The exact number of men and women who went ‘a-pirating’ during the ‘Golden Age’ (the thirty years after 1694) will never be known. At the height of their activity in the Caribbean, when Woodes Rogers arrived to reform or evict the Brethren of the Coast from New Providence in 1718, there may have been as many as 2,400 on that one island.
Some eight years later, after this tidal wave of terror had run its course across half the globe, the numbers sailing under the Black Flag had irreversibly slumped to around 400. Most of them were holed up on the island of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean. During the intervening eight years, about the same number had met their end swinging from the gallows or the yardarm.
The ‘high period’ lasted only ten years. It started with the Lord Archibald Hamilton’s treasure hunters departing for New Providence in 1716 and ended with the hanging of the last of the Brethren, William Fly, in Boston in 1726. This intense and spectacular period in maritime history has captured the public’s imagination ever since.
Defoe’s General History of Pyrates (written under his pseudonym of Captain Charles Johnson) is by far the greatest source to have survived from the period. The first edition (1724), relating bloodthirsty tales replete with details of pillage, rape and murder, was an immediate best-seller. It focused, understandably, on the dare-devil deeds of a handful of the most ruthless and bloody pirate captains. The Scots included in his rogues’ gallery are William Kidd of Dundee and John Gow of Orkney.
Of the lives of the rank-and-file crew members, however, very little is known. Indeed, most were careful to nurture the cover of anonymity behind which they intended to slip back into peaceful society with their ill-gotten loot. The few names that were recorded were those unfortunate enough to have been caught and interrogated by officials (usually clergymen or surgeons) prior to being hanged. The great pirate historian of modern times, Philip Gosse, gleaned these names, along with those mentioned in the Calendars of Newgate Prison, and added them to Defoe’s principal characters. The outcome was his The Pirates’ Who’s Who, first published in 1924. From this representative sample it would appear certain that the Celts (Welsh, Irish and Scots) contributed a disproportionately high number of villains, relative to the size of their seafaring populations.
With many pirate companies disbanding to take the pardon and individual pirates retiring with their loot without being caught, it is very rare to find piracy trials of large crews. Of the handful from the ‘high period’, the first was that of ‘Major’ Stede Bonnet and his thirty-one crew tried in Charleston in 1718.
Bonnet was a well-off Barbadian gentleman planter who seems to have been drawn into piracy by the spirit of high adventure the year before. He bought his own vessel, the Revenge, intending to be a legitimate privateer against the Spanish and join those plundering the wrecks of the Spanish plate flotta. Events, however, quickly carried him over that fine line that separates privateering from piracy.
He made a pretty poor pirate captain by all accounts. Defoe described him as ill qualified for the business, as not understanding maritime matters. He was, in fact, an ex-infantry officer whose attempts at imposing strict military discipline on his ruffian crew backfired. Indeed, most deserted to Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach on the Queen Anne’s Revenge when the two captains met off the coast of Virginia in August 1717. They cruised together for nearly a year during which time Bonnet was humiliated at every turn and finally cheated out of his share of the booty. Bonnet took ‘the pardon’ the following spring and later obtained a privateering commission to cruise against the Spanish in the Caribbean from Charles Eden, the easily bribed Governor of Carolina.
On clearing out of Bath Town, however, he changed the name of his sloop to Royal James, and his own name to Captain Thomas, before reverting to piracy against local vessels. He was finally cornered and captured in the Cape Fear River of North Carolina in late September by two armed sloops. Their commander, William Rhett, had been searching for Charles Vane when the Governor of Charleston received the news of Bonnet’s presence.
At Charleston, his crew of thirty-three men were tried for piracy and thirty were found guilty. Fortunately for posterity, the court recorded not only their names but also their last place of residence. Five gave a Scottish domicile: Neal Paterson, William Scot and William Eady were noted as ‘late of Aberdeen’; while George Rose and George Dunkin said that they were from ‘Glascow’. They were all found guilty and publicly executed on 8 November 1718 at White Point, Charleston and buried in the marsh below the high-water mark.
Bonnet and his first mate, David Harriot, were not with them as they had managed to escape a few days before the trial. After bribing their guards, they had stolen a small boat and sailed out to sea from Charleston, only to be blown back by bad weather. While sheltering on Sullivan’s Island, Rhett tracked them down. The mate was shot dead and Bonnet was recaptured. His luck having finally run out, he was found guilty and sentenced to death. He pleaded for his life by offering, if pardoned, to render himself incapable of turning pirate again, by having his arms and legs amputated.
