FOOTNOTES
[82] Water bailiff:—a custom house officer charged with the duty of searching ships.
[83] The place of the execution was about where the North End Park bathing beach is today.
[84] In the summer of 1755, two negro servants of Capt. John Codman of Charlestown, poisoned their master. Phillis, the woman servant and the principal in the murder, was burned at the stake at Cambridge and Mark, her accessory, was hanged and then gibbetted on Charlestown Neck. Three years later Dr. Caleb Rea of Wenham, while on his way to Ticonderoga, rode by and stopped to inspect the body of Mark. He recorded in his diary that “the skin was but little broken altho’ he had been hanging there near three or four years.”
[85] These pirates were tried under authority conferred by a commission sent over in accordance with an Act of the 11th and 12th year of William III, authorizing the trial of pirates by Courts of Admiralty, out of the realm. The commission sent to New England was dated Nov. 23, 1700. This commission required that all trials should be conducted “according to the civil law” of the Province, which at that time required two innocent witnesses against each defendant necessary for a conviction, and in no case was the testimony of an accomplice admissible. Moreover, by the Act under which the commission was issued, principals only were triable in the Admiralty Courts held in the Provinces; accessories were expressly required to be sent to England for trial. We learn from the Boston News-Letter of the third week in July, that Captain Larramore and Lieutenant Wells, of the “Larramore Galley,” had been sent for England in the express sloop “Sea Flower,” Captain Cary, for trial as “Accessaries in endeavouring to carry off the 7 Pirates.... He carries also with him three Evidences of their crime committed.” All the men on board the pirate brigantine could not be considered as principals. In fact, only six men were executed and the rest of those condemned to death at the same time were afterwards set free. Only such as could be shown were principals in committing acts of piracy or murder could be sentenced by the court. All others must clearly be sent to England to be tried by jury. Nothing in the somewhat detailed report of the trial that was printed in London at the time, shows that the accused were even given the benefit of a doubt either as to the law or the testimony. For an analytical summary of this trial, see Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. VIII, p. 397.
[86] Acts and Resolves of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Vol. VIII, p. 397.
CHAPTER VIII
Samuel Bellamy, whose Ship was Wrecked at Wellfleet and 144 Drowned
Very little is known of the origin of this man save that he came from the west of England where families of the same name are living today. In company with one Paul Williams,[87] he first appears in the West Indies where they tried to raise a Spanish wreck hoping to salve the bags of silver supposed to be in the hold. Meeting with no success and being at odds with honest merchants and shipmasters, they decided to turn pirates or “go on the account,” a term adopted by men of that profession, and not long after they fell in with Capt. Benjamin Hornygold, in the sloop “Mary Anne,” and Capt. Louis Lebous, in the sloop “Postillion,” and agreed to join forces. They set out in two large sloops each having about seventy men aboard.
Before long several captures were made that increased their gains and also enlarged their crews, but Hornygold and some of the Englishmen on board his sloop refused to take and plunder English vessels, so his company divided and he went away in a prize sloop with twenty-six men leaving ninety men who elected Bellamy their new captain. Most of those on board were English and at that time it was not their habit to force men.
Bellamy and Lebous sailed together and off the Virgin Islands took several small vessels and off St. Croix, a French ship from Quebec laden with fish and flour. Afterwards making Saba they sighted two ships which they chased and came up with, spreading a large black flag “with a Deaths Head and Bones a-cross.” The larger of the two was the ship “Sultana,” commanded by Captain Richards. The other was commanded by Captain Tozor. The “Sultana” was taken over by Bellamy and cut down and made into a galley and Paul Williams, his quartermaster, was given command of the sloop.
THE
TRIALS
Of Eight Persons
Indited for Piracy &c.
Of whom Two were acquitted, and the rest found Guilty.
At a Justiciary Court of Admiralty Assembled and Held in Boston within His Majesty’s Province of the Massachusetts-Bay in New-England, on the 18th of October 1717. and by several Adjournments continued to the 30th. Pursuant to His Majesty’s Commission and Instructions, founded on the Act of Parliament. Made in the 11th. & 12th of KING William IIId. Intituled, An Act for the more effectual Suppression of Piracy.
With an APPENDIX,
Containing the Substance of their Confessions given before His Excellency the Governour, when they were first brought to Boston, and committed to Goal.
