing hard west, cut tight along the shoals, where only a pirate or a madman would risk his keel. The water shallows fast here—one wrong tack and I’ll split the hull open like a dropped melon. But they won’t follow. They never do. Not here.
One more shot. This one sings past my ear. I duck on instinct. Salt spray cuts across my face.
Then silence.
Just the wind again. Just me and the boat and the dark bay swallowing the rest.
I sail on until the lights are gone, until even the shouts vanish under the rush of tide and distance. Then I cut back behind a crumbling breaker wall near the far channel—my place. No one follows me here.
I let the crate drop and sit down beside it, soaked to the bone, breath heavy in my chest. My hands are shaking, scraped raw. Not from fear. From the rush. From being alive and still free and full of blood that hasn’t dried yet.
This isn’t about oysters. Never was.
It’s about them not stopping me.
Not yet.
2
I didn’t come to the bay for adventure. I came because I was broke, restless, and seventeen with more pride than sense. School was behind me. Work—real work—meant standing in line with bent men and dead eyes, waiting to be told what to do for pennies a day. No thank you.
The first time I saw the oyster pirates was from the docks. I was hauling fish guts for a nickel a bucket, stinking like rot, slipping in my own boots. They came in just before dawn—three boys on a battered yawl, laughing loud enough to make the dockhands scowl. One of them had a knife tucked into his boot, the blade still wet. Another tossed an oyster at a passing seagull just to watch it scatter. They looked like the kind of trouble you dream about when your stomach’s empty and your soul’s already halfway out the door.
That night, I followed them.
Didn’t talk to them. Just watched. Watched how they moved—quick and quiet, no wasted motion. Watched how the law didn’t touch them. Everyone knew who they were. No one stopped them.
They were kings without crowns. Outlaws without masters.
And I wanted in.
I borrowed thirty dollars from a woman I used to read books for, promised to pay her back once I had my feet under me. She said I was a charming little liar and gave me the money anyway. Found the boat from a whisky-soaked fisherman with a busted jaw and a toothless grin who said I reminded him of himself. I told him I’d take that as a compliment. He said I shouldn’t.
That first week, I barely slept. Not from fear—from hunger. I’d eat whatever I could buy with the few coins I made selling oysters before the sun came up. Sometimes I cracked a few open for myself, ate them raw with seawater still clinging to the shell. Once I got sick from a bad one. Threw up over the side until my ribs ached. Next morning, I was back on the beds. You learn quick out here: nothing comes easy, and everything worth stealing fights back.
The other pirates didn’t welcome me exactly. They weren’t a brotherhood. No handshakes. No shared spoils. But they knew my name within a week. Knew I wasn’t stupid. Knew I wasn’t scared. That was enough to keep them from cutting my line or running me off the beds.
There’s one I see more than the rest. Older than me, maybe twenty. Long coat, wool cap pulled low, knife always out. Calls himself Cutter. Says it’s not a nickname—it’s a promise. He’s faster than I am. Meaner, too. We don’t speak much, but when we do, it’s all teeth.
Last time we crossed, he told me, “You think you’re clever. But clever just gets you shot slower.”
I told him I’d rather be clever and bleeding than stupid and buried.
He smiled like I’d said something romantic.
There’s no loyalty out here. Just a shared understanding that we all hate the same men—the ones with deeds and titles, with badges and backroom handshakes. They claim the bay like they claim the sky, like there’s anything holy about ownership. But the water doesn’t care. It swallows rich and poor the same.
I’ve run jobs three nights in a row now. My hands are blistered, knees bruised, back stiff from the cold. But I’m lighter in my head than I’ve ever been. There’s no preacher whispering rules, no teacher correcting my tone. Just me, the boat, and the line between survival and legend.
Tomorrow, I’ll sell the haul behind the old stables to a man who won’t ask where I got it. He’ll pay in coin, heavy and warm, and I’ll eat something that didn’t come out of a tin. Maybe I’ll buy new boots. Maybe I’ll lie to the woman who loaned me the money and tell her I’ve taken honest work, just to see her smile again.
But tonight, I pull my coat tight, lie down in the belly of the boat, and let the bay rock me like something it doesn’t quite know what to do with.
Not a man. Not yet.
But something dangerous enough to become one.
3
Cutter’s already there when I slide in past the breakers.
His boat’s lashed to a half-submerged piling, sail half-down, bobbing like a corpse in shallow water. He’s standing with one foot on the gunwale, chewing a toothpick like it owes him money. Doesn’t wave. Doesn’t speak. Just watches as I drop anchor a dozen yards off and let the sloop settle.
“You’re late,” he calls.
“I wasn’t invited.”
