The affidavits of the Speedy Return’s two crewmen, Freeland and Phipenny, taken at Portsmouth were immediately sent by express to London. There they were eventually brought before Robert Harley, the Secretary of State for the ‘Northern Department’. Such was the significance of their testimony to Anglo-Scottish affairs that he had a copy of them forwarded to Edinburgh. These were accompanied by a plea from Queen Anne for a further stay of execution for the crew of the Worcester, whilst their case was fully reviewed. By now eight days had passed since the taking of the original depositions.
The messenger duly arrived in Edinburgh on the morning of 11 April 1705, three hours before the scheduled execution on Leith Sands of the first batch of condemned pirates: Captain Thomas Green; his chief mate, John Madder; and the gunner, John Simpson.
The trial of Green and the crew of the Worcester in Edinburgh had, for months, provided a focus and outlet for the seething resentment against England that had been fomenting in the Queen’s Northern Kingdom for over a decade. The inevitable underlying resentment of a more powerful neighbour had been exacerbated since the news reached Scotland of the callous treatment meted out by the English governors of the Caribbean islands and American colonies to the sick and the dying survivors fleeing from the ill-fated Darien venture. These officials, it must be said, were acting under a direct Royal proclamation from King William to turn the Scots colonists away. As a result, of the thousands of men and women who perished in this forlorn venture, many hundreds – who lookt rather like skelets than men, being starved – died needlessly.
The suffering of the Darien survivors continued long afterwards. Captain Pincarton and his crew of the Dolphin, captured by the Spanish, had been conveyed in chains to Seville. As their Scots Company’s commission was not recognised by William, the Spaniards felt well within their rights to try them as pirates. It took nineteen months of delicate negotiations to secure their release, during which a number had died in captivity. The overall outcome was that there was hardly a Lowland Scots seafaring family or noted house that had not lost a relative at Darien or in the retreat – not to mention the squandering of a quarter of the nation’s available wealth and an unbearable loss of national pride.
Even before Scotland’s colonial aspirations finally sank with the Company’s two great ships – the Rising Sun and the Duke of Hamilton – at Charleston, high-handed English naval commanders in Scottish waters were making a mockery of Scotland’s supposed independent sovereignty. English navy captains, such as Pottinger on hms Dartmouth, while defending the realm from the Jacobite threat, took to intercepting Scottish ships returning from the Americas in breach of the English Navigation Acts and carried them off south as prize. These acts were done in blatant disregard of the Scottish Admiralty. The Scottish Privy Council had fervently pleaded with Queen Mary, in William’s absence abroad, to reprimand these officers and have the seized vessels returned – but to no avail. Much was blamed on the thinly disguised conspiracy between the English Establishment and Royal Companies to do all in their power, short of open war at sea, to block Scotland’s attempts to break into the world’s markets.
It is indicative of the national mood that the first act of the reconvened Scottish Parliament of January 1700 was to display its enormous displeasure at the critics of the Darien Scheme. They ordered that a copy of a ‘treasonable’ pamphlet then circulating, entitled A defence of the Scots abdicating Darien by ‘Britanno sed Dunensi’, should be publicly burned by the city hangman. Thereafter, the Lords of the Scottish Treasury offered a reward of £500 for the arrest of the alleged author, the turncoat Walter Herries.
At the same time a motion, calling on King William to censure the English Parliament for intermeddling in the affairs of this kingdom, and the invasion of the sovereignty and independence of our King and Parliament, was narrowly defeated. Two Edinburgh engravers who dared to lampoon the divisions in a political cartoon, were arrested and charged with ‘lease making’. This ancient term for slander was normally reserved for insulting a royal minister and so carried the death penalty. On this occasion, however, the jury had the eminent good sense to find that this petty crime did not warrant such a serious charge or punishment and so dismissed the case as ‘not proven’.
The death of the heir, Prince William, the last of Anne’s thirteen children, during that year threw open the whole question of the Succession. The English Parliament passed the Act of Settlement that handed the English crown to the Hanoverian descendants of James I (VI of Scotland) on Anne’s death. The Scottish Parliament seized on this opportunity and passed their own Act of Security in 1704. This threatened to choose a different successor for the Scottish throne, thereby ending the Union of the Crowns of 1603, unless the ‘freedom of trade’ issue was resolved in their favour.
This tidal wave of ill-feeling in the North might have subsided without bloodletting, had not the Annandale incident reignited the nation’s hatred of their overbearing neighbour. As the schism descended into a ‘tit-for-tat’ spiral of hostile legislation, the Company of Scotland, bereft of vessels, bought the majority share of an armed London merchantman of 220 tons and 20 guns in October 1703. Her previous owners were a small group of independent English merchants led by John Johnson – an Englishman, or said to be – who had yet to purchase a licence from the English East India Company for her intended voyage to the East as an independent trader.
Her new Scots owners renamed her the Annandale, in honour of the Company’s London Director, the Marquis of Annandale, and sent their agent, Robert Laurie, from Edinburgh to oversee her fitting-out while still in the Thames. Her mission was, ostensibly, to retrieve the valuable cargo of the Speedwell wrecked in the Malacca Straits. The Company also bought a three-quarters’ share in her outgoing cargo that included £2,500 in Mexican silver dollars.
To legitimise the Annandale’s passage ‘East of the Cape of Good Hope’, the Scots Company sent to London copies of their ‘Letters Patent’ (granted by an Act of the Scottish Parliament) and a ‘Letter of Marque’ signed by the Earl of Queensferry (the Queen’s Commissioner for Scotland). The latter gave her the status of privateer, empowered to capture any French and Spanish vessels she might encounter. These documents were given to her commander, John Ap-Rice, who had previously been a part-owner and was now retained as her captain. After a suspiciously long delay getting clearance from the Customs House of London, during time which her papers were subjected to a stricter manner than was ever practised on any foreigners, she sailed down-river to Gravesend.
While she was moored there, the London-based agents of the Company of Scotland, Captain Alexander Gawne and William Murray, found out that their newly appointed captain was a common debtor and a rogue of the first order, who had purloined her bill of sale. They deduced that his intention was to make off with the Annandale and her cargo at the first opportunity.
Without clear proof of ownership and in a hostile environment, they sent an urgent dispatch to Laurie (now serving on board as the second supercargo) that Ap-Rice was to be turned out of his command and never allowed to set foot on her again. Ap-Rice however, proved highly obstructive to his dismissal and demanded £100 in compensation for loss of earnings. This was refused and he was forcibly removed, after three days’ belligerence, with only his ‘river wages’.
On landing ashore he made straight for the offices of the East India Company. There he divulged his insider information as to the designs of the interloping Scots. They immediately supported his personal claim for compensation (which had now increased to £20,000) through the Court of Chancery and applied for a warrant to stop her sailing on his behalf.