Boston:
Printed by B. Green, for John Edwards, and Sold at his Shop in King’s Street. 1718.
On Dec. 19, 1716, about nine leagues to the leeward of the island of Blanco, they fell in with the ship “St. Michael,” James Williams, master, a Bristol ship that had sailed from Cork in September, bound for Jamaica with provisions. The ship was taken to the island of Blanco where they helped themselves to such provisions as they wanted and forced four men. Among the men who were forced was Thomas Davis, the ship’s carpenter, born in Carmarthenshire, Wales, who was the only white man to escape drowning when Bellamy was afterwards wrecked on Cape Cod. Thomas South of Boston, England, also was forced.
When Davis was told he must join the pirate crew he cried out that he was undone and “one of the pirates hearing him lament his sad condition, said, ‘Damn him, He is a Presbyterian Dog, and should fight for King James.’” Captain Williams tried to say a good word for Davis and finally Bellamy promised that he might go free on the next vessel that was taken. On Jan. 9, 1717, with fourteen other forced men, he was put on board the “Sultana.” At that time there were on the three pirate vessels eighty men of the “old Company” and one hundred and thirty forced men. “When the Company was called together to consult, each Man to give his Vote, they would not allow the forced Men to have a vote.”[88]
From Blanco, they sailed to a maroon island called Testegos where they refitted and then sailed for the Windward Passage, but the wind blowing hard they parted company with Captain Lebous and went into St. Croix, “where a French pirate was blown up.”
About the end of February, 1717, the “Whidaw,” a fine London-built galley commanded by Capt. Lawrence Prince, was making her way under easy sail through the Windward Passage between Cuba and Porto Rico. She had lately cleared from Jamaica and was bound for London, with a rich cargo of elephants’ teeth, gold dust, sugar, indigo and Jesuit’s bark, having previously been on a slaving voyage to the Guinea coast. The galley was about three hundred tons burthen, mounted eighteen guns and carried a crew of fifty men. Early in the morning a ship and a sloop in company were sighted. They shortly altered their course and followed the “Whidaw” and after a three days’ chase took her with practically no resistance. In fact, Captain Prince was so lacking in spirit that only two chase guns were fired at the sloop and his flag was hauled down at the first demand to surrender.
The pirate ship was commanded by Captain Bellamy who ordered a prize crew on board the “Whidaw” and all three vessels then made a course for Long Island, one of the Bahamas, where they came to anchor. This prize not only enriched but strengthened them for Bellamy immediately took her over and mounted additional guns, so that she carried twenty-eight. Captain Prince was rewarded for making an easy surrender by being given the ship “Sultana.” He also was permitted to load her with much of the best and finest of the cargo of the “Whidaw,” not wanted by the pirates, and after his crew had been picked over and the boatswain and two other men forced and seven had volunteered, he was allowed to go. Bellamy felt so well-disposed that he gave the captain £20 in silver and gold, “to bear his charges.”[89]
When the “Whidaw” was taken over, Davis reminded Captain Bellamy of his promise and asked if he might go with Captain Prince. Bellamy said he might go if the company consented and called for a vote; but the pirates expressed themselves violently and voted no. He was a carpenter and needed on board. “Damn him,” said the company, “rather than let him go he should be shot or whipped to Death at the Mast.” All the new men were now sworn to be true and not cheat the company to the value of a piece of eight and it was agreed to treat forced men and volunteers alike. “When a prize was taken the Watch Bill was to be called over and Men put on board as they stood named in the Bill.”
The money taken on the “Whidaw” was reported to amount to £20,000. It was counted over in the cabin and put up in bags, fifty pounds as every man’s share, there being one hundred and eighty men on board. “The money was kept in chests between decks without any Guard.”
The next day Bellamy and Williams sailed and shaped a course for the Capes of Virginia on the way taking an English ship, hired by the French, laden with sugar and indigo, and after an inspection dismissing her. Off the Virginia coast three ships and a snow were taken, two of them hailing from Scotland, one from Bristol, and the last, a Scotch ship from the Barbadoes with a little rum and sugar aboard, in so leaky a condition that the crew refused to go farther in her and so the pirates sunk her and put the crew on board the snow which was commanded by a Captain Montgomery. This vessel was taken over and manned by men from the “Whidaw.” The two other ships were plundered and discharged.
