The buccaneers and marooners of America

by A. O. Exquemelin; Daniel Defoe

When Roberts was gone, as though he had been the life and soul of the gang, their spirits sunk; many deserted their quarters, and all stupidly neglected any means for defence or escape; and their main-mast soon after being shot by the board, they had no way left but to surrender and call for quarter. The Swallow kept aloof, while her boat passed and repassed for the prisoners, because they understood they were under an oath to blow up; and some of the desperadoes showed a willingness that way, matches being lighted, and scuffles happening between those who would and those who opposed it. But I cannot easily account for this humour, which can be termed no more than a false courage, since any of them had power to destroy his own life, either by pistol or drowning, without involving others in the same fate who are in no temper of mind for it. And at best, it had been only dying for fear of death.

She had 40 guns, and 157 men, 45 whereof were negroes; three only were killed in the action, without any loss to the Swallow. There was found upwards of £2,000 in gold-dust in her. The flag could not be got easily from under the fallen mast, and was therefore recovered by the Swallow; it had the figure of a skeleton in it, and a man portrayed with a flaming sword in his hand, intimating a defiance of death itself.

The Swallow returned back into Cape Lopez Bay, and found the little Ranger, whom the pirates had deserted in haste, for the better defence of the ship. She had been plundered, according to what I could learn, of £2,000 in gold-dust (the shares of those pirates who belonged to her), and Captain Hill, in the Neptune, not unjustly suspected, for he would not wait the man-of-war’s returning into the bay again, but sailed away immediately, making no scruple afterwards to own the seizure of other goods out of her, and surrendered, as a confirmation of all, fifty ounces at Barbadoes, for which, see the article at the end of this book: “All persons who after the 29th of September, 1690,” &c.

To sum up the whole, if it be considered, first, that the sickly state of the men-of-war when they sailed from Princes was the misfortune that hindered their being as far as Sierra Leone, and consequently out of the track the pirates then took; that those pirates, directly contrary to their design, in the second expedition, should get above Cape Corso, and that nigh Axim a chase should offer that inevitably must discover them and be soon communicated to the men-of-war; that the satiating their evil and malicious tempers at Whydah in burning the Porcupine and running off with the French ship had strengthened the Swallow with thirty men; that the Swallow should miss them in that road, where probably she had not, or at least so effectually, obtained her end; that they should be so far infatuated at Cape Lopez as to divide their strength which, when collected, might have been so formidable; and lastly, that the conquest should be without bloodshed—I say, considering all these circumstances, it shows that the hand of Providence was concerned in their destruction.

As to their behaviour after they were taken, it was found that they had great inclinations to rebel if they could have laid hold of any opportunity, for they were very uneasy under restraint, having been lately all commanders themselves, nor could they brook their diet or quarters without cursing and swearing and upbraiding each other with the folly that had brought them to it.

So that, to secure themselves against any mad, desperate undertaking of theirs, the Swallow strongly barricaded the gun-room, and made another prison before it, an officer with pistols and cutlasses doing duty night and day, and the prisoners within manacled and shackled.

They would yet in these circumstances be impudently merry, saying, when they viewed their nakedness, “That they had not left them a halfpenny, to give old Charon, to ferry them over Styx;” and at their thin commons they would observe that they fell away so fast that they should not have weight left to hang them. Sutton used to be very profane, he happening to be in the same irons with another prisoner who was more serious than ordinary and read and prayed often, as became his condition; this man Sutton used to swear at and ask him, “what he proposed by so much noise and devotion?” “Heaven,” says the other, “I hope.” “Heaven, you fool,” says Sutton, “did you ever hear of any pirates going thither? Give me h—ll, it’s a merrier place; I’ll give Roberts a salute of thirteen guns at entrance.” And when he found such ludicrous expressions had no effect on him he made a formal complaint, and requested that the officer would either remove this man or take his Prayer Book away, as a common disturber.

A combination and conspiracy was formed betwixt Moody, Ashplant, Magnes, Mare, and others, to rise and kill the officers and run away with the ship. This they had carried on by means of a mulatto boy, who was allowed to attend them, and proved very trusty in his messages between the principals, but the evening of that night they were to have made the struggle, two of the prisoners that sat next Ashplant heard the boy whisper them upon the project and naming to him the hour they should be ready, presently gave notice of it to the captain, which put the ship in an alarm for a little time; and on examination several of them had made shift to break off or lose their shackles, no doubt for such purpose; but it tended only to procure to themselves worse usage and confinement.

In the same passage to Cape Corso, the prize, Royal Fortune, was in the same danger. She was left at the Island of St. Thomas’s in the possession of an officer and a few men to take in some fresh provisions (which were scarce at Cape Corso), with orders to follow the ship. There were only some of the pirate’s negroes, three or four wounded prisoners, and Scudamore, their surgeon, from whom they seemed to be under no apprehension especially from the last, who might have hoped for favour on account of his employ, and had stood so much indebted for his liberty, eating and drinking constantly with the officers; yet this fellow, regardless of the favour, and lost to all sense of reformation, endeavoured to bring over the negroes to his design of murdering the people and running away with the ship. He easily prevailed with the negroes to come into the design, but when he came to communicate it to his fellow-prisoners, and would have drawn them into the same measures, by telling them he understood navigation, that the negroes were stout fellows, and by a smattering he had in the Angolan language he had found willing to undertake such an enterprise, and that it was better venturing to do this, run down the coast and raise a new company, than to proceed to Cape Corso and be hanged like dogs and sun-dried. One of them abhorring the cruelty, or fearing the success, discovered it to the officer, who made him immediately a prisoner and brought the ship safe.

When they came to be lodged in Cape Corso Castle, their hopes of this kind all cut off, and that they were assured they must there soon receive a final sentence, the note was changed among most of them, and from vain insolent jesting they became serious and devout, begging for good books; and joining in public prayers, and singing of psalms, twice at least every day.