Back on board the Annandale, the senior supercargo, Mallory Peirson, was ordered to take command, abort the voyage to the East Indies and immediately bring her to the safety of Scottish waters. Common sense, however, dictated that Peirson should wait for a convoy (it was wartime) to escort his ship through the English Channel before making for the Clyde. It was, therefore, not until late January 1704 that the Annandale finally got under way.
A few days later, on 1 February, while riding to her anchors at the Downs, off the south coast of England, she was boarded by customs officers under the pretence of looking for stolen money. They were led by the Tide Surveyor for London, Charles Robertson, who was accompanied by an armed naval party from hms Dunwich. The Lieutenant in charge promptly pressed twenty-one of the Scots Dogs he found on board the Annandale and had them rowed over to his warship. Laurie (the second supercargo) later reported to his directors in Edinburgh that those Scots seamen remaining on board were then subjected to great abuse, their captors threatening to put them in Irons, drawing their Cutlasses, cocking their Muskets at them, and Swearing they’d shoot them through the Heads, as if they had been Robbers and Pirates.
All this brought vehement protests from the Annandale’s officers. They produced Queensferry’s Royal Commission as proof of their right to proceed unmolested. To this Robertson scornfully replied that he valued it not a Pin, for that he had the East Indies Company’s Warrant to Indemnify him, and that they had a long purse to defend themselves in Westminster Hall.
So saying, he had all the locks broken and sent his men to rummage the cargo and cabins. When he eventually departed, he took with him the ship’s officers, their papers and the treasure chests. He left behind his junior officer, Russell Catcliffe, with a gang of ruffians hired by the English Company. Having little control over these men, Catcliffe could not stop them looting the few remaining Scots crewmen of their personal possessions. While engaged in this malicious act, they taunted Laurie with the boast that their Company had given Orders, [to] take care to find Mr Innes, Supercargo of the Speedwell in the East Indies, and make sure of [seizing his] effects.
At one stage they ran the Annandale aground. After she was refloated, she was carried into Dover where her general cargo was landed and her sails and yards stripped from her masts. There she lay while the matter of her ownership was contested in the courts.
As Robertson had predicted, it was a costly affair. The directors of the Company of Scotland, on hearing of her seizure and the outrageous treatment of their officers and men, dispatched their secretary, Roderick McKenzie, directly to the Queen with a petition. She heard the Scots Company’s list of grievances in a session of the Privy Council, at which the Attorney and Solicitors-General were present. During this meeting she expressed her sympathy for the Scots’ cause but heeded her councillors’ advice and refused to intervene directly. Her pronouncement was, therefore, that this highly contentious affair was a matter for the English courts to settle.
In the run-up to this politically explosive hearing, the English company directors put it about that they were prepared to spend £100,000 on legal costs, rather than release the Annandale. This precedent-making threat had the desired effect of deterring other would-be speculators from taking up a similar commission with the Company of Scotland. Only the previous month, James, Earl of Morton, had signed Articles of Agreement with the directors to send out his small well-armed vessel, the Morton, to the East Indies. Still in the Thames, she was within immediate reach of the agents of the English Companies and so he prudently cancelled her departure. A similar scheme to fit out the Hannah galley on behalf of the Company of Scotland, by the London merchant Ainsworth, was also dropped; even though she lay out of harm’s way at Burntisland in the Firth of Forth.
After a false start, the ‘trial’ of the Annandale was finally called before the Bar of the Court of Exchequer on 28 June 1704. The ‘charge’ was that the Annandale was intending to trade ‘East of the Cape of Good Hope’ without licence from the English Company, whose monopoly was enshrined in an English Act of Parliament. The vessel and her cargo should, therefore, be condemned as the prize to the Company.
Many of the English directors were present on the day and their cause was presented by a battery of nine eminent Queen’s Counsel. Much to the exasperation of the Scots Company lawyers, the Attorney and Solicitors-General, who had recently advised the Queen on the matter, were amongst their number.
The atmosphere in the courtroom changed to utter disbelief when Captain John Ap-Rice was presented as a legal witness for the English Company’s cause. Remonstrate all they might against the appearance of this man – known for his notorious Treachery, avow’d Malice and evil Reputation – the judges dismissed the Scots Company lawyers’ objections and Ap-Rice was allowed to testify as to the designs of the interloping Scots.
The Scots defence was straightforward. The Annandale was the legal property of the Company of Scotland, whose charter was enshrined in an Act of the Scottish Parliament. As such, she had every right to go about their business in English waters without fear of seizure of their vessels by the English Company. In fact, she should be shown the same respect as vessels of the Dutch East India Company in similar circumstances. In any case, the Annandale was not heading out on a passage to the East Indies but on a coastal passage to the Clyde.
After ten hours of legal debate, the four Barons of the Exchequer gave down their verdict: three to one in favour of the English Company claim. The Annandale and her cargo were duly condemned as lawful prize to the English East India Company.
The following day, 4 July, the legal counsel for the Scots Company moved for an ‘Arrestment of the Judgement’. As this was the last day sitting for this Court before the summer recess, the lawyers for the English Company had no difficulty in having this appeal put back to the autumn. In the meantime, the Annandale was released back to her Scots owners, on their finding security for her value and that of her cargo.
Before she could be refitted to sail from Dover, Ap-Rice struck again. No doubt with prompting from his new backers, he had his agent nail an Admiralty ‘Process of Arrest’ at the foot of her mainmast. This was for £3,000 damages he claimed he had suffered as a result of the legal action. The Scots agents in London were, yet again, forced to find security for this sum before the Annandale could be taken back round to Deptford in the Thames.
She had only just arrived there when the opportunity for reprisal presented itself in Scottish waters on 28 July. This was when the English East Indiaman, the Worcester (180 tons, 16 guns and 32 men), put into the Firth of Forth.
She was a private small trader with the second-rank English ‘Two Million Company’ (operating under an East India Company licence) on her home run to London after an absence of two years. She had rounded Scotland, in company with sixteen Dutch and two English East Indiamen, to avoid capture by the large French privateers that stalked the English Channel. Once clear of the Pentland Firth, however, the three London-bound Indiamen had left the convoy and turned south.
Sailing down the east coast of Scotland, the slow and leaky Worcester soon fell behind the other two vessels. Left by herself and with her gunpowder casks wet, her captain, Thomas Green, concluded that his ship was now highly vulnerable to attack from the small French and Jacobite privateers that worked close inshore. He decided, therefore, to call into Fraserburgh, on 19 July, to buy replacement gunpowder.
There he sent a lengthy letter, via Edinburgh, to his London owners detailing his voyage and his intention to put into Leith to repair the leak and await the next convoy for Newcastle. To this end, he loaded a few casks of new dry gunpowder and took on a Scottish pilot.
