Pirate tales from the law

by Arthur M. Harris

The fifteen-ton brig with the sugar and molasses aboard was kept by Quelch and made a “tender”, as he called it, of the Charles, and thus created a sort of fleet, with the Boston brig as flagship and John Quelch as admiral.

Latitudes seven and eight degrees south had yielded two victims; November twenty-fourth found them in latitude nine degrees south, and tumbling well around the elbow of Brazil, but still in the vicinity of Cape St. Augustine.

Below the cape they took another Portuguese brig, this time of forty tons. She was on her way from the plantations to Pernambuco, laden with about eight hundred dollars’ worth of sugar and molasses. We are vividly reminded of Kidd’s first catches, which so often consisted of small sloops carrying butter, coffee and opium.

A cool piece of work was the taking of this ship, impudently accomplished well within sight of land. Quelch, with John Twist, the linguister, at his side, led in the capture, which was made without resistance on the part of the Portuguese. It took two or three days to shift her cargo to the Charles, after which she was tossed away like a squeezed lemon to get back to port as best she might. Through Twist Quelch informed these Portuguese that the Charles was a French ship and that the Portuguese, as allies of the English, had fallen on the sad mischances of war. Another trick out of Kidd’s bag.

Isaac Johnson, a Dutchman, committed the chief crime on a pirate ship: he talked too much. Somehow or other he told the Portuguese the truth about Quelch. Gunner Moore had met his end at the hands of Captain Kidd because of a fatal flexibility of the lips, and Ike Johnson likewise, though not so severely, was made an example of by the decisive Quelch.

All hands were piped on deck,—not with a boatswain’s whistle, however, but by a trumpet loudly sounded by the kidnapped though apparently not disconsolate Cæsar-Pompey, who to the job of cook added that of ship’s trumpeter. Johnson was brought forward and tied by the wrists to a grating; and Anthony Holding, with malice aforethought and continuous, laid on Ike’s bare back with a rope’s end, and thus counseled him as to the wisdom of silence. It was an approved sea fashion of admonition.

December brought them to latitude thirteen degrees south and early presented them with two jars of rum, a little linen and a trifle of earthenware filched from a shallop. This was the smallest sprat that came to their net during the cruise. She was taken by the tender, and, being despoiled, was sent on her way.

The same day the tender took another small Portuguese boat. Both of these takings were right under the guns of Fort Mora, so close that the flag flying over the fort was clearly discerned. Being a little too close to the fort to run needless risk, Quelch staved in the captured boat and let her gurgle and bubble down into the green Atlantic. Her crew went aboard the Charles, perhaps as recruits.

From her they took a quantity of vari-colored silk; and soon the crew of the Charles were gallant and picturesque in silk breeches and shirts,—of homemade cut and tailoring, to be sure, but none the less gratifying to the wearers.

The next capture was in latitude thirteen degrees south and below Mora. The busy little tender here grabbed a twenty-ton brig, from which an inconsiderable amount of rice and a negro slave were taken. The negro’s name was Joachim; but his captors dubbed him Cuffee and turned him over to Cæsar-Pompey as a flunky. In addition to these there was a young man on board with a canvas bag containing two hundred and fifty dollars in gold coin. The young man was allowed to keep the canvas bag.