Just at this time a storm came up and Bellamy took in all his small sails and Williams double-reefed his main sail. It was a thunder-storm and the wind blew with such violence that the “Whidaw” was very nearly over-set. Fortunately it blew from the northwest and so drove them away from the coast with only the goose-wings of the foresails to scud with. Towards night the storm increased mightily “and not only put them by all Sail, but obliged the Whidaw to bring her Yards aportland, and all they could do with Tackles to the Goose Neck of the Tiler, four Men in the Gun Room, and two at the Wheel, was to keep her Head to the Sea, for had she once broach’d to, they must infallibly have founder’d. The Heavens, in the mean while, were cover’d with Sheets of Lightning, which the Sea by the Agitation of the saline Particles seem’d to imitate; the Darkness of the Night was such, as the Scripture says, as might be felt; the terrible hollow roaring of the Winds, cou’d be only equalled by the repeated, I may say, incessant Claps of Thunder, sufficient to strike a Dread of the supream Being, who commands the Sea and the Winds, one would imagine in every Heart; but among these Wretches, the Effect was different, for they endeavoured by their Blasphemies, Oaths, and horrid Imprecations, to drown the Uproar of jarring Elements. Bellamy swore he was sorry he could not run out his Guns to return the Salute, meaning the Thunder, that he fancied the Gods had got drunk over their Tipple, and were gone together by the Ears:
“They continued scudding all that Night under their bare Poles. The next Morning the Main-Mast being sprung in the Step, they were forced to cut it away, and, at the same time, the Mizzen came by the Board. These Misfortunes made the Ship ring with Blasphemy, which was encreased, when, by trying the Pumps, they found the Ship made a great Deal of Water; tho’ by continually plying them, it kept it from gaining upon them: The Sloop as well as the Ship, was left to the Mercy of the Winds, tho’ the former, not having a Tant-Mast, did not lose it. The Wind shifting round the Compass, made so outrageous and short a Sea, that they had little Hopes of Safety; it broke upon the Poop, drove in the Taveril, and wash’d the two Men away from the Wheel, who were saved in the Netting. The Wind after four Days and three Nights abated of its Fury, and fixed in the North, North East Point, hourly decreasing, and the Weather clearing up, so that they spoke to the Sloop, and resolv’d for the Coast of Carolina; they continued this Course but a Day and a Night, when the Wind coming about to the Southward, they changed their Resolution to that of going to Rhode Island. All this while the Whidaw’s Leak continued, and it was as much as the Lee-Pump could do to keep the Water from gaining, tho’ it was kept continually going. Jury-Masts were set up, and the Carpenter finding the Leak to be in the Bows, occasioned by the Oakam spewing out of a Seam, the Crew became very jovial again; the Sloop received no other Damage than the Loss of the Main-Sail, which the first Flurry tore away from the Boom.”[90]
While on the voyage to Rhode Island they came upon a Boston-owned sloop commanded by Captain Beer, who was ordered on board the “Whidaw” while the sloop was being plundered. Both Bellamy and Williams were for giving Captain Beer his sloop again but for some reason the company would not agree to it and so the sloop was sunk and later Captain Beer was set ashore on Block Island. He reached his home in Newport, the first of May.
After the vote to sink the sloop had been taken Bellamy announced the fact to the captain in a speech that has been preserved in the “History of the Pirates.”
“D—— my Bl——d,” says he, “I am sorry they won’t let you have your Sloop again, for I scorn to do any one a Mischief, when it is not for my Advantage; damn the Sloop, we must sink her, and she might be of Use to you. Tho’, damn ye, you are a sneaking Puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by Laws which rich Men have made for their own Security, for the cowardly Whelps have not the Courage otherwise to defend what they get by their Knavery; but damn ye altogether: Damn them for a Pack of crafty Rascals, and you, who serve them, for a Parcel of hen-hearted Numskuls. They villify us, the Scoundrels do, when there is only this Difference, they rob the Poor under the Cover of Law, forsooth, and we plunder the Rich under the Protection of our own Courage; had you not better make One of us, than sneak after the A——s of these Villains for Employment? Capt. Beer told him, that his Conscience would not allow him to break thro’ the Laws of God and Man. You are a devilish Conscience Rascal, d——n ye, replied Bellamy, I am a free Prince, and I have as much Authority to make War on the whole World, as he who has a hundred Sail of Ships at Sea, and an Army of 100,000 Men in the Field; and this my Conscience tells me; but there is no arguing with such sniveling Puppies, who allow Superiors to kick them about Deck at Pleasure; and pin their Faith upon a Pimp of a Parson: a Squab, who neither practices nor believes what he puts upon the chuckle-headed Fools he preaches to.”[91]
On board the “Whidaw” was a man named Lambert, and John Julian, a Cape Cod Indian, both of whom knew the coast and who were to act as pilots. It was Bellamy’s intention to clean his ship at Green Island.