How Scotsmen came to be sailing with the Barbadian Bonnet on his 10-gun sloop was hinted at in the trial papers. They all claimed that they had been marooned before being rescued by Bonnet. They admitted that they had since participated in piratical actions but only because of the dire lack of provisions on board the Revenge (later Royal James).
This rather novel line of defence may have been based on fact. Two Scottish ships were among the twelve logwood traders caught and burned in the Bay of Campechy in 1716 by a Spanish taskforce. This was a reprisal for the attacks on the salvage ships working over the sunken wrecks of the plate fleet. At the time of the attack, the Spanish were content to burn the vessels of the interlopers, leaving their crews marooned.
That they did not plead that they were forced men, the time-honoured defence of all notorious pirates, is significant. The most likely explanation is that they had all chosen to ‘turn’ pirate and sign Articles when their Scottish merchantmen were captured. Bonnet is known to have looted the Anne of Glasgow (under Captain Montgomery) for clothing, ammunition and provisions at the very start of his last pirate cruise. Some months later he boarded and ransacked three more Glasgow-bound tobacco traders off the Capes of Virginia. Likewise, the Aberdeen contingent may well have deserted from the captured Young of Leith.
The largest group of pirates ever tried were the crews of Bartholomew ‘Black Bart’ Roberts’s squadron, comprising the Royal Fortune, the Great Ranger and the Little Ranger. They were the survivors of the fierce sea battle with Captain Chaloner Ogle on hms Swallow in March 1722 that ended the reign of the Black Flag terror in African waters. Such was the nation’s relief, that Ogle was given a knighthood. He is the only naval officer ever to have received this honour solely for capturing pirates.
At their trial at Cape Coast Castle, all of the 169 charged with piracy pleaded ‘not guilty’ on the grounds that they were forced men. Seventy-four had their plea accepted and were acquitted, while the rest were tried and found guilty. Of the latter, seventeen were sentenced to be transported in chains to Marshalsea Prison in London (eight died on the way), twenty were given as slaves to the Royal Africa Company to labour in their gold mines for the rest of their days, and fifty-three were hanged outside the gates of Cape Coast Castle.
As at Leith the year before, the first batch to march to the gallows outside the castle gates were those identified as members of the ‘House of Lords’. These were the aristocrats of piracy by virtue of being members of the original New Providence Brethren. The Swallow’s surgeon, Mr Atkins, was in close attendance to ascertain their age and birthplace as they filed past.
Leading this grisly procession was the 36-year-old ‘Lord’ John Sympson, originally from North Berwick in East Lothian. He had aided and abetted Howell Davis when he seized the Buck. Later, when Davis was killed in an ambush he had thought to challenge Roberts for the vacant position of captain. Measuring up his opponent, he thought better of it and threw his lot in with the Welshman. For that he was made quartermaster after ‘Lord’ Thomas Antis absconded with the appropriately named prize – the Good Fortune, taking a large share of the accumulated booty with him. It was, therefore, Sympson who was left to rally the crew of the Royal Fortune after Roberts was killed by a grapeshot ball that gashed his windpipe as he stood on his quarterdeck.
On his way to the gallows, Sympson displayed the fatalistic swagger expected of a pirate ‘Lord’ until he passed a woman in the crowd whom he recognised. On recovering his composure he arrogantly scoffed out loud, I have lain with that Bitch three times, and now she has come to see me hanged. The unfortunate subject of his outburst was Elizabeth Trengrove. She had been a passenger on the Royal Africa Company ship Onslow when taken by Roberts eight months previously. Sympson had, no doubt, exploited his position as quartermaster to appoint himself her guard. This had given him the opportunity to repeatedly abuse her, despite Roberts’s Article concerning women on board.
She had finally been allowed to depart on one of the two small prizes that Roberts gave to the evicted crew of the Onslow when he took that vessel over as his last flagship, renaming her Royal Fortune. One of those prizes headed for Fort James in the Gambia River whilst the other, carrying Sympson’s victim, made straight for Cape Coast Castle. She arrived in ample time to have the dubious satisfaction of witnessing his trial and execution.
She might have counted herself fortunate had she known the fate of the woman taken by Antis in the Caribbean at around the same time. That lady was a passenger on the Scottish vessel Irwin, under Captain Ross, carrying 600 barrels of beef from Cork when captured off Martinique. This poor woman was thrown overboard, still alive, after twenty of his crew had raped her and broken her back.