Had the Worcester been a large ‘regular berth’ of the East India Company (that is, carrying naval-rated heavy armament and three times as many men) it is doubtful whether the agents of the Company of Scotland could have secured her in compensation for the Annandale without an immediate fight or expectation of retaliation. As it was, she was a perfect target and her presence in Scottish waters was already known in Edinburgh. To prepare the political ground for her seizure, the directors of the Company of Scotland presented a petition to the Marquis of Tweeddale – the Queen’s High Commissioner to the Scottish Parliament. In it, they graphically portrayed the violence and insults of the Annandale incident. These were presented as but the latest in a series of repeated Acts of Violence and Oppression committed against their legitimate interests. Such blatant, state-approved, English aggression demanded retaliation in kind.
The following day, 12 August, two weeks after her arrival, the Worcester was seized by a simple deception. The now Anglophobic Secretary of the Company, Roderick McKenzie, armed with an arrest warrant, rowed over to her as she lay to her anchor off Burntisland. He had with him a small number of men and bottles of wine and brandy. Coming alongside, he hailed the watch and offered to make merry in exchange for a tour of this fine vessel that had come all the way from India.
In the absence of the captain and senior officers, the unsuspecting crewmen invited them aboard and ushered them into the great cabin. The rest of the crew (at least six of whom were Scots) joined them in a bowl of punch, suitably laced with McKenzie’s brandy.
As the wine flowed freely, McKenzie requested that they strike up a hearty song. The Worcester’s boatswain, James Burn, later testified as to what happened:
whilst we were in our mirth, a Scots Man-of-War, then at anchor in Leith Road, near us, fired a Gun with Shot, immediately after which the said Mr McKenzie rose up, and told us, we had been very kind and civil to him, and he would now sing us a Song; but not being used to sing[ing], he had his Song in Writing, and drew out a piece of paper, and told us it was a Warrant from the Africa and East India Company of Scotland to seize our ship for Reprisal for the Annandale seized in England, or words to that effect. On which all the Scots in the great Cabin drew their swords, and said, we all were their prisoners.
The warship that signalled the seizure was the sixth-rater Royal Mary of the ‘Old Scots Navy’, under the command of the closet Jacobite, Commodore Thomas Gordon. He had previously used his Royal Commission as a naval officer to aid and abet the Company of Scotland. His signal was probably to tell McKenzie that Captain Green and his officers, who were in Edinburgh at the time, had been safely detained. Firing a cannonball, rather than just a blank powder charge, also served to intimidate the Worcester’s crew at the critical moment of seizure. It can also be assumed that Gordon had the Royal Mary standing close guard in the Forth in case the East Indiamen, that had recently parted company from her, came to her aid.
After the Worcester was securely in the hands of the Company’s agents, she was placed under the supervision of Captain David Munro. He decided to minimise the risk of an attempt by her crew to retake her, by turning the ordinary seamen ashore. They were evicted without their two years’ pay and left to fend for themselves as best they could. A few made their way to Leith, while most had the good sense to head straight for the border and London.
After the seizure, the young Captain Green and his Scots-born first mate, John Madder, were given their freedom to take up lodgings with Mrs Barclay (or Barlett) in Edinburgh, whilst the fate of their vessel was decided.
It was Munro who first reported an undertow of unease and tensions amongst the five crewmen retained on board to maintain the Worcester. The first incident he noted was when he was stopped and questioned by the gunner, James Simpson, as he passed by his hammock. This restless sailor was very anxious to know if there was another reason for the seizure of the Worcester – one that might imperil his life?
A day or two later, Munro overheard a heated exchange between the overwrought ship’s carpenter, Henry Keigle, and the gunner’s mate, Andrew Robison, as to their non-payment of wages. Keigle was for both of them abandoning their posts on the Worcester and going ashore. But Robinson had already decided to take his Hazard and stick with the ship while there [was] any hope.
These incidents would have been dismissed as their due concern for their predicament, had not Robinson retorted to the carpenter’s continuing complaints: this is just Judgment of God on us, for the Wickedness committed in our last Voyage; and I’m afraid it will pursue us further, since that, being reduced to so small a Number aboard, for if five of us cannot agree amongst ourselves. Months later, in the witness box, Munro, rather theatrically, placed great emphasis on the fact that Robison had uttered his remark after a heavy Groan or two.
Matters took a turn for the worse when the Worcester was moved into the heads of Burntisland harbour and stripped of her sails and yards. In doing so, she was immobilised and could no longer be sailed away by a ‘cutting out’ party sent in by the English East India Company or the English Navy. For the fiveman watch on board, this indicated that their ship was not going to be released in the foreseeable future.
Soon afterwards, her dejected anchor-watch adjourned to the great cabin to drown their sorrows in a bowl of punch. It was during this heavy drinking session that one of the Company’s guards boasted about the daring exploits of Commodore Gordon when chasing Jacobite and French raiders. Not to be outdone, the tipsy ship’s steward, George Haines, bawled out: our sloop was more terrible upon the coast of Malabar, than ever Captain Gordon was or will be to the French Privateers on the Coast of Scotland; For a better Sailer than that sloop never carried canvas! He was referring to a small sloop that the Worcester had carried dismantled in her hull, and had reassembled at Delagoa Bay in Southern Mozambique to act as the inshore coastal trader while in the Indian Ocean.
Having raised the image of the East, the ‘Gentlemen of the Scots Company’ present in the great cabin enquired of Haines (by now lukewarm with punch) if he had met the overdue Speedy Return and Content on his travels. He answered that he had heard of them but not seen them. He then merrily volunteered: it’s no great Matter, you need not trouble yourself about them, for I believe you will not see them in haste. This fateful remark instantly aroused their keenest interest. They pressed him on what might be the reason for his comment. At this point Haines, despite becoming aware of the sudden change in tone of the conversation, blurted out that he had heard: that they were turned pirates, and that one of them had eight guns and the other Twelve or Fourteen, to the best of his memory.
Haines was not only a drunken braggart but also a womaniser. He soon had romantic designs on the young women from Burntisland who often visited the ship in harbour. During the following weeks, one nineteen-year-old lass, Anne Seaton, appeared to return his advances. What Haines was not aware of was that this ‘femme fatale’ had a sweetheart on board the missing Speedy Return. The three other crewmen then on board, Simpson, Keigle and Robison, listened with increasing despair as Haines regaled this young lady with swaggering tales. At the first opportunity they took him aside and severely threatened him if he did not put a stop to his loose and inventive tongue.
Such was their concern that two of the English crewmen who had been turned ashore, George Kitchen and Thomas Whitehead, were recruited to spirit Haines away before he could do any more mischief. The plan was for all three to take horse to the neighbouring town of Kinghorn, further along the coast, where a ferry regularly crossed to the busy seaport of Leith. Once there, a berth could easily be had on one of the fast sailing smacks that ran as packets to London.