On Friday, April 26, 1717, early in the morning, about a fortnight after setting Captain Beer ashore, when halfway between Nantucket shoals and St. George’s banks, the pirates came up with a pink, the “Mary Anne,” of Dublin, Capt. Andrew Crumpstey, with a cargo of wine from Madeira. She had touched at Boston and was bound for New York. The pirate vessels came up “with King’s Ensign and Pendant flying” and after the pink had struck her colors a boat was hoisted out from the “Whidaw” and seven men were sent on board “armed with Musquets, Pistols and Cutlasses.” Captain Crumpstey, with five of his hands, was ordered to go aboard the “Whidaw” with his ship’s papers. The mate, Thomas Fitzgerald, and two seamen, Alexander Mackconachy and James Dunavan, were left on board the “Mary Anne.”
A little later, men from the “Whidaw” rowed over to get some wine from the cargo but finding it difficult to get at returned with only a small quantity, carrying back at the same time some clothing needed by the men from the pink. Soon after the boat was hoisted aboard, the ship hailed and ordered the pink to steer N. W. by N. and the little fleet followed this course until about four o’clock in the afternoon when it came up very thick, foggy weather and they lay to. Presently the snow came up under the ship’s stern and hailed Captain Bellamy and told him that they saw land. He then ordered the pink to steer north. A sloop from Virginia had also been taken that afternoon and as night came on all four vessels put out lights a-stern and made sail, keeping together. Soon Captain Bellamy hailed the pink, which was a slow sailer, and ordered them to make more haste, whereupon John Brown, one of the pirates, swore “that she should carry sail till she carryed her Masts away.”
The pirates on board the pink drank plentifully of the wine on board and took turns at the helm. As she was leaky all hands were forced to pump hard and in consequence damned the vessel and wished they had never seen her. A pirate named Thomas Baker was in command of the company on the pink and told Fitzgerald, the mate, that Captain Bellamy held a commission from King George, and Simon van Vorst, one of his men, said, “Yes, and we will stretch it to the World’s end.”
At this time there were about fifty forced men on board the pirate vessels “over whom they kept a watchful eye, and no Man was suffered to write a word, but what was nailed up to the Mast. The names of the forced men were put in the Watch Bill and fared as others. They might have had what money they wanted from the Quartermaster, who kept a Book for that purpose.”[92] It was common report on board that they had with them about £20,000, in gold and silver.
About ten o’clock in the evening it came on very thick weather. The wind blew from the east, it lightened and rained hard and the vessels soon lost sight of each other. Fitzgerald, the mate, was then at the helm and suddenly found that the pink was among the breakers. All hands tried to trim the head sail but before they could do it the vessel ran ashore opposite to Slutts-bush, at the back of Stage Harbor, on the south side of Cape Cod in what is now the town of Orleans. Baker, the pirate in command, at once ordered the foremast and mizzen mast cut down and the heavy sea soon drove the pink high on shore. Some of the prize crew, fearful of apprehension, then said “For God’s sake let us go down into the Hould and Die together” and later asked Fitzgerald to read to them out of the common prayer book which he did for about an hour. As the pink gave no signs of breaking up everybody remained on board until daybreak when they found it possible on the shore side to jump directly on land. It was a small island called Pochet Island, now a part of the mainland of Orleans. Here they breakfasted on sweetmeats found in a chest, washed down with wine from the cargo. At the time they could see at anchor beyond the bar, the snow and the small sloop, both having ridden out the storm safely. About the middle of the morning they worked off shore.
At ten o’clock in the forenoon two men, John Cole and William Smith, came out to the island in a canoe and carried them all to the mainland where they went to Cole’s house and stayed for a short time, “looking very dejected.” Cole afterwards testified that they asked the way to Rhode Island and seemed in great haste to be off.