Hanged alongside Sympson was the Orcadian Joseph Mansfield. This one-time highwayman had deserted from Woodes Rogers’ naval escort hms Rose and later joined Davis’s pirate company on the Buck at Hispaniola. On the day of the momentous engagement with hms Swallow, he was so badly inebriated below decks that he only managed to stagger onto the deck of the Royal Fortune to lead a boarding party with drawn cutlass and swearing after the fight was lost. He was aged 30 when the hangman’s noose was tightened round his neck.
Dangling beside him were a fellow Orcadian, John Stephenson, and two Aberdonians, Peter Lesley and Israel Hynd. The 24-year-old Lesley had been a seaman on the Onslow. He had, very foolishly, decided to join the pirates just as the net was closing around them. A number of very Scottish-sounding characters stood beside him at the trial but whose origins, unfortunately, were not recorded by the surgeon Atkins. These include Robert Armstrong, Peter Cromby, Hugh Harris and William Macintosh (all hanged), Hugh Menzies (acquitted) and Thomas Ouchterlony (pardoned).
Armstrong was the only one of the whole group who was hanged from the yardarm of hms Weymouth which was at anchor off Cape Coast Castle at the time. The navy claimed their right to hang him as he was a deserter from hms Rose. It is an interesting aside that, of the Weymouth’s crew assembled to witness the punishment, Alexander Selkirk (Robinson Crusoe) was missing. Selkirk had only recently died while serving on the ship as an able seaman and had been buried at sea off the Guinea Coast.
The bodies of Sympson and Mansfield were among the eighteen chosen to be tarred and hung in chains on the three hills above the Cape Coast Castle. There they swung to the ocean breeze, rapidly rotting in the sweltering heat and humidity.
Among those released or pardoned were the three surgeons found on board Roberts’s flotilla as forced men. It was rare for a pirate crew to let a surgeon or his mate go when they laid hands on them. Apart from injuries sustained in their chosen profession, they were invariably riddled with ‘Guinea fever’ and syphilis. Any surgeon who survived the close proximity to the pirates’ diseases and random acts of violence, could only hope that his captors would be quickly hunted down.
Around this time, the Royal Colleges of Surgeons in Scotland (Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen) were churning out 80 per cent of Britain’s qualified doctors. The dire lack of positions available at home meant that most were obliged to earn their living beyond their native shores. It comes, therefore, as no surprise that pirates laid hands on a number of them.
Dr Archibald Murray, surgeon on the Buck at the time of the pirate insurrection, endured his two-year captivity till he was finally released at Inveraray Jail. The same fate befell the 26-year-old Dr Robert Hunter of Kilmarnock. He was taken off the Jeremiah & Anne of London close to Bermuda by the pirate George Lowther and forced to serve on the Happy Delivery (ex-Bumper galley) for close to a year.
Lowther had been the second mate of the Royal Africa Company’s Bumper dispatched with passengers and forty soldiers to re-garrison the fort on St James Island in the Gambia River after it was burnt by Davis. Hunter’s release came in 1723 when Lowther was trapped while careening his vessel in a secluded cove on the small island of Blanquilla (North Venezuela) by the pirate hunter Captain Walter Moore on the South Sea Company armed sloop Eagle.
Lowther initially got away by climbing out of one of the stern windows, but was later found on the islet with his brains blown out and a discharged pistol by his side. One of Lowther’s men who did make good his escape that day was the impressive-sounding Lancelot Johnston, previously from Galashiels. The rest of the crew, including the Scots, Edward McDonald and Andrew Hunter, were tried and hanged at St Kitts in March of 1724.
Lowther had previously forced the 25-year-old John Crawford, a Scots surgeon on the merchantman Greyhound of Boston taken off Honduras in January 1722. Her captain put up a stout defence for an hour before surrendering. For his defiance he and his officers were badly drubbed while the crew were wantonly cut about. Crawford was singled out for torture with lighted fuses between his fingers to reveal the whereabouts of some concealed gold dust. Lowther, no doubt, got wind of it from the first mate, Charles Harris, who had chosen to turn pirate and sign Articles. Before the vessel was set on fire, three other skilled men were also forced. One was the carpenter, David Lindsay, a 50-year-old Scot.
Lowther’s former sailing partner, Edward Low, also forced and retained a young Scots surgeon on board his ship the Fancy. Dr John Hincher was a fine catch as he was a recent graduate of Edinburgh University. Low was a psychopath of the same order as Blackbeard and delighted in mutilating his victims and brutalising his crew.