They were, apparently, unaware that Haines was being watched. For, as they mounted their hired horses, they were intercepted by a posse of local men led by George Ker. The steward was subsequently delivered unceremoniously back on board the Worcester, where his fellow crewmen ensured that he remained muzzled.
To circumnavigate his vigilant minders, his temptress – Miss Seaton – arranged for him to visit her at her mother’s house in Burntisland. There he was plied with drink and engaged in probing conversations in front of witnesses. During one of his performances, in September, the drunken Haines fell into a fit of melancholia in the presence of John Henderson, Writer to the Signet, and William Wood, a gunner with the Royal Artillery. When asked what was troubling him he wrung his hands and melodramatically replied: It is a wonder that since we did not sink at Sea, that God does not make the Ground open up and swallow us up when we came ashore, for the Wickedness, that has been committed during the last voyage on board that old Bitch Bess. And he turned and pointed to the Worcester riding in the harbour.
Later, while walking with Haines along Burntisland Links, the gunner Wood opened a conversation about a relative of the Worcester’s chief mate. The rumour was, he recalled, that Madder’s uncle had been burned alive in oil at Amsterdam for attempted arson on vessels in that port. Haines duly obliged him with the retort: that if what Captain Madder had done during this last Voyage were as well known, he deserved as much as his Uncle met with!
The following month, while Haines, with one of the ship’s two ‘black’ servants in attendance, was enjoying a toast or two in the Widow Seaton’s house, he was confronted by James Wilkie. James was the brother of Andrew, the surgeon on the Speedy Return, and was accompanied by his anxious mother. Cornered by their questions as to the fate of the Speedy Return, Haines fell into a passion and screamed: Damn me, what have I to do with Captain Drummond?
It took some time and a few more cups of punch to restore his humour, after which, he was persuaded to return to the subject. He eventually divulged that, while they were on the Malabar Coast, a passing Dutch ship had informed them that Drummond had turned pirate, whereupon Captain Green had ordered the Worcester’s sloop, christened the Delagoa by the crew, to be made ready in case they were attacked. Fortunately for them, the Scots pirate never made an appearance.
Perhaps to retain the attention of his wearying audience, he added a tantalising aside that, at the time of the seizure of the Worcester in the Forth, he had in his custody, that which he would not have fallen into the Seizers Hands for twice the value of the ship! When queried as to what this mysterious item might be, he curtly replied that he had long since thrown it overboard, declaring as he did so: let them seek it now at the Bottom of the Sea!
James Wilkie tried steering him back to his dark secret by enquiring about the value of the Worcester. The braggart in Haines rose to the bait, for he chose to disclose that she was not as rich as would be expected after her two-year voyage; but there were things still hidden in her that had escaped detection at the first rummage by the agents of the company. Things of which he, of course, knew the exact whereabouts and which could only otherwise be found by stripping her hull board from board.
Mrs Wilkie, by now deeply distressed by Haines’s evasive ranting, left the room with the Widow Seaton. Out of his earshot, Mrs Wilkie pleaded with the Widow to make him tell her what he knew of her son. The Widow counselled her that, as he was a suitor for her daughter’s hand, Anne was the person best positioned to pry open his secrets. This was agreed and the Wilkies took their leave. Some time later, the conceited Haines confided to his attentive belle that he found they had a design to pump him, but that they should not be the wiser of him, tho[ugh] what he had said, he had said. At which point Anne decided that the game had run its course.
The following morning she left Burntisland and made for the house of Kenneth McKenzie in the Canongate, Edinburgh. He was a kinsman of the secretary and himself an agent of the company. He listened with the deepest interest as she divulged all she had heard and what she suspected. Spurred to action by her rendition of Haines’s boast of ‘things’ hidden in the Worcester, he went straight to the Committee in Council of the company.
They immediately ordered a more thorough search of the Worcester. At the same time they set in motion enquiries with a view to raising a case against Captain Green and his crew for piracy of the Speedy Return and the murder of her crew.
The further rummage was exhaustive but revealed nothing directly incriminating. The searchers did, however, report to the Committee that they had found the nature of the ship’s books and the state of the cargo highly suspicious. Some of her ledgers were written in a cipher, which they held to be circumstantial evidence of some kind of clandestine activity, not befitting an honest trader. Furthermore, her cargo was in a dishevelled state, with a number of bales and chests unmarked. This state of affairs, they maintained, would never have been allowed by a self-respecting supercargo. Both observations raised the question: was this plundered cargo that had been dumped in the hold?
The investigation had, by now, gained its own momentum. The inquisitors moved forward on the assumption that, as pirates, they would have taken an oath of secrecy. Unless one could be made to confess, others had to be found who could testify to their guilt. Their search for witnesses quickly led them to the two ‘black’ servants still on board the Worcester: Antonio Ferdinando, the cook’s mate, and Antonio Francisco, manservant to Captain Green.
In Ferdinando they found what they were looking for – the vital eye-witness to an act of piracy and murder. He was a Portuguese-speaking Indian and told them, through an interpreter, of a terrible act that took place at sea. This event happened off the coast of Malabar, between Calicut and Tellicherry, in January or February 1703.
According to him, the Worcester had come up with another vessel flying the same flag and Captain Green, the supercargo (now deceased) and the purser went aboard her. On their return the Captain ordered the sloop to be made ready to attack the other vessel. The sloop was then armed with four cannons and two swivel-guns. Madder was put in charge of the twenty men, including Ferdinando, who manned the Delagoa sloop for the assault.
The sloop, being a fine sailer, caught up with the other vessel and engaged her in a fire-fight over two successive days, but did not have the weight of shot to overpower her. On the third day, the Worcester finally came up and fired her heavier cannon. Whereupon, Madder then led a boarding party which took the vessel. They then proceeded to brutally murder the captured crew with hatchets and throw their bodies overboard. Ferdinando reckoned that ten men died in this manner. During the engagement he was one of a number of the Worcester’s crew who received a wound, the scar of which he still bore.
Afterwards, some of the captured vessel’s cargo was taken aboard the Worcester. The prize was then sailed to the Keilon River where she was sold to Coge Commodo, a native merchant and servant of the local king.
This hair-raising story appeared to be corroborated by the testimony of the Worcester’s 26-year-old surgeon, Charles May, now residing in Edinburgh. At the time of the alleged piratical attack, he was ashore with one of the seamen, John Reynolds. Even so, he claimed that he had heard and seen much.
In his statement he related that, as he stood at a landing-place four miles from Callicoilean, he heard cannon-fire far out to sea. Later that day, when he was in the company of Coge Commodo and the Worcester’s ‘linguister’, Francisco de Olivera, he enquired what caused the shooting. He was told that the Worcester had gone out and was Fighting at Sea with another Ship.
