‘The Pirate Gow’ is the last major tale in the 1726 edition of Defoe’s General History of Pyrates. Bundled in along with the story of the Irish murderer Roche, Gow is something of a misfit. Gow, while undoubtedly a brutal and bloody pirate, was not in the same league as the Brethren of the Coast who filled the rest of Defoe’s book.
John Gow, alias John Smith, was a native of the village of Kerston, near Stromness in Orkney. At his trial at the Old Bailey for the murder of his former captain, Olivier Ferneau, and numerous acts of piracy, he steadfastly refused to enter a plea. He was plainly unaware that a charge of piracy, like that of witchcraft or treason, invoked a special dispensation to use judicial torture to put the question to the uncooperative.
The presiding magistrate, therefore, instructed the executioner to crush his thumbs with whipcord until he was forthcoming. This Gow endured several times before the cord broke. As he remained obdurate, the judge then ordered that he should be ‘pressed’ by great weights in the prescribed manner: laid upon his back, with his body bare; that his arms be stretched forth with cord … and that upon his body be laid as much iron and stone as he can bear and more. The first day he shall have three morsels of barley bread, and the next he shall drink thrice the water in the next channel to the prison door but no spring and fountain water; and this shall be his punishment till he die. Gow was returned to Newgate Prison where he was shown what was entailed by a pressing. He immediately entered a plea of ‘Not Guilty’.
It was, given the mountain of evidence and witnesses, a short trial. Gow, along with his first mate Williams and six of his crew, was found guilty and sentenced to hang at Execution Dock, Wapping on 11 June 1725. A seventh crewman, Alexander Robb, was executed a few days later. He had originally been sentenced to transportation but had caused so much trouble in his cell that this was changed to the death penalty.
The bodies of Gow and Williams received the customary encasement in chains and were left on public display hanging over the mud of Gallows Reach on the Thames until three tides washed over them, after which their bodies were given over to the ‘anatomisers’ (teaching surgeons and their students) for public dissection.
Gow’s story had none of the epic proportions, exotic locations or dazzling treasure associated with the likes of Bartholomew Roberts. Gow earned his place in the General History of Pyrates by virtue of the number of throats he slit during his short but dramatic cruise off the north-west coast of Africa and the Iberian Peninsula.
What probably appealed to the ‘carrion writer’ in Defoe was the depths of depravity displayed during the first crime of mutiny, matched by the absurdity of his capture in his own home waters of Orkney. Defoe also had ready access to Gow whilst the latter was awaiting execution in Newgate Prison.
Gow had signed on to the Caroline galley (200 tons) at Amsterdam, pretty well intent on piracy. A previous attempt to raise a crew against their legal commander had failed miserably and he was lucky not to have been rumbled before. At Amsterdam, however, he found a kindred spirit and partner in crime, the Welshman James Williams. Williams almost certainly instigated the desertion of two Scots seamen from the Margaret of Burntisland, under Captain Andrew Watt, which was then anchored across from the Caroline.
They joined the Caroline just as she sailed for Santa Cruz in the Canaries. The galley was a well-armed vessel with twenty cannon and a crew of twenty-four. This was an adequate defence against the Barbary corsairs who swarmed out from their nests along the North African coast. She was also ideal for Gow’s intended purpose – that of pirate cruiser.
During the two-month outward passage Gow and his co-conspirators worked relentlessly on the crew’s sense of grievance; so much so that Captain Ferneau and his officers became aware of the mounting disaffection in the forecastle and were preparing their small arms against a possible mutiny.
Gow and his men, however, struck first during the first evening out from Santa Cruz en route for Genoa, on 3 November 1724. Three mutineers cornered and attacked the captain on the deck. He fought them off before Gow appeared and fired his pistol into his body. Bleeding profusely and still alive, Ferneau was thrown overboard.
With the whole crew now alerted to the mutiny, the mate and supercargo hid in the hold. Williams and Daniel McAuley (from Stornoway) soon tracked them down and cut their throats. Both victims, obligingly, managed to crawl on deck before expiring. The ship’s surgeon got as far as the stern before he was dispatched in a similar manner. With all the officers heaved over the side, the remaining crewmen were herded into the great cabin. There they were told that no harm would come to them if they followed orders and went about their duties.
At the age of 28, Gow realised his ambition when his eight fellow mutineers elected him their captain and the Black Flag was unfurled. The next few days were taken up with converting the galley, renamed the Revenge, to her new role, with additional cannon brought up from the hold.