He spits into the water, then squats and starts cutting something with his knife—rope maybe, or bait, or just to keep his hands busy. I watch his blade move in quick circles, steady as breathing.
I don’t trust him. Nobody does. But sometimes it’s safer to circle the same waters than cross into someone else’s.
“You hear about the new watchmen?” he asks, not looking up.
I shake my head.
“Rich bastards hired a couple old navy types. Not just drunks with guns anymore. Real uniforms. Real boats. They caught Rook last night near the north bank. Shot the rudder clean off his skiff. Would’ve bled him, too, if he hadn’t jumped overboard.”
“Rook can’t swim.”
“He can now.”
I glance at my own rig—patched sail, leaky hull, no protection worth a damn.
“What are they guarding?” I ask. “It’s oysters. Not silver.”
Cutter shrugs. “Doesn’t matter. We take, they chase. Makes ‘em feel like kings.”
I sit on the edge of the boat, peel off my gloves, and check the line. The salt’s working through the rope again—gonna need repair. Everything out here breaks eventually.
Cutter lights a stub of a cigarette with one hand. He holds it between two fingers like it offends him, then offers it to me across the gap.
I shake my head.
“You’re not like the rest,” he says, watching me. “You’ve got clean hands.”
I glance down. They’re scabbed and raw, nails chipped, one thumb still caked with dried blood from last night.
“Used to read books,” he adds. “Didn’t you?”
“A few.”
“Why steal oysters, then?”
“Because books don’t feed you.”
He grins, wide and mean. “No. But they make you think you’re better than the ones who do.”
I don’t answer. He’s not wrong.
He flicks the stub into the water, stands, stretches, and kicks a coil of rope aside. “We’re hitting the beds under the east bluff tonight. Deeper water. Less patrol. You coming?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
I nod at the horizon. “I’ve got something else in mind.”
He narrows his eyes. “Something big?”
I shrug. “Big enough.”
Cutter studies me a long moment. The sun’s going down behind his head, turning the sky red and bruised. He looks like a shadow with teeth.
“Well,” he says, “try not to get shot. I like having someone around who knows when to shut up.”
He unties his line, hoists the sail, and swings out without another word. I watch until his boat vanishes behind the jetty, then pull in my own anchor, hands stiff and cold.
I don’t know what I’m planning yet.
But I know this much:
I’m not going to keep raiding the same dead beds, fighting for scraps with boys who’d gut me for a clam. Cutter’s not wrong—there’s something in me that still believes in more than mud and hunger. But belief without action is just pride with nowhere to go.
So I’m going to take something that matters.
Something they’ll feel.
And when they come looking for who did it, I want them to say my name. Not with fear.
With respect.
4
The rain rolls in around midnight. Not the kind that washes anything clean—just enough to soak through the seams and make your bones ache. I pull the tarp over my shoulders and sit on the edge of the dock, watching the lights across the bay blur into halos.
I know the spot I’m after. It’s deeper than the others, harder to reach unless you know the tides like breath and can sail blind. Nobody touches it—not the pirates, not the watchmen. Too far, too risky. But I’ve mapped it in my head. Traced the current, marked the rocks. It’s there, waiting.
That bed hasn’t been picked in months.
They keep it off the books. Probably serve those oysters to the bankers and the railroad men, call it “reserve stock.” Whatever the reason, it’s fat. Full. Untouched.
I want it.
Not for money. Not even for the danger. For the story. For the fact that none of them—Cutter, the guards, the ones with deeds in their names—would dare it.
I push off just after two. Tide’s swinging in slow and high, wind cutting hard from the west. The sloop groans but obeys. I keep her lean—no lantern, no sound, sail tight against the gust. My coat’s soaked through before I’m halfway there. Doesn’t matter. The cold helps me focus.
I round the point near Fisherman’s Bluff and cut the line. Drift the last quarter mile on memory and instinct.
The bed rises from the water like a secret—shallow ridge, half-submerged, the shells shifting against each other in the tide. I drop anchor and slide overboard, boots landing silent in the silt. The bay’s black and bottomless on every side. One wrong step and I’m gone.
I don’t think about that. I work.
Every oyster I pry loose is a little rebellion. I don’t even bother with a crate—I line the floor of the sloop with wet burlap and dump them straight in. Faster that way. Riskier, too. I’m ankle-deep in water and stolen property when I hear it.
A low thrum.
Then a light.
Not a lantern. A search lamp.
Too bright. Too focused.
They’re using a motor launch.
I drop flat into the water. Mud rushes up my nose. I bite my lip hard to keep from coughing. The lamp sweeps past once, then swings back and catches the sloop broadside.
“Got one!” a voice shouts. “Boat anchored!”
I don’t move. I can’t. I’m half-submerged and half-frozen and there’s nowhere to go.