Early the next morning, he was back at the landing-place and saw that the Worcester had returned to her anchorage, some four miles offshore. Near her stern there appeared to be riding another vessel. Later that morning, the Worcester’s long-boat came in over the sand bar, despite a heavy running sea. The surgeon asked what was the emergency that warranted such a risk. He was told that Madder had sent them to get a ‘Pinguetta’ (native boat) to bring water out to the Worcester as they had spilt and staved all their Water Aboard. The men looked exhausted. They explained away their fatigue on having been busking all night. The surgeon took this to be a sailor’s term for working a vessel back upwind to her mooring after having been driven from her anchors by adverse conditions. The prosecution would, however, later claim that this term was pirate parlance for fitting-out a merchant vessel as a fighting raider.
Five or six days passed before the surgeon, carrying his new supply of medicines, went back on board the Worcester. He was immediately struck by the shambles of bales and chests on the deck and asked Madder, what have you got there, you are full of Business? His enquiry was met with a curse and a command to go mind his Plaister Box. Soon afterwards Ferdinando presented himself to the surgeon with a bandaged arm that proved to be fractured and gashed. When asked who had applied the dressing, the Indian said a Dutch doctor at Cochin, a port further up the coast. Two other crewmen, Duncan Mackay and Edward Cumming, also needed his skills for injuries. At the time he thought these wounds could have been the result of a fight, but he could not be certain.
The other servant, Francisco, was a Portuguese-speaking African manservant, bought by Captain Green at Delagoa Bay while trading for ivory. He proved to be of little use to the inquisitors as he had been chained in the hold most of the time of the alleged act of piracy. In fact, he only knew what Ferdinando had told him of the incident.
Some time later, a Leith goldsmith and seal-maker, John Glen, came forward to the Committee with new and damning information. He said that, a few days after the Worcester arrived at Burntisland, the first mate Madder had taken him aside. Once in the privacy of the great cabin, Madder had shown him a seal that he had in his possession. Glen described it as mounted on a lignum vitae handle and bearing the unmistakable coat-of-arms of the Company of Scotland: the St Andrew’s Cross, a Dromedarie or Camel with a Castle on the back of it, a ship with a Rising Sun above the Helmet, and two wild Men as Supporters … near the bigness of an English Half-Crown. To the interviewing Committee this was an indisputable piece of hard evidence as to what Haines had hinted was hidden in the Worcester. Indeed, this sighting of their seal proved to the Council that there was a direct link between the act of piracy reported by Ferdinando and at least one of the missing Scots vessels.
The Committee duly handed over their findings to the Prosecutor for the High Court of Admiralty of Scotland. On 15 December 1704, Green and Madder were arrested at their lodgings in Edinburgh on the charge of piracy, robbery and murder. At the same time, the five crewmen on the Worcester and seven others found in the immediate area of Burntisland and Leith were rounded up.
They were marched off to four separate locations: Edinburgh Castle, the Old Town Tolbooth (close to St Giles on the Royal Mile), the Canongate Tolbooth (further down the Mile), and Leith Tolbooth. The star witnesses for the prosecution, Ferdinando, May and Francisco, were also detained in the Castle, although they were given their liberty within its walls.
By now Edinburgh was in uproar, even though the Prosecutor’s final charges were careful to state that the alleged heinous crimes were perpetrated against an unknown ship, manned by an unidentified English-speaking crew. Indeed, the indictment did not mention at any time (or in any place) Captain Drummond, or any member of his crew, or the Speedy Return.
It may have been a coincidence, though highly unlikely, that around the time of their arrest, the Lord High Admiral of England formally sanctioned the seizure of the Annandale. This decision meant that henceforth all Scottish vessels found trading in breach of any of the English Companies’ monopolies were legal prize.
The stalemate was complete. It was now no longer possible for the company vessels of one nation to survive unmolested in the sovereign waters of the other.
The trial of Captain Green and his crew commenced on 4 March 1705. Sitting on the bench were two regular judges, James Graham and Robert Forbes. Such was the gravity of the offences and the political overtones of the case that they were joined by the Earl of Loudoun, the Earl of Belhaven, Robert Dundas (Senior) of Arniston, John Home of Blackadder and John Cockburn of Ormiston.
The prosecution team of eight advocates was led by Alexander Higgins, the Procurator Fiscal for the Admiralty Court. The defence team of six advocates was led by Sir David Theirs. The jury was hand-picked from the most interested parties – five sea captains (led by Archibald Drummond of Leith) and ten Edinburgh merchants. Most of these jurors had close connections with the Company of Scotland.
The defence, predictably, opened the hearing with a legal challenge as to the Court’s competence to adjudicate a case brought against an English master and an English vessel for supposed crimes committed thousands of miles away. This argument was set aside as the Court deemed itself empowered by the Law of Nations to deal with any act of piracy committed in international waters.
The defence then followed up with a formal request that Captain Green should be tried first, as the rest of the accused were seamen doing his bidding. They stated that, like the late Captain William Kidd, Green held a quasi-naval commission to suppress piracy in the Indian Ocean (as granted by the late King William, under the Great Seal). Failing that, those crewmen standing in the dock who were plainly innocent (notably the second mate, John Reynolds, who had been ashore at the time of the alleged attack) should be freed so that they could bear witness for the defence. Both these motions were denied. The judges ruled that the captain and his crew were socii criminis (common criminals) and not acting in any naval capacity that might excuse an attack on another vessel.
With all procedural points of law dealt with, the two-week trial of all fifteen defendants got under way with the interrogation of the only eye-witness to the crime, Ferdinando. This examination was conducted with the help of Captain George Yeaman of Dundee as interpreter.
Given the deeply held prejudices of the day towards ‘black’ people, Higgins first took time and care to build the credibility of Ferdinando with the jury. He stated that the 24-year-old Indian was a baptised Christian and the son of Christian parents. As such, he fully understood the gravity of the oath he had taken as witness. He also pointed out that Ferdinando had joined the Worcester at Anjango on the Malabar Coast, only a few days before the alleged act of piracy. He had, therefore, little time or occasion to nurture such a strong grievance against this captain and his crew that he should perjure himself in an act of malice.
Ferdinando was then invited to relate the story of his involve-ment in a terrible act of piracy to the jury. This evidence was seemingly verified by May and Francisco. Higgins then proceeded to underpin his case with the witnesses to Haines’s rantings at Burntisland. The seal which Madder had shown the Leith master had, unfortunately, since gone missing, so a lookalike was displayed for the benefit of the jury.
The defence opened with a pre-emptive broadside on the flimsiness of the charges, which never specified the exact time or place of the crimes or the identity of the victims. How, Sir David Theirs demanded, could these men in the pannel ever prove their innocence if these essential details were not forthcoming? Prophetically, he put it to the jury that the vessel and crew alluded to might well have been shipwrecked or taken by pirates elsewhere. Witnesses to these events may have survived and so be able to provide alibis – if only the vessel was identified in the charge. After all, this vessel had not been sunk, but sold to others who would have knowledge of its identity and ultimate fate.