Nine days after the mutiny Gow took his first prize, the Delight of Poole, bound for Cadiz from Newfoundland with a cargo of dried cod. Her captain, Thomas Wise, and his five crewmen were taken off the small sloop before she was ransacked and scuttled. Cruising towards the Straits of Gibraltar he fell in with his next victim, the snow Sarah of Glasgow, heading for Genoa with ‘kitted’ (boiled) salmon and salted herring under Captain John Somerville. Two of her crew, John Menzies and Alexander Robb, chose to turn pirate and joined Gow’s crew. The Sarah was looted of her provisions and gear before being sunk.
Gow then chased a French vessel for three days before losing her in a fog bank. Running low in water, Gow set course for the Portuguese island of Madeira. Off Funchal he sent in an armed boat party to rifle what they could from any vessel they happened to find at anchor. This only succeeded in scaring off the local vessels and warned the local governor of the true nature of his visitors.
Gow’s solution to his problem was to change his tactics and try again elsewhere. He subsequently, crossed the thirty-five-mile channel to the neighbouring island of Porto Santo. Running in under British colours he sent a polite note ashore asking the governor’s permission to buy water and provisions. This was granted and the governor rowed out to pay his respects. Once on deck he was held captive until the water and provisions were forthcoming. The last items loaded were a cow and her calf and a coup full of chickens. The governor was then sent ashore with a present of beeswax.
So replenished, Gow set a course northwards to the coast of southern Portugal. Off Cape St Vincent, on 18 December, he took the American timber ship, the Batchelor, sailing under Captain Benjamin Cross. As before, the vessel was looted of its provisions. This time, however, Gow decided not to sink her but used her to rid himself of the captive crew of the Delight. Captain Wise and all but one of his men were duly put aboard and given a present of beeswax before being cast off. The cabin boy, William Oliver, was forcibly retained as Gow had the notion that he could be turned to piracy.
Nine days later, nearing Cape Finisterre and close inshore he struck again. She was a French vessel, the Lewis Joseph, heading north from Cadiz with a cargo of wine and fruit under Captain William Mens. After she was looted Captains Somerville and Cross were dumped on her along with a number of their crewmen and the now customary present of beeswax. Once out of sight of Gow, they altered course and headed for Scotland.
Twelve leagues off Cape Finisterre, the Revenge came up with a large and well-armed Frenchman that Gow refused to engage. The mate Williams was incandescent with rage at his cowardice. At the height of his tirade he drew his pistol and snapped it against Gow’s head. It failed to fire. At this, two other pirates came to Gow’s defence and discharged their pistols at Williams, wounding him in the arm and belly. With some difficulty he was eventually overpowered and clamped in irons below.
Three days after this incident, some thirty leagues off Vigo, Gow stopped the Triumvirate of Bristol, on her way south with a cargo of fish under Captain Joel Davis. She was extensively looted and her long-boat taken before Gow ordered the remaining members of the Sarah to board her. Two forced crewmen from the Caroline at the time of the mutiny pleaded with Gow to let them go too, but he refused, claiming their skills were too valuable to lose.
The wounded Williams was, however, expendable and so he was dragged up and heaved onto the Triumvirate. Gow requested that Captain Davis turn him over to a British naval commander to be hanged as a pirate at the first opportunity. This Davis duly did as hms Argyle was in Lisbon en route for Sheerness at the time of his arrival.
Gow’s two-month cruise as a pirate had yielded little in the way of wealth other than a collection of sea captains’ gold and silver watches. He had intended to cross to the Caribbean and emulate the Brethren who had taken fortunes in plate from the Spanish. His lack of provisions put paid to that idea. Instead, he decided to retire with what he had before the net closed around him. And so he quit Iberian waters and sailed back to Orkney and his hometown of Stromness. During the voyage the galley’s name was changed again, to the more peaceful sounding George.
Foolishly, Gow took with him a crew of thirty men, most of whom were now lukewarm about their career as pirates and anxious to desert. Gow, nevertheless, rehearsed them in their cover story. This was that they were driven into Stromness by adverse weather while going ‘north-about’ round Scotland from Cadiz heading for Stockholm. To strengthen their resolve and silence the waverers, he devised a set of standing orders that were to be followed to the letter:
1. That every man shall obey his commander in all respects as if the ship were his own, and be under monthly pay.
2. That no man shall give or dispose of the ship’s provisions. Whereby may be given reason of suspicion that everyone hath not an equal share.
3. That no man shall open or declare to any person what we are or what design we are upon; the offender shall be punish’d with death on the spot.