The launch cuts hard toward me, engine humming low like a threat. I hear boots on deck. I hear a rope swing out, hook the stern.
“Empty?” someone says.
“Hold on.”
I hear the burlap shift.
“Full. Son of a bitch’s been busy.”
“Where is he?”
“He’s here somewhere. Fan out.”
I press myself into the mud. My lungs scream. My fingers slip on a rock and I nearly cry out. I bite harder. Copper floods my mouth.
Another beam. Closer. It hits my boots.
Footsteps in water. Two men, maybe three. Close enough to hear them breathing.
Then a sound behind them—closer to shore. A clatter, like something dropped into the shallows. A voice, sharp and panicked.
“There!”
They pivot. The lamp swings away. The light goes with them.
I count to ten. Then twenty.
When I move, I move fast. Clamber into the sloop, cut the rope, shove off with both feet. The motor launch is still at the shoreline, voices raised, light bouncing wildly through the reeds.
I drop the sail, catch the wind, and vanish.
By the time they realize they’ve been tricked, I’m two points west and hugging the black edge of the bay. No one chases. No one sees.
Not until the next morning, when the sun hits the docks and the rich men find their private stash picked clean.
5
I don’t go back to the usual haunts. No stables. No alley trades. I keep the oysters hidden under damp canvas in the hold, tucked behind the rotting barrel I use for ballast. They’ll keep a day or two if the cold holds, and it’s holding. The whole city’s frozen in its bones. Even the drunks are walking straighter, trying to stay warm.
I wait until the market’s closing and the crowds thin out. Not the public stalls—those are crawling with badge-holders and taxmen. I go to a boarding house in Dogtown, where the back door always smells like coal smoke and cabbage and the man behind it never asks more than one question.
“You pull these yourself?”
I nod.
He pulls back the cloth. His face doesn’t change, but his voice does.
“Jesus.”
They’re massive. Round and fat and still clinging to bits of seaweed, like they were scared to let go. I didn’t even cull the smallest ones—just took what I could carry and ran. There must be sixty pounds of them.
He closes the cloth, nods to himself, then reaches into a tin box under the stove.
“You didn’t get these from me.”
“I was never here.”
He hands me a stack of coins, more than I’ve ever held at once. My fingers twitch around it. There’s enough here to buy another boat. Enough to eat well for a month. Enough to disappear for a while, if a man had the sense.
I walk out with the weight of it in my pocket, heavier than the oysters ever were. It clinks against my thigh with every step. Like a bell. Like a dare.
The sun’s already down. Fog creeping in off the wharves. I pass Cutter leaning against a post near the livery, boots muddy, collar up, eyes sharp. He falls in step without a word.
“You pulled it off,” he says finally.
“I did.”
“That was you on the private beds.”
I don’t answer. Don’t need to.
He whistles. “They’re calling it sabotage. Said someone tampered with the buoys. One of the guards got fired. Another’s drinking himself blind.”
I say nothing.
“You’re making enemies.”
“Good.”
“You’re gonna make a name.”
“I’m not after a name.”
Cutter grins. “Sure you are. We all are.”
He peels off down an alley. I keep walking. Past the dry docks. Past the tenements where children cry into coal-dust pillows. Past the church with the broken cross where the priest used to tell me I’d end up dead or damned if I didn’t straighten out.
Maybe he was right.
But I’ve never felt more alive.
I stop at a rail overlooking the water, let the fog soak into my lungs. The tide’s coming in again. Same as it ever does. And me? I’m still afloat. Still dangerous. Still hungry.
Tomorrow, they’ll search the beds with guns drawn and fingers shaking.
Tonight, I eat hot and sleep warm.
And no one—no lawman, no rich bastard, no pirate with a grudge—can touch me.
6
I don’t sleep long. Can’t.
The sky’s still dark when I wake with a jolt, heart punching my ribs like it wants out. Something’s wrong. Off. The way the wind sounds through the pilings. The way the gulls are quiet. I throw on my coat, boots half-laced, and make for the dock.
My sloop’s still there. But she’s not alone.
There’s a man sitting in the bow, arms crossed, one leg swinging like he owns it. His coat’s too clean. His hat’s too stiff. He’s not one of us.
“You Jack?” he calls.
I don’t answer.
“Don’t bother running. You won’t get far.”
I glance around. Cutter’s on the roof of the fish market across the way, crouched in the shadow of the chimney, watching. Just watching. No help in his eyes. Only curiosity.
The man in the boat stands. “I’m not a constable. I work for people who own things. Oysters. Boats. Judges.”
“Sounds like a full house,” I say.
He smiles. Thin and cold. “They’re tired of losing. You embarrassed them.”