He declared that any verdict of ‘proven’ returned on such vague charges could never be safe. In support of his argument, he cited the opinions of the ancient criminologist Pharinacius and the great Scots jurist, Sir George McKenzie. The prosecution had, he claimed, ignored the most basic rules of evidence, as laid down by the Constitution of the Roman Emperor Theodosius.
The defence laid great emphasis on the fact that a number of accused had had the opportunity to escape. They had chosen not to, even though they were well aware of the rumours of piracy that surrounded their vessel. Indeed, one of the ordinary seaman, John Bannantine, a native of Scotland, had presented himself at the Canongate Tolbooth after the arrest of the others, intent on clearing his name. This was not, the defence proclaimed, the action of a guilty man. These arguments failed in their objective, namely, to have the case dismissed before moving to a formal defence.
Forced to proceed, the central plank of the defence strategy was to discredit the testimonies of the two main prosecution witnesses, Ferdinando and May, as riddled with inconsistencies. The principal discrepancy was that Ferdinando had stated that the piratical attack took place over a period of three days. The surgeon, on the other hand, was adamant that the Worcester had been gone only one night from her mooring.
Furthermore, the cook’s mate stated that the location of the alleged act of piracy was well over a hundred miles from the shore where May heard gunfire. This could not be possible as the lead-sheathed Worcester was a slow sailer and could never have been in all the places mentioned by Ferdinando in the time-scale given. If Ferdinando’s story of a sea-fight was true, the defence demanded, why were there no marks of cannon-shot to be seen on the Worcester’s hull?
Pressing home their argument, the defence pointed to the obvious fact that there had not been one word of a piratical attack along the Malabar Coast during the time of the alleged incident. Such news invariably spread like wildfire along the Indian Coast and would have been reported back to London by now. Indeed, at least two East Indiamen had docked recently – those that had accompanied the Worcester on her homeward passage – carrying the most recent intelligence of events on the Malabar Coast. The inescapable conclusion was that the Worcester had never been involved in an act of piracy. Ferdinando, for reasons known only to himself, was lying.
As for the surgeon’s circumstantial evidence of hearing gunfire, the jury were informed that there was another, more plausible, explanation – shooting in salutation. It was then common practice for large vessels of the same nationality in the trade to discharge a five-gun salute when coming alongside one another.
This also explained his sighting of a vessel apparently riding to the Worcester’s stern. At a distance of four miles and viewed from a certain angle, any vessel anchoring over the same patch could easily be mistaken for being in tow or moored to the Worcester. Indeed, the surgeon was right in only one detail – the meaning of the term ‘busking’ as referring to the wholly innocent activity of tacking a vessel back against the wind.
The defence went on to maintain that May’s description of finding the deck of the Worcester heaped with bales and chests on his arrival, was a typical scene when trading off a shallow estuary mouth. In the absence of a deep-water jetty to moor against for loading, goods were delivered alongside in small boats and hoisted on deck. Madder’s curse and dismissive comment to the surgeon’s enquiry was his crude way of expressing his concern for the Goods being Dammaged, and [said in] a Tarpallion temper usual in Seamen. As to the comments he claimed were made by Coge Commodo and the linguister regarding a sea-fight, these were hearsay. Commodo’s reference to buying a vessel could easily refer to a purchase made before the event in question.
As for the crewmen’s injuries that May suspected as wounds sustained in a battle, these were common occurrences in a working ship. Indeed, it was more than likely that Ferdinando’s wound was the result of a ‘below deck’ squabble that got out of hand. Such an injury he would naturally wish to conceal from his captain, for fear of punishment.
Turning to the other testimonies, the defence dismissed those concerning the conversations that took place while the Worcester lay at Burntisland, as hearsay or inference or conjuncture. Haines’s ambiguous asides never once made direct reference to the crimes under trial and inferred no more than that he was using some stratagems to gain his Mistress. Likewise, the overheard talk of Wickedness between the other crewmen could readily apply to any one of the numerous sins to which sailors were susceptible when voyaging abroad and need not be a reference to piracy and murder.
Lastly, the defence turned to the company’s seal which Madder once had in his possession and which had been so perfectly described to the jury by the Leith seal-maker. They argued that, as the directors of the Scots Company had taken to signing commissions with other individuals and partnerships in recent years, there were a hundred ways that one of their seals might have come into his hands, none of which necessarily involved an act of piracy.
Higgins, for the prosecution, commenced his summing-up with a tirade against the scourage of pirates who were worse than ravenous Beasts. After reviewing the evidence given under oath, he concluded by reminding the jury that they had an eye-witness in Ferdinando, who tho[ugh] a Black, is a legal Witness seeing that, upon full Debate, has been already determined by the Honourable Judges; And indeed besides that, he is not only a Man but a Christian. So directed, the jury retired on Wednesday 14 March to consider their verdict. They were ordered to return their decision by that Friday.
At ten o’clock on the appointed day, the Chancellor of the Jury, James Fleming of Rathobyres, handed up his note. This was that the jury by a plurality of votes find, that there is one clear witness to the Piracy, Robbery and Murder libelled, and that there are accumulative and concurring Presumptions, proven for the Piracy and Robbery so libelled; But find that John Reynolds, second mate of the said ship was ashore at the time of the Action libelled. Reynolds was duly released at the bar.
The news of the guilty verdict on the other fourteen was received in the streets of Edinburgh with undisguised jubilation. Defoe solemnly reported: I cannot but here take Notice (though with much Concern) that upon the Condemnation of these unhappy Men, there seemed a universal Joy in and about the City; it was the only Discourse for some Days, and every Man thought himself nearly concerned in it; and some could not forbear in Words openly to express their brutal Joy: ‘Now’, said they, ‘we’ll Darien ‘em: By this they shall see we’ll do ourselves Justice.’
Defoe reckoned that, during their final days of captivity, the prisoners were subjected to a constant barrage of verbal abuse and intimidation, as they
were not only insulted with the most opprobrious Language, by such as could get to ‘em, but continually worried by the religious Kirk Teachers. The most dismal Threatnings were denounc’d against ‘em, and nothing but God’s Wrath and eternal Torments in all its Horrors, were to be their Portion, if they died obdurate (as they call’d it) that is, without owning themselves guilty; and all this delivered with that Passion peculiar to that bitter Sett of Men. Nay, so restless were they, that even now, after Condemnation, they singled out some they found more terrified by their Cant, and assur’d ‘em of Life if they would ingenuously acknowledge the Crimes they were condemned for; and, at last, worked so far upon Haines and Linsey [Linsteed], that they brought them to own almost what they pleased.