4. That no man shall go ashore till the ship is off the ground and in readiness to put to sea.
5. That every man shall keep his watch night and day, and precisely at the hour of eight, leave off gambling and drinking, everyone repair to their respective stations.
6. Whoever offends shall be punish’d with death; or otherwise as we shall find proper for our purpose.
This was nailed to the mainmast and was still there at the time of their capture on the Calf islet in the Sound of Eday.
The change of events and coincidences that led to his downfall intrigued Defoe as much as his acts of Murther and Piracy. Indeed, in his one-shilling An Account of … John Gow (published under his own name by Applebee), the subtitle proclaims: A Relation of all the horrid MURTHERS they committed in cold blood AS ALSO their being taken at the Islands of Orkney and sent up Prisoners to London.
Gow’s motives for returning to Stromness were a mixture of necessity – the galley badly needed her sides cleaned and required to be provisioned – and a misplaced sense of security. He brought the George in to the roadstead in mid-January 1725 and received a warm welcome from the inhabitants. Here was a local son who had obviously done well for himself and was now captain of a large ship. His crew behaved themselves well enough while ashore and traded their cargo of beeswax and copper for wine and brandy in a open-handed way. In between times, they were kept busy cleaning a side of the George at low tide. No one ashore asked too many questions, as this was an area steeped in smuggling.
Unfortunately for Gow, the Margaret of Burntisland came to anchor close by and her captain recognised the Caroline – despite the repainting of her stern and change of name. Captain Watt made it his business to row over and demanded to know the whereabouts of the two deserters from his ship. Gow gave him short shrift, first denying their presence on board and then refusing to turn them over to him.
All might have gone well for Gow had he cleared out immediately, but he still had the other side of the hull to clean. This delay was to be his downfall for, unknown to him, Watt met up with one of his deserters, Harry Jamieson, while ashore. Jamieson gave Watt a full account of the events since he had jumped ship at Amsterdam. Watt realised that they were both in mortal danger. Gow was not only a cold-blooded murderer, but also the master of the eighteen cannon on the George. He could inflict a terrible act of reprisal on the Margaret, should Watt make public Jamieson’s information. Watt, therefore, advised the young seaman to get away while he could. The captain had already decided to tell the authorities about the pirates in their town only when he was about to make sail.
Jamieson went straight back on board the George to avoid suspicion. He must, however, have told a number of his fellow crewmen what Watt intended to do, for on the evening the Margaret sailed (1 February) ten men escaped from the George on the long-boat.
These men spent that night on a small island in Scapa Flow before they rowed across the Pentland Firth to Caithness on the Scottish mainland. There they tried to turn themselves in to the local Justice of the Peace. He was not prepared to deal with them and sent them on their way after feeding them. At Fortrose they sold some of their clothes for food before breaking up – five heading for Glasgow, four to Aberdeen and one to his hometown of Banff.
By now Gow’s plan to slip away quietly was falling apart. As he made his final preparations to leave, one of his men, Robert Read, a native of Cromarty, deserted whilst ashore. Running inland, he told a farmer his tale and was given a horse to ride the twelve miles to Kirkwall to inform the authorities. In the meantime the farmer raised the alarm in the local area.
It was a timely warning, for Gow had decided to resort to a pirate press-gang to make good his losses in manpower. Two men were taken off a small vessel in the harbour, while another two were grabbed off a street in Stromness. Three others volunteered, not knowing the nature of the voyage. Gow even managed to recruit his 14-year-old nephew. As he was ashore doing so, two more crewmen deserted: William Oliver, the cabin boy from the Delight, and the informer Harry Jamieson, who escaped dressed as a woman.
On 10 February Gow decided to make sail even though the George had still only been cleaned on one side. His last act before departing was to send an armed shore party to Graemsay Island, two miles to the south. Led by the boatswain, James Belbin, their mission was to loot the great house of Robert Honeyman of Graemsay, the High Sheriff of Orkney.
When they arrived they found the master of the house absent. He had been called away to Kirkwall to deal with Read’s report of pirates. So it was left to his formidable womenfolk to confront the pirates when they broke in. Honeyman’s daughter escaped through an upper window with the charter chest. Her mother hid most of the money kept in the house in the folds of her dress. The pirates came away with only seven pounds in cash and a few silver spoons. They did, however, abduct the resident piper, Edward Gunn, and two servant girls.