Hincher is the most likely candidate for the unnamed drunken surgeon who was forced to stitch a severe cutlass wound to Low’s face. During the operation Low took great exception to the poor quality of his handiwork, whereupon the surgeon struck him such a hard blow with his fist that the stitches burst, reopening the wound to expose his teeth, telling him to stitch it himself! This may have been the reason why Hincher was later transferred onto the prize Rebecca which Low had given to his newest recruit, the first mate Harris, as a consort to the Fancy.
When hms Greyhound caught up with them in 1723, Low fled, abandoning Harris and the pirate crew on the Rebecca to their fate. At their trial in New Port, Rhode Island in July, Harris and twenty-three of his crew were convicted and condemned to hang. Hincher and another forced man from Edinburgh, the 17-year-old John Fletcher, were pardoned.
The sadistic Low was later bundled into a small boat by his own crew and cast adrift. He was picked up by a French warship and summarily hanged from the yardarm.
What drove men to sign Articles of Regulation and become Blades was usually a combination of the desire to escape cruelty at the hands of a ruthless and exploitative master, the lure of a decadent life – albeit a short one – and the prospect of treasure.
The first motive is best illustrated by the Last Dying Words of William Fly, one of the last pirates of the era to be hanged. He faced the noose at Boston on 12 July 1726, unrepentant and defiant to the last. The self-righteous and pompous Reverend Cotton Mathers, in company with the Reverend Benjamin Colman, led the gaggle of ministers intent on extracting a last-minute confession from these godless men. They were astonished at Fly’s utter lack of contrition or remorse when facing death.
In the highest cavalier fashion, he assisted the fumbling hangman to tie the appropriate knot. Thereafter, he proclaimed from the steps to the gallows that his fondest wish was that all Masters of Vessels might take warning by the Fate of the Captain that he had murder’d, and to pay Sailors their wages when due, and to treat them better; saying, that their Barbarity to them made so many turn Pyrates.
One of the men acquitted at this trial, eight days before, was the forced Scot, William Ferguson.
Howell Davis’s conversion to piracy mirrors the pressures and abuses listed by Fly. Born to the sea, he made his last legal voyage as the first mate on the slaver Cadogan snow of Bristol under the ruthless Captain Skinner. Off Sierra Leone, the Cadogan was taken and plundered by Edward England.
A number of his pirate crew had served under Skinner and held a deep grievance against him. He had, apparently, turned them over to a naval press-gang as troublemakers and pocketed their wages after they had made a complaint. Unbeknown to Skinner, they later deserted and found their way to New Providence. Defoe records that as soon as the pirates boarded the Cadogan Skinner’s old boatswain, probably John Taylor, confronted him: Ah, Capt. Skinner! Is it you? The only Man I wish to see; I am much in your Debt, and now I shall pay all in your own coin. He summoned the others who had been abused by him and after a vote, tied him to the capstan where they pelted him with broken wine bottles until he bled profusely. He was then severely lashed before being shot through the head and dumped overboard.
The testimony of the much-abused John Lazenby, the second mate forced from the Cassandra by England and Taylor, makes it certain that had Captain James Macrae been recaptured, he would have received similar treatment.
The attrition rate among the pirates to disease and mindless violence was such that skilled men were forced whenever they were captured. Howell Davis, as a first mate, was a prime candidate as he understood the art of navigation, which very few seamen then did. England had tried with death threats to get him to sign Articles but Davis steadfastly refused. England, admiring his pluck, wrote him a letter that gave him the looted Cadogan and what was left of its cargo, after which England departed to raid the Azores and went on to the Guinea Coast.
Davis took the Cadogan across the Atlantic to Barbados where his reward for his courageous stand was to be flung in prison for three months for consorting with pirates. Blacklisted by the local merchants thereafter, he resolved to join the pirates on New Providence at the first opportunity. He arrived on the island at the same time as Woodes Rogers.
Bartholomew ‘Black Bart’ Roberts embraced piracy in much the same way. He was the third mate on the slaver Princess of London when Howell Davis took her off Anamaboe in November 1719. He too refused to sign Articles but six weeks later, following the death of Davis, he had turned pirate. He declared himself a candidate for the vacant captaincy with the statement: it is better to be a captain than a common man, since I have dipped my hands in muddy water and must be a pirate.
Defoe reckoned that the secret of Roberts’s spectacular success as a pirate captain – he took over 400 vessels – was that he strove to curb the destructive effect that habitual heavy drinking of punch had on his crew’s cohesion and ability to fight. He was himself an avid tea-drinker and disciplinarian.