On 28 March 1705 all this pressure paid off. George Haines not only confessed, but turned belated Queen’s Witness to save his neck. From his cell in the Canongate Tolbooth he gave a new sworn declaration in front of Judge Forbes, declaring that after the ship herein mentioned was seized, he saw the men which were from, killed and murdered with pole axes and cutlases, and saw their dead bodies put into the sloop & soon after thrown overboard, and to the best of [his] knowledge, the said men were Scots … having heard them speak the Scots language. And further declared that the ship seized was understood by the crew of the Worcester to have been Captain Drummond’s ship …
He went on to identify Madder as the leader of the attack and claimed that he had withheld this information for fear that his information would have caused the Scottish Government [to be] offended, And obliged to deall harshly with him. Defoe, rather ghoulishly, later elaborated on this confession by having him state that when the crew turned pirate, every one of ‘em was let Blood, which they mixed together, and after every Man had drank part, they all swore to Secrecy.
Haines’s sensational statement was immediately leaked to the Edinburgh Gazette. It provided some further embellishments and released an article the following day stating that the vessel taken on the Malabar Coast was a Ship belong to our Indian and African Company, Commanded by Capt. Drummond; and that they were murdered all the Men on board her, by chopping off some of their heads with a Hatchet, and tying others Back to Back, and throwing them in the Sea.
This confession to the gruesome murder of the Scottish crew put the verdict beyond all shadow of a doubt for most patriots. With the first executions scheduled in six days’ time, these latest revelations struck the spark to the tinder-dry emotions of the greatly feared Edinburgh mob. Even the right-minded burghers, who had previously balked at this travesty of Scottish Justice, dropped all reservations. Defoe recalled that as soon as their Confessions were made publick, the Gentry, as well as the Mob, was transported with Rage, and the poor Wretches were blackened and reviled in a shameful Manner; and so violent was the Torrent of their Fury, that it reached even their Council for their Tryals, and they were obliged, for their own Safety, to withdraw into the Country.
In the absence of any direct intervention by her Scottish Privy Councillors, the Queen’s hands were tied. At the insistence of her English Councillors she requested a short reprieve. This was duly approved by her Scottish Councillors sitting in Edinburgh – but they would go no further. To all intents and purposes, this trial had been conducted with due process and diligence. For the monarch to intervene with a pardon for Green and his crew would be to usurp Scottish Justice. Such a move could only be interpreted as riding roughshod over Scottish national sentiment, in an effort to placate, yet again, the interests of the English East India Company.
In England, the dire events unfolding in Edinburgh were viewed with horror, anguish and anger. On the streets of London, hack writers were hard at work churning out tracts that claimed to expose the callous and murderous designs of the Scots. They claimed that the two ‘black’ witnesses had been hurriedly baptised as Christians for the occasion, kept in strict isolation until the trial and had since been poisoned in their cells. Divine retribution had already struck down the scurrilous surgeon May, as he had dropped dead from an uncontrollable nosebleed at the end of his testimony – certain proof, the newsmongers claimed, that he had borne false witness against Green and his crewmen.
The opportunity was not missed by the Royal Company’s lobbyists in the English Parliament who were pushing for further retaliatory legislation. This was in the form of the draconian Aliens Act that would exclude the Scots from owning, working or trading in England, if a nearer and more compleat Union be not made.
From daybreak of the first scheduled executions, huge and ugly crowds were lining the way from Edinburgh Castle to Leith Sands, baying for blood and screaming their incessant chant No Reprieve! Tens of thousands had poured into Edinburgh, many armed and determined not to be denied their moment of vengeance on the English treachery of the past decade. The fact that two of the men hanged that day, Madder and Simpson, were Scotsmen did not seem to matter.
Only a handful of the Scottish Privy Councillors dared show their faces at Old Parliament House to consider the new evidence from Portsmouth and Queen’s latest plea. Most had arrived early in the morning so as to avoid running the gauntlet of the crowds that were massing along the Royal Mile. As Defoe reported: the Mob perceiving, imagin’d [the Council meeting] ‘twas in order to a further Reprieve or Pardon; immediately all Shops were shut up, and the streets filled with incredible Numbers of Men, Women and Children, calling for Justice upon those English Murtherers. The Lord Chancellour Seafield’s Coach happening to pass by, they stopp’d it, broke the Sashes, haul’d him out, and oblig’d him to promise Execution should speedily be done before he could get from ‘em.
In such an atmosphere of life-threatening intimidation, this rump of besieged Councillors decided to dismiss the affidavits of the two returned sailors from the Speedy Return as only attested copies and to proceed with the executions. In doing so, they chose to believe that they were upholding the integrity of Scottish justice in the face of southern interference whilst averting rioting and bloodshed on the streets of Edinburgh.
With their fate confirmed, the three condemned men, Green, Madder and Simpson, were escorted from Edinburgh Castle under heavy military guard. Green was visibly bewildered and still held faith in a last-minute pardon. Madder and Simpson were reported to appear resigned to their fate and remained silent as they took their seats in the cart.
Penny broadsheets purporting to be Greens and Madder’s Last Dying Words had been selling briskly on the streets days before. Both these testaments maintained their innocence and passionately decried the injustice done to them.
One English gentleman in the crowd reported that as the condemned men trundled past, the jeering crowds huzza’d in triumph as it were, and insulted [them] with the sharpest and most bitter Invectives. Captain Robertson, in charge of the guard escorting them to the gibbet, calculated that around eighty thousand people had turned out for this macabre spectacle.
At Leith Sands, with the Worcester plainly in sight across the Forth, the City hangman prepared the threesome for their step into eternity. Captain Green twice stopped him from pulling the hood over his head, so that he might look for the rider who would bring the Queen’s pardon. After which he seemed to have accepted the inevitable and struggled no more. The ladder was then kicked from under him.
It is significant that, breaking with the Establishment’s traditional treatment of pirates, the bodies of the three were not hung in chains but conveyed back to their lodgings. There Mrs Barclay, assisted by the Captain of the Guard, washed and prepared them for a Christian burial, away from the clutches of the mob. During the removal of their coffins, Captain Robertson had to draw his sword to fight back an inflamed rabble intent on abusing the bodies.
In the aftermath of this great tragedy, much soul-searching was undertaken on both sides of the border. The politicians, having witnessed the terrifying power of the baying mob, stepped back from the abyss of further bloodletting. The young Duke of Argyll, as a Queen’s Commissioner, arranged for the remaining prisoners to be quietly released and provided them with sufficient monies from his own purse to see them safely back to London.
The Worcester was not released. In a final and frantic piece of legal wrangling, the solicitors for the Company of Scotland had the pirate status of this vessel (henceforth the property of the Crown) revoked in favour of that of ‘a prize’, in reprisal for the seizure of the Annandale.