These women were, after some dalliance, later put ashore on Cava Island in Scapa Flow with sufficient gifts to enable them to find husbands. Defoe played this incident for all it was worth, claiming that they were actually taken from Cava and wrenched from the pleading arms of their mother and that they were terribly abused during their short captivity on board the George.
By then news of the raid on Graemsay’s house had reached Kirkwall, where frantic preparations were being made to repel the anticipated pirate attack. Sheriff Honeyman chaired a meeting of local magistrates and town councillors to deal with the emergency. They ordered:
twenty-four men, furnished with good and sufficient arms, to keep guard at the Tollbooth … and appoint that the town’s guns and haill other armes belonging to the inhabitants to be made ready for service, and lykeways appoint the great guns belonging to the burgh, now in the church, be carried down to the fort at the shoarre … to issue forth a proclamation advertising the haill inhabitants … by tuck of drum to rendezvous before the Tollbooth this afternoon.
However, Gow had another easier target in mind. This was Carrick House near the hamlet of Calfsound on the island of Eday. This property was owned by an old acquaintance, James Fea of Clestrain. To achieve the element of surprise, while avoiding any custom cutters or naval sloops that might be waiting for him off Kirkwall, he sailed due north from Stromness and rounded Papa Westray into the North Sound.
On his final approach to the inner Sound of Eday, Gow made the greatest mistake of his life as he entrusted the helm and pilotage to one of his new and reluctant men, Robert Porringer of Westray. While going about at the entrance Porringer ‘missed stays’. The galley immediately lost headway and fell back under the influence of the strong rip tide. Swept onto the nearby Calf of Eday, she grounded on the islet.
This mistake could have been rectified easily and the galley got off undamaged by ‘kedging’. This required the ship’s anchor and cable to be rowed out to deep water and dropped, after which the crew at the capstan could haul the galley up to the anchor, pulling the George off the ground. The weight of the great anchor, however, was such as could only be supported by a large long-boat. The small sailing dinghy that Gow had on deck was wholly inadequate and would have sunk under the weight. Unfortunately for Gow, at that moment his long-boat, taken from the Triumvirate, was lying on the hard standing at Thurso, over fifty miles away. There was, though, one suitable vessel very close at hand, a two-ton salt boat that belonged to his intended victim, James Fea.
Fea was watching from the shore of the main island when the George grounded. It was three days since the raid on Graemsay’s house and the news had already reached this remote part of the islands. He knew that Gow would sooner or later have to send ashore for assistance. This happened late in the morning when an unarmed shore party rowed over in the dinghy. Fea was waiting, musket in hand, and refused to let them land. Instead, he gave them a letter he had prepared. It was addressed to his one-time schoolfriend, John Gow, and made it clear that he was aware of how things stood: All the inhabitants of this place have fled to the hills because of the bad reports that your enemies have reported of you thro this countrey which I hope is groundless.
From the brief encounter with his shore party, the astute Fea had deduced Gow’s predicament. He ordered his men to have all the boats on the island hidden along with their sails. He also had a lower plank in his salt boat staved in so as to make her unseaworthy. Finally, he sent a dispatch to Kirkwall to seek assistance with the pirates.
That afternoon Gow sent back a five-man shore party led by the boatswain. This time they came heavily armed and with instructions to force the local inhabitants to co-operate. As there were very few firearms on the island with which to repel them, Fea feigned compliance and bid them join him in a drink at a nearby hostelry. This offer was readily accepted.
As proceedings got more and more convivial, Fea invited the lecherous boatswain to visit his house to pay his respects to his good wife. This he accepted, leaving the other four pirates to their whisky. Fea had men waiting in ambush along the road and Belbin was taken by surprise and, after a violent struggle, tied up. By the time Fea returned to the inn with his men, the four pirates were so drunk that they offered little resistance to their captors. All five were securely tied up and marched away to the other side of the island and out of reach of Gow.
In this incident, Gow had lost five of his willing Blades and the dinghy, as well as arming Fea’s men with their captured firearms. His situation was now desperate and the following day he tried to sail the George off on the high tide. One of the forced men deliberately cut the anchor cable at the critical moment. Without an anchor to check her, the galley was driven hard up on the rocks at Calf Island at the top of the tide.
Gow was now stranded, with no hope of escape without Fea’s help. He sent a pitiful letter by a messenger who walked across the islet waving a white flag as a signal to be picked up. In it he tried to move Fea with a mixture of bribery and suicidal threats: If you’ll grant me assistance I hereby oblidge myself to pay you the value of one thousand pounds sterling; [for] if it be my misfortune to be shipwrecked, the Government siezes all; and I’ll take care they shall be nothing the better – only the guns; for I’m resolved to set fire to all and all of us perish together.