News of the wreck traveled swiftly and soon reached the ears of Joseph Doane of Eastham, a justice of the peace and representative to the Great and General Court. Fitzgerald testified at the trial of the pirates that Mackconachy, the cook on the pink, had bravely denounced the seven pirates as soon as they reached the house of John Cole. At any rate, Justice Doane, with a deputy sheriff and posse of men, was soon in pursuit of the fleeing pirates who were overtaken and seized at Eastham tavern and taken to Barnstable gaol.
Meanwhile, the “Whidaw” drove ashore ten miles[93] to the north with a great loss of life. Only two out of the ship’s company of one hundred and forty-six men reached the shore alive,—Thomas Davis, a young Welsh shipwright who had been forced the previous December, and John Julian, an Indian, born on Cape Cod,—these two men, by great endurance and good fortune, not only swam ashore from the bar on which the “Whidaw” was breaking up, but after reaching the shore successfully scaled “the Table Land” and escaped the smother of pounding rollers beneath.
Davis told the judges of the Admiralty Court in Boston that when the thunder-storm broke, the “Whidaw” lost sight of her escorts and like the pink soon found breakers ahead. An anchor was let go but the violence of the sea was so great that the cable was cut and the attempt made to work off shore but she soon drove on the bar. A quarter of an hour after she struck, the mainmast went by the board and in the morning the fine new ship was a tangled mass of wreckage. About sixteen prisoners were drowned including Crumpstey, the master of the pink. “The riches on board were laid together in one head,” testified Davis.
While the condemned pirates were awaiting execution they were taken to the North Meeting House, as an edifying spectacle, and there the Rev. Cotton Mather preached a sermon which was published under the title: “Instructions to the Living from the Condition of the Dead.” In this pamphlet he states that “when it appeared that the wrecked ship was breaking up the pirates murdered their prisoners on board lest they should escape and appear as witnesses. Wounds were afterwards found on their dead bodies washed up by the sea.” Nowhere in the testimony given at the trial is there an allusion to anything of the sort. Davis, the white survivor, testified in great detail and makes no mention of such horrible brutality. That dead bodies may have come ashore battered and mutilated is highly probable. Every great loss of life in a wrecked ship that has broken up and buffeted its victims has exhibited similar horrors.
Another tale that has survived relates to the supposed heroism of the captain of the Irish pink. The “Boston News-Letter” of April 29-May 6, 1717, prints news of the wreck and states that “The Pyrates being free with the Liquor that the Captive had, got themselves Drunk and asleep, and the Captive master in the Night, thought it a fit opportunity to run her ashore on the back side of Eastham.” Nearly eighty years later a citizen of Wellfleet wrote a short history of the town with an account of the pirate wreck, in which he doubtless perpetuated the local traditions. He relates that Bellamy’s entire fleet was “cast on the shore of what is now Wellfleet, being led to the shore by the captain of a snow, which was made a prize on the day before: who had the promise of the snow as a present, if he would pilot the fleet into Cape Cod harbor; the captain, suspecting that the pirate would not keep his promise, and that instead of clearing his ship, as was his pretence, his intentions were to plunder the inhabitants of Provincetown. The night being dark, a lantern was hung in the shrouds of the snow, the captain of which, instead of piloting where he was ordered, approached so near the land, that the pirate’s large ship which followed him struck on the outer bar; the snow being less, struck much nearer the shore. The fleet was put in confusion; a violent storm arose; and the whole fleet was shipwrecked on the shore. Many in the smaller vessels got safe on shore. Those that were executed, were the pirates put on board a prize schooner before the storm.... At times to this day [1793], there are King William and Queen Mary coppers picked up, and pieces of silver, called cob money. The violence of the seas moves the sands upon the outer bar; so that at times the iron caboose of the ship, at low ebb, has been seen.”[94]
SPANISH DOUBLOON
From the original coin found on the beach at Wellfleet, Mass., where Bellamy’s pirate ship was wrecked in 1717 and now in the possession of Charles A. Taylor.
A SPANISH “PIECE OF EIGHT”
From a coin in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society
No longer ago than the year 1900, Capt. Webster Eldridge of Chatham, secured two guns that undoubtedly came from the wreck of the wine ship. The guns of the “Whidaw” should be found where she first struck on the outer bar, as she turned bottom up before she broke up and came ashore.