Arguably the best account of pirate behaviour is that of Captain William Snelgrove. He was taken prisoner after his slaver, the Bird galley, was boarded by pirates on April Fool’s Day 1719. He was released, on a whim, a month later. In between times he had kept company with the forced cooper John Daniels of the Loyalty of Port Glasgow.
In his account, Snelgrove described the mayhem that followed the boarding of the Bird as she lay in the Sierra Leone River, by a long-boat party from Cocklyn’s vessel. He claimed that he only escaped being killed during the first moments of the assault by the loyalty of his boatswain, who vouched for his good treatment of his crew. The late arrival of Davis’s men turned the looting into a drunken orgy:
hoisted upon the Deck a great many half hogsheads of Claret and French Brandy: knock’d their Heads out, and dipp’d Canns and Bowls into them to drink out of: And in their wantonness threw full Buckets upon one another. And in the evening washed the Decks with what remained in the Casks. As to bottled Liquor, they would not give themselves the trouble of drawing the Cork out, but nick’d the Bottles, as they called it, that is, struck their necks off with a Cutlace.
Roberts seems to have convinced himself that such indiscipline had played its part in the loss of the Royal Rover and the treasure he had left in Kennedy’s care. Immediately afterwards, he wrote out these strict new Articles for his remaining crewmen to sign:
I. Every Man has a Vote in Affairs of Moment; has equal Title to the fresh Provision, or strong Liquors, at any Time seized, & use them at pleasure, unless a Scarcity make it necessary, for the good of all, to vote a retrenchment.
II. Every Man to be called fairly in turn, by List, on Board of Prizes, because they were on the Occasions allow’d a Shift of Cloaths: But if they defrauded the Company to the Value of a Dollar, in Plat, Jewels or Money, Marooning to be their Punishment. If the Robbery was only between one another, they must content themselves with slitting the Ears and Nose of him that is guilty, and set him on Shore, not in an uninhabited Place, but somewhere, where he is sure to encounter hardships.
III. No Person to Game at Cards or Dice for Money.
IV. The Lights & Candles to be put out at eight o’Clock at Night: If any of the Crew, after that Hour, still remained inclined for Drinking, they were to do it on the open deck.
V. To keep their Pieces, Pistols & Cutlash, clean & fit for Service.
VI. No Boy or Woman to be allow’d amongst them. If any Man is found seducing any of the latter Sex, and carried her to Sea, disguised, he is to suffer Death.
VII. To Desert the Ship, or their Quarters in Battle, is punished with Death, or Marooning.
VIII. No striking one another on Board, but every Man’s quarrels to be ended on Shore, at Sword & Pistol.
IX. No Man to talk of breaking up their Way of Living, till each had shared a £1000. If in order to this, any Man should lose a Limb, or become a Cripple in their Service, he was to have 800 dollars, out of the publick stock, and for lesser Hurts, proportionably.
X. The Captain and Quarter-master to receive two Shares of a Prize, the Master, Boatswain & Gunner, one Share and a half, and other Officers, one and a Quarter.
XI. The Musicians to have Rest on the Sabbath Day, but the other six Days & Nights none without special Favour.
There was also an unwritten addendum – that no Irishman should ever again serve under his command.
Roberts also knew how to create an awe-inspiring personal image that struck terror in his victims and generated fierce loyalty in his men. At the moment of his death, on the quarterdeck of the Royal Fortune, he was dressed in a rich crimson damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his hat, a gold chain round his neck, with a diamond cross hanging to it, a sword in his hand and a pair of pistols hanging at the end of a silk sling, hung over his shoulder. Lord Sympson was said to have been in tears when he fulfilled his captain’s long-standing request that, should he be killed in battle, his body was to be immediately dropped over the side.
The same cannot be said for Bonnet’s tormentor and tyrant, Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach. Though a highly skilled seaman, he kept his crew in terror of him with random acts of violence, usually following heavy drinking bouts. Occasionally he would kill or maim one of his crew – lest they would forget who he was – as with Israel Hands, crippled for life by a musket ball fired under the table.
Teach’s Journal of his cruise on the sardonically named Queen Anne’s Revenge gives some idea of the knife-edge existence his crew shared with him: Rum all out. Our Company somewhat sober – A damn’d Confusion amongst us! Rogues plotting – great Talk of Seperation – so I look’d sharp for a prize … Took one with a great deal of liquor on Board, so kept the Company hot, damned hot, then all things went well again. It was a rum-sodden Blackbeard who was, along with most of his crew, shot and hacked down in his famous final encounter with Lieutenant Maynard’s squadron in the waters of the Ocracoke Inlet.