“Didn’t mean to.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
I step onto the dock, slow. “What do you want?”
“A deal.”
I wait.
“You come work for us. You know the beds. The tides. The thieves. We put you on the patrol. A badge. A wage. Clean slate.”
I laugh. Can’t help it. “So you want a pirate to catch pirates.”
“We want the best one.”
“And if I say no?”
His smile doesn’t move, but the warmth in it disappears.
“Then you’ll be the example.”
Cutter shifts on the roof. I can feel his interest. Like a knife at my back.
I step closer. Close enough to see the threadbare wear on the man’s gloves. Rich hands, not used to real work.
“Let me think on it,” I say.
He nods. “Don’t take too long. The tide’s rising.”
He steps off, boots landing sharp on the planks. He walks away without looking back. Confident. Certain.
I don’t move until he’s gone.
Then I sit in my boat, watching the fog close in, the water lift beneath me, the sky turning gray.
I don’t know what I hate more—that they think I’d sell out—or that part of me considered it.
Not for the badge.
But for the power. The safety. The clean slate.
I look across the bay.
I know what I have to do now.
One more job. Not for oysters. Not for coin.
For my name.
For the fire it’ll leave behind.
7
I wait two nights.
Long enough for the rumor to settle, for the patrols to get lazy again. The man in the stiff hat doesn’t come back. But his offer still echoes, stuck somewhere behind my teeth.
They wanted me to be a warning. So I’ll give them one.
I sail just before midnight, no lights, no gear but my knife and a bottle of lamp oil tucked beneath the boards. The tide’s slack and the wind’s got a bite, but the sloop moves clean. She knows this is the last one.
I don’t go to the oyster beds.
I go to the docks.
Not the public ones—no, I aim higher. The private moorings, where the big men keep their pretty boats, white-painted and brass-trimmed, names like Providence and Liberty etched in gold. I drift between them like a ghost, boots soft on wet wood, bottle in hand.
I pick the biggest one.
A launch with polished rails and a wheelhouse finer than most homes I’ve slept in. Belongs to the man who owns half the bay, if the papers are true.
I climb aboard.
My hands don’t shake. Not even a little.
I pour the oil slow, careful not to splash. Under the cushions. Across the wheel. Down into the engine hatch. It stinks like fire already. The dark hums around me.
I strike a match.
It flares, hot and bright.
I hold it a second longer than I need to.
Then I drop it.
The launch goes up like it’s been waiting.
Flames spill down the dock, licking the moorings. I hear voices—first curious, then shouting. The heat smashes the quiet apart like a windowpane. Someone’s running. Someone’s screaming.
I’m already gone.
The sloop catches wind and flies. I don’t look back. Not this time. I know what I left behind.
By dawn, the fire’s out.
So is the story.
They say a pirate torched the bay. That he walked among their property and lit it up just to prove he could. That no one saw him come, and no one saw him leave.
They say he was young. Bold. Unstoppable.
They say he laughed.
I hide for a while. Out past the flats, in the marsh where no patrol will bother. I sleep under canvas and eat dried fish. The money’s almost gone. I don’t care.
Because now when I pass through town, I hear my name whispered like a dare.
Not outlaw.
Not thief.
Prince.
Prince of the oyster pirates.
And that’s something they can’t steal back.
Author’s Note
The best writers don’t just invent stories—they live them first. Jack London was no exception. Long before The Call of the Wild or White Fang made him a household name, he was a laborer, a hobo, a war correspondent, a sailor, and yes—an oyster pirate. At fifteen, broke and restless in Oakland, he borrowed money to buy a sloop and began poaching oysters from the beds of wealthy Bay Area merchants. He ran under cover of night, evading patrols, selling his haul before sunrise, and earning a reputation as one of the boldest thieves on the water. His brief reign ended not with arrest, but with reinvention: Jack joined the California Fish Patrol and began catching the very pirates he’d once called brothers.
This story is true in spirit and structure, drawn from London’s own accounts in The Road and A Raid on the Oyster Pirates, though told here in fictionalized first-person, with some names, dialogue, and moments imagined for dramatic clarity. The fire, the confrontation, the final raid—all of that is invention. But the grit, the hunger, the wind in his face and the knife in his belt—that’s all Jack.
In later years, London wrote about those nights on the bay with a kind of swaggering nostalgia—so much so that others came to call him, half in jest and half in awe, the Prince of the Oyster Pirates. He may never have worn the crown, but he earned the legend.
He lived it before he ever wrote it, and we’re lucky he did.
On a personal note: Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” was the first short story I ever remember reading—my first real spark. I was eight or nine years old. I think my mom gave it to me to see what I would do with it—a test of sorts. Thanks, Mom.
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I really liked this story