The “Whidaw” came ashore about twelve o’clock at night. As soon as it was light, Thomas Davis, one of the two survivors, found his way to the house of Samuel Harding, about two miles distant from the wreck, and after telling his story Harding took him on his horse and they went to the shore and began to salvage what had washed up from the ship. They made several trips between the shore and the house. By ten o’clock a dozen others were there busily at work. The next day was Sunday and when Mr. Justice Doane reached the beach that morning he found that everything of value had been carried away. Davis was apprehended by him and a few days later the nine men in Barnstable gaol were placed on horseback and started for Boston under a strong guard and on May 4th they were placed in irons in the stone gaol that then was located where the City Hall Annex now stands.
Meanwhile, Governor Shute saw visions of a great store of pirate gold and so issued a proclamation charging all of His Majesty’s officers and subjects within the Province to use all diligence to seize and apprehend not only escaped pirates but “money, bullion, treasure, goods and merchandizes” from the pirate ship. He also dispatched Capt. Cyprian Southack to the scene of the wreck. Captain Southack had been in command of the “Province Galley” for over nineteen years and afterwards published a chart of the New England coast on which he located the pirate wreck. He hired a small sloop, the “Nathaniel,” John Sole, master, and sailed from Boston on May 1st, at ten o’clock in the morning, only five days after the “Whidaw” had come ashore. The wind was at the south, “a frisking gale,” and he didn’t reach Cape Cod harbor until the afternoon of the next day. There he hired a whale boat and sent two men to Truro where they got horses and at seven o’clock in the evening reached the wreck where a watch was maintained all night.
At four o’clock on the morning of May 3, 1717, the diligent captain started in a whale boat and crossed the Cape by means of the natural canal that existed at that time between Orleans and Eastham, sometimes called “Jeremy’s Drean.” At Truro, he was “much afronted by one Caleb Hopkins, Senr. of Freetown,” and nowhere on the Cape did he find a cordial spirit of coöperation, as may be surmised. He found the “Pepol very Stife and will not [give up] one thing of what they Gott on the Rack.” He wrote to the Governor that “Samuel Harding has a great many Riches that he saved out of the Rack being the first man there and says that the Englishman give him orders to Deliver nothing of the Riches they had saved, so I find the said Harding is as Gilty as the Pirates saved.”
The day after he arrived at Eastham, he posted a notice on the doors of three nearby meeting-houses announcing that he had been authorized by the Governor to discover and take care of the wreck, with power to “go into any house, shop, cellar, warehouse, room or other place and in case of resistance to break open any door, chests, trunks and other packages” and seize any plunder belonging to the wreck. But His Majesty’s “loving subjects” refused to disgorge. “They are very wise and will not tell one nothing of what they got on the Rack,” wrote the complaining captain. The coroner and his jury had ordered the victims of the wreck to be buried and demanded £83, as their due for the cost of burying the sixty-two bodies. Captain Southack claimed that public money should not be wasted in burying outlawed pirates and so the thrifty coroner “putt a stop” on some of the goods from the wreck and secured payment, which “is very hard,” writes the captain.
The fragments of the wrecked ship he found scattered along the shore for a distance of nearly four miles. The anchor of the “Whidaw” could be seen on the bar at low tide but the sea was so rough that it was impossible to go out in the whale boat that he had impressed until nearly a week had gone by and then nothing could be seen for the moving sand made the water thick and muddy. It also rained much of the time. Altogether, a disagreeable experience for the faithful captain! Eventually he was obliged to abandon his attempt to recover “the riches” believed to be buried in the sand on the bar and return to Boston. Fate also played him a scurvy trick by sending along a pirate vessel to capture the sloop “Swan,” Samuel Doggett, master, that had been ordered from Boston to bring back the goods saved from the wreck. After being plundered of stores to the value of £80 she was allowed to go. This happened on the voyage down to the Cape.
Does the sandy bar off Wellfleet still conceal the pirate gold? Who can say? Certainly no large salvage has ever been made. Moreover, there is a possibility that a part of it was carried off by some of the crew who may have escaped from the stranded ship. Captain Williams, the escort of Bellamy, also put in a belated appearance two days after the “Whidaw” was wrecked and came to anchor off shore and sent in a boat. Some salvage may have been effected then.