Because of their violent deaths, there was no opportunity for any official to enquire as to their origins. The only Scot that is known to have sailed with Blackbeard was William Cunninghame, his master gunner. He had taken the pardon but later reneged when Governor Rogers looked to be losing control. He then joined Captain John Auger’s company operating out of New Providence. Their pirating activities were quickly ended by Captain Hornigold, Woodes Rogers’ very effective ‘gamekeeper’. Cunninghame was one of those hanged at New Providence by order of Rogers as a show of strength to the local Brethren.
Unlike the summary trials meted out by Rogers and the panel of officers convened at Cape Coast Castle, the piracy trial heard before Lord James Graham sitting in Edinburgh followed due legal process. Detailed allegations and defences were lodged for each of the pirates captured from Walter Kennedy’s crew off the Eagle in Craignish Loch. These offer a unique insight into the membership and doings of the pirate crews of Davis and Roberts.
All pleaded defence of force that they were not Blades of Fortune or Standard pirates (who had willingly signed Articles) but ordinary sailors who had in fear of death signed up. For had the pirates taken it into their heads to enter into such Articles, whoever aboard the ship had refused to assent to them … a Hatchet or Cutlace must have resolved their Fate; Whiping or Irons would have gone for nothing, when they were resolved to tye the Knot secure; Recusants behoved to be dispatch’d, that they might not tell tales.
Each told their personal tale of capture and torture to the jury. ‘Lord’ Roger Hughes (Hews) acknowledged that he was a member of the nineteen crew of the Buck that first sailed her across the Atlantic from England with Governor Rogers. He claimed, however, that he was still sick with ‘Guinea distemper’ and below decks under Dr Murray’s care, when Howell Davis led the pirates that took over the sloop at Hispaniola. Not being one of the Blades, he was confined to the hold at pistol point during the taking of prizes.
Richard Jones claimed that he was forced from the fourth prize, a Philadelphian vessel taken by Davis while still in the Caribbean. After he had surrendered, Davis’s gunner maliciously slashed him across his leg with a cutlass before tying a rope round his middle and dragging him into the long-boat. The wound was so deep that it took six weeks of dressing in bandages by Dr Murray to heal.
On his recovery he made his bid to escape while the Buck was at St Nicholas, one of the Cape Verde Islands off the West African Coast. Pursued by Kennedy, he was eventually hunted down and recaptured sixteen miles inland. He desperately appealed to the local governor for protection, but this cry fell on deaf ears as the wily Kennedy (using his smattering of Portuguese) convinced the Governor that Jones was a deserter from one of the English slaving forts on the Guinea Coast. Once back on the Buck, Jones claimed he was severely lashed at the mast and never allowed ashore again.
All the other defendants told similar stories of random violence, mock executions and threats of marooning for refusing to fight or attempts at escape. William Green, a sailmaker on the Guinea Hen of Barbados, taken off the Isle of May, escaped only to be caught by ‘the Moors’ and handed back. For that he was slashed a few times before being whipped. He also recalled that some time later he refused to handle a pistol during an attack. Davis pressed him so hard to take it that the pistol went off, shooting a hole through Dr Murray’s valuable medicine chest and breaking a number of bottles inside. For that he was brought to the mast and flogged to within an inch of his life.
Perhaps the saddest tale was that of the 16-year-old Hymen Saturly, who was taken off the Jack in the Sierra Leone River. This happened just before Davis, Cocklyn and La Bouche launched their attack on Bance Island fort. He managed to escape with some others and made it to the fort where they roused the garrison to their imminent danger. For the next twenty-four hours they helped fight off the pirates. When the fort was finally stormed by a landing party, he managed to flee upriver in a canoe.
Soon afterwards, he was captured by local natives and delivered back on board one of the pirate vessels. At Frenchman’s Bay, in the estuary mouth, the pirates called in to divide their spoils, carouse and take on water. He then volunteered to go as the guide for the shore party as the area was heavily wooded. The pirates soon rumbled that his real intention was to attempt another escape and had him dragged back aboard where he was savagely whipped.
All these stories of desperate escapes and barbaric treatment did not impress the jury sitting in Edinburgh. They were all found guilty and, with the exception of the youth Saturly who was pardoned due to his age, were hanged on Leith Sands.