There then followed a flurry of correspondence and parleys via a go-between, during which Gow upbraided Fea for not helping him as a friend, threatening to burn the galley and its cargo and then cast himself into the sea. In the end Fea lost patience and told Gow to give himself up before the navy arrived.
This stand-off would have continued much longer, had not the go-between, Scollay, disobeyed Fea’s direct order and gone on board the George. Fearing that he was being held hostage, Fea led a second boat party with seven armed men over to Calf Island. After much discussion Scollay was escorted to the shoreline by Gow and the last two mutineers remaining at liberty, under a white flag of truce. Face-to-face with Gow at last, Fea seized the opportunity to make all three prisoners after a brief scuffle.
Those remaining on board were now leaderless and easily duped into coming ashore. This was done by a letter from Fea that promised them a boat on which to escape, but only if they gave over the George and its cargo. Before walking over to the rendezvous point, the last of the pirates broke open the ship’s chest and they filled their pockets with what they could carry. By evening they had all been ferried across to Eday where they were, to their great chagrin, put in irons.
From there Gow and his crew were shipped over to Fea’s main residence on the neighbouring isle of Shapinsay, to await the arrival of the agents of law and order. In the interim, Fea had Scollay organise the refloating of the George while his clerk set about cataloguing her cargo and contents as his prize.
On 26 February, nine days after the capture of Gow, the sloop-of-war, hms Weazell, dropped anchor in Linga Sound. Her captain immediately dispatched his long-boat to take possession of the George as his prize. Fea was outraged but, as he could do little about it, he gracefully volunteered the use of his men in her salvage.
By the time they had the George refloated, on 5 March, the sixth-rater hms Greyhound had arrived to take the prisoners to London for trial. Already on board were two of the men who escaped on the long-boat and had since been picked up in Aberdeen.
The authorities in Edinburgh and London had been aware of Gow’s activities and general whereabouts even before the raid on Graemsay’s house. Four days earlier, the released Captains Somerville and Cross had put into Stranraer on Loch Ryan on the Lewis Joseph and given their account to the local Customs Officers. This report was immediately relayed to their Commissioners in Edinburgh and London. Three days later Captain Andrew Watt, master of the Margaret of Burntisland, made his statement to officials as to what he knew about the fate of the officers of the Caroline galley.
By then hms Argyle had already docked at Sheerness with the mate Williams as prisoner. It was the imprisonment of Williams in London and the availability of witnesses to the murders that gave the High Court of Admiralty sitting at the Old Bailey the jurisdiction to try the whole crew for crimes committed on the high seas.
Gow and thirty-one of his men left Orkney on 9 March as prisoners on board hms Greyhound. James Fea also travelled with them as a passenger. His interest was the George, which sailed as part of the convoy under escort of hms Weazell. They all arrived in the Thames together and the prisoners were marched off to Marshalsea Prison, Southwark on 30 March. After a preliminary hearing twenty-four were committed for trial and moved to Newgate Prison. In the interim, five of the forced men had been pardoned so as to give evidence for the prosecution.
After the trial and executions the legal wrangling over the prize vessels continued. The French owners of the Lewis Joseph could not be found at first and so advertisements had to be taken out in the London papers. Fea had an outstanding salvage claim on the George that the Admiralty had to square with that of the captain of hms Weazell. To resolve all issues Fea was awarded £300 in salvage money, £1,000 for his astute and courageous capture of the pirates and a further £400 from the grateful marine insurers of London.
Back in Orkney, Fea’s new-found wealth was the subject of much malicious gossip. As a well-known and barely concealed Jacobite, it did not take much for the local population to vilify him as an unscrupulous man who had come by his blood money by tricking men whilst under the white flag of truce. The insults were such that he spent much of his money and time in legal actions trying to clear his name. He was later to pay dearly for his allegiance to the Stuarts in exile. For his open support for Bonnie Prince Charlie, Butcher Cumberland’s troops burned his house on Shapinsay.
Gow’s legacy to Orcadian folklore includes the tale of his former sweetheart, Helen Gordon, who reputedly travelled to London intent on releasing herself from her promise to marry him. She had ‘pledged her troth’ years before by touching his hand through the hole of the Odin Stone, an ancient monolith that stood at Stenness. She arrived too late to speak with him as he had already been executed. So she touched his lifeless hand as he hung in chains on Gallows Reach to escape a visitation by his ghost.