Williams had reached Block Island on April 28th, too late to join Bellamy, and while there had beguiled on board and forced three men, Dr. James Sweet, George Mitchell and Willaim Tosh.[95] From Block Island, he steered easterly and the next day, April 29th, reached the scene of the wreck. From there he chased several fishing vessels and then stood out to sea. He was back again a month later and took a ship and a schooner and even came into Cape Cod harbor on May 24th and then sailed through Vineyard Sound the following Sunday. He was then in great want of provisions. On May 25th, a man-of-war and an armed sloop, with ninety men, had sailed from Boston in pursuit. The news was sent to Rhode Island and Governor Cranston replied, “I hope it will please god to Bless Your Excellency’s Indevours by the Sirprize and Caption of those Inhumaine Monsters of pray so as our Navigation may be made more Safe and Secure.”
As for the possible escape of men from the wrecked “Whidaw,” the only evidence that now appears is found in the deposition of Daniel Collins, the master of a Cape Ann fishing sloop, who was captured by a small pirate sloop on May 10th. He was forty leagues eastward of Cape Ann at the time. There were nineteen men on board the pirate and they told him that “they were the only men that escaped that belonged to the ship that run on shoar att Cape Cod and that they made their escape in the long boat.” Since then they had taken three shallops and three schooners that belonged to Marblehead.
Pirates usually were brought to a speedy trial in Boston; but for some reason the men who escaped the perils of the sea on Cape Cod remained in gaol until Friday, Oct. 18th before they were taken into Admiralty Court and made to taste the perils of the land. John Julian, the Cape Cod Indian, was brought to Boston with the others but never was tried. He disappears from the records and may have died. Thomas Davis, the twenty-two year old Welshman, was able to convince the Court that he was a forced man and when he was cleared “put himself on his knees and thanked the Court and was dismissed with a suitable admonition.”
The remaining seven:—Simon Van Vorst, 24 years, born in New York; John Brown, 25 years, born in Jamaica; Thomas Baker, 29 years, born in Flushing, Holland; Hendrick Quintor, 25 years, born in Amsterdam; Peter Cornelius Hoof, 34 years, born in Sweden; John Sheean, 24 years, born in Nantes; and Thomas South, 30 years, born in Boston, England; were brought to trial in the Court House standing at the head of what is now State Street. Governor Shute, the Captain-General of the Province, sat as President of the Court and beside him was Lieutenant-Governor Dummer. The prisoners were charged with piracy in taking the “free trading Vessel or Pink called the Mary Anne” and were tried under the statute made in the 11th and 12th year of the reign of William III. The evidence was conclusive. Thomas South, it appeared by the testimony, was a ship carpenter who had been forced by Bellamy the previous December, from a Bristol ship commanded by Capt. James Williams. He was cleared. The others were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged on Friday, Nov. 15, 1717, “at Charlestown Ferry within the flux and reflux of the Sea.”
After the condemned pirates were removed from the courtroom the ministers of the town took them in hand and “bestowed all possible Instructions upon the Condemned Criminals; often Pray’d with them; often Preached to them; often Examined them; and Exhorted them; and presented them with Books of Piety.” At the place of execution Baker and Hoof appeared penitent and the latter joined with Van Vorst in singing a Dutch psalm. John Brown, on the contrary, broke out into furious expressions with many oaths and then fell to reading prayers, “not very pertinently chosen,” remarks the Rev. Cotton Mather. He then made a short speech, at which many in the assembled crowd trembled, in which he advised sailors to beware of wicked living and if they fell into the hands of pirates to have a care what countries they came into. Then the scaffold fell and six twitching bodies, outlined against the sky, ended the spectacle.
Instructions to the LIVING,
from the Condition of the
DEAD.
A Brief Relation of REMARKABLES
in the Shipwreck of above
One Hundred
Pirates,
Who were Cast away in the Ship Whida, on the Coast of New-England, April 26. 1717.
And in the Death of Six, who after a Fair Trial at Boston, were Convicted & Condemned, Octob. 22. And Executed, Novemb. 15. 1717. With some Account of the Discourse had with them on the way to their Execution.
And a SERMON Preached on their Occasion.
Boston, Printed by John Allen, for Nicholas Boone, at the Sign of the Bible in Cornhill. 1717.