Even this did not save the private possessions of the hanged men being auctioned off as the property of pirates, with Secretary Roderick McKenzie first in line to acquire those of Captain Green. For a few shillings he bought Green’s Eastern curios: two ostrich eggs, a tiger skin and an Indian lance and bow, and his Bible.
The principal owner of the Worcester, Thomas Bowery, had been the driving force behind the petitions to the Queen for a reprieve. After the executions, he compiled and had published in London The Case of the Owners and Freighters of the Ship Worcester, … and also the Case of the late Capt. Thomas Green … executed in Scotland for Pretended Piracy and Murder. In this document he assembled the testimonies of those witnesses who had either been dismissed or unavailable at the time of the trial.
Of the latter group was that of Captain Grandell of the East Indiaman Aureng-Zeb. This respected captain claimed that at Quilon, near the port of Anjango, he had exchanged five-gun salutes, over a period of three days, with Green on the Worcester. This meeting happened around the time of the alleged attack on the Speedy Return. He stated that Green had been driven into Quilon by stress of weather but had been good enough to send over water to him for his sick crewmen. Furthermore, in all his time on the Malabar Coast, he had never heard any mention of an act of piracy at this time.
The other statements included were those taken from the two returned sailors from the Speedy Return and the crewmen from the Worcester who had escaped over the border before the arrests. All these statements supported Captain Green’s denial of any wrongdoing.
The one statement which held new information was that taken from Elizabeth Robison. She was the wife of Andrew, the convicted gunner’s mate. She claimed to have new evidence that discredited the Worcester’s surgeon, Charles May. She related how she had rushed to Edinburgh from London on hearing of her husband’s arrest. On the night before his trial, she sought out the surgeon at his lodgings and confronted him about his testimony, which would condemn her husband to hang for piracy. May was in a flippant mood and claimed that what he had done would harm no Man. She then asked him specifically about his key statement – seeing a mysterious ship lying to the stern of the Worcester. After much cajoling, he eventually conceded it was a Country Boat (native coastal craft) and not another European-built East Indiaman.
Mrs Robison was, by then, quite sure that he had been bribed by someone to maintain the myth that the vessel could have been the missing Speedy Return. She pursued him on this matter and he finally told her that, during his enforced stay in Edinburgh Castle, Lady Mary, the fourteen-year-old daughter of the Governor, Lord Leven, had been his constant companion. This lady had proved highly persuasive and arranged a payment of 150 guineas for his deposition, as it was to be heard in court.
May also told Mrs Robison that Lady Mary had in her possession a letter written by the steward Haines to his father in London. He had given it to George Kitchen to be delivered (presumably after his failed escape bid to Kinghorn), but it been taken from this English crewman before he fled over the border. In his letter, Haines solemnly Declared the Innocency of Capt. Green and his Crew to his father.
The exact truth behind the trial, which caused the polarisation of opinion in the two Kingdoms, may never be known. Of the three central witnesses for the prosecution, two (Ferdinando and May) died (of natural causes) in Edinburgh within weeks of the executions. The third, Francisco, took a berth on a visiting Dutch warship and was never heard of again.
As for Captain Green’s Last Dying Words, the general consensus on both sides of the border was that this was the work of a hack writer close to him in the days before his execution. Indeed, one cynical southern observer claimed that a copy had been sent to one of the London owners of the Worcester eight days before the hanging. He identified the author as William Burnet, one of the errand runners for the defence lawyers. Thereafter, this unscrupulous clerk was known as ‘Coge Commodo’ for his mercenary act. This nickname was, apparently, first bestowed on him by the coal-stealers of Edinburgh.
Opinion as to the fairness of the verdict remained firmly drawn along political lines. The supporters of a Union between Scotland and England held that Green and his crew were innocent men, whilst those against the Union held firm to their belief that they were guilty as charged and deserved to hang.
With modern hindsight, it would seem a remarkable coincidence that Defoe, writing twenty years later about the exploits of Bowen, noted that this pirate once sold an English East Indiaman to native merchants at Callequillon. This transaction took place only months before the arrival of the Speedy Return and the Content at Madagascar and the Worcester off the Malabar Coast. It may well be that this was the vessel to which that Coge Commodo was referred in his conversation with May.
Whatever the real story behind the drama of Captain Green, the trial had the effect of demonstrating the immensity of Scottish disaffection with its overbearing southern neighbour and shocked both establishments into seeking a way round the impasse. That same year, the Queen ordered her Commissioners to assemble in London to set about implementing a full ‘incorporating’ Union between the two nations, as a final solution to the schism. The first Article was the surrender of Scotland’s national sovereignty to create ‘one kingdom’ in exchange for Scotland’s full admission into the (new) British overseas empire.
While they set about this delicate and highly contentious business, the Company of Scotland tried to reassert its authority and revive its fortunes with yet another passage to the East. In December 1706, five months after the proposed Articles of the Union had been presented to the Queen, they signed an agreement with a group of Edinburgh merchants – James Gordon, James Majoribanks and Robert Forrester (all jury members at the trial). This was for a last-gasp voyage to China via Madagascar under the Company Patent.
This venture employed the Neptune galley (200 tons), under the command of the Edinburgh merchant and master, James Miller. She was particularly well armed against the threat of pirates and against the agents of the English Companies with twenty-four ‘great guns’ and fifty men.
She sailed from Leith in January 1707, just four months before the Union and the dissolution of the Scots Company, carrying the usual mixed cargo of strong liquor and small arms. This venture ended in the same way as that of the Speedy Return and the Concord. The Neptune was taken by the Madagascan pirate John Halsey.
The visit of the Neptune to Madagascar did, however, significantly contribute to the demise of this great pirate nest. As the pirate hunter Captain Alexander Hamilton commented, the Scots ship commanded by one Millar did the public more service in destroying them, than all the chargeable squadrons that have been sent in quest of them; for, with a cargo of strong ale and brandy, which he carried to sell them … he killed above 500 of them by carousing, although they took his ship and cargo as a present from him, and his men entered, most of them into the society of the pirates. The ‘chargeable squadron’ he was referring to was that of hms Scarborough and hms Severn under Commodore Littlejohn, which had cruised around Madagascar between 1703 and 1705 to no great effect.
This unintentional massacre of pirates by alcohol abuse heralded a period of respite from the scourge of the Black Flag in the Indian Ocean. To capitalise on this cull, a committee was set up by the Board of Trade in 1707. On this board sat the owner of the Worcester, Thomas Bowery. It recommended offering a new pardon to the survivors of Miller’s visit, which was duly granted by the newly constituted (British) Privy Council.
This uneasy peace in the Indian Ocean lasted twelve years. It was finally broken when the New Providence pirates Edward England, John Taylor and Olivier La Bouche, arrived in Madagascan waters from West Africa in 1719, in good time to intercept Captain James Macrae on the